Nostradamus: 2012, the program on the History Channel

Entry for January 5, 2009

Okay, once again I get more activity on this site when the History Channel shows a Nostradamus show. On Sunday evening, they debuted a production named “Nostradamus: 2012”. I watched it and took notes, because I wanted to keep everyone abreast on the accuracy of what they had to sell this time.

I will add much greater detail under my heading “This and That Archive” later. For the sake of simple minds floating through the blogesphere, I will try to keep this program review short. As such, two things stand out immediately that I saw.

One, the usual trick of building up belief for fifteen minutes, then busting that bubble for two minutes before a three minute commercial break, with some expert opinion that makes reason for disbelief possible, was not present. There were no talking heads that were chosen to debunk anything presented in this new program. There were eleven people given time to explain support for the central theme, in one form or another, from various levels of expertise in differing fields of study and focus. The primary opinions were made by promoters of Nostradamus, with others specializing in various views on Armageddon and the end of the world, through Mayan studies, Egyptian mystery schools-freemasons-alchemists, earth-space possibilities and probabilities, Hopi Indians, as well as some “Bible Code” and the “Lost Book of Nostradamus” leftovers.

Two, the theme was founded in the Mayan calendar prediction of 2012 being the end of time, due to that calendar not going beyond that year. Everything else was an attempt to tie other predictions to that same year, with Nostradamus being the marquee performer. However, the History Channel “Facebook” posting of an advertisement for the coming release of the program started off by saying, “Nostradamus: 2012 takes off where the Lost Book of Nostradamus left off.” That is the true theme, more than the same old Nostradamus stuff previously presented. They were basing the title on the name of Nostradamus largely because of the “Lost Book”, and on seven pictures from that book.

These pictures were not presented in that last production, which clearly indicated the artist could not have been Michel de Notredame, although it was possible it was one of his sons, most possibly Caesar Nostradamus. Therefore, “Nostradamus: 2012” could more rightly be named “Caesar Nostradamus: 2012”, with guest appearances from his father’s prophecies, which led to the artwork.

The 2-hour program (roughly 102 minutes) covered each of those seven pictures, with some of the commentators explaining the meanings of the images, in particular to how they were depicting an event that will occur in the year 2012. That event is the lining up of the Sun to the center of the Milky Way. These seven pictures were not presented in the other show about that source of all the book’s pictures, supposedly lost in the Vatican library.

In between the presentation of this meaning of pictures, the show presented (at least partially) fourteen quatrains from Les Propheties, a brief segment from Nostradamus’ “Epistle to Henry II”, and a quatrain identified as “Presage 16”. There was absolutely nothing explained about the meaning of these poems, or statements. Their presentation simply created the illusion that something of importance had just been shown.

They would cut from one picture’s explanation, or some other reference to the astronomy of a 26,000-year precession cycle, and previous known cataclysms, to a background picture of Nostradamus and an astrological chart. Then an invisible hand would write out the lines of an identified quatrain in white letters, as though Nostradamus was watching the program and writing at the same time. In each line that appeared, one word would turn to red and glow, before fading to black, shortly after another line would appear, repeating the same format.

With that dog and pony trick, they were actually just showing quatrains that had two or three words that went along with the theme of the show. Following the shift to a new scene, nothing was explained about the quatrain just presented. The commentators simply made more comments about something bad happening, using those words that had appeared in red-black.

The excerpt that was presented from the letter to Henri II was two segments of words (less than 40 total), from a letter of over 4200 words. Those two segments were clipped from one very long grouping of words segments, with several segments between them omitted. The words omitted would have shed a different light to those segments they chose to present, had they read them also. However, that would have made them make little sense, as far as supporting a theme of 2012 would be concerned.

The presage 16 they presented was something a man named Bernard Chevignard decided was important. He found similarities between the prophecy quatrains and the Almanac predictions. Presage 16 was actually a prediction Nostradamus made for the month of May, in the year 1557. This, like the presentation of the other Nostradamus material, was not explained as to why it had anything to do with 2012. There were simply foreboding words used, which fit the theme of Armageddon.

Some legitimate observations made include (and I paraphrase): Many of Nostradamus’ quatrains are pinpointing the period between 1992 and 2012 (Vincent Bridges); Nostradamus purposefully obscured the prophecies to mislead the idiots who would try to interpret them, while the truth would only be caught by a few (John Hogue); and, Nostradamus is telling us (in the modern world) to be careful (Vincent Bridges). As the show closed, the announcer said something to the effect, “Nostradamus says it is up to us to chose our future. We will either prevail or perish together.”

My view of this program is it does more harm than good. I fully agree that 2012 can be defended by what Nostradamus wrote; but you have to know how to read Nostradamus to make what he wrote become a full-scale argument for that time being a critical time to prepare for. Preparation has to include the understanding that Nostradamus did not write anything because he studied alchemy (which I have seen no proof of). Nostradamus wrote over and over, giving one piece of supporting evidence after another that he wrote a true prophecy, at the direction of Jesus Christ.

Without that understanding, we have no concept of preparing to face the year 2012 by beginning to change the way we are headed now, which is taking us to a terrible end. We must understand we are responsible for what happens in our world (not some alignment in the stars), and if we do nothing to change what will happen now, whatever happens then is on us. We can only truly be motivated to change by seeing for ourselves the power of true prophecy, which means actually taking the time to want to see Jesus Christ through the words of Nostradamus.

The Epistle to Henri II has a wealth of information that can nail down several years of importance, including 2012, but also slightly before and also beyond by twenty years. There are astrological quatrains that have planets positioned in alignments that will occur in November 2012, which is not far before the Galactic Alignment that is said to be coming on December 21, 2012. There are stories in both the quatrains and the letters that tell of events that will happen on the eve of all this happening in 2012, which will be the signs of having reached the point of no return. The point of having a point of no return is to no when the latest time to turn away from disaster will occur. That makes the point be to turn away as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I do not have a contract with the History Channel, so you will only see what I have to say here.

Again, I will go much further into some deeper explanation of the faults of this program in the Archive section. Give me a few days to get a page or two written. There will be another airing of the Nostradamus: 2012 program on January 8th, at 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. You can watch it again to see what I am talking about, with some knowledge of the tricks they pull.