Laughable, but oddly chilling.
Fans of The Bible Code, read on.
Sixteenth-century prophet Nostradamus left behind a set of complicated and at times scary predictions. Here, Ovason (The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital, p. 863) untangles them for us, claiming that Nostradamus employed an elaborate code, the so-called Green Language. Nostradamus supposedly forecast a great many events that came to pass: the execution of Charles I in 1649, London’s Great Fire of 1666. Did he come out and say these things? Of course not. He used his code. Here, for example, is the quatrain that predicted the fire: “The blood of the just at London will be a mistake, Burned by thunderbolt the twenty three the sixes; The antique lady will fall from a high place, From among the same sect several will be killed.” The first line tells us we’re in London, declares Ovason, the second that there is a fire, and that somehow the number 666 is involved. (Incidentally, this is one of Nostradamus’ most lucid predictions.) The prophet also foresaw the London plague, the flight of James I, the election of William, Prince of Orange, to the English throne, and almost every detail of the French Revolution. Turning to the 19th century, Nostradamus predicted Napoleon and several earthquakes. In the 20th: Hitler, the decline of Islam in Turkey, the Spanish Civil War, the divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Di (but apparently not the latter’s death) . . . and don’t forget the spate of UFOs that visited Earth. Perhaps wisely, when it comes to interpreting the verses concerning the 21st century and beyond, Ovason speaks only in generalities—none of which, by the way, include a great stock-market crash.
Laughable, but oddly chilling.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019671-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Late night thoughts have a foreboding, and thus it is with Thomas: in his third compilation of magazine and newspaper pieces, he saves the title essay for last. It is a foreboding about the bomb and the foolishness of governments. "I am old enough by this time to be used to the notion of dying," he says. Now, hearing the cellos at the end of the Mahler pick up fragments from the first movement, "as though prepared to begin everything all over again," he remarks that he used to hear this as a wonderful few seconds of encouragement. Instead, with a pamphlet on MX-basing in front of him, the cellos "sound in my mind like the opening of all the hatches and the instant before ignition." Several of these essays—including the first, "The Unforgettable Fire"—are eloquent dark statements by a somber Thomas who sees little hope except perhaps from enough people reading the documents and writings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In other essays, of a more familiar sort, Thomas eyes nature with his special vision. A favorite, "On Smell," will appeal to all who have savored autumn leaf bonfires, now succeeded by "great black plastic bags, set out at the curb like wrapped corpses." The range of delights may be gleaned from the titles: "On Alchemy"—about the emergence of the "soft," or behavioral sciences; "Altruism"—some amusing turns on sociobiology. Other pieces of a scientific sort include one on dementia; a personal chronicle of the installation of a pacemaker; and, inevitably, one on language. And there is Thomas' list of the new seven wonders of the world (solicited by the New York Times)—where he has again found a miraculous symbiosis between two distinct species, as well as some very grand wonders indeed. Any Thomas is worth reading. These essays, with their theme and coda on nuclear holocaust, add a note of gravity that is new.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0140243283
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
The apologia for the previous super-controversial Worlds in Collision does away with all literary and mythological evidence and gets down to the bare bones and stones of the earth's history. The contention is boldly, inflexibly, the same; vast global catastrophes, the last of which surely flooded this world a mere few thousands of years before the current era, did the violent work which the Agassiz-Lyell-Darwin hypotheses sought to account for. If the ice Age is not an outright fraud, if uniform change is not the blissful dream of a peace-loving scientist, if evolution is not an outdated euphemism, these concepts are certainly at hopeless odds with the facts adduced by Velikovsky. He cites incredibly large graveyards where no enemy other than global flood could cause such havoc; sand deposits, monster boulders and resurrections of mountains which no known geological forces could have created; remains of an Andean city well developed culturally and of very recent date which was founded so high up that corn will not ripen there. The approach is essentially negative, punching every possible hole in the traditions of geology, paleontology, archaeology, biology, astronomy. The evidence is nevertheless torrential, embracing an immense variety of sources. The tone is often needlessly defiant and antagonistic. But for the science-minded, or even actively curious reader, it is a sensation-monger with a potential perhaps greater than the earlier book.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1955
ISBN: 1906833125
Page Count: 277
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1955
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