Llewellyn Journal - Year of the Comet

In early August, a faint white speck becomes barely visible in the night sky. With each passing day, it grows rapidly larger and brighter, approaching at several times the velocity of a rifle bullet. It is not a meteoric space rock, but a ball of cosmic dust and ice left over from the formation of the solar system billions of years ago—a comet. By mid-August, it lights up the sky almost like a second sun. While not especially large as comets go, it is getting much too close. It is, in fact, on a collision course with planet Earth.

The comet almost misses, but it comes so near that Earth’s gravity captures it and whips it back around the planet, over the North Atlantic, southern France and Italy. Soon after entering Earth’s atmosphere, the comet suddenly explodes over the Aegean Sea with the earthshaking roar of a thousand atomic bombs.

Astronomers have known for a long time that such an event is virtually inevitable, but it may be much closer than most people think. Exactly this scenario was envisioned for this year of 2004 by the famed French psychic Nostradamus. (See Comet of Nostradamus, Llewellyn 2000)

Here on Earth – a planet pock-marked by more than one hundred known impact craters – it is clear that bolides (large fireballs from space that impact Earth) are a constant threat. The last one hit less than a century ago. By some fluke of fortune, the 1908 Tunguska comet happened to strike an almost uninhabited forest region in Siberia. The missile flattened more than 1,000 square kilometers of timber with a blast that could be heard 500 miles away. According to one eyewitness who was too close for comfort: “The sky split apart and a great fire appeared. It became so hot that one couldn’t stand it. There was a deafening explosion and Semenov [a friend] was blown over the ground a distance of six meters. As the hot wind passed by, the ground and huts trembled.” (Gallant, Roy A., originally from Interdesciplinary Independent Expeditions of the Tomsk Branch of the Russian Society of Astronomical-Geodedic Society. See http://www.galisteo.com/tunguska/docs/splitsky.html for more information.)

From the epicenter of the blast, a huge pillar of fire rose high into the atmosphere as tens of thousands of trees were instantly vaporized. Ash and debris from the explosion carried around the world, providing eerily discolored sunsets for several days. So far as is known, there were no human fatalities at Tunguska. But if the comet had struck in a populated area it could easily have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The Siberian missile may have been a harbinger of things to come. Some scientists suspect that comets tend to hit the earth in periodic clusters, separated by quietus centuries, and that Tunguska may have been just the first of a new batch. A sizable comet missed our planet by less than two Earth diameters in 1992. It would have struck with the force of 15,000 megatons of TNT. The disquieting fact about Nostradamus’ 2004 comet is that it is not projected to hit in some lonely taiga or tundra zone, but near the populous island of Euboea just off the mainland of Greece. Every town along this 90-mile isle would suffer the blast effect of the comet, and unless people were evacuated in time, many deaths and injuries would inevitably follow. Doubtless, Athens itself, only about 50 miles away, would feel the shock wave. The power of such a explosion would unleash tidal waves of monstrous height in the Aegean—maybe throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Nostradamus specifies a tsunami near old Ephesus on the Turkish coast, and an even bigger one at the Greek Gulf of Volos. The Volos wave is supposed to carry several miles inland, suggesting that the 2004 comet will be substantially larger than the Tunguska missile, which has been estimated at around 100,000 tons. There are also hints in Nostradamus’ quatrains that the comet’s impact will trigger an earthquake—not unlikely since there is a large geological fault line running between Euboea and mainland Greece.

Even before the impact, the Seer predicts a fiery rain of comet fragments and debris on parts of southern France and central Italy, with numerous outbreaks of fire. And there is more to come after impact. Huge amounts of blast debris will hover over the Aegean region, filling the air with choking carbon dust and stunting the summer crops. Worse yet, according to the prophecy, the Comet of Nostradamus heralds the arrival of a period of intensified unrest in the Mediterranean and Middle East, culminating in the outbreak of a major conflict—what I have called The Mediterranean War.

What Are the Odds?
So foreboding a prediction compels us to calculate, as best we can, the chances of actual fulfillment. We know that nearly 40% of Nostradamus’ prophecies have been on target. But is the Seer’s vision still on track after so many centuries?

As demonstrated in Comet of Nostradamus, the 16th century prophet was phenomenally accurate in his forecasts for the French Revolution, and even up through World War II. But these are, after all, bygone eras. One could argue that a psychic’s perceptions of coming events might easily tend to grow dimmer as he peers farther and farther into the future. Could any psychic really see nearly half a millennium ahead of his time?

Doubtless Nostradamus was well aware that there is always an indeterminate element in the future of humanity—what we might call the free-will variant. This much is clear from the fact that a number of his prophecies are contingently worded, that is, “If you do X, it will surely cause Y.” This free-will variant bores into the future in an ever expanding cone because any willed deviation creates the potential for yet more deviations. It seems to follow that the farther into the future a prophet tries to see, the less success can be anticipated. The Seer, then, must have known that some of his predictions would fail since variables could be expected. He also must have known that there was a risk of perceiving bits of alternate futures which would not be actualized.

The fact is we have no clear-cut case of any successful prophetic pronouncement extending more than some five or six hundred of years into the future. For example, the Old Testament prophecies of the Bible, predicting the reestablishment of the Jewish nation, probably refer to the Maccabean state (1st & 2nd century B.C.) rather than to the creation of modern-day Israel. Presumed references to Jesus in Isaiah, though impressive, are not quite specific enough to be indisputably convincing. (Jews, obviously, have another interpretation.) Yet it is very clear that the prophet Isaiah did forecast the destruction of Israel and its restoration more than five centuries before the Maccabees. If this is prophecy’s maximum reach, it seems that Nostradamus—whose quatrains are now four and a half centuries old—is beginning to approach the outer limits of his art.

Still, analysis of the Centuries shows only a modest fall-off in the Seer’s prophetic acuity over time. Of the 353 quatrains that I rank as “hits” in Comet of Nostradamus, almost 10% of them are applicable to the post-World War II era, which constitutes about 13% of the time since the quatrains were written. Nostradamus predicted such historically recent events as the assassinations of the two Kennedys, the Vietnam War, the Moon landings, the take-over of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Reagan era, the collapse of Communism, plus a number of others. He devotes several of his quatrains to Saddam Hussein and the Gulf Wars, suggesting that these engagements may loom larger in history than we now perceive.

There is still a running argument whether the Seer foresaw the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster in New York. The most quoted quatrain is X-72:
“The year 1999, the seventh month, from the sky will come a great King of Terror: to bring back to life the great king of Angolmois. Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.”

Though the date is off a bit, on a scale of five centuries it is not off by much. (While most of the Seer’s dated quatrains are on the mark, a few others, though substantively correct, are near misses date-wise.) The “king of Terror” coming from the sky is quite striking, and Mars has indeed favored the military counterstrikes of the United States and its allies in the wake of 9/11. The main problem with the verse is the word “Angolmois,” usually taken as an anagram for Mongolmois (Mongols). The first thought is that Nostradamus is talking about a new Genghis Khan, but since the Khan was not Muslim, he does not work well as a figure for Osama Bin Laden. A better fit would be the despot Tamerlane, 14th century ruler of Mongol and Turkic tribes, who was a devout Muslim and one of ultimate terrorists of history. He thought nothing of massacring tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children—Christian or Muslim—to make a political point. His rule also encompassed Afghanistan, which served as Bin Laden’s home base.

There is another quatrain that is also suggestive of the Twin Towers tragedy and has fewer difficulties:
“The dart from the sky will make its extension, Deaths in speaking: great execution. The stone in the tree, the proud nation restored; turmoil (or “noise”), human monster, payback, expiation.”

The “dart from the sky” is most descriptive, and “human monster” is an apt portrayal of Bin Laden. “The stone in the tree” is merely a metaphor for explosive force. The proud nation restored could well refer Afghanistan, reestablished as a respectable member of the international community after the ouster of the Taliban. A case can be made, then, that Nostradamus did catch a glimpse of 9/11, even if through a glass darkly.

On the subject of terrorist attacks, there is an unresolved quatrain that should be given some heed. Verse IX-83 reads:
“Sun twentieth of Taurus, the earth will tremble so severely. It will ruin the great crowded theater: To obscure and trouble air, sky, and land; then [even] the infidel will invoke God and the saints.”

This quatrain could presage a terrorist strike at a large theater or stadium in late April, or perhaps early May (most likely within the next few years). The obscured air seems to suggest an explosion rather than just an earth tremor. The trouble in the “sky” could also imply a skyjacking. It could not hurt to exercise some extra caution around these times.

Rumors of War
But the Comet of Nostradamus is only part of the bad news for our era forecast by the Seer. One of the strongest themes in the quatrains is that of a final showdown between the West and militant Islam—a confrontation ordained for the early 21st century according to the astrological indicators. Here again, the Nostradamian vision does not appear to be far off the mark. Indeed, the preliminaries are already underway. The United States and some of its allies have been involved in a shooting war with terrorist Muslims and the governments that support them since late 2001, with little sign of any early end. Though the far-flung Mediterranean War that I outlined in my book may have seemed somewhat unlikely when written, it has since become a palpable danger. It would be a mistake, though, to adopt an air of inevitability about such an escalation of the current conflict. In fact, the issue appears to be teetering on a knife-edge, and is probably within the range of the free-will variant.

Analysis of the quatrains strongly indicates the key event that pitches the Mediterranean War into inevitability is a radical Muslim take-over of Turkey. That scenario seemed to move a notch closer in early 2003 when the AK Party swept the Turkish elections. The AKP is actually a reconstitution of an older party that was banned in Turkey because of its pro-Muslim zealotry.

There are a couple of counter-balancing forces still in the equation, though. One is the Turkish military—strongly secular in its outlook, unfavorably disposed towards those who mix religion with politics. Equally important, the Turkish economy has not been doing well and the Turks are eager to get into the European Union to hype business. Complicating matters further, the Turks have a running feud going with the Greeks who are already in the EU, and who want a resolution of the Cyprus dispute before any Turkish admission. Meanwhile, the Turks are hyper- antsy about the drive for autonomy among the Iraqi Kurds for fear that it will mean trouble in the Kurdish sector of eastern Turkey.

The situation, then, is touchy, fraught with difficulties, and needs to be closely watched. Thrusting a natural calamity—such as the Comet of Nostradamus—into this volatile mix would only serve to exacerbate matters further. There are already plenty of opportunities for critical mistakes. If, for instance, the negotiations on Cyprus do not go well, the long-term results could be potentially disastrous. Maximum dexterity on the part of the western diplomatic corps will be required to avoid serious troubles.

In this connection, a striking Nostradamian quatrain, Q. III-60, prophesies that it will be a youngish leader, who has been pardoned for a previous offense, who drives Turkey into the radical Muslim camp. The leader of the AKP and current Premier of Turkey is young for a head-of-state (49 years old) and was banned from politics in 1998 for inciting religious hatred. Only a change of law allowed R.T. Erogan to gain the premiership. Erogan claims to have mended his ways, and so far it seems he has. Still, more than a little suspicion remains.

There is another quatrain,Q. II-62, which may give us a clue as to whether The Seer’s vision of the future is still on track:
“Mabus then will soon perish. There will come a horrible rout of people and beasts: Then suddenly one will see vengeance; century, hand, thirst, hunger, when the comet will Run”

With the permissible alteration of one letter (b to d),”Mabus” is a good anagram for Saddam. So the verse appears to be about Gulf War II, particularly since the word “century” implies a time soon after the turn of a new century. The implication is that Saddam will not survive long after his defeat, whether the 67-year-old tyrant expires of natural causes, suffers the death penalty for his numerous crimes or dies in some other fashion. But the clock is ticking on this prediction. If Saddam lasts more than several months in captivity, we might suspect that something unforeseen has somehow altered the historical continuum since Nostradamus’ time.

While Nostradamus bats close to .400 on a substantive basis over time, there is another question: the chronological accuracy of the quatrains, an important point as we try to anticipate the immediate future. Analysis of the specifically dated quatrains should give us some kind of a handle on this aspect.

Of the nine dated quatrains, five are direct hits. Two others are off by less than six years and so can be scored as marginal hits. One other, though, may suggest some divergent factor has entered into the order of things. Quatrain VI-54 reads:
“At Daybreak, at the second crowing of the cock, those of Tunis, of Fez and of Bourgie, by the Arabs the king of Morocco captured; the year sixteen hundred and seven of the Liturgy.”

This partly unsolved quatrain almost surely predicts a fundamentalist Muslim coup in Morocco, assisted by radical elements from Algeria and Tunisia. While the dating is not obvious, it most likely refers back to the time when the Canon of the Bible was officially fixed. This happened in two closely related Church councils of the late 4th century under the sway of the great Saint Augustine. The Council of Hippo in 393 A.D. specified what books would go into the Bible and which would not. Four years later, the Council of Carthage reaffirmed this decision, closing the Canon with a pronouncement that nothing outside the endorsed books could be used in church as divine scripture. Thus the time frame of the Seer’s forecast works out to be the year 2004, or, less likely, the year 2000.

Since this Moroccan coup has not yet occurred, there is at least a hint that the Seer’s predictive chronology may have been somehow warped by events. An intriguing note here is that an Islamic takeover of Algeria—which could well have doomed Morocco to the same fate—was narrowly averted in the early 90’s. After the fundamentalists swept the elections, only stunningly swift and decisive action by the military salvaged the day. Is this, then, a case where a formidable exercise of human will altered—or at least extended—the historical line seen by Nostradamus?

The free-will variant, of course, makes it almost impossible that any collage of long-term prophecies can ever be entirely accurate. Even Isaiah, usually considered the greatest of the prophets, had a few bad calls. Perhaps his worst is found in Isaiah 17 where he predicts the total and final destruction of Damascus. The city has been damaged on occasion in times of war, but has always soon recovered and remains today the longest continuously inhabited major city in the world. Even if Damascus were to be leveled to the ground next week, the prophesy would be unimpressive because of the immense time lag involved.

Despite the many startling prophetic successes by the likes of Nostradamus, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, it is clear that we do not live in an entirely predetermined world. Some things may be inevitable, but others are not. And it is not just our human wills that may be subject to change: The Bible very clearly teaches that the Deity sometimes alters his design in response to shifts in human behavior. So the determinists are just as wrong as those who like to think the human will is entirely free. The world can best be seen as a dramatic interplay between the human and the divine wills, in which the latter is dominant but the former not insignificant.

Overall, the impression we get from an analysis of the old Nostradamus prophecies is that, while his event line may have veered somewhat after five hundred years, he is not off by much. Things today are pretty much as he envisioned: Wars rage in the Middle East, Communism has collapsed and the Soviet Union broken up, militant Islam is on the warpath again, a Muslim bridgehead has been established in Bosnia, just as the Seer predicted. As to the Comet of Nostradamus, even now there are ominous signs in the heavens. A space rock called Toutatis, is heading for a close encounter with Earth in September of this year. It is supposed to miss us by the astronomically small distance of a million miles. But it is an odd asteroid, composed of two weakly joined nodules, with an eccentric rotation. If it should break apart before mid-year, the present calculations would be out the window. Since Nostradamus was probably unaware of the technical distinctions re comets, meteors and asteroids, it is not out of the question that this is the bolide that he perceived.

One thing for certain: Toutatis will bear very close watching.

Year of the Comet

R.W. Welch