September 11, 2001

3:37 PM

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb", "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

- Nostradamus, 1654
posted by Nick Finck (44 comments total)

citation for quote?
posted by mathowie at 3:42 PM on September 11, 2001

What about this? From Tarot:

The Tower -- 'The Tower is numbered sixteen and shows a tower struck by lightning, with raging fires within and the top of the tower falling. There are usually figures falling, head-first, from the ruins. The Tower shows us a basic fact of spiritual life - the power of the Gods can strike unexpectedly to break down all the long-established patterns and assumptions that we have taken for granted for so long.'
posted by LMG at 3:45 PM on September 11, 2001

I'm a skeptic. Always thought Nostradamus' quatrains could be explained prosaically. I don't know what I think anymore. This is so frightening. Good luck to all of us, fellow humans!
posted by crasspastor at 3:45 PM on September 11, 2001

1) Nostradamus died in 1566
2) The people who "analyse" the Quatrains simply scan through history until they find an event that seems to fit with the quatrain.
3) Fomenting panic is really a very bad idea at a time like this.
posted by swerdloff at 3:45 PM on September 11, 2001

as lightning hits the tower.
posted by jcterminal at 3:46 PM on September 11, 2001

An eerily prophetic newsgroup post too, thanks for giving me somewhere to post it, I didn't think it was front page worthy.

Personally I don't believe in Nostradamus, it can be translated and construed in many ways. Besides, New York isn't really considered a "City of God". Seems more fit for Jerusalem
posted by geoff. at 3:46 PM on September 11, 2001

I don't believe The Big Apple has ever been referenced as a City of God.
posted by linux at 3:46 PM on September 11, 2001

great leader? hmm, not Bush then..
posted by Mossy at 3:47 PM on September 11, 2001

Nostradamus said world war III would start in 1994ish. It's about damn time we start panicing. Besides I missed out on the whole Y2K panic, so I plan on going all out for this one.
posted by fuq at 3:51 PM on September 11, 2001

City of God = Jerusalem.

Roll dem bones.
posted by Sinner at 3:51 PM on September 11, 2001

Oh shut up, you tin foil hat wearing nuts.

Go hang up on the psychic hotline, find someone you love, and give them a hug.
posted by bondcliff at 3:53 PM on September 11, 2001

I'm sorry but I find it obscene to quote Nostradamus. The idea that all is predetermined and foreseeable is abhorrent to any idea of freedom, free will or history.
It's people who kill; people who die. Things have to be done. They can be done. The ridiculous meanderings of the old quack Nostradamus are always cited after the fact but they do have the nefarious effect of freeing us from blame and from any future intervention.
Whatever the intention, this is in very bad taste.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:55 PM on September 11, 2001

yah, i think the nostradamus tie in is pretty tasteless. when in was in grade school, one of my teachers showed a nostradamus video and had absolutely terrified me that new york would be struck by a nuclear missle, just at the time when my sister was looking into taking a job there. i'm sure that if we scanned through the book of revelations, we can connect a passage or two with today's events -- it would prove nothing, besides that there may be an interpreted connection.
posted by moz at 4:00 PM on September 11, 2001

The Nostradamus stuff is garbage. The quatrains are so purposefully vague and unintelligible that they can be "interpreted" to reference any event.

In fact, one quatrain predicted by birth...trust me, it's in there.

This is much more spooky than Nostradamus though.
posted by mkn at 4:03 PM on September 11, 2001

Bad taste? It was due to come up.

I've never given Nostradamus a whit of merit. Yet like a good ghost story the phrase, "The two brothers torn apart by chaos" is haunting.

Indeed, the fright that I referred to, that I feel, is that there is nothing about today that isn't hauntingly surreal. So, it's just great for me, I've relegated myself to one of the loonies populating MeFi.
posted by crasspastor at 4:07 PM on September 11, 2001

After further researching I cannot find any conclusive information on this quote. The closest thing I can find was a book perhaps titled "End of the World" (Nostradamus, 1654)... but it's unconfirmed... I am not 100% sure book actually exists much less even if it does that the quote is accurate. Are there any historians or librarians in the house?
posted by Nick Finck at 4:08 PM on September 11, 2001

I am a librarian in the house. That quote specifically is used in this page to show how Nostradamus can be used to basically be "predicting" anything. I'm with bondcliff, go out and hug your loved ones.
posted by jessamyn at 4:14 PM on September 11, 2001

hey, geoff- have you pointed the authorities to that newsgroup?
posted by MonkeyMeat at 4:16 PM on September 11, 2001

No, I'm about to, John Ashcroft asked anyone with information to go to ifccfbi.gov though I'm sure I'm not the first person to find this post.
posted by geoff. at 4:20 PM on September 11, 2001

From Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy: “The Pentagon. Really a giant magick symbol to house Nyarlathoptep who is beneath the pentagon. A suicide bomber crashes the side of the pentagon. Freeing Nyarlathotep.” - 1975
posted by Davezilla at 4:26 PM on September 11, 2001

Ok, let's go with the assumption that the quote is accurate... (we all know how words in other languages can be misinterpreted)..

Ok, so some of you have pointed out that "the city of god" is not the big apple, it's Jerusalem.

correct... however, it doesn’t say the city of god is burning... it says the big city...

"The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

Of course, since this was a second quote I am not sure if it is in fact Nostradamus saying it.

The reference (http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.htm) does not have the second quote much less is not a reputable source... it's from some guy's website named Neil Marshall... a Co-operative Education Student at the Faculty of Education, Brock University.

Show me a reputable source.
posted by Nick Finck at 4:28 PM on September 11, 2001

I'm reporting it now. I'd generally say 'that's just a coincidence' but dude -- this one's too strange for me.

"I am going away in seven days, and you will not hear from me again" (posted 9/4/01)
posted by jragon at 4:29 PM on September 11, 2001

*cough*

<.sarcasm> jesus is coming. look busy. <./sarcasm>
posted by eatdonuts at 4:31 PM on September 11, 2001

Nostradmus' writings are as vague as possible. You can apply his ramblings to a lot of events, that doesn't mean he foretold them. Rather, it means he figured that bad things will happen in the future. He's not a visionary, or a prophet, or a fortune teller, his predictions are no more clairvoyant than me saying "at some point, this year, it will rain"...
posted by Dark Messiah at 4:38 PM on September 11, 2001

followup on the newsgroup fucked up post:

http://www.ratbags.com/ranters/djmin010629.htm
posted by Nick Finck at 4:43 PM on September 11, 2001

I don't know who Sollog is, but the same guy who was going away in seven days shared this story today (as long as we're on the subject of prophecies).
posted by timothompson at 4:45 PM on September 11, 2001

Good thing Nostradamus is utter bullshit.
posted by tranquileye at 4:47 PM on September 11, 2001

search for: tesnal@psl\.moc

very odd.
posted by Nick Finck at 4:47 PM on September 11, 2001

The E. L. Doctorow novel called City of God was set in, and referred to, New York City at the turn of the last century.
posted by mikewas at 4:49 PM on September 11, 2001

SOLLOG - "Son of light, light of god." AKA John Patrick Ennis aparently the Nostrdamus today?
posted by Dean_Paxton at 4:59 PM on September 11, 2001

from the skeptic's dictionary:

Sollog--his real name is John Patrick Ennis--considers himself to be the Nostradamus of the nineties. He has many reported aliases: Sollog Immanuel Adonai-Adoni; Temple of Hayah; TOH; J.P. Essene; Hisam H'asi; Hasim Asi; El Haddid Etsah; Tony DiPaolo; Nick Ensley; and "God Almighty."
posted by dutchbint at 5:00 PM on September 11, 2001

I'm just wondering why no one is jumping down this dudes throat for posting a linkless post? Last time I posted a linkless post I got about 12 e-mail telling me how is was wrong for me to post a linkless message, some of them were just short of deaththreats. I don't really care, I just thought it was odd. I also thought that matt made it impossible to post something to the frontpage without a link in it.
posted by bytecode at 5:54 PM on September 11, 2001

why should every post have a link? get real.
posted by Nick Finck at 5:58 PM on September 11, 2001 [1 favorite]

hey man, its not my policy, like I said, I was flamed like hell for doing it. There was even a huge metatalk thread about it! But it does say in mats rules that you should have a link.
posted by bytecode at 6:15 PM on September 11, 2001

Check this out. That same guy is still posting crazy anti-American rhetoric today, blah blah blah. This should definitely be reported to the FBI..
posted by benbrown at 7:22 PM on September 11, 2001

Please cite a quatrain and century please, if this is really a Nostradamus prophecy. Multiple searches on the elements of the alleged 'quote' only show up on that one page using a Google search.

I think the guy just made that line up as an example of a vague prophecy, and Nick Finck fell for it, thinking it was an actual Nostradamus prophecy. False alarm.
posted by SenshiNeko at 7:55 PM on September 11, 2001

I have to agree with SenshiNeko; a fairly intensive search at www.nostradamus-repository.org turns up nothing even close to this. I, too, think the guy hosting the page made it up as an example. (A fairly eerie example, to be sure, but not a Nostradamus quote.)

FWIW, I found their FAQ page and their Myths page to be fairly balanced and pretty interesting reading.
posted by anastasia at 8:03 PM on September 11, 2001

In the Rorschach test, meaningless blotches of ink are important because people see things in them. What's there is in our mind, not in the ink.

Put enough meaningless poetic phrases in a book and eventually each one will match some event; it doesn't mean that it's prophecy.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:08 PM on September 11, 2001

Others have already been there, but the quote is fabricated. The first part by a Canadian high school senior in 1996, and the second by whoever, probably today. Nostradamus said no such thing.
posted by kfury at 9:54 PM on September 11, 2001

does anyone read the FULL thread anymore? I already said it was not accurate. only part of the quote is attributed to Nostradamus. READ
posted by Nick Finck at 10:08 PM on September 11, 2001

And yet NONE of the quote actually CAME from Nostradamus. FACTCHECK (and stop yelling please...)
posted by kfury at 1:08 AM on September 12, 2001

Cinq & quarante degrez ciel bruslera
Feu approcher de la grand cit‚ neuue
Instant grand flamme esparse sautera
Quand on voudra des Normans faire preuue.

At forty-five degrees the sky will burn,
Fire to approach the great new city:
In an instant a great scattered flame will leap up,
When one will want to demand proof of the Normans.

Century VI, Quatrain 97.
posted by waterfrog at 3:15 AM on September 12, 2001

Anyone else sick of this silly, little, Frenchman being used only in hindsight? If there were any portents for what happened yesterday, why didn't we hear them? Why didn't the Nostradamus scholars give the people of New York and Washington some warning? It's great that Nostradamus has such power to predict the a future event, but only after the fact. The same goes for any so-called modern-day "prophets." I'm sure the families of the dead will enjoy hearing this kind of asinine post-perception.
posted by sunsolid at 8:48 AM on September 12, 2001

Already a snopes.com update on this little meme.
posted by yupislyr at 10:59 AM on September 12, 2001