Nostradamus and the 2012 Presidential Election

A few days ago I made a trip to the local Goodwill to check out the books.  As a collector of paranormal literature, I tend to go ahead and buy ANYTHING that even remotely applies to the paranormal that I find there.  For less than a dollar, I see it as a good investment in my personal library, lol.  Anyway, on this trip, I picked up a 1985 book by Erika Cheetham, called The Further Prophecies of Nostradamus:  1985 and Beyond.  It's a follow-up to an earlier work by the same author.

The first section of the book is sort of a combination of the author's own background and how she got involved in decoding Nostradamus, as well as a short history on Nostradamus himself.  I read through this part, and basically lost interest.  However, before I stuck the book on the shelf and totally forgot about it, I flipped through some of the "prophesy pages."  I know I was working on little sleep, but one passage in particular jumped out at me and immediately my brain went into that "what if" mode...

Here's the original quatrain:

De l'Orient viendra la coeur Punique
Facher Hadrie et les hoirs Romulides
Accompagne de la classe Libyque
Temples Mellites et proches isles vuides.

And here's the author's transcription into English:

From the [Middle?] East will come the African heart to trouble Hadrie and the heirs of Romulus.  Accompanied by the Libyan fleet, the temples of Malta and nearby islands shall be deserted.

Not only does the author translate the quatrains, but she also makes a stab at interpreting them, and while not much is said about this particular one, it was theorized in context with some other quatrains to mean that WW III would probably start around 1986 in the middle east, with Qaddafi being a major player.

Of course, I was 3 years old in 1986, so I looked at this quatrain with the perspective of the 21st century, and since the election JUST happened, is still fresh and relevant in my overworked brain.  Immediately, my AP English classes kicked in and I wanted to extrapolate the passage, despite the fact that Nostradamus not only wrote in his own "code" of sorts, but also, his words have been loosely translated and interpreted, opening his meaning up to all sorts of different perspectives.  Still, this is what I think it means...

I think that the African heart is Barack Obama.  Obviously, he is African American, and his father hails from Kenya.  Although he's not "middle eastern," there are people who will bet their first born child that he is a Muslim...which so many in this country just automatically associate with the Middle East.  The heirs of Romulus in this case is Romney.  An heir of Romulus would be someone from Rome, or someone Rome-born, which can be expressed grammatically as Rome ne (masculine) or Rome nee (feminine).  Rome-ne can be loosely interpreted as Romney.  I won't get too much into the second part of the quatrain, but the major issues going on with the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, and one can easily read enough into this information to make it relevant.

On the other hand, one can read into this information and find arguments to make it fit a variety of scenarios.  When I told my sister about my "revelations," she automatically threw back a rebuttal that I was experiencing the Barnum Effect, lol.  The Barnum Effect is properly known as the Forer Effect, named for Bertram Forer, who studied the effect in 1948 through a series of personality tests given to his students.  The name Barnum Effect comes from the circus man's "something for everyone" slogan.

The Barnum Effect, or Forer Effect basically states that individuals will attribute very broad generalizations about character to their own individual characteristics, and is why an individual can read ANY sign's horoscope and find things in there that apply specifically to them, lol.  However, in psychology usage...and to an extent, "paranormal" usage, this term really does apply to things like personal characteristics and experiences, and even though I read into what I thought was relevant with this quatrain, it wasn't about ME, lol.  Therefore, I prefer the term apophenia, which I think may or may not be more accurate within this usage.  Apophenia, which will be discussed more in a later post, is basically seeing meaning where there is no meaning.  Technically, this definition used in general context doesn't really fit either, but its a great explanation for the 3:33 and 11:11 phenomena, lol. 

Looking for more Nostradamus Prophecy?  Check out my article on the Gangnam Style Apocalypse!