Nostradamus Revisted

We've become familiar with this name from all angles of history. Michael de Nostradamus, a physician and seer, whose quatrains of predictions never cease to startle the world. I love a good mystery, love to plunder into the paranormal, and one of the reasons is to try and get at the true heart of what I'm questing about. I don't want to believe just because it's more seductive and defies logic or science, and I do love science.

Think upon this a bit: Nostradamus wrote his many quatrains, or 4-line paragraphs of prediction (some say warning) and modern man looks to them for explanations for so many historical events. But all of his predictions happen after the fact. People only look back to them after something has happened. If indeed he predicated 9-11, where were the true believers on 9-10? The Nostradamians, they're called. I proffer my respect but truly, if I had a book foretelling the coming of Napoleon, the birth of the Anti-Christ, the burning of cities and the horrid deaths of millions, I think I'd tell someone. Why are his quatrains only valid after the fact??

In specific, on 9-11-01 many saw his predictable hand in one of the quatrains which talked about "towers of the new city falling in blood and terror" etc., as in the picture above. There were hits all over the net, and people read the quatrain and said "Yeah look at that! He knew it would happen!" This really could have so many other explanations, many cities have crumbled in firey defeat, even a Major Arcana tarot card bears that picture. This is an image from an old deck of tarot cards and clearly it's a tower afire. Even without it's meaning in tarot, it could be any event, anywhere. But I want to be fair, let me examine something I'll never understand about Mon. Nostradamus.

In a very famous quatrain, he tells of a man who will come to destroy millions, a man of great power and persuasion, who he names Hister. How many times have people assumed this certainly must be Hitler, with his name disguised? Rewind: Nostradamus had to write his predictions in grimoire or "hidden" fashion so as not to anger the powered nobles of his time, those who threatened to imprison, probably kill him for practicing witchcraft. So he wrote in "riddle" and disguised many names, places, events, leaving just enough to encourage thought. Here's my problem with that:

No one in his time ever heard of Hitler, why didn't he just write HITLER? Who would be angered? Did he just get the spelling wrong? If he wrote "Hitler" no one would've known who he meant, hence no danger. What's the reason?
He is said to predict the oncoming of Napoleon. He wrote the name as "Nau - po - leon". Not hard for you and I to distinguish, but for contemporaries of Nostradamus a complete mystery. So why not just say "Napoleon"? His quatrain on this prediction says that "a small soldier shall rise from the ranks to become king and ruler". Doesn't that describe Harry Truman too? Truman was a soldier who rose to become president and the first human to drop the A-bomb on other humans. It could also describe JFK, a PT boat pilot who went on to become a great ruler. It's just a small ripple in my thoughts on this man, one I realize was gifted, but I caution those "Nostradamians" to be alert and aware. It's so easy and seductive to be carried from logic into the hazy zones of mystery, just because it tickles our fantasy.