The Eclipse and Prophecy

The eclipse of 2017 is nearly upon us, and like all eclipses prior, there are the usual “End of the World” crackpots to go along with it. There are some who point to the “fact” that the eclipse will only be visible in the United States, which is true, but it’s arbitrary. The eclipse would be visible from this continent whether or not the US had been founded or not. This eclipse didn’t just pop up in the past few months, either. I’e known about it since the early 90’s personally, and astronomers have known about it for far longer. Eclipses are not omens, they are calculable occurrences and we know when they will occur for the next thousand or so years.

A couple years ago ended a period of the “four blood moons” or, less ominously, four total lunar eclipses in succession (no partial eclipses between). This was known about and has happened a few times times in the fairly recent past (1967/68, 1985/86, 2003/04, 2014/15) and it will happen again in most of our lifetimes. Eclipses are quite common, with solar eclipses occurring more frequently (although they last a much shorter period of time). The end times nuts were around this last time, at least, and I’m going to bet they were around for all of the previous ones, too. They seem to pop up for every time a celestial event happens.

Eclipses, alignments, retrogrades, and other celestial occurrences have zero effect on people’s personalities, their love lives, career, or anything else, especially not our planet. These things happen and we know when they’re gonna happen down to the minute and second (although, the further into the future we go, the timing will have to be revised). How could these be seen as omens or portents if they can be predicted well into the future? If a solar eclipse occurs on the full moon, then I might take it to be a bad sign if some other explanation cannot. The eclipse coming up on August 21 is taking place on the new moon, which is exactly what should happen.

Nothing earth-shattering is going to happen because of this or any other eclipse. Maybe something will happen on earth that could be considered earth-shattering, but it will not be because of the moon passing in front of the sun from the point of view of the earth. Nothing would happen if all of the planets lined up in a perfectly straight line because the combined gravitational effects of all of the planets and their moons as well as our own moon are totally dwarfed by the gravity of the sun. Rest assured, nothing will happen because of the eclipse.

Also, eclipses are not a sign of things to come either. They are not omens or portents because they don’t just “pop up” unexpectedly. I have been looking forward to this upcoming eclipse since I was in grade school and thinking about how old I would be when it happens. 2017 seemed an eternity away. Here I am now, and I find myself thinking about how much has changed since 1985 when I was 11 years old. That will be another post. My advice is simple, enjoy the eclipse wherever you are. If you can’t make it to the path of totality, you will still see an amazing show.

The Nostradamus Effect

There was a time when I thought that the Prophecies of Nostradamus were something to be revered and respected. Whenever there was a war or a disaster, or 9/11, a quatrain from the seer would be dragged out and analyzed and it would be determined by guys in capes with bad haircuts talking on the "History" Channel, that it had been foreseen. Wow. Amazing. This guy who lived many centuries ago saw the collapse of the Twin Towers, the rise and fall of Hitler (even missing his name by one letter), and the first Iraq war (or was it the second?). Yes, whenever something major happens in the world, it turns out that Nostradamus had already seen it coming.

WAIT! Hold on just a cotton-pickin' minute!

The major thing happens AND THEN we see the prophecy? That's not how it's supposed to work. A prophecy is supposed to be a prediction of future events, not a reporting of what has already happened. That's called news. And actually, reading some of the "prophet's" quatrains, they don't necessarily describe future events as much as past and current events can be shoehorned into them to make them look like prophecy. That is precisely what has been happening all along.

Somehow, after a major thing happens, a quatrain is referenced and shown how it precisely manages to describe every part of the event with laser-precise accuracy, down to the date and time of the event. However, when one of these "scholars" is asked about future predictions out of these quatrains, it becomes quite vague and murky. Suddenly, the precision is completely lost and it suddenly becomes a range of five to twenty years, and the location is somewhere on a continent.

Shouldn't a prediction of future events actually be a prediction? What good is it if we're told that "bad thing" will happen between now and 2025 somewhere in western hemisphere? So, I have a challenge for the Nostradamus believers out there. If you're truly a scholar on Nostradamus, then make a prediction of a future event with the same precision as he supposedly predicted events that have already happened. I will be generous and give you a window of a week and geographical precision within a region of a country.

Nostradamus was either a fraud for money (a prophet for profit, if you will), a political writer who got a sweet gig acting like a seer or scryer, or just insane. My money is on the second (if I actually gambled). I personally think his writing were a sort of political blog written in a coded language that spoke to the proletariat and was meant to look like prophecy to the upper class.