Every few years, Nostradamus trends again. Someone cracks open The Prophecies, finds a quatrain about “great trembling under the sky of the seventh month,” and declares it proof that Nostradamus foresaw everything from 9/11 to last Thursday’s gas station sushi incident.
It never fails.
Nostradamus wrote hundreds of vague, cryptic four-line verses — allegedly predicting the future — but only ever became “right” when people twisted his words after events happened. You’ll never find a Nostradamus scholar saying, “He predicted this, so next Thursday at 3 p.m., this will happen.”
No. It’s always after. Always with generous, gymnastic interpretations applied like cheap spray tan over centuries-old ink.
A line about “fire from the heavens”? Earthquake.
A line about “the eagle falling from the sky”? Terror attack.
A line about “two brothers torn apart”? Literally anything remotely sad involving more than one human being.
It’s a psychic Rorschach test for people who want to believe that destiny has been preordained, even if the map is written backward, upside down, and in a language nobody understands without a suspicious amount of creative license.
And of course, the great cosmic joke: Nostradamus didn’t even think he was predicting the future in our modern sense. He mashed astrology, old-world political commentary, and vague poetic dread into a stew of guaranteed misinterpretation, then spent the rest of his life laughing his 16th-century butt off at anyone who thought he meant anything specific.
If Nostradamus truly foresaw the future, he could have saved us all a lot of trouble by predicting Amazon Prime, TikTok, and the slow death of attention spans. Instead, he gave us a collection of horoscope-style riddles vague enough to apply to anything and permanent enough to guarantee his royalties in the afterlife.
If you want a real prophecy, try this: There will be another disaster soon.
Humans will argue about it. And someone will swear Nostradamus predicted it.
You’re welcome.