Monday,
October 1, 2001 |
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Article |
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Nostradamus
overwhelmed by search engines queries
Jean-Francois Rosnoblet
FRENCH
doomsday astrologer Nostradamus is topping Internet search lists after
the deadly attacks in the USA and wild prophecies based on his musings
are flooding the Web.
Jacqueline Allemand,
curator at the Nostradamus museum in the town of Salon-de-Provence,
southern France, where the seer died in 1566, says his cryptic
predictions are being stunningly skewed — but she is not surprised.
The 16th-century
Frenchman’s name was one of the four most searched-for words on the
main Internet search-engines after the attacks on the USA and books
about Nostradamus topped the charts compiled by on-line bookseller
Amazon.
"His work is a
huge intellectual achievement but people are making him look as though
he talked nonsense. His predictions can’t be translated and the
pseudo-revelations flourishing on the web are fantastical and
absurd," he told Reuters in an interview.
"We’ve seen
this phenomenon before. Every time there’s a crisis, people turn to
Nostradamus. Only the bible is more frequently consulted."
"During the Gulf
war, during the (bomb) attacks on Paris (in 1995) or before the
eclipse in 1999, everyone was checking his predictions, which would
sometimes frighten and sometimes reassure. It’s become a
habit," Allemand says with a sigh.
Nostradamus shot into
the spotlight after widely circulated e-mails, quoted in newspaper
columns around the world, suggested he foretold the destruction of New
York in a prophecy translated to read "in the year of the new
century and nine months..."
Two brothers torn
apart
A Website for
Nostradamus study cast doubt on the reliability of the various
translations that caused a stir when they first showed up in the days
after the September 11 suicide airplane attacks on the twin towers of
the New York World Trade Center.
One version,
discredited by the Website, said: "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."
Allemand said
visitors, particularly Americans, have flocked to the museum in the
town where the astrologer died ever since the attacks.
Michel de Nostradame,
called Nostradamus, was born in 1503. He etched out a place in history
with his work "Centuries" but the enigmatic style of his
predictions tends to draw varied interpretations.
Internet information search engines
such as Google and Ask Jeeves both said Nostradamus even trounced
Osama bin Laden — names as prime suspect for the U.S. assault — on
their list of most visited Websites.
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