Symbolic Forest

Flicking through my viewing figures and my search keywords, I spotted one that caught my eye:

Is it true that nostradamus predicts that George W Bush is going to get assassinated?

Well, no. No, I have to say, it isn’t. It has been claimed that he did, though, by a writer called Mario Reading. As I do try hard to maintain this blog’s position as the top source for Mario Reading information on the internet, I thought I’d better mention it. Mr Reading’s prediction is based on this quatrain by Nostradamus:

The successor will avenge his handsome brother
He will take over the realm under cover of vengeance
The obstacle slain, his dead blood seethes
Britain and France will hold together for a long time

This is Reading’s own translation. He interpreted it as: a powerful world leader, whose main international ally is the British government, undergoes an assassination attempt; and this will lead to Britain aligning itself more with the EU. Oh, and, all this will take place in ’06.^* He stepped carefully around the issue of naming the leader in print:

One of many possible targets, of course, might be US President George W Bush

but this is after mentioning that “under cover” in the quatrain, souz umbre in the original, probably means something like “under a bush”. Not to mention, Reading was rather less guarded when, as part of the pre-publication publicity, he went on the telly and said specifically that it was George W Bush that he meant.

Needless to say, none of this has come true, as you might have noticed, and the time for Reading’s prophecy to apply is well past. Nevertheless, he’s since declared that his prophecy did indeed come true! He wrote on his blog that:

I’m very sad to say that the predicted assassination did indeed take place, with the murder, on the 27th December 2007, of Benazir Bhutto. … The prophecy was further vindicated by the fact that both of Benazir Bhutto’s brothers had also died under unnatural circumstances, and that their brother-in-law, Benazir Bhutto’s husband, was elected President of Pakistan. … I rest my case.

Hang on a minute there, Mario! Yes, I know, “handsome brother” might be a mistranslation of “brother-in-law” – but in your prophecy there, it’s the brother who’s been attacked. Benazir Bhutto may well have been assassinated, but she definitely was no man’s brother. Having said, back in 2005, that you thought George W Bush was going to get attacked, it’s a bit misleading of you to go back and say “aah, someone else was assassinated, see, I was right all along”. Particularly as that someone else doesn’t at all fit the prediction you wrote.

I’ve been meaning, for a while, to write a full and proper critique of Reading’s book; something which is only going to get easier over the years as fewer of his prophecies come true. I’ve had more important things to write about, but I’m getting round to it. Once I have, I’m tempted to go on to Peter Lemesurier, who, in the mid-90s, predicted, using Nostradamus and astrology,^** that an Islamic army would have invaded Europe from North Africa by now.^*** He’s still writing books, and his website is actually pretty useful, despite not acknowledging his past predictive failure. But, on the other hand, there is a whole world of future-predictors to debunk out there. All I can ever do is scratch the surface.

Update, September 2^nd 2020: Mario Reading died in 2017 and his website disappeared from the internet, so you will just have to take my word for it that the text above is an accurate quote. Sadly, he won’t be around to see the rest of his predictions fail to come true, as indeed they probably will not.

* Reading has his own dating scheme which links the year to the number of the prophecy; according to that, the prophecy applies to a year ending in 06, although he goes on to link it, because of his interpretation, to the vaguer period “2006-2008″.

** which does make sense in a way, as Nostradamus was basically an astrologer himself. Le Mesurier sets the dates of his predictions by looking at repeating astrological cycles.

*** This is why, as I wrote a while back, the work of people like Reading and Le Mesurier really needs a Ron Howard voiceover, to say things like “It hasn’t”.

Keyword noise: assassination, books, clairvoyance, criticism, George W Bush, Mario Reading, Nostradamus, Peter Lemesurier, prediction, prophecy.

If you’ve been reading regularly, you might remember my post from last week about noted Nostradamus-interpreter Mario Reading, in which I idly wondered aloud if he plans to correct some of the predictions he published a few years ago which have, amazingly, failed to come true. I wrote him an open letter, asking if he’ll be issuing errata for his book Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies For The Future, in which Mr Reading – sorry, Nostradamus’s – predictions have turned out to be rather wrong.

Having had no response, though, I thought I’d drop him a line, to make sure he’d seen what I wrote. After all: if someone was writing about me, I’d want to know. He’d written a blog post about searching the web to see what people were writing about him; so this is what I wrote:

Funnily enough, I posted something on my own blog about one of your books the other day. I’d been planning to write to you directly, but given the lack of direct contact details on your website – entirely understandable, I’ve had email addresses become completely unusable due to junk mail – I decided to write it as an open letter to you instead. I wonder if you’ve come across it yet.

Which was all quite respectable and polite, I thought. He doesn’t get many comments, so I thought he’d appreciate one.^**

It was held for moderation, which is normal. However: it never appeared. He’s had another comment since, which has passed moderation;^*** mine has disappeared. I can only assume that Mario Reading doesn’t want his blog readers to see my post, for some reason. And that he doesn’t particularly feel like answering my letter to him.

Now, Mario Reading’s blog and mine are both driven by the same software, WordPress. And I know, from using it, that when you log in to a WordPress blog’s admin pages, you get taken to a page called the Dashboard. Which, among other things, gives you a little list of other blogs that have recently linked to your own site.^*

I’m in the habit of checking my site logs regularly; so, when someone clicks on a link that takes them to me, I notice it. So I know that: someone who has access to Mario Reading’s blog admin pages saw that link on his Dashboard page, on the 17th. So presumably, he’s aware of what I wrote, but can’t be bothered to answer me.

Mr Reading, if you’re reading, which I assume you will do eventually: I’d appreciate an answer to my questions. Do you intend to keep Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies For The Future on sale even though many of the things predicted in it haven’t happened? Do you intend to issue errata for it? You could do that on your blog easily enough, after all.

Meanwhile: if I’m going to be so critical, I may as well have more to go on than a vague memory of Reading being interviewed on the telly a few years ago. So his book’s on order from the local library; so we can see exactly what Mario Reading – sorry, Nostradamus – predicted would happen in the world over the past couple of years, and whether he was right about it.

* It pulls the data from Google Blog Search, although older versions of WordPress used Technorati.

** Because he uses WordPress, you can tell how many comments he’s had submitted; it gives every comment a number, and the number gets put in the URL. My comment on his website was number 3.

*** The first one to appear on his blog, in fact! And the fourth to be submitted – the first after mine.

Update, 1^st September 2020: As now mentioned at the bottom of the post I linked to at the start, Mario Reading died in 2017, and his website and blog were taken offline, so I’ve removed the now-dead links.

Keyword noise: books, criticism, errata, Mario Reading, Nostradamus, open letter, prediction, prophecy.

No news on the Bristol guided busway (“Bus Rapid Transit”) scheme today, you’ll be relieved to hear.

Today, though, I thought it would be time to revisit something I wrote, back in the mists of time, when this blog was (relatively) newly-minted - insert wavy dissolve effect here. I spotted, on the telly, a chap called Mario Reading, who had just published a book claiming that according to Nostradamus, George W Bush would suffer an assassination attempt before the end of his presidency.

Lots of people have, of course, interpreted what Nostradamus wrote in different ways; and they have, consistently, been entirely and completely wrong when they produce predictions for events which haven’t happened yet. The recent US Election reminded me of Mr Reading: it reminded me that there’s not very long left for his prediction – sorry, Nostradamus’s prediction to come true – in any case, according to the table of contents of his book, it was due to have happened already by now.

I have a vague recollection at the time of Reading stating, on the telly, that he hoped that his book would be a warning to the US Secret Service, and that they would be able to use his book to foil any such assassination attempt. So maybe he’ll just say “ahh, well, clearly he would have been assassinated if it wasn’t for me.” Which begs an interesting question: what, then, for Nostradamus’s role in it all? If you publish a book that says “Nostradamus predicted that X will happen, but if you read this book you can stop it!” then does that mean Nostradamus was right or wrong? I dreamt the other night that I was going to bake myself a cheesecake for tea. I told my girlfriend – so she made us pasta instead. Clearly, this means I can see the future!

Reading’s book – Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies For The Future – is still available on Amazon. Indeed, at a discount, which seems reasonable enough considering that now a good three years of the book’s future is our past; so we can easily judge for ourselves how accurate Mr Reading’s – sorry, Nostradamus’s future-prophesying skill is. He also has another book: Nostradamus: The Good News – all the cheerful bits. Its first prediction of the future isn’t due to occur (or not) until 2021, sadly. It turns out, too, that Reading has recently started writing a blog.^* He’s got a Nostradamus-themed thriller coming out next year, and a third non-fiction Nostradamus book. How you’re meant to tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction in this context, I’m not entirely sure, but he’s clearly found a vein and is mining it for all he’s worth. Unfortunately, his blog doesn’t seem to have private contact details on it, which is a shame, because I wanted to get in touch with him. Ah, well. I’ll have to put an open letter here instead:

Dear Mr Reading,
I notice your book Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies For The Future is still on sale, and apparently selling well according to your website. However, I note that it’s now 3 years since it was written; and that many of the events which it predicted to occur between its publication date and the present day have not, in fact, happened as you – sorry, Nostradamus predicted. Do you intend to keep the book on sale even though it contains information you now know to be wrong? Will your forthcoming Nostradamus book contain revised versions of these prophecies, and will you acknowledge the mistakes, or be issuing errata for, The Complete Prophecies For The Future?
Yours, etc…

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go into a trance to try to predict whether or not I’ll get a reply.

Update, September 1^st 2020: I’ve removed the link, because following Mario Reading’s death in 2017 his blog and indeed his entire website was taken offline. At the time of his death, he’d written a total of five allegedly-non-fiction books about Nostradamus, three Nostradamus-related novels, and three more novels apparently about the Templars (because who doesn’t love novels about Templar-related conspiracies). As I haven’t read the last three “non-fiction” books, I have no idea whether or not they did address the things he’d predicted in his first book that already hadn’t happened. Clearly, though, he found a good income-generator and milked it.

Keyword noise: books, criticism, errata, Mario Reading, Nostradamus, open letter, prediction, prophecy.

Author Mario Reading has been in my mind recently, because people have been searching for information about him. In case you’ve forgotten – it is, after all, exactly a year since I first wrote about him – he’s the chap who predicted that some time this year or the next, someone will try to assassinate George W Bush.

He says he isn’t predicting that, of course. He says the prophet Nostradamus predicted it, a few hundred years back, and Reading is merely spreading the word. Even though noone would probably have come to this conclusion without hearing of Reading’s work, that’s irrelevant: he says Nostradamus said it, and it’s nothing to do with him. It’s still another couple of years before we can point and laugh at Mario Reading, and say he got it all wrong; but I’m going to try not to forget him.

Now, at first I thought: “how hard can it be?” Surely anyone can just get hold of some Nostradamus, and slap some current references over the top? But, then, secondly: surely the original text has nothing to do with it? Surely I could write something that looked like Nostradamus,^* add “interpretations”, and – if my theory that the original text has little to do with what most Nostradamus-fans come out with is right – my interpretations would be just as valid predictions of the future as anything else. So, I think I might just try that. Coming soon: my own book, “Nostradamus, honest”.

* or, at least, Nostradamus-in-translation. I don’t speak either medieval French, or Provençal.

Keyword noise: George W Bush, Mario Reading, Nostradamus, prediction, prophecy.

Owning up to your mistakes is almost always the best thing to do. In an hour or so, it looks like I’m going to be proved wrong about something.

Specifically, something I wrote almost a year ago,^* when I said: “at the earliest, [Tony Blair is] going to resign in the first quarter of 2009″. It looks, now, that I’m going to be nearly two years out, and that he’s going to give up power before getting within a year of Thatcher’s longevity record. On the other hand, I’m not the only person who was wrong. According to the article that prompted the earlier post, this time last year most Labour MPs weren’t expecting him to go until 2008. I still don’t believe he would give up power willingly until 2009, if he thought he could get away with it. I think that saying “yes, I’m going to resign, but not yet” is a bloody stupid way to run any sort of organisation, to be frank. Moreover, I’m wondering just how many journalists who have previously said “Blair will resign in 2008″, or similar things, will admit that they were wrong about it.

There’ll be plenty more chances for my predictions to come true in the future, of course. In January this year I said that George W Bush will still be alive in 2009, despite the “Nostradamus-inspired” prediction of author Mario Reading. I’m betting that my own prediction there is rather more secure than Reading’s – or than my earlier prediction about Blair. We’ll just have to wait and see.

* fifty-one weeks ago yesterday, in fact.

Keyword noise: George W Bush, government, Mario Reading, mistakes, Nostradamus, prediction, Prime Minister, resignation, Tony Blair.

Incidentally, those of you who read Friday’s post about Nostradamus interpreter Mario Reading will likely assume that I am a complete non-believer when it comes to prediction, clairvoyance and seeing the future. Well, that isn’t quite true.

I don’t believe that you can ever use the works of Nostradamus to predict the future. I have no idea whether the famous Michel had any sort of clairvoyant skills, but his writing is far too opaque. Noone has ever been right by telling us what Nostradamus has to say about things that haven’t yet happened, although plenty of people have made money out of claiming to do so over the years. I don’t think that Mario Reading is going to be an exception to this

On the other hand, I do very much believe that it’s possible to see into the future. I have had enough experiences, at first hand, to convince myself of this. Some people do see scenes from the future. The problem, the intractable problem, is knowing which ones are real.

* although people have made plenty of money off it.

Keyword noise: clairvoyance, Mario Reading, Nostradamus, prediction, prophecy.

Today, author Mario Reading is in the news. Lucky for Mario Reading, because it gives him a chance to plug advertise his new book, a new translation and interpretation of Nostradamus. It’s the book, in fact, that’s newsworthy. It claims that in a couple of years’ time, someone will try to assassinate George Bush, and if they are successful he will be succeeded by his brother, who will take revenge with terrible results. Reading’s American distributors are rather upset about the prophecy – you’d think he would have seen the fuss coming.^*

Reading himself seems very concerned that people should realise that you can’t blame him for what Nostradamus wrote. Interviewed on More4 News about the death of George Bush, he said:

This is Nostradamus predicting this, not me, I hasten to add.

See, I can spot a possible flaw here right away. I haven’t read his book,^** but there’s a long, proud history of reinterpreting Nostradamus. Most could be summarised as:

This is me predicting this, based on a wild reinterpretation of a rather vague stanza of verse.

Given that many people have gone before him and failed, I’m rather doubtful as to what Reading’s prediction hit rate will be. However, given the timescale here, we don’t have to wait too long. In three years’ time, hopefully I’ll remember writing this. And if nobody’s tried to kill George Bush by then, I’ll try to remember to post an update. A rather sardonic one.

* Sorry, that joke is compulsary in any piece of writing that mentions Nostradamus. If I hadn’t made it, I would have been tied down and spanked.

** Well, obviously: it hasn’t been published yet

Update, three years later: hah, when I wrote this, I almost certainly didn’t realise that the next presidential inauguration ceremony would be three years later to the day.

Keyword noise: books, future, George W Bush, literature, Mario Reading, marketing, news, Nostradamus, prediction, prophecy, prophet, psychic, publicity, reading, television, telly, tv.