By RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.

– Shakespeare

Guess whose spirit — if at all it’s possible — is cock-a-hoop at the present time? You got it right. Nostradamus, the famed mediaeval seer, the man who saw tomorrow… even before it came… never ever, and never after.

Who else?

That publishers, and booksellers, of a host of Nostradamus titles, are laughing their way to the bank, from Miami to Mumbai, is now archaic. Because, the demand for the master crystal-ball gazer’s encrypted, sometimes puzzlingly “possible” prophecies, in print, has multiplied manifold ever since Mumbai’s “Terror Wednesday” — a tragedy never before incarnate in history? Indeed.

Photo Courtesy: www.happyvalleynews.com

But, one big question has not changed in its dimension. It continues to “haunt” the laity, which has lapped up the prophet’s work, lock, stock, and barrel, and the scientific community that has always had reservations vis-à-vis its prophecies. Not surprisingly, the huge divide has become all the more imminent now than ever before.

Agreed that the underlying principles of Nostradamus’ predictions cannot be scientifically validated, but what really takes the cake is their uncanny gist for far-reaching themes. While Nostradamus sculpted most of his prophecies with the best of intensions, if not clarity of purpose, some have been manipulated by his disciples, and many misinterpreted, or skewed, by a legion of scholars, who may have shot into limelight soon after an event — not necessarily before it.

As a matter of fact, Nostradamus himself acknowledged that his prophecies were perpetual, based as they were on a cyclical view of history. Yet, the seer’s model was not as simplistic, albeit the principle was faithful to the genre. Reason: history is often periodic, and what may have happened at any time was quite likely to happen again, given the right planetary and human conditions. Nostradamus also implied that nothing, of course, could change the planetary variables. However, the only thing that could avoid, or just bring about the event in question, scholars now acknowledge, was/is human behaviour itself.

What impresses us most is this very postulate Peter Lemesurier, a noted Nostradamus researcher, and author of an impressive book, Nostradamus In The 21st Century, examines… and puts forth, with an attached sense of detachment — especially in view of the relevance of Nostradamus’ disturbing prophecies, today… Relate it to an Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, terrorist strikes, or what you may.

You have it all — out there, in Nostradamus’ fertile mind. Not only that. Lemesurier also chronicles a blow-by-blow account detailing the coming invasion of Europe, by a massive military power, and includes over 100 new verse-translations. He contends that one should not view the seer’s prophecies as mere forecasts of inevitable doom, but as a project in which humanity can co-operate, or guide themselves — and, maybe, avoid their “fruition.” For one simple reason: forewarned is forearmed.

This is not all. Nostradamus was, quite simply, a mastermind, yes. He never ever gave a particular date to a possible future event. A fact, as Lemesurier says, has allowed his followers to constantly say, “Well, it hasn’t happened yet.”

Just think of it as pure windfall — one that has allowed the prophet himself to steer clear of ever being proved flawed.