Essay, Research Paper: Three Famous Quatrains

Three Famous Quatrains

Michel de Nostredames or better known to the public as Nostradamus was a french physician and astrologer. He had a special ability to gaze into the future. Nostradamus wrote 946 cryptic quatrains that were predictions pertaining to the future, but only one dozen of his quatrains fulfilled the predictions. In the next few pages I will discuss a few of his most popular quatrains, from the last decade and into the next.
Nostradamus left his predictions to us in the form of several letters, almost one thousand four line verses called quatrain's (the Centuries). The prophecies listed in these letters are not sequential by the date. He left us his original prophesies written in an older style French and all of his writings were twisted and mixed up, to prevent the people of his time from reading them. He did not want anyone to know of his writings because he felt they would not be able to comprehend what will happen in the future until it really happened. There are many different views on what Nostradamus exactly meant in his prophesies, everyone who reads his prophesies interprets them differently; some people would say that his quatrains are so obscure that they can be interpreted to predict any event in the future.
Nostradamus had so many predictions, that came so close to the events, that he talked about in his writings, that it would lead someone to believe that Nostradamus was not guessing about what would happen in future events. Here is the quatrain that gave him his reputation as a prophet.
Century 1, Quatrain 65 - King Henry II
"The younger lion shall surmount the old
On martial field in duel man to man.
Two breaks at once, eyes pierced in cage of gold,
Death shall come hard as only dying can." (Lemesurier 28)
In 1559 King Henry II of France held a three-day knightly tournament (which was three days of battling), in honor of the marriages of his sister Marguerite to the Duke of Savoy and of his daughter to King Phillip II of Spain. Henry participated in the games himself. Henry was always dressed in full armor and carried a shield with an ornate lion symbol on it. When King Henry won each of his battles, he would raise his visor from his golden helmet, to receive the applause of the crowd.
On the third day of the tournament, Henry was to battle against Count Montgomery in the final duel. The duel ended in a draw. Henry would not except a draw and told the young count that they must do battle again until someone wins. The count did not want to because he knew about Nostradamus' prophecy. Henry continued to insist that they do battle, finally the count agreed.
During the second charge of the duel their lances collided into each other. There was a loud crack when the lances broke after colliding. A piece of the counts lance had pierced through Henrys golden helmet and was lodged in the corner of his eye, also a piece of the lance had pierced into Henrys throat. King Henry died of the two wounds that were inflicted in the duel, but only after ten days of agony. King Henry II had then filled one of Nostradamus' most famous prophecies.
Century 1,Quatrain 81 - Chalanger Space Shuttle Disaster.
D'humain troupeau neuf seront mis a' part, De iugement & conseil seperez:
Leur sort sera diuise'en depart,
Kappa, Thita, Lamboda mors bannis esgarez.

Translation:
"From human flock nine will be sent away,
Separated from control and advise
Their fate will be sealed on departure
K-Th-L make a error; the dead banished" (Flanagon).
On January 28, 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle was sent into space from Kennedy Space Center. It exploded in seventy two seconds after lift of. It wasn't out of the earth's atmosphere yet. Challenger was carrying seven crewmembers and they all died in the accident.
Nostradamus spoke in his prophesy about nine being sent away. There were only seven crewmembers on board. Next it said they were separated from control and advise, which is true they had no control over what was going to happen and the ground controllers did not either. Also the contact with the astronauts was lost after the explosion. Their fate will be sealed on departure; after reviewing the tapes they did see some flames coming out of the side of one of the rockets while lifting off, so their fate was sealed the minute that ship lifted off the ground. K-Th-L, stands for ThioKoL the
manufacturer of the rocket engine that had the problem that caused the explosion.
Century 10, Quatrain72(1) - July, 1999
"In the year 1999 and seven months [July]
The great king of terror will come from the sky
He will resurrect Ghengis Khan
Before and after war rules happily" ( Zachary 21-22).
Some people see this Quatrain as saying that there will be a World war three in 1999. Others state that we are expecting one of our satellites that we launched many years ago to re-enter the earth's atmosphere at that time. The problem with the satellite is that it is holding a substantial amount of plutonium and there is a small chance that it could re-enter the atmosphere the wrong way and cause substantial amount of damage to the earth.
There is still one more hypothesis of this Quatrain which is that we will be visited by extraterrestrial life in 1999. These creatures will come from the sky in some sort of flying objects and change the world it is today.
Some of Nostradamus' predictions did come true, while many did not. Nostradamus stated that if a person had knowledge of the future he could change the future. So maybe many of his predictions were incorrect, but maybe people saw the predictions and re-thought their actions that changed the outcome of the future. Despite that fact, he still predicted many outcomes of our future in the twentieth century and maybe in the twenty first century. It is hard to ignore Nostradamus' predictions for our future, but the ultimate message is one of hope.