"Billy" Eduard Albert Meier (February 3, 1937) is a citizen of Switzerland who claims to be a UFO contactee and prophet. He is also the source of many controversial UFO photographs, which he states are evidence of his encounters. Meier reports regular contact with extraterrestrials he calls the Plejaren (aliens from beyond the Pleiades) describing them as humanoid Nordic aliens.

Background[link]

A farmer born in the town of Bülach in the Swiss Lowlands, Eduard "Billy" Meier's claimed his first extraterrestrial contacts occurred in 1942 at the age of five with an elderly extraterrestrial human man named Sfath.^[1] Contacts with Sfath lasted until 1953. From 1953 to 1964, Meier's contacts continued with an extraterrestrial human woman named Asket.^[2] Meier says that after an eleven year break, contacts resumed again (beginning on January 28, 1975) with an extraterrestrial human woman named Semjase^[3] the granddaughter of Sfath.

In his teens, Meier joined the French Foreign Legion but says he soon left and returned home. He traveled extensively around the world pursuing spiritual exploration, covering some forty-two countries over twelve years. In 1965 he lost his left arm in a bus accident in Turkey. In 1966 he met and married a Greek woman, Kalliope, with whom he has three children. The nickname "Billy" came by way of an American friend who thought Meier's cowboy style of dress reminded her of "Billy the Kid". This anecdote was told by Meier himself in an interview with Bob Zanotti of Swiss Radio International in June, 1982. (BZ, 1/08).

Meier has accumulated a large collection of controversial photographs showing alleged spaceships (called beamships) as well as alleged extraterrestrials (humanoids called the Plejaren). Meier says that the Plejaren gave him permission to photograph ^[4] and film their beamships in order to produce some of the evidence for extraterrestrial visitation.^[5] Meier's claims are both believed and disputed by UFO skeptics and enthusiasts.^[6][7][8]

Contact[link]

Beginning in 1975, Meier says he began his official contacts ("official" in that evidence was to be provided publicly, unlike earlier contacts), communicating both directly (face-to-face) and by telepathy with a core group of the Pleiadians/Plejaren, or Errans as he also refers to them (Erra being their home planet), who gave their names as "Ptaah", "Semjase",^[9] "Quetzal" and "Pleja",^[10] among numerous others. According to Meier himself in the video documentary 'Contact', he says that his first contact with extraterrestrials began on January 28, 1975.^[11]

These visitors reportedly hail from the Plejares star system which is beyond the Pleiades and in a dimension that is a fraction of a second in the future from our own (an alternate timeline). These Plejaren have allegedly afforded Meier a more interesting sampling of evidence than that derived from most such encounters, including highly detailed photography, videos, multi-toned sound recordings, the temporary use of a weapon which he employed for trial on a nearby tree, and metal alloy samples.^[12]

Meier claimed the visitors charged him with certain informational and consciousness-raising tasks.^[13] As he undertook this mission, he met with a great deal of scorn and derision in addition to (according to his center) twenty-one assassination attempts. Some of these were allegedly initiated by hostile extraterrestrial entities and subsequently defeated largely through the intervention of his Plejaren friends.^[14] Meier was uncomfortable with the megalomaniacal associations some would attach to his role as a representative (such as use of the term "prophet", e.g.) but he undertook the effort nonetheless.

In 1975 Meier established the Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien ("Free Community of Interests for the Fringe and Spiritual Sciences and UFOlogical Studies"), or FIGU, a non-profit organization for the benefit of researchers into this field, and headquartered it at the Semjase Silver Star Center.^[15]

Topics[link]

Meier claims that he was instructed to transcribe his conversations with the various extraterrestrials, some of which have been published in the German language. These books are referred to as the Contact Notes (or Contact Reports). Currently, there are ten published volumes of the Contact Reports (titled Plejadisch-Plejarische Kontaktberichte). Some of the Contact Reports were translated into English, extensively edited and expurgated, and published in the out-of-print four-volume set Message From The Pleiades by Meier case investigator Wendelle Stevens.

Meier's discussions with the Plejarens are highly detailed and wide-ranging, dealing with subjects ranging from spirituality and the afterlife to the dangers of mainstream religions, human history, science and astronomical phenomena, ecology and environmental dangers, in addition to prophecies of future historic trends and events.

An additional aspect of the Meier case is the highly controversial book the Talmud Jmmanuel. It is said to be the translation of ancient Aramaic scrolls that were discovered by Meier and a colleague in Jerusalem in 1963. The book claims to be the original teachings and life events of the man named Jmmanuel (called Jesus Christ by historians and Christians). Extensive study has been made of the book by James Deardorff.

Criticism and controversy[link]

The photographs and films[link]

Some of the most important evidence for Meier's claims come from his large collection of controversial photographs. These include images of alleged spacecraft in the Swiss countryside, the Apollo-Soyuz 1975 docking and distant astronomical phenomena. Supporters insist that the images are exceptionally high quality and that a one-armed man could not possibly have fabricated them.

In 1978, the pictures and Meier himself were the subject of 6 years of onsite investigation by Retired Lt Col Wendelle Stevens and an American team assembled specifically for the purpose of determining whether trickery was involved. Stephens himself thought the case was genuine but his findings were largely ignored by the UFO community because of his refusal to hand over any of the evidence because of fear of tampering or theft.^{[citation needed]}

Critics such as Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallée believe them to be fakes.^[16] Some critics have provided examples of similar faked photos^[17] and have pointed out that some of his photos are taken from science fiction books, paintings and television programs.^[18] Meier claims that these photos were altered by intelligence agencies and slipped into his collection in order to discredit his UFO testimony.^[19] Other allegations include focus and light-direction problems consistent with cut-and-paste and model techniques.^[20]

Some of the most convincing recreations of Meier's images were created by photographic effects specialist and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, for the June, 2005 issue of Fortean Times magazine. Friswell had employed techniques used in the pre-digital age of film special effects, as modern processes would, in Friswell's opinion, have been "unsporting". Using 'old fashioned' tricks, such as foreground miniatures and photographic cutouts, Friswell crafted believable copies of Meier's UFOs, but claimed that his pictures did not in any way confirm that Meier was a hoaxer, as without personal experience of the events, he had no right to draw conclusive opinions one way or the other.

Meier's relationship with his wife Kalliope ended acrimoniously and in 1997 Kalliope stated in an interview that the UFO in the photos looked like models that Meier had made himself with items like trash can lids, carpet tacks and other household objects, and that the stories he told of his adventures with the aliens had been entirely fictitious. She agreed when asked by an interviewer that the infamous "wedding-cake" ufo looked like the lid to a trash barrel. She has also claimed that one of the pictures taken of an "extraterrestrial female" was actually an acquaintaince covered in tanning foil. Also, photos claimed to be Asket and Nera was actually two The Golddiggers dancer-Michelle Della Fave and Susan Lund, though Meier claims that these photographs were part of a batch that had been tampered with. Michelle Della Fave alleges ^[21] that pictures of her were illegally used by Billy Meier to support his claims of having been visited by female Extraterrestrials.

The metal samples[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2010)

In a video titled “Contact: An Investigation Into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier” a metallurgist’s examination of Billy Meier’s metal revealed: “We have little marker bars here that we can line up on each peak as they come up. This one indicates that we have silver there. Over here, let's see, we've got some copper. A small amount of copper. That looks about all that's in here at the moment."

In 1979 Meier sent Marcel Vogel, a chemist working at IBM, crystal and metal samples Meier claimed to have received from the Plejarens. Vogel examined these samples with a scanning electron microscope and reported; "When I touched the oxide with a stainless steel probe, red streaks appeared and the oxide coating disappeared. I just touched the metal ... and it started to deoxidize and become a pure metal. I have never seen a phenomenon like that before." Vogel also claimed that another metal sample he examined contained nearly every element in the periodic table stating; "Each pure element was bonded to each of the others, yet somehow retained its own identity." At 2500 X Vogel claims the sample was, "...metal, but at the same time... it is crystal!"

And here is a piece of text transcribed from a video file from an interview of Vogel: It's a very unusual combination from an metallurgical standpoint. I've shown these to metallurgists and they shake their heads. The most unusual thing you'll see, purity of these metals in adjacency to one another without their cross contamination. They're very sensitive to marking, the soonest I've exposed them to intense light from my microscope the metal oxidizes very rapidly and just breaks down. I've never seen that.

And on the right side there are 2 screen captures from the same video file, front view and rear view of 1 of the 3 samples he claims he received.

In Wendell Stevens' book UFO Contact from the Pleiades: A Preliminary Investigation Report (1982), page 424: "Looking at the piece by X-ray diffraction, for elemental analysis, he found a single element deposit of Thulium (Tm, Atomic Number 69, Atomic Weight 168.934), a rare transition element in the Lanthide series, and also of Rhenium (Re, Atomic Number 75, Atomic Weight 186.2), another rare metal". Further down the page is also the following paragraph: "Looking at that part spectrographically, the Thulium, remarkably, showed only the primary band spike for that element - no secondary bands existed. All of the elements examined spectrographically had missing bands in their spectrums which should have been there if they were normal spectra. This indicates that the elements are put together in a very unusual way from normal Earth technology. The spectrographic bands are entirely different, beyond what one would consider an isotope. The bands showed a very high elemental purity and no secondary bands and no catalyst. Most of the specimens studied showed the same un-Earthly characteristics."^[22] Due to the disappearance of the metal samples and no peer review process being adhered to, it is not possible to scientifically verify Vogel's claims today. On page 426 is an explanation of the disappearance of the specimen: "...the specimen was being carried on Dr. Vogel's person, in a small plastic envelope, to Ames Research Laboratories for still more exotic tests, when the metal specimen simply disappeared leaving the envelope completely undisturbed."^[23]

The Independent Investigations Group (IIG) analyzed the data from Marcel Vogel presented in the 1985 video Beamship: The Metal Analysis ^[24] and in Wendell Steven's book mentioned above ^{[25] [26]}. The IIG concluded the following: the element found was Aluminum and not Thulium, the evidence for the presence of all elements in the sample is in fact Bremsstrahlung radiation with no bearing on element composition, the structure that suggests exotic micro-manipulation can be found on the surface of metals machined by ordinary cutting tools in a machine shop, and the evidence of crystal birefringence detected using Nomarski and Cross-Polarized microscopy can be reproduced by the topography of a simple metal structure with no birefringence associated to it ^[27]. The IIG did not find data supporting the presence of Rhenium or any other rare earth element.

Meier's Meeting with Jmmanuel[link]

As recounted in the unabridged version of Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 2, Meier was taken back in time by the extraterrestrial Asket where he met personally with Jmmanuel, alleged to be the real Jesus, and who told Meier that Meier's evolution was higher than that of Jmmanuel himself, saying, "Truly, your evolution has proceeded for 2000 years further, which fact I have not considered." (page 512). The contact with Jmmanuel lasted for four days after which Meier was returned to the present time.^[28]

World War Three[link]

Billy Meier has repeatedly warned of an impending Third World War beginning in November 2006, 2008, 2010, or 2011. He has also denounced the terrorist activities and vigilante behaviours of various Muslim extremist groups, which he says only foment the possibility for war. At one time, Meier suggested November 2006 as the most likely start of World War III, then revised the date to November 2008, a period that has also now passed. Meier also stated that, in an approaching year, four world leaders will die within seven days of one another, giving a clear sign that within a mere 2 years of these events the long-feared world war will indeed erupt — that is unless terrestrials finally gain mastery over their reason and change their behavior. He always insisted that these prophecies are all just probabilities subject to change, as opposed to predictions, which are inevitable consequences.^[29]

Business[link]

FIGU is a non profit organisation that supports (through membership and newsletter fees) the dissemination of Billy Meier's writings. Funds raised from FIGU core group and passive members go towards the upkeep of the Semjase Silver Star Center (SSSC) in Switzerland and towards the cost of putting the writings of Mr Meier into a high quality hardback book. All financial records are available to the public as per Swiss law.

See also[link]

• Talmud Jmmanuel

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Kinder, Gary (1987) Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard MeierISBN 0-87113-139-0
• Moosbrugger, Guido. And Still They Fly ISBN 0-9711523-1-4
• Meier, Eduard Albert, Through Space and Time: A Photo Journal of Billy Eduard Albert Meier ISBN 0-9711523-5-7
• Stevens, Wendelle C., Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 1: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier ISBN 0-934269-14-9
• Stevens, Wendelle C., Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 2: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier ISBN 0-934269-24-6
• Stevens, Wendelle C., Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 3: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier ISBN 0-934269-28-9
• Stevens, Wendelle C., Message from the Pleiades, Vol. 4: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier ISBN 0-934269-30-0
• Stevens, Wendelle C., UFO Contact from the Pleiades: A Preliminary Investigation Report ISBN 0-9608558-2-3
• Stevens, Wendelle C., and Lee Elders, UFO... Contact from the Pleiades, Volume 1 ISBN 0-937850-02-0
• Sheaffer, Robert (1998). UFO Sightings: The Evidence. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-213-7. 
• Stuttaford, Andrew (2003-01-17). "Spirits in the Sky". National Review. Archived from the original on 2007-06-02. http://web.archive.org/web/20070602212922/http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/stuttaford/stuttaford011703.asp. Retrieved 2007-05-01. 
• Ortega, Tony (1998-03-05). "The Hack and the Quack". Phoenix New Times. http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1998-03-05/news/the-hack-and-the-quack/full. Retrieved 2007-05-01. 
• Talmud Jmmanuel: The Clear Translation in English and German (Isa Rashid, Eduard Meier, J. H. Ziegler & B. L. Greene): ISBN 978-0-9711523-3-5
• In Search of Truth & Freedom (Dietmar Rothe), ISBN 0-9677453-2-2
• King of Travelers: Jesus Lost Years In India (Edward T. Martin): ISBN 0-9672408-3-2
• The Meier Contacts: The Key To Our Future Survival (Michael Horn) (2004) (video)

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (August 2010)

• Billy Meier - Homepage
• Billy Meier - Figu Website
• Billy Meier - Figu Arabic Website آول موقع عربي بيلي ماير و فيقو
• Steelmark Books (English Billy Meier Publisher)
• Michael Horn - Exploring the Billy Meier UFO Contacts
• James Moore's Meier Wiki - The Largest Collection of English-language Contact Reports
• Michael Horn's guest appearance on The Paranormalis
• James Deardorff's Talmud Jmmanuel Website
• Bibliography of English-language materials
• The Billy Meier UFO Case Investigation
• 2004 Skeptical Report on Meier's Predictions
• James Randi on Billy Meier
• Billy Meier biography, tales and evidence
• In Which A. W. (UK) fakes a UFO photograph just like Meier's
• Pictures analysis
• The Silent Revolution Of Truth, a documentary by Michael Horn including extensive video interviews with Billy Maier
• Is Billy Meier the Only UFO Contactee? a documentary by Michael Horn

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Michel de Nostredame
Nostradamus: original portrait by his son Cesar
Born	14 December or 21 December 1503 Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France
Died	2 July 1566(1566-07-02) (aged 62) Salon-de-Provence, France
Occupation	Apothecary, author, translator, astrological consultant
Known for	Prophecy, treating Plague

Michel de Nostredame^[1] (14 or 21 December 1503^[2] – 2 July 1566), usually Latinised to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties (The Prophecies), the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Since the publication of this book, which has rarely been out of print since his death, Nostradamus has attracted a following that, along with the popular press, credits him with predicting many major world events.

Most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power.^[3] Nevertheless, occasional commentators have successfully used a process of free interpretation and determined 'twisting' of their words to predict an apparently imminent event. In 1867, three years before it happened, for example, Le Pelletier did so to anticipate either the triumph or the defeat of Napoleon III in a war that, in the event, begged to be identified as the Franco-Prussian war, while admitting that he could not specify either which or when.^[4]

Biography[link]

Nostredame's claimed birthplace before its recent renovation, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

Childhood[link]

Born on 14, or 21 December 1503^[2] in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France, where his claimed birthplace still exists, Michel de Nostredame was one of at least nine children of Reynière (or Renée) de Saint-Rémy and grain dealer and notary Jaume (or Jacques) de Nostredame. The latter's family had originally been Jewish, but Jaume's father, Guy Gassonet, had converted to Catholicism around 1455, taking the Christian name "Pierre" and the surname "Nostredame" (the latter apparently from the saint's day on which his conversion was solemnized).^[5] Michel's known siblings included Delphine, Jean I (c. 1507–77), Pierre, Hector, Louis, Bertrand, Jean II (born 1522) and Antoine (born 1523).^[3][5][6] Little else is known about his childhood, although there is a persistent tradition that he was educated by his maternal great-grandfather Jean de St. Rémy^[7]—a tradition which is somewhat undermined by the fact that the latter disappears from the historical record after 1504, when the child was only one year old.^[8]

Student years[link]

At the age of 15^[9] Nostredame entered the University of Avignon to study for his baccalaureate. After little more than a year (when he would have studied the regular trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic, rather than the later quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy/astrology), he was forced to leave Avignon when the university closed its doors in the face of an outbreak of the plague. After leaving Avignon, Nostredame (according to his own account) travelled the countryside for eight years from 1521 researching herbal remedies. In 1529, after some years as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine. He was expelled shortly afterwards by the university's procurator, Guillaume Rondelet, when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, a "manual trade" expressly banned by the university statutes,^[10] and had been slandering doctors.^[11] The expulsion document (BIU Montpellier, Register S 2 folio 87) still exists in the faculty library.^[3] However, some of his publishers and correspondents would later call him "Doctor". After his expulsion, Nostredame continued working, presumably still as an apothecary, and became famous for creating a "rose pill" that supposedly protected against the plague.^[12]

Marriage and healing work[link]

In 1531 Nostredame was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, to come to Agen.^[5] There he married a woman of uncertain name (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), who bore him two children.^[13] In 1534 his wife and children died, presumably from the plague. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy.^[5]

Nostradamus's house at Salon-de-Provence, as reconstructed after the 1909 Lambesc earthquake

On his return in 1545, he assisted the prominent physician Louis Serre in his fight against a major plague outbreak in Marseille, and then tackled further outbreaks of disease on his own in Salon-de-Provence and in the regional capital, Aix-en-Provence. Finally, in 1547, he settled in Salon-de-Provence in the house which exists today, where he married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde, with whom he had six children—three daughters and three sons.^[5] Between 1556 and 1567 he and his wife acquired a one-thirteenth share in a huge canal project organized by Adam de Craponne to irrigate largely waterless Salon-de-Provence and the nearby Désert de la Crau from the river Durance.^[8]

Seer[link]

After another visit to Italy, Nostredame began to move away from medicine and toward the occult. Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first time Latinizing his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus. He was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he decided to write one or more annually. Taken together, they are known to have contained at least 6,338 prophecies,^[3][14] as well as at least eleven annual calendars, all of them starting on 1 January and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March. It was mainly in response to the almanacs that the nobility and other prominent persons from far away soon started asking for horoscopes and "psychic" advice from him, though he generally expected his clients to supply the birth charts on which these would be based, rather than calculating them himself as a professional astrologer would have done. When obliged to attempt this himself on the basis of the published tables of the day, he always made numerous errors, and never adjusted the figures for his clients' place or time of birth.^[6][8] (Refer to the analysis of these charts by Brind'Amour, 1993, and compare Gruber's comprehensive critique of Nostradamus’ horoscope for Crown Prince Rudolph Maximilian.)^[15]

He then began his project of writing a book of one thousand mainly French quatrains,^[16] which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. Feeling vulnerable to opposition on religious grounds,^[3] however, he devised a method of obscuring his meaning by using "Virgilianized" syntax, word games and a mixture of other languages such as Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal.^[3] For technical reasons connected with their publication in three installments (the publisher of the third and last installment seems to have been unwilling to start it in the middle of a "Century," or book of 100 verses), the last fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh "Century" have not survived into any extant edition.

The quatrains, published in a book titled Les Propheties (The Prophecies), received a mixed reaction when they were published. Some people thought Nostradamus was a servant of evil, a fake, or insane, while many of the elite thought his quatrains were spiritually-inspired prophecies. In the light of their post-Biblical sources (see under Nostradamus' sources below), Nostradamus himself encouraged this belief. Catherine de Médicis, the queen consort of King Henri II of France, was one of Nostradamus' greatest admirers. After reading his almanacs for 1555, which hinted at unnamed threats to the royal family, she summoned him to Paris to explain them and to draw up horoscopes for her children. At the time, he feared that he would be beheaded,^[17] but by the time of his death in 1566, Catherine had made him Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to her son, the young King Charles IX of France.

Some accounts of Nostradamus's life state that he was afraid of being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition, but neither prophecy nor astrology fell in this bracket, and he would have been in danger only if he had practiced magic to support them. In fact, his relationship with the Church was always excellent.^[18] His brief imprisonment at Marignane in late 1561 came about purely because he had published his 1562 almanac without the prior permission of a bishop, contrary to a recent royal decree.^[18]

Final years and death[link]

Nostradamus' current tomb in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, Salon, into which his scattered remains were transferred after 1789.

By 1566, Nostradamus's gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years and made movement very difficult, turned into oedema, or dropsy. In late June he summoned his lawyer to draw up an extensive will bequeathing his property plus 3,444 crowns (around $300,000 US today), minus a few debts, to his wife pending her remarriage, in trust for her sons pending their twenty-fifth birthdays and her daughters pending their marriages. This was followed by a much shorter codicil.^[5] On the evening of 2 July, he is alleged to have told his secretary Jean de Chavigny, "You will not find me alive at sunrise." The next morning he was reportedly found dead, lying on the floor next to his bed and a bench (Presage 141 [originally 152] for November 1567, as posthumously edited by Chavigny to fit what happened).^[3][14] He was buried in the local Franciscan chapel in Salon (part of it now incorporated into the restaurant La Brocherie) but re-interred during the French Revolution in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, where his tomb remains to this day.^[5]

Works[link]

Copy of Garencières' 1672 English translation of the Prophecies, located in The P.I. Nixon Medical History Library of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

In The Prophecies he compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. The first installment was published in 1555. The second, with 289 further prophetic verses, was printed in 1557. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but now only survives as part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. This version contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called "Centuries".

Given printing practices at the time (which included type-setting from dictation), no two editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to find even two copies that are exactly the same. Certainly there is no warrant for assuming—as would-be "code-breakers" are prone to do—that either the spellings or the punctuation of any edition are Nostradamus' originals.^[8]

The Almanacs: by far the most popular of his works, these were published annually from 1550 until his death. He often published two or three in a year, entitled either Almanachs (detailed predictions), Prognostications or Presages (more generalized predictions).

Nostradamus was not only a diviner, but a professional healer. It is known that he wrote at least two books on medical science. One was an extremely free translation (i.e. a "paraphrase") of The Protreptic of Galen (Paraphrase de C. GALIEN, sus l'Exhortation de Menodote aux estudes des bonnes Artz, mesmement Medicine), and in his so-called Traité des fardemens (basically a medical cookbook containing, once again, materials borrowed mainly from others) he included a description of the methods he used to treat the plague – none of which, not even the bloodletting, apparently worked. The same book also describes the preparation of cosmetics.

A manuscript normally known as the Orus Apollo also exists in the Lyon municipal library, where upwards of 2,000 original documents relating to Nostradamus are stored under the aegis of Michel Chomarat. It is a purported translation of an ancient Greek work on Egyptian hieroglyphs based on later Latin versions, all of them unfortunately ignorant of the true meanings of the ancient Egyptian script, which was not correctly deciphered until Champollion in the 19th century.

Since his death only the Prophecies have continued to be popular, but in this case they have been quite extraordinarily so. Over two hundred editions of them have appeared in that time, together with over 2,000 commentaries. Their popularity seems to be partly due to the fact that their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits" (see Nostradamus in popular culture).

[edit] Origins of The Prophecies

Nostradamus claimed to base his published predictions on judicial astrology—the astrological 'judgement', or assessment, of the 'quality' (and thus potential) of events such as births, weddings, coronations etc.—but was heavily criticized by professional astrologers of the day such as Laurens Videl^[3] for incompetence and for assuming that "comparative horoscopy" (the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events) could actually predict what would happen in the future.^[8]

Recent research suggests that much of his prophetic work paraphrases collections of ancient end-of-the-world prophecies (mainly Bible-based), supplemented with references to historical events and anthologies of omen reports, and then projects those into the future in part with the aid of comparative horoscopy. Hence the many predictions involving ancient figures such as Sulla, Gaius Marius, Nero, and others, as well as his descriptions of "battles in the clouds" and "frogs falling from the sky." Astrology itself is mentioned only twice in Nostradamus's Preface and 41 times in the Centuries themselves, but more frequently in his dedicatory Letter to King Henri II. In the last quatrain of his sixth century he specifically attacks astrologers.

His historical sources include easily identifiable passages from Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch and other classical historians, as well as from medieval chroniclers such as Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Jean Froissart. Many of his astrological references are taken almost word for word from Richard Roussat's Livre de l'estat et mutations des temps of 1549–50.

One of his major prophetic sources was evidently the Mirabilis Liber of 1522, which contained a range of prophecies by Pseudo-Methodius, the Tiburtine Sibyl, Joachim of Fiore, Savonarola and others (his Preface contains 24 biblical quotations, all but two in the order used by Savonarola).^[19] This book had enjoyed considerable success in the 1520s, when it went through half a dozen editions (see External links below for facsimiles and translations) but did not sustain its influence, perhaps owing to its mostly Latin text, Gothic script and many difficult abbreviations. Nostradamus was one of the first to re-paraphrase these prophecies in French, which may explain why they are credited to him. It should be noted that modern views of plagiarism did not apply in the 16th century. Authors frequently copied and paraphrased passages without acknowledgement, especially from the classics.The latest research suggests that he may in fact have used bibliomancy for this—randomly selecting a book of history or prophecy and taking his cue from whatever page it happened to fall open at.^[9]

Further material was gleaned from the De honesta disciplina of 1504 by Petrus Crinitus,^[8] which included extracts from Michael Psellos's De daemonibus, and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum (Concerning the mysteries of Egypt...), a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th century Neo-Platonist. Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon, and extracts from both are paraphrased (in the second case almost literally) in his first two verses, the first of which is appended to this article. While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all of the occult works in his library, no one can say exactly what books were destroyed in this fire. The fact that they reportedly burned with an unnaturally brilliant flame suggests, however, that some of them were manuscripts on vellum, which was routinely treated with saltpeter.

Only in the 17th century did people start to notice his reliance on earlier, mainly classical sources.^[20] This may help explain the fact that, during the same period, The Prophecies reportedly came into use in France as a classroom reader.^[21]

Nostradamus's reliance on historical precedent is reflected in the fact that he explicitly rejected the label prophet (i.e. a person having prophetic powers of his own) on several occasions:^[3][8]

Although, my son, I have used the word prophet, I would not attribute to myself a title of such lofty sublimity – Preface to César, 1555 (see caption to illustration above)^[22]

Not that I would attribute to myself either the name or the role of a prophet – Preface to César, 1555^[22]

[S]ome of [the prophets] predicted great and marvelous things to come: [though] for me, I in no way attribute to myself such a title here. – Letter to King Henri II, 1558^[23]

I do but make bold to predict (not that I guarantee the slightest thing at all), thanks to my researches and the consideration of what judicial Astrology promises me and sometimes gives me to know, principally in the form of warnings, so that folk may know that with which the celestial stars do threaten them. Not that I am foolish enough to pretend to be a prophet. Open letter to Privy Councillor (later Chancellor) Birague, 15 June 1566^[3]

His rejection of the title prophet is consistent with the fact^[3] that he entitled his book

(a title that, in French, as easily means "The Prophecies, by M. Michel Nostradamus"—which is what they were—as "The Prophecies of M. Michel Nostradamus", which, except in a few cases, they were not, other than in the manner of their editing, expression and reapplication to the future).

Given this reliance on literary sources, it is doubtful^[3] whether Nostradamus used any particular methods for entering a trance state, other than contemplation, meditation and incubation. His sole description of this process is contained in letter 41^[24] of his collected Latin correspondence.^[3] The popular legend that he attempted the ancient methods of flame gazing, water gazing or both simultaneously is based on a naive reading of his first two verses, which merely liken his efforts to those of the Delphic and Branchidic oracles. The first of these is reproduced at the bottom of this article and the second can be seen by visiting the relevant facsimile site (see External Links). In his dedication to King Henri II, Nostradamus describes "emptying my soul, mind and heart of all care, worry and unease through mental calm and tranquility", but his frequent references to the "bronze tripod" of the Delphic rite are usually preceded by the words "as though" (compare, once again, External References to the original texts).

Interpretations[link]

Most of the quatrains deal with disasters, such as plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, and battles—all undated and based on foreshadowings by the Mirabilis Liber. Some quatrains cover these disasters in overall terms; others concern a single person or small group of people. Some cover a single town, others several towns in several countries. A major, underlying theme is an impending invasion of Europe by Muslim forces from further east and south headed by the expected Antichrist, directly reflecting the then-current Ottoman invasions and the earlier Saracen (that is, Arab) equivalents, as well as the prior expectations of the Mirabilis Liber.^[3] All of this is presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of the world—even though this is not in fact mentioned^[25] – a conviction that sparked numerous collections of end-time prophecies at the time, not least an unpublished collection by Christopher Columbus.^[26]

Nostradamus has been credited, for the most part in hindsight (see under 'Alternative views' below), with predicting numerous events in world history, from the Great Fire of London, and the rise of Napoleon and Adolf Hitler, to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.^[15] In 1992 one commentator who claimed to be able to contact Nostradamus under hypnosis even had him 'interpreting' his own verse X.6 (a prediction specifically about floods in southern France around the city of Nîmes and people taking refuge in its collosse, or Colosseum, a Roman amphitheatre now known as the Arènes) as a prediction of an undated attack on the Pentagon, despite the historical seer's clear statement in his dedicatory letter to King Henri II^[27] that his prophecies were about Europe, North Africa and part of Asia Minor.^[28] Skeptics such as James Randi suggest that his reputation as a prophet is largely manufactured by modern-day supporters who fit his words to events that have either already occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable, a process sometimes known as "retroactive clairvoyance" (postdiction). Thus, no Nostradamus quatrain is known to have been interpreted as predicting a specific event before it occurred, other than in vague, general terms that could equally apply to any number of other events.^[29] This even applies to quatrains that contain specific dates, such as III.77, which predicts 'in 1727, in October, the king of Persia [shall be] captured by those of Egypt' — a prophecy that has, as ever, been interpreted retrospectively in the light of later events, in this case as though it presaged the known peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Persia of that year.^[30] Moreover no quatrain suggests, as is often claimed by books and films on the alleged Mayan Prophecy, that the world will end in December 2012.^[31] In his preface to the Prophecies, Nostradamus himself stated that his prophecies extend 'from now to the year 3797'^[32]—an extraordinary date which, given that the preface was written in 1555, may have more than a little to do with the fact that 2242 (3797-1555) had recently been proposed by his major astrological source Richard Roussat as a possible date for the end of the world.^[33]

Alternative views[link]

A range of quite different views are expressed in printed literature and on the Internet. At one end of the spectrum, there are extreme academic views such as those of Jacques Halbronn, suggesting at great length and with great complexity that Nostradamus's Prophecies are antedated forgeries written by later hands with a political axe to grind. Most other specialists in the field reject this view.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are numerous fairly recent popular books, and thousands of private websites, suggesting not only that the Prophecies are genuine but that Nostradamus was a true prophet. Due to the subjective nature of these interpretations, however, no two of them agree on exactly what he predicted, whether for the past or for the future.^[6] Many of these do agree, though, that particular predictions refer, for example, to the French Revolution, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler,^[3][34] both world wars, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is also an evident consensus among popular authors that he predicted whatever major event had just happened at the time of each book's publication, from the Apollo moon landings, through the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986,^[35] to the events of 9/11: this 'movable feast' aspect appears to be characteristic of the genre.^[6]

Possibly the first of these books to become popular in English was Henry C. Roberts' The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus of 1947, reprinted at least seven times during the next forty years, which contained both transcriptions and translations, with brief commentaries. This was followed in 1961 (reprinted in 1982) by Edgar Leoni's Nostradamus and His Prophecies. After that came Erika Cheetham's The Prophecies of Nostradamus, incorporating a reprint of the posthumous 1568 edition, which was reprinted, revised and republished several times from 1973 onwards, latterly as The Final Prophecies of Nostradamus. This served as the basis for the documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. and both did indeed mention possible generalised future attacks on New York, though not specifically on the World Trade Center or on any particular date. A two-part translation of Jean-Charles de Fontbrune's Nostradamus: historien et prophète was published in 1980, and John Hogue has published a number of books on Nostradamus from about 1994 onwards, including Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (1999) and Nostradamus: A Life and Myth (2003).

With the exception of Roberts, these books and their many popular imitators were almost unanimous not merely about Nostradamus's powers of prophecy, but also about various aspects of his biography. He had been a descendant of the Israelite tribe of Issachar; he had been educated by his grandfathers, who had both been physicians to the court of Good King René of Provence; he had attended Montpellier University in 1525 to gain his first degree: after returning there in 1529 he had successfully taken his medical doctorate; he had gone on to lecture in the Medical Faculty there until his views became too unpopular; he had supported the heliocentric view of the universe; he had travelled to the north-east of France, where he had composed prophecies at the abbey of Orval; in the course of his travels he had performed a variety of prodigies, including identifying a future Pope; he had successfully cured the Plague at Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere; he had engaged in scrying using either a magic mirror or a bowl of water; he had been joined by his secretary Chavigny at Easter 1554; having published the first installment of his Propheties, he had been summoned by Queen Catherine de' Medici to Paris in 1556 to discuss with her his prophecy at quatrain I.35 that her husband King Henri II would be killed in a duel; he had examined the royal children at Blois; he had bequeathed to his son a 'lost book' of his own prophetic paintings;^[36] he had been buried standing up; and he had been found, when dug up at the French Revolution, to be wearing a medallion bearing the exact date of his disinterment.

Curiously, this particular story seems to have been first recorded by Samuel Pepys as early as 1667, long before the French Revolution. Pepys records in his celebrated diary a legend that, before his death, Nostradamus made the townsfolk swear that his grave would never be disturbed; but that 60 years later his body was exhumed, whereupon a brass plaque was found on his chest correctly stating the date and time when his grave would be opened and cursing the exhumers.^[37]

From the 1980s onwards, however, an academic reaction set in, especially in France. The publication in 1983 of Nostradamus's private correspondence^[38] and, during succeeding years, of the original editions of 1555 and 1557 discovered by Chomarat and Benazra, together with the unearthing of much original archival material^[5][8] revealed that much that was claimed about Nostradamus did not fit the documented facts. The academics^{[5][6][8][39]} revealed that not one of the claims just listed was backed up by any known contemporary documentary evidence. Most of them had evidently been based on unsourced rumours relayed as fact by much later commentators, such as Jaubert (1656), Guynaud (1693) and Bareste (1840), on modern misunderstandings of the 16th century French texts, or on pure invention. Even the often-advanced suggestion that quatrain I.35 had successfully prophesied King Henri II's death did not actually appear in print for the first time until 1614, 55 years after the event.^[3][8]

Additionally, the academics,^[6][39][40] who themselves tend to eschew any attempt at interpretation, complained that the English translations were usually of poor quality, seemed to display little or no knowledge of 16th-century French, were tendentious and, at worst, were sometimes twisted to fit the events to which they were supposed to refer (or vice versa). None of them were based on the original editions: Roberts had based his writings on that of 1672, Cheetham and Hogue on the posthumous edition of 1568. Even Leoni accepted on page 115 that he had never seen an original edition, and on earlier pages he indicated that much of his biographical material was unsourced.

However, none of this research and criticism was originally known to most of the English-language commentators, by function of the dates when they were writing and, to some extent, of the language in which it was written. Hogue was in a position to take advantage of it, but it was only in 2003 that he accepted that some of his earlier biographical material had in fact been apocryphal. Meanwhile some of the more recent sources listed (Lemesurier, Gruber, Wilson) have been particularly scathing about later attempts by some lesser-known authors and Internet enthusiasts to extract alleged hidden meanings from the texts, whether with the aid of anagrams, numerical codes, graphs or otherwise.

Popular culture[link]

The prophecies retold and expanded by Nostradamus have figured largely in popular culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. As well as being the subject of hundreds of books (both fiction and nonfiction), Nostradamus's life has been depicted in several films and videos, and his life and writings continue to be a subject of media interest.

There have also been several well-known Internet hoaxes, where quatrains in the style of Nostradamus have been circulated by e-mail as the real thing. The best-known examples concern the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks, which led both to hoaxes and to reinterpretations by enthusiasts of several quatrains as supposed prophecies.^[41]

With the arrival of the year 2012, Nostradamus's prophecies started to be co-opted (especially by the History Channel) as evidence suggesting that the end of the world is imminent, notwithstanding the fact that his book never mentions the end of the world, let alone the year 2012.^[42]

Despite being known for his prophecies, Nostradamus was known for his keen interest in making jam, specifically cherry.^[43]

See also[link]

Century I, Quatrain 1: 1555 Lyon Bonhomme edition

• For comparison with another predictive protoscience see Alchemy.
• Divination
• List of astrologers
• Mysticism
• Roger Frontenac
• Vaticinia Nostradami

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michel de Nostredame

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nostradamus

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Nostradamus

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Nostradamus

The following websites are or aim to be factual, and consistent with the article, rather than speculative or fictional in character.

• Nostradamus FAQs
• Timeline
• Facsimiles, reprints and some translations of a range of Nostradamus texts, info etc.
• Largest online library of Nostradamus facsimiles
• Selected English translations from the Mirabilis Liber
• Historical origins of the Propheties
• Espace Nostradamus Benazra's French website and major academic forum
• CURA's major international academic forum
• Nostradamus Research Group
• Texts, FAQs, translations, quatrain search engine, general information and illustrated tour of Nostradamus's Provence

Steven M. Greer
Born	(1955-06-28) June 28, 1955 (age 56) Charlotte, North Carolina
Occupation	Physician Ufologist

Steven M. Greer (June 28, 1955) is an American physician and ufologist who founded the Orion Project and The Disclosure Project.

Biography[link]

Greer claims that he is a contactee who has coined the term "close encounter of the fifth kind" to describe human-initiated contact with extraterrestrials.^[1]

The Disclosure Project[link]

The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project started by Greer in 1992 that exposes the existence of a US government cover-up of information relating to unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The Disclosure Project has been well-received by UFO enthusiasts, with speeches from Greer and various other witnesses being presented at various UFO-themed conferences. Greer has held press conferences and embarked on a continuing series of lectures and television appearances trying to raise popular support.^[2]

Mainstream media coverage of the group mostly centered around a 2001 conference at the National Press Club^[3] which was described by an attending BBC reporter as the strangest he had ever seen.^[4] Greer convened the conference with more than 100 other contactees offering testimony. Among the contactees were "...about 20 former government workers, many of them military and security officials, who stepped forward...and called for congressional hearings about such sightings."^[5] Such arguments were met with by derision by skeptics and spokespeople for the U. S. Air Force who maintain that there is no convincing evidence for the speculation that UFOs are alien spacecraft.^[6][7]

Media appearances[link]

Greer has appeared on Larry King Live,^[8] CBS, BBC, NTV in Japan, Sightings, Encounters, Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM,^[9] the Art Bell show, the Armstrong Williams radio show and hosts an Internet radio segment called "Conversations with Dr. Steven Greer". He is also very present at ufosearchonline.com.^[10]

Publications[link]

• Contact: Countdown to Transformation 2009. ISBN 0-9673238-3-1.
• Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge 2006. ISBN 0-9673238-2-7.
• Disclosure : Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History 2001. ISBN 0-9673238-1-9.
• Extraterrestrial Contact: The Evidence and Implications 1999. ISBN 0-9673238-0-0.

References[link]

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