January 1, 2016 • 64 mins
Nostradamus. Edgar Cayce. Baba Vanga. Have any of history's alleged psychics successfully predicted the future? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as look at humanity's efforts to predict the future, from ancient oracles to the bleeding edge of science.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:22):
welcome back to the show. My name is Max, my
name is Noel, and today I am Ben. Most importantly,
you are you, which makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. At least, we hope you're feeling like yourself,
and if you're feeling like someone else, well it's nice
to talk to that person too. We have a very
special announcement as we begin the show today. We are
(00:46):
I believe we are the last show recording for the year.
We're on the cusp. Gentleman, that is correct as long
as we finish after Jonathan finishes his session. That's happening
simultaneously theoretically. Theoretically yes, which means that by the time
you hear this, it will be twenty sixteen. So there's
(01:09):
something that we would like to wish you guys. Uh,
good luck, Mary New New Order Day? Oh what what? Mary?
New Order Day? Is this thing? Nolan I started and
started it's take it off. Well, it was more like
it's more you're more the visionary of it. You're the
Walter White. I'm kind of wood shopping and I don't
(01:31):
know if I'm ready to try it out. It's quite yet.
I feel as though I jumped the gun and dropping
that slogan apologies to well, this is uh, this is
the one time of year we're ball dropping is not
only cool but a television events. So happy New Year
to you guys. So today, whether or not we are
the last podcast, we are definitely the first podcast for
(01:53):
stuff they want you know. Twenty sixteen and today we're
talking about something that's somewhat a propose. Correct, Yes, we're
talking about profits and the seeing into the future and
predicting things that are to come. Maybe perhaps yes, an
idea that goes back to the earliest days of religion,
(02:15):
right the oracle of Delphi, where wherein these priestesses would
sit over a fissure in the earth on a tripod
kind of stool and breathing the fumes from this fissure
and whisper predictions about what was to come. That's a
(02:36):
that is a very cool image and I wish I
could have seen that right. Funny story about the famous
oracles at Delphi is that the predictions or mutterings of
these priestesses were interpreted by their us we'll find. Yeah,
this is a commonality that we will seem among different profits.
(03:01):
And I should note that the people who were performing
these acts of divination, those were the specifically the oracles.
So the English word prophecy appears in Europe in the
mid twelve hundreds twelve, and it comes from the French,
the twelfth century word prophecy. So you can see where
(03:21):
they're connected. This goes all the way back to the
Greek um. This comes from a word that's profema, which
means to say beforehand, to to ford tell. So what
what we see is that even before then people have
(03:41):
been making predictions, right, Well, yeah, it's a fun thing
to do, right to just for an everyday human being,
all of you sitting in your cars or whatever you're
doing running, It's kind of fun to think what is
going to happen in the next five years, maybe the
next hundred years, just for somebody who doesn't even have
any kind of powers or you know, it is in
(04:04):
touch with some greater thing. Uh. I like to do it.
I like to sit around and go, oh, man, I
can see this happening in the next World War So
is there is there a connection ben between the word
prophecy and the idea of prophecy for telling the future
and the idea of like professing something or speaking out
about something, or being a professor for example, like someone
(04:24):
who teaches. No, uh no, that's that's an interesting question
because the idea of a profit not necessarily prophecy, but
profit itself is sort of one who speaks for the gods,
So it does have the to speak for right, So
(04:44):
professor would be more like declare publicly if that makes sense.
It does, so there is a relationship there, But I
don't know if a professor is necessarily speaking for God
or by divine inspiration. Hey, you guys ever seen a
prophetic professor like on the streets walking around in the city. Yeah,
(05:09):
there is a There is a group of people now
who are um pamphleting the streets regarding cell phone use
and cancer the w h O World Health Organization. But
what I was going to say, though, is I don't
want to misl you listeners by thinking the prophecy is
a Western thing. It should go without saying what we're
(05:31):
going to say it anyway, to be fair, that prophecy exists.
It probably predates writing because one of the earliest things
that man tried to do, or humankind tried to do rather,
would be to forecast the movements of the heavens and
to see if there were any correlation between the movements
(05:53):
of the sky and the movements on the ground. And
most of the earliest civilizations, many of which have been
lost to time, were oral traditions. So this had to
exist before the Western world. I mean, we can't be that,
you know, Western centric, but the stuff we're gonna hear
(06:14):
about usually concerns the Western world, and we'd like to
take a look at several world famous profits today. This
is our this is kind of our prediction show too, Hi, guys.
I was going to add that, you know, speaking of
not being originated in the Western world necessarily, I mean
I was thinking about the idea of like casting bones
or like looking at you know, in trails and things
(06:35):
like that and trying to figure out what the future is,
and I was just looking up oracle bones. Apparently that
goes as far back as like the Shang dynasty um
which was around two b C. And so they found,
you know, examples of these oracle bones that were used
to kind of like see into the future, things like
looking into flames, you know, for example, Yeah, that's divination rituals.
(06:57):
That's that's great. I wonder if that would also make
UM almost a separate show on its own too, because
you know, reading the liver or the entrails of a
goat or the tea leaves, you know, the tea leaves,
of course, And oh there's so many other different methods,
and one of which, if you live in the US,
(07:18):
you may be surprised to find, is still practiced today
in the modern age. Can anyone guess what it is?
Listeners will give you a chance, you guys are I
would think it was the palms? Though what reading of
palms or terroris? Oh? It's groundhog Day. It's the one
everyone participates in. Yeah, even though it's completely bunk. I ever,
tell you have several members of my family who lived
(07:41):
in Punkstani? No you didn't. Yeah? Can they still call
him punk Satani Phil? Or do they? I don't like
the Georgia Bulldogs. Bulldog when it dies, give add a
number to it, like I'm pretty sure? Okay, Wow, I'm
gonna I might be completely incorrect. The last time I
was there it was still punk satani Phille. It was
not the original. Oh yeah, it's like the Marlborough Man,
(08:03):
right exactly or Zoros. So let's let's get a few
things out of the way before we delve into this.
If you've already checked out our video and prophecy, then
you know some of what we're going to talk about.
We're going to mention some specific alleged profits or would
be profits or people who thought they were profits, and
(08:24):
then we're also going to look at some of the
stuff they said or again allegedly said, and whether it
measures up. So first things first, one of the big
questions that you might have is, well, if there are
true profits, and if they are true specific prognostications or
(08:47):
whatever of future events, then why do these future events
occur if they're still disasters? If someone says the Titanic
is going to sink, yeah, somebody's gonna stop that from happening, right,
because now we know, right, or do we? And why is?
Why is it's what's the old quotation we see through
(09:07):
the class darkly or something? Why Why does so much
of what is called prophecies seem to be kind of vague?
I mean, not to mention like time travel tropes and
books and television. I mean, you can't do it. You
can't keep Hitler from being born, you know, you can't
keep Kennedy from being assassinated. It's never gonna work. Something's
always gonna crop up against you, and you're gonna fail.
(09:30):
You know. Yeah, like that, that's a that's a perfect
point to you know, what is the nature of the
presence relationship with the future, right is it? Is it possible?
There's a great thing in um Stephen King book, And
I know Stephen King is divisive for some people, but
he wrote this book about someone who tries to go
(09:50):
back in time and stop the Kennedy assassinations. What I
was mentioned, Yeah, there's a great line in there. Always
says the past is obdurate, which which means that this
guys going back in time and he's trying to change
certain things, but even the little things are really really
hard to change. Yeah, it will not it's it will
not be changed. It resists change. Because this is the
(10:12):
only time, probably in my life, I've been able to
use this statement correctly. It is what it is. That's
that's it. That's the only time. So all right, So
let's let's talk about some of those problems with prophecy.
Skeptics like James Randy will tell us that most prophecies
only become predictive in the eyes of people looking back
(10:34):
in reference to something that already happened. What you mean,
it's some kind of postdiction, some retroactive divination, right, Yeah,
they're translated in a way that makes sense to the
recent events around them, exactly exactly. So, with with that
in mind, what we hope, what we hope to explore
today is whether there are prophecies that clearly delineated something
(10:58):
that happened in the future, Whether there were prophets who
did so, whether the at least in the cases we're
looking at, and uh, whether the other part is true,
whether the fans or the advocates or the believers in
these prophecies said years after an event, oh totally, you
predicted World War two. It's a lot of it too,
(11:20):
has to do with the language of the prophecy. And
one of the first ones we're gonna get into very
well known prophet and Nostradamus. His were almost written like
in the form of riddles or kind of weird little
aphorisms that you know, sort of like the fortune cookie.
You know, can you could apply it to something if
you choose. If you see an event and you say, oh,
(11:41):
you know, here's a thing it's kind of related. You
can make a jump on a leap and get there
if you want to um. Some of them are weirder
than others as well discuss, but again it's all about
the language and prophecy. Prophecies do tend not to be
this thing is going to happen on this day. It's
gonna be just like this. They're usually much more vague
and open ended. So so I've of a funny well
(12:03):
it's not. It wasn't funny to me, but it might
give everybody a chuckle. Uh. I have a funny story
about mister Damas. When I was a wee young tyke
one of my uncles who has always been into fringe
kind of theories, and he saw he's still a hard
person to read. He would occasionally just sent me books
out of the blue. And one of the books that
(12:24):
I received from him was a book about nostrodomass prophecies
for the End of the world. And this was probably
a book that was over my head at the time
and it was also on the cusp of the nine
Atlanta Olympics. So I read this one question was and
it had this strange um strange phrasing, but it was
(12:48):
something like in nine hundred and nineties six build your house,
sort of rock and sticks, war and fire will sweep
over the land. And they did like, oh, apostrophe e er,
which to me was super like super legit at the time.
And then I was convinced that the end of the
world or the end of the city would occur in
(13:10):
during the nine Olympics. And I was I'm being dead serious,
you guys. I was terrified to go into the city.
I was certain that this mass market paperback had accurately
predicted future. In a my mom made me go to
one thing and the rest of the time I stayed home.
Certain the bomb went off right, yes, exactly, And then
(13:34):
the there was a bombing at the at the Olympics
that year, but civilization soldiered on. But that must have
been creepy for you at the time to see on
the news or something here somebody talking about it. I
was convinced that the ancient wisdom of Nostra Damas had
saved my life and for and I was for a
(13:54):
couple of a couple of years, but then we started
to look at the interpretations and and a lot of
people are aware of Nostradamus, skeptics and believers alike. So
let's get into it, you guys, who who is this dude?
So his full name was Michelle de nostrodama Um and
went by the street name. I suppose you could say,
no Strodamus Um. One of my favorite hip hop names
(14:17):
of all times is Flastradamus. Yes, fantastic, just throwing that
up there, but um so. According to most sources, he
was born in December of fifteen o three and died
in fifteen sixty six. He made a living as like
an apothecary sort of, you know, exactly a pre curstorch
of pharmacists. But today he's much more well known, regarded
(14:39):
as a soothsayer or a prophet as we're talking about.
In fifteen fifty five he published a book called Li Profetise,
which remains relatively popular even to this day and has
been translated into numerous languages. Um today you can find
the full copyright free PDF of this in the public domain.
You can get it on an archive dot org courtesy
of the Library of Congress, though it should be O
(15:00):
did uh, And this was something I was going to
bring up. We're talking about how these things are interpreted.
They're also translated literally, quite literally, because the original version
was written in French. The Prophetisse and the one that
you can find that we mentioned that PDF is completely
in French. And you can just imagine the little nuances
(15:20):
they get lost as it gets changed over to English
or to Spanish or I mean, you know, in the
Romance languages. It might be even more similar. But then
imagine if it's translated let's say, I don't know, to
Mandarin or something like that, and people are using these
prophecies as and trying to translate them. Oh man. And
having been out of the college game for a minute,
it I'd only recently occurred to me again how important
(15:43):
um translators are for you know, works of philosophy, and
how you become like the pre eminent voice, you know,
in terms of translating in particular, you know, writer, and
because you are literally creating the interpretation of this work
that is going to be consumed and tall and you know,
passed around and a lot of times that we're interpretation
(16:04):
definitely applies. I mean it has to, and it goes
it goes back. That's so interesting because it goes back
to what we're talking about with oracles, right, Uh, the
the priests for the sibyl and in the interpreter, the
intermedient medium. Uh so, Uh, this is this is great
that we're getting to this part because it's not just
(16:27):
modern French. It's French from the fifteen hundreds, sort of
like like Middle English or something. It's difficult to it's
it would be very, very difficult, although I do love.
One thing I love about spoken French at least is
that everything rhymes. Do you guys ever think about how
easy it must be to wrap in French? Really interesting? Yeah,
(16:48):
you're right, I didn't think about that. But it flows,
it flows, it flows, it does. And so Nostradamis's predictions
are written, as we said, in this French, and they're
grouped in a peculiar way. They're grouped in four line
stanzas quatrains that um observe or maybe worn about vague
(17:09):
events or very symbolistic. Uh. The stands as themselves are
grouped into units of a hundred called centuries, and as
we said, it's all about the interpretations. So let's talk
about some of the specific prophecies that Nostra damis made.
Should we go ahead and jump right in to the
(17:29):
old September eleven attacks? Why not? Man, I'm not an
eight and a half the yards kind of guy. Okay,
that's where we're going. Uh, let's let's get into the
English translation that old Matt Frederick. Here o l apostrophe
Matt Frederick, or however you want to translate Frederick. Al Right,
(17:51):
here we go. Volcanic fire from the center of the
earth will cause trembling around the new city too. Great
rocks will make war for a long time. Then Arufsa
will redden a new river. Yeah. Rufsa's side note is
(18:12):
a nymph who turned into a fountain in her story.
Uh so that's one translation, but I don't know if
this is the same one. I found another version. Apparently
there were quite a few folks talked around about nine eleven.
This one has some similar ideas, but it's in the
city of God. There will be a great thunder, two
brothers torn apart by chaos. While the fortress endures, the
(18:36):
great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin
when the big city is burning. That is an interesting
one actually, because I've seen the imagery in their matches
up really well with what we saw on the news
and what kind of happened. What what I'm saying, it's
the fortune cookie men town. You know, you can fit
it in, you can totally box it in if you think, wow,
(18:58):
those are some big burly image is that he's talking about,
and like you can connect them with, you know, to
the Twins, the two buildings, the Fortress of the Pentagon,
which still stands. Also, the qualification of posting something on
the Internet is entirely the ability to have an Internet connection,
of course. And I remember this one. This was this
was right when everything went down and everyone was talking
(19:18):
about the Nostrongs connection. This one was totally doctored and
it is made up, but you may remember this. It
was two steel birds will fall from the sky on
the metropolis. The sky will burn at forty five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the Great New City. Immediately, a huge scattered
flame leaps up. Within months, rivers will flow with blood.
The undead will roam the earth for a little time.
(19:40):
Totally fabricated. Someone just took the flavor of Nostrodamus and
added maybe a couple of lines from one of the
quatrains and dumped this out and it was making the round.
I remember seeing this two steel birds, and they didn't
have steel See. I think I think the steel Birds
line is actually taken from another profit that we're going
to speak about a little later, that's definitely attributed to
(20:01):
Nostradamas at the time, it's completely bunk. And that's yeah,
that's another thing Nostre Damas also, all right, so we
know that there are some bunk translations. We know that
there are people who said, yeah, why don't I just
stick a line about New York in here? And so
what they end on that thinks, and that's why we
have Nostre Damas. This guy writing in uh the fifteen hundreds,
(20:23):
allegedly according to the Internet, saying stuff like New York
the eleventh day of the ninth month. And again not
the way any of these were laid out. Okay, I'm
gonna play. I'm gonna play Devil's advocate here for a
moment on the side of someone who perhaps can see
beyond the veil, for a moment in a fleeting glance
(20:45):
of something. Imagine that you have no context for what
New York City looks like, or if for what a
city or a building or anything that you're looking at.
It looks like like, imagine you're getting a glimpse of
a futuristic city hundreds of years from now, and you
have no idea what anything is. You don't know what
the names are, but you see two things that looks
(21:08):
similar to a plane for sure attacking something. I mean,
it's it's interesting to me imagining how I would write
down on a piece of paper or what I was
seeing if I could somehow see that and and potentially
a very cool literary device. I can't pick pick it
out right now, but I feel like I've seen that
before in a movie or in like a novel, whether
(21:29):
someone has had a prophecy and they describe it in
these kind of like very m rudimentary terms, something that
will happen in the future, which like the Great Turtle
will rise from the sea, and you know, things like
that where it's like maybe it's like a warship or something.
You know, it's like cargo cults then that we've talked
about before. Yeah, cargo cults. People will call UH what
(21:52):
it is. It's a term that might be somewhat defraudatory.
It can be for people who are living in isolated
areas in the Pacific Ocean, isolated islands, and they would
see cargo dropped and see airplanes for the first time,
and service members of various wars. There is there was
(22:13):
within your lifetimes, listener, there there was an active cargo
cult that worshiped Prince Philip UH and they would build
towers or radio towers and an attempt to summon these
things from the sky. Again, well he is kind of dreamy,
is he. Yeah, But just the idea that there's no
there's not a lot of context for for that group
(22:36):
of people who have seen something that's beyond their understanding
that has done something good for them. I thought it's
a great Yeah. I think that's a great argument. I'm
glad you make it because we've heard arguments about that
in biblical text, right. I can't remember if it's I
think it's Old Testament. Yeah, it's gotta be Old Testament
where Ezekiel has a vision of what he said earning
(23:00):
or file wheels within wheels, and that description is clearly
someone trying to be very specific about some but bizarre
spectacle but not maybe not quite knowing what it is,
which has led you know, ancient alien people to say
that it's some sort of visitation extraterrestrial. But that's a
(23:20):
story for a different day. It is, it is, it is,
But I just have thrown via Mona's that's one of
the coolest things. The the idea of the flying ships
for an ancient Indian texts, ancient nuclear war hunt. Dude,
the Nazis believed in it. It's also interesting to the
way you can sort of divide profits up into the
into two camps. I mean, you have these religious leader
profits that are communicating with said deities that are in
(23:42):
charge of whatever faith they represent, and then you have
these nostre dambist soothsayer type profits that are more about
looking at the big picture. They're not necessarily saying they
got a message from God. They're just saying they can see,
you know, beyond and seeing in the future. And they're
both kind of you know, considered profits, but they have
sort of have their own little game going on right well.
And yeah, and in no stredamis is time, it was
(24:06):
apostasy or the denial of religion technically it's like this
huge crime. So you know, it's it's strange when you
think about that too, because most of the prophets we
see have, or people who believe their prophets have some
sort of spiritual nature. And sometimes it's I'll say it,
sometimes they believe they have discovered it independently. But that's
(24:30):
the nicest way to say it. There's another one. Since
we started at nine eleven. Well, yeah, and and since
you said the Nazis did believe perhaps in the ancient
nuclear war, yes, uh, did Nostredamus predict the rise of
Hitler and the beginning of World War two? In the
(24:50):
place very near, not far from Venus, the two greatest
ones of Asia and of Africa, from the Rhine and
history they will be said to have come cries tears
at Malta and the Ligurian side Histor, huh, that sounds
pretty close. Yeah, but I don't think. I don't think
that's what there or perhaps Okay, I just have to
(25:13):
say it's a it's a river, right, Histor is a river,
The Rhine is a river. They are in Germany, or
at least on the western side of Germany. The Ryan
is there. And then the history. I don't know exactly
where it's the Latin name for like the lower stretch
of the Danube. Okay, okay, so yeah, so that that Sunds.
We're Here's just the show everybody, how different these translations
(25:33):
can be. We've got the original friends Shire, which I'm
not going to butcher, but then someone else translates it
to remember what um what we just heard from no earlier?
Someone else says, beast wild with hunger shall cross the rivers.
Most of the fighting shall be close by the history.
It shall result in the great One being dragged in
an iron cage, while the Germans shall be watching over
(25:55):
the infant rhine. What vastly? Yeah? Yeah, and so what
what part of that is fabricated? Right? Uh? So again,
you can read various interpretations of this, especially with no
Stradamus in mind, because there's so many, so many translations
that are people actually trying to transliterate. I mean, the
(26:19):
original is so innocuous. It's just it's like in a
place not far from Venus, like like it's how much
more vague can you be? And then it gets it
gets more specific, and they will be said to have
come cries tears at Malta and the Ligurian side. It's
just so open ended, you know that you can just
shoehorn whatever idea you want into that if you choose. Now,
(26:41):
is that what you think is happening? I think it's
what's happening with this other translation that you're talking about.
And I think, like you say, it's it's if you
get excited about the idea that maybe this guy really
did have something, your brain starts to make all these
leaps and fill in the gaps, and you know, kind
of like what is the confirmation bias? Kind of Yeah,
this this makes me think about so many other things.
(27:04):
We've looked at the psychotronics studies in the USSRUH in
the aftermath of World War Two, the various m k
ultra type experiments people have tried to conduct with or um.
Was it stargate with INGOs Swan, where people were trying
to access what they were certain was an extra sensory ability.
(27:25):
I'm not here to say that that stuff conclusively doesn't exist,
though it is true that governments have spent a lot
of money on things that ultimately didn't pan out. Well, yeah,
and that's why we had to do right. We talked
about this, but with the reason why the United States
government had to do research into this, uh, this this
(27:48):
subject is because it was being done by the other side.
And if the other side somehow unlocked psychic powers or
these you know, ways to see through buildings and perhaps
even moved to them and we didn't have it, oh
we're in trouble if they've got X men and we don't.
But yeah, but okay, I while I get that, it's
also somewhat disingenuous, and I know this is a bit
(28:10):
of a different topic. It's disingenuous, uh, at least on
the part of some members of the military the bureaucracy,
because clearly it's war is good for the winner's economy, right,
so it's also a way to rationalize more spending. We'll
watch out this week thing. I mean, remember, we live
(28:31):
in a country where mere decades ago someone said, what
if we could make a bomb, it would just turn
people gay? Yeah, what if? Why don't we just try
that and let's spend a couple let's spend a couple
of mill on it and just see if that's a
real thing. All right, So we should mention though one
(28:52):
common misinterpretation about nostradamis is that he created all of
his work independently. That is not true. He pulled. There's
pretty convincing evidence that he pulled from existing literature of
his time, histories, things like that. So a lot of
his work is referential, but not necessarily referring to future events.
(29:14):
It's referring to or alluding to existing works in his
time in the fifteen hundreds, similar to the way that T. S.
Eliot's The Waste Land refers so heavily and is so
elusive in terms of it how it leans on other
existing works. So some of these prophecies are these translations
(29:39):
or more amalgamations of other things. He didn't write this
all independently, and he didn't predict the end of the
world the Mayan cycle, which itself is kind of based
on a mistranslation. In Instead, he said his prophecies extend
from now to the year thirties, seven, nineties seven or
something like that is a long time from now, that's
(30:02):
a while, a really long time from fifteen five. But
his major astrological source at the time, Richard Rousseau, said
that forty two might be a date for the end
of the world. Uh I don't remember the arcane logic
they use, and three seven nine seven minus fifteen fifty
five when he published the book is twenty two two.
(30:25):
I don't know, man, I was gonna say one, that's
probably a better, better year. It's just so funny because
when you it doesn't matter who you are. I don't
care how popular you are among any circles. If you
just throw out a number like that, I don't know.
Well I'll throw I'll throw out a number for you.
Um well, I can't. I know this is weird because
(30:49):
I can't tell you much about the person who told
me this, but I am convinced by this source the
world is ending for someone or some group of people.
Every every day and every year. There are between fifty
and two hundred apocalyptic groups who believe that this is
(31:09):
it is a big finish. And without without being disrespectful
or dismissing these people's beliefs, I will say that there's
something inherently narcissistic and self center to assume that a
thing that existed for thousands of years is going to
(31:30):
stop that and you showed up just in time. Job.
I mean, it's there's something inherently not selfish but self
important about that And so far, the one thing that
all apocalyptic groups have in common is that they have
(31:55):
not accurately predicted the end of the world. You know,
my favorite end of the world um prophecy is what
are you guys familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
So they celebrate this holiday every year in July fifth,
called X Day and UM. Initially X Day was supposed
to be the end of the world and was supposed
to be on July, at which point um an alien
(32:18):
race known as the exists or men from Planet X
would come to Earth and destroy the world and rid
the world of the quote normals or pinks or glorps
which or the non sub genii that inhabit the planet.
But you know, as as you know, from time time happens,
everyone makes mistakes. The creators of the Church of the
SubGenius got the calendar date wrong, uh and apparently looked
(32:41):
at it upside down. So it's actually going to take
place in the year eight six sixty one. Who So
that gives them plenty of padding there, you know, their
parties up until the new end of the world comes.
So I love I love SubGenius because it takes all
the wind out of these kind of endo the world
death conspiracies, you know, and just sort of like it's
(33:03):
a very tongue in cheek and I'm a big fan.
Well yeah, I again, you guys know that I have
a fascination with alternative religious beliefs. I guess is the
most fair way to dance around the word cults. But
the thing that fascinating to me is that there are
so many instances where someone predicts the end of the world.
(33:26):
And you know, apocalypse or of an apocalyptic event does
not necessarily mean the end of the world. We use
it that way in English today, but what it means
at heart is the revealing of hidden things. So that
revelation right the end of the world. It's become conflated
or synonymous in modern speech, but a lot of these
(33:48):
groups will talk more in terms of a great spiritual
revelation and when't they are wrong. If the date comes
and it passes, then there's a wealth of a plethora,
And I am using that word correctly of reasons that
the thing will have to be adjusted. So kudos to
the SubGenius Church for moving and giving themselves a little
(34:10):
bit of a buffer. I hope they make it to
the eight hundreds eight thousands. Okay, So next is someone
who might be a deep cut for some listeners. This
actually might be new to some of you out there,
and we hope you enjoy it. Let's talk about the
Nostradamis of the Balkans, as she is sometimes called. You're
(34:32):
gonna have to see her name. Baba Vanga, like Baba Yaga,
the Russian witch of folklore, but Baba Vanga born Vangelia
Pandeva Dimitrova in January nineteen eleven. She was in She
was born in what was then known as the Ottoman Empire,
(34:53):
and when she was born she was completely normal until
the age of twelve. Yeah, and allegedly, or at least
according to stories, she was blinded during a storm that
occurred when she was only twelve years old. I almost
wanted to seem blinded by the light. No, that's messed up, ben,
and don't do that well. Um, But yeah, So she
(35:15):
was missing for a number of days. At some point
she had that kind of mystical thing where she's disappeared
but now she's returned. Her eyes were when she returned
sealed shut, and her family couldn't afford to get them fixed,
couldn't take her to the doctor or the uh yeah,
let's say the doctor. So she was going to be
(35:35):
blind for the rest of her life, but yeah, she
was going to have that sense replaced, at least according
to her and her supporters. She claimed she began having
visions during the first few days of her disappearance, and
that's a super common trope in you know, historical accounts
of um prophets or sybyls, right, like, that's a thing,
I mean, the blind prophet, you know, yes, and mythology
(35:59):
and what and also yeah, in history and leaving and
not being seen for a period of time then returning
and then this completely changed the new things. And that
goes back to Joseph Campbell, right, I was saying when
that that that period of disappearances when you know, some
significant events took place and changed the person's perspective wherever. Yeah,
(36:21):
I would recommend Hero with a Thousand Faces or Heroes
Journey by Joseph Campbell to learn some more of that.
This happened in real life. She believed that because of
her visions in her quest, she could predict the future
and heal people using otherworldly powers and scientists and government officials,
not to mention the wealthy, came to visit her for advice.
(36:41):
According to the story, she served as an advisor to
the Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, who would ask her questions
to advance their cause. Right in the Great in the
Great Game of geopolitical intrigue, she was kept under surveillance
by the secret police, and politicians and businessmen would come
(37:04):
meet with her. And that I can believe because if
your secret police, you want to bug those conversations. Yeah,
even if even if what she's telling them is completely untrue,
just having those individuals in a room speaking, Yeah, we're
gonna bug that if we're in charge. So let's talk
about her specific prophecies. Right. According to The Independent, she
(37:27):
allegedly predicted the forty four US president would be black
also the last president, which is predictions of who will
be the last president are distressingly common. Uh, And I
think a lot of them are made up by people
on the internet. But as well, she has thought to
have predicted uh nine eleven. And we we have the
(37:47):
quote from the Guardian here, and here's that image that
seemed to crop up and that was attributed to Notre
damas horror, horror. The American Brethren will fall after being
attacked by the steel Birds, the wool will be howling
in a bush, and innocent blood will gush. So clearly
that steel Bird's imagery was pilfered from this and kind
of connected with some nostradamous lines and then you know,
(38:10):
thrown out there on the internet. Now, one study, uh,
one one study says that she was accurate. I have
a hard time believing this. This game from Dr Georgie Lozonov,
who is director of the Institute of I'm not making
this up. Suggest ology and parapsychology and Sophia Bulgaria and
(38:31):
uh he said that I like that word suggest ology,
suggests ologies. Sounds very subgenious. So there's also here's the thing.
Though this was a legit place at thirty staff members.
The Bulgarian government was paying for it. They thought that
a lot of Baba Anga's predictive abilities, especially the stuff
(38:54):
where she was looking for lost relatives and friends, were
pretty accurate. However, the issue with this is you can
find it in the methodology. You know. I'll post this
online if anybody wants to check it out. But we've
talked before about parapsychology experiments and how easy it is
to how easy it is to do something that renders
(39:17):
the experiment on sound um. Anyhow, there's also the additional
side note that many of the people who are close
to Bob a Vanka during her life claims she never
made prophecies attributed to her on the internet. She died,
and she left behind several other alleged predictions for the future.
(39:39):
Vice has a good Vice has a good article on it,
and we can check in with that maybe towards the
close of the show. Well, let's move on, because I
can't wait to see what other people say about Bob
a Vanka. But we would be remiss if we did
not talk about another um, another profit or seer that
you ladies and gentlemen asked us to check out for
(40:01):
a while now. Yeah, and it's also getting a little
bit closer to the present day, which is kind of cool.
So it's somebody that actually has stuff written down about them,
perhaps even books that are published with English that we
will be able to understand readily. Right. Oh, also, our
first English speaker that's correct of this of this run,
(40:21):
and that goes to Mr Edgar Casey, Casey was born
in March of eighteen seventy seven and passed away in
January of He had a pretty interesting alias, I guess
you could say, which was the Sleeping Profit, because he
would go into these trances, these kind of like fugue
states reveries when he was diagnosing illnesses or recounting ancient wisdom,
(40:44):
were just making these different predictions that that is fascinating
to me. And a lot of the I would say
pop culture references to a lot of things where someone
will go into a trance and then make a prediction
like this. I feel like it's especially in film, goes
back to maybe being influenced by this guy. Also some
of the theatrics of uh, you know, communicating with spirits
(41:07):
and the seance or something where you know, the medium
would sort of rock back and forth and enter into this, uh,
this trance like state and then be inhabited by the
spirit of a past loved one, you know. As we know,
a lot of that was you know, largely theater, but
definitely was a very impactful presentation for folks of the
(41:28):
time for sure. And as we said before, this guy
is very well documented, perhaps the most well documented profit
that we know of and we even know a lot
about his history growing up in early life. Right, yeah,
you can. You can find various different accounts. We'll read
one from someone who we'll we'll read one from Edgar
Casey on Atlantis, which was which contains several statements about
(41:53):
his beliefs regarding Atlantis, delivered under his trance, edited by
the director the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Hugh Lynn Casey,
a descendant. And we'll also talk about the A R
E a little bit too. So the thing is that, um,
he was supposed to be in his waking life, pretty
(42:15):
good husband's olive father, uh taught Sunday school, pretty nice guy,
gifted protect professional photographer, But when he was in a
trance he became a medical diagnostician, a prophet, a proponent
of biblical lore. So even as a child in Kentucky,
his parents said that he displayed powers of perception that
(42:39):
seemed to go beyond the five senses. At the age
six or seven, he told his parents he was able
to see and talk to visions, sometimes of dead relatives.
One of my favorite stories about him. His parents said
that he probably had no overactive imagination, but one of
my favorite stories is that apparently he was able to
learn by some sort of range osmosis uh. Sleeping with
(43:02):
his head on school books, he got a photographic memory,
which helped him advance rapidly in school. This faded uh
as he grew older, and he was only able to
complete complete the seventh grade of formal education. Uh. So
he started to develop a paralysis of the throat muscles
(43:22):
in and was in his early twenties. Doctors weren't able
to find a cause for this condition, so they tried everything.
They tried hypnosis too, and then, in desperation, Casey apparently
asked one of his friends to help him achieve the
same kind of trance he had used when he was
(43:43):
sleeping on school books as a kid. And then all
of a sudden, he uh did the old diagnose thyself
physician kind of thing, and he got medicine and recommended
a therapy that restored his voice, cured his throat. A
group of doctors came by and started asking him to
diagnose their own patients. One thing leads to another, Wow
(44:07):
really and uh yeah, and he becomes the sleeping profits.
So when he dies in forty five in Virginia, left
well over fourteen thousand documented stenographic records of the statements
he had given for more than eight thou and different
people over forty three years. So we got a lot
(44:27):
of stuff on them. So the Association for Research and
Enlightenment which we mentioned exists today. It is a nonprofit
organization founded to facilitate the study of his work. You
can see their website right now, it's Edgar Casey dot Org.
I mean, if you're driving or something, don't don't do
it while you're driving and see perhaps he has a
(44:51):
prediction that applies to you, or does he. Because here
is the thing about Edgar Casey, ladies and gentlemen, he
because he is so well documented, we also know a
lot of what he got wrong, not interpretively wrong, but
factually inaccurate. One example that really sticks out is that
(45:13):
he said the pilt Down Man was real, the Piltown
Man being a famous hoax where the jaw of an
orangutang was combined with the cranium of a modern human
to argue that there was this evidence of human evolution
in uh in the area of its discovery, which was
puilt out in East Sussex. So Edgar Casey, however, said
(45:37):
that this was evidence of an Atlantean race or a
someone who survived in Atlantis or was from Atlantis. UH
colonizer specifically, who had traveled to Britain. And in ninety three,
a little bit after Casey's death, it was exposed as
(46:00):
hopes he read through the Bible entirely each year and
this helped him reconcile his Christian beliefs with the metaphysical
stuff he he said while he was in a trance.
He's often called one of the founders of the New
Age movement. However, critics say that he UH. Critics say
(46:23):
that he cribbed some stuff from other authors like Carl
Young or Elena Blovotsky from the Theosophy movement. I don't
know if that's necessarily plagiarism, though. If it is a
real trance, people might just be free associating, you know
what I mean. We've all been in that area between
sleep and wakefulness, where sleep paralysis occurs and where thoughts
(46:44):
spring unbidden. You know, you're singing a song you love
and then realize it doesn't exist in the real world
and that your mind is writing it for you. I'm
pretty sure I'm there right now, man, So most of
the weirder beliefs about Atlantis come from cases. When you
hear people talk about fantastically advanced civilization brought to Ruin
(47:06):
by meddling with strange powers, some of that comes from Casey.
And if you would like to learn more about Edgar Casey,
you can again check out their website Edgar Casey dot org.
You can also, let's see, I would there are a a
ton of books. Yeah, there are a ton of books,
(47:26):
but I recommend looking at stuff from that society because
at least although they definitely are starting with the opinion
that the guy is correct, uh, they're also using the
actual translations, so you won't run into a nostrodamist thing
where someone made it up. Okay, that makes sense. So
start with the materials from Casey dot org and then
(47:49):
maybe move on to another spot, get some other books
and stuff like that if you really want to deep
delve deep into this. I do like the head or
the header on the pages. Edgar Casey's are a r E,
which stands for Association for Research and Enlightenment, acted since
nineteen thirty one. They do have a health SWAS center.
(48:10):
Did you mention that already? Because you can go you
can go there. I mean, if you really want to
get into this, head on out. Where is it? Where
is the main main office? Looks like it's in Virginia Beach,
Virginia Beach, Virginia, right, that's where he was living at
the time. To see what the what the scene is like.
(48:31):
It would be nice to be nice to visit that.
Here's another prediction that he got wrong. It seems that
the US were discovering Atlantean death ray as in a
death ray from the Law Civilization of Atlantis in nineteen
Got it wrong or did he been beat me to
the punch? We don't know at this point. Perhaps sometime
(48:53):
we will in the future. We do want to end, however,
on something a little bit difference. We're talking about secrets,
so let's not just talk about another secret. Let's talk
about three at once, and that would be the three
Secrets of Fatima. This is a little bit different because
(49:14):
it doesn't involve um, it doesn't involve lifelong career sort
of profits, you know, like Edgar Casey, No tre Damas
Baba Vanga spent decades uh making predictions. This, however, is this, however,
is something different that involves apparently divine direct divine intervention.
(49:39):
So these three young Portuguese shepherds le see A Santos primarily,
and then her cousins are visited by an apparition of
the Virgin Mary several times, starting on the thirteenth of
May nineteen seventeen. They said they were visited six times
between May and October that year. Now this apparition is
(49:59):
popularly own as our Lady of Fatima. She entrusted the
children with three secrets in July nine seventeen. Two of
these secrets were revealed in nineteen forty one at the
request of a bishop named Jose Alvas Correa del Silva,
and he wanted to assist with the publication of a
(50:23):
new edition of a book on one of the cousins.
As for the third secret, the bishop ordered her to
put it in writing. Lucia wrote it down, sealed it
in an envelope that wasn't not supposed to be opened
until nineteen sixty when it would quote appear clearer. The
text of this third secret was officially released by poop
(50:43):
John Paul the second in two thousand or or was
it because some people claim that it was not the
entire secret, and we will never know for sure because
only a few people were actually in control of that information, right. Yeah,
it reminds me of when we did some of the
(51:05):
we did some of our earlier episodes on the the
Restricted Material and the Vatican Archives, because the secret archives
of Vatican are real, but they're using secret in a
different way. It's still tricky though, because you can request
something if you know exactly what you're requesting. Yeah. I
(51:25):
feel like someone should make a list of all possible
things that could ever exist and then just submit them
daily to the Vatican. What what are the What are
the secrets? Yes, great question. Okay, So the first secret
is a vision of hell. I've got some of the text.
Our ladies showed us. A great sea of fire which
(51:47):
seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire
with demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning
embers all black and they're burnished bronze that goes on.
The second was a statement that World War One would end,
along with the prediction of another war during the reign
of Pope Pious. Uh, and then that would happen if
(52:10):
Russia did not convert to Catholicism. Yeah, So basically one
is a vision of health, one is about communist Russia, uh,
and then the third one. Though the third one, at
least the way it was published, was that there would
be an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul the second.
(52:34):
And that's the crazy thing there was, you know. So
the thing is that there actually was an assassination attempt
on Pope John Paul, which occurred on the thirteenth of
May nineteen one. You can see a video of that
if you wish and just head on over to YouTube.
(52:56):
And people have thought about this back in worth you
know that it is actually a prophecy or is it
just something that would happen because the Pope is up
there with the US president or other heads of state
who would be much more likely than the average person
to have an assassination attempt occur, perhaps even higher because
(53:18):
of the vitriol that you can have between religions. So
in June of two thousand, UH the that it can
finally release this uh, this secret. But there there have
been several other people who were involved with it who
(53:39):
said that um, that the the handwritten four page text
is not the real secret or not the full thing.
And they believe that the third Secret is actually composed
of two texts. One of those is the four page
published version. The other is a single page letter containing
the real truth. And their Italian journalists like Antonio soshi
(54:01):
Um who say that they have proof that there's a
second secret. All right, and here's here's just some of
the proof quickly. Uh Lucia Santo says she wrote the
message in the form of assigned letter to the bishop.
The text is supposed to contain words attributed to the
Virgin Mary, which the published one doesn't really the full secret.
(54:23):
Bishops working with Pope Pious, Pope John and Pope Paul
all commented that the text was written on one sheet
of paper, not four, and the full secret, according to
these people, contains information about the apocalypse, a great apostasy,
and Satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church. Who and then
(54:45):
you would hear I remember a couple of years ago
you heard a lot about, oh gosh, what is the
name of the pope that is prior to the one
we currently have. And then after Pope John Paul second
was Ratzinger rat Okay that I remember hearing lots and
lots of people talking about rattling here being this version
of these prophecies where he had infiltrated in his group
(55:08):
had infiltrated and they were evil. That's the thing about prophecies.
I mean, it's so easy to let your imagination run
wild and use it to confirm something that you already believe.
You know, like this pope feels like an outsider or
something right, and to be totally to be totally fair. Here,
one of the people who served as Vatican Secretary of
(55:29):
State until two thousand thirteen, a Cardinal Bertoni, wrote a
book called The Last Secret of Fatima, and he published
an Italian English and it has an interview that touches
on this where the journalists, a journalist named Giuseppe de
Carli is interviewing Um is interviewing the cardinal, and he says, well,
(55:51):
what about this rumor that you're concealing a one page
text of the Third Secret that predicts Rome will lose
the faith and become the throne of the anti Rist
and the cardinal I just wanna read this too, affair.
The cardinal says, that's absolutely crazy. Are you claiming that
the Prophecy of Fatima is about the apostasy of the
Church of Rome? And Fatima is a prediction of Rome's
(56:11):
transformation into the throne of the Antichrist. Despite the love
our lady capitalized our Lady of Fatima has for the
pope and the popes for our lady. Anyone can write books,
can based on conspiracy theories, on biased interpretations. Anyone can
take sentences out of context and present them as clues
to some supposed plot to avoid divulging the truth and
(56:31):
to transmit it in a code that only the initiates
can understand. No, the whole theory you allude to is
a fabrication, and this supposedly factual account is actually the
sort of device the Mason's used to invent to discredit
the church. I'm surprised that journalists and writers who claim
to be Catholic let themselves be taken in strong words,
really strong words. Sounds like somebody I don't. My brain goes,
(56:57):
oh boy, this guy sounds guilty, But well he might
also just be irritated with having heard that, right, I mean,
I can imagine how irritating that would be. But at
the same time, to fight back that hard, well, that's
also that's our That's where we're ending. Just because this
is this thing where it's not as far as the
Catholic Church is concerned, this is not a matter of interpretation.
(57:21):
This is a true for telling of an event before
it occurred. And the other three examples um k C,
Baba Banga and no Stradamis are all a little bit
more muddy. And I know we didn't get to everything,
but there's so many profits now. But it's is interesting
to have these prophecies like officially sanctioned by such a
(57:45):
you know, an important body as you know, the Holy
Roman Church. It's pretty intense. There are a lot of
there are a lot of interesting things that we could
talk about regarding the power structure of the Catholic Church,
not the faith or religion in any way. Uh, we've
discussed it a bit in the past, but there's just
some fascinating things I think we got into when we
were talking about possessions and the it's just some old
(58:11):
things that still exist now in the Catholic Church. I
mean referring to the official exorcise. Yes, yes, that is
that is a true and fascinating thing. We would like
your help, folks. Do you have any profits that you
would like us to look into in the future. Or prophecies,
(58:31):
because we'll tell you right now. One thing in our
experience that occurred was that it was surprisingly difficult to
find some of the actual like the what what our
some of our co workers would call the actual facts translations?
Uh and and to separate the chaff from the wheat,
(58:53):
you know, the internet echo chamber. But we would like
to hear some more people that we should check out.
And I gotta I gotta ask you guys. I know
that we went on some tangents and discovered some future
episodes we could cover, But what do you think about
upcoming prophecies? And what do you what do you think
(59:13):
we had talked about this before. Do you think that
software and big data will eventually be able to do
what human beings have been trying to do predict disasters
and changes, big global changes like that. I mean, we've
I think so, I think we're gonna get darn close.
I mean, I'm sure there are folks are at work
(59:35):
at it. Yeah, some of my whole professors actually, yeah, oh,
the the guy who's making the huge map or the simulation. Yeah,
that's super cool. Not to mention things like predicting trends
and you know, commerce in this doctor, I mean that's
the other world. But that's true. So how do we
get in on this? Well, if you know how to
(59:58):
do this, give us a write us an email. Will
tell you how to do that in a minute. Um right,
it's like they'll joke about time traveling. Time Traveler Club
meets here two days ago. Yeah, we meet every every
Wednesday or Thursday here, So come join us in the
you know, in the booth. We will allow you to
be on here every every time we record. Oh man,
(01:00:20):
what are we gonna do If somebody burst in and
uh Doc Brown style and claims to have traveled through
time or to have a prediction the future. I would
hear them out. Absolutely, I don't see the harm. I
would give John Feter my seat and give them a see.
We could just have them pull up another seat. No, no no,
I just said, hey man, you go in there. I'm
gonna stay out here. There's there's a chair, there's an
(01:00:42):
extra chair. I don't want any I don't know time radiation,
I don't know. I'm scared of that stuff. All right, Well,
we'll we'll table that for future discussion, barring any unexpected
time travelers arriving. It's almost time for us to head out.
Do you guys have any message for the New Year. Well,
(01:01:02):
I just want to say we all didn't die in
September of Uh. There were a lot of people and
predictions being made about something crazy happening at that time,
and they nothing happened. That's good. Or maybe we did
die and that we're just like on the Lost Island. Oh,
how could you tell? That's kind of cool if this
is the afterlife. I gotta say, Um, I'm I'm having
(01:01:23):
a good time. It's not so bad. It's not as
bad as I thought. See, maybe we've always been making
this podcast and we will always be making this podcast.
It's a flat circle, bro, what about you know? Oh yeah,
I don't know. Apparently you're supposed to eat black eyed
peas and color greens and it gives you good financial luck.
So I'm gonna give that a go. Um, mainly, I
(01:01:44):
don't know. No, it's been a good year. Um, still
biting this uh, this Christmas crowd here. So I I
hope that in the new Year that I don't have
a cold. I hope so too. Man. You know, I
was talking to one of my friends recently and she
said that people were not supposed to be lobster or
chicken on the New Year because something about like chickens
(01:02:06):
walking or how both animals move backwards or something. I'm
not sure. I didn't sort it out. But then also,
I have failed often to eat the collared greens and
black eyed peas bo. A friend of mine just suggested it,
and it's like, no, you just just do it. You
have to do it. Yeah, I wonder it's a Southern thing, right,
(01:02:26):
hop and John, Like Hop and John the Cuban side
of my family, we have to eat a certain number
of grapes right up to the Yeah, there's a to do.
That's cool. So there we are, guys. We hope that
you have adventures in the New Year's If you are
making resolutions, keep in mind that you are statistically more
(01:02:49):
likely to keep a resolution if you make it almost
any other month. Your birthday is really good for resolutions. January,
out of all twelve months, is the worst month to
attempt a resolution. Or don't tell anybody but your diary
or yourself or whatever it is that you use to
write down your resolution. Don't tell a single human being,
(01:03:11):
or make a resolution to start doing something in February
doing it in February, give yourself some breathing like that,
unlike the third February three third, So you have that
one day at the first, the second um in two days.
All right, So, folks, we're going to head out. If
you would like to hear our podcasts about predicting the
future through big data and software, you can find that,
(01:03:34):
along with every other podcast we have ever done, on
our website Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot Com.
You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook. We
are conspiracy stuff on both of those. Huge shout out
to the Nurdest for mentioning this podcast. Holy mackerel. Cool.
I know we're just honorably mentioned, but still thanks Nurnest.
(01:03:54):
It was very nice. It was very It was very kind.
You know that's because one of us one that usher
league game right what anyway, story for another day. I
don't mean to derail us. Uh. If you would like
to email us directly, all of our best ideas come
from you, So let us know what you think about
(01:04:14):
this episode and profits and prophecy, and also let us
know what you think we should take a closer look
at in the future. Our email is conspiracy at how
stuff works. Dot com from on this topic. Another unexplained phenomenon,
(01:04:35):
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M from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:22):
welcome back to the show. My name is Max, my
name is Noel, and today I am Ben. Most importantly,
you are you, which makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. At least, we hope you're feeling like yourself,
and if you're feeling like someone else, well it's nice
to talk to that person too. We have a very
special announcement as we begin the show today. We are
(00:46):
I believe we are the last show recording for the year.
We're on the cusp. Gentleman, that is correct as long
as we finish after Jonathan finishes his session. That's happening
simultaneously theoretically. Theoretically yes, which means that by the time
you hear this, it will be twenty sixteen. So there's
(01:09):
something that we would like to wish you guys. Uh,
good luck, Mary New New Order Day? Oh what what? Mary?
New Order Day? Is this thing? Nolan I started and
started it's take it off. Well, it was more like
it's more you're more the visionary of it. You're the
Walter White. I'm kind of wood shopping and I don't
(01:31):
know if I'm ready to try it out. It's quite yet.
I feel as though I jumped the gun and dropping
that slogan apologies to well, this is uh, this is
the one time of year we're ball dropping is not
only cool but a television events. So happy New Year
to you guys. So today, whether or not we are
the last podcast, we are definitely the first podcast for
(01:53):
stuff they want you know. Twenty sixteen and today we're
talking about something that's somewhat a propose. Correct, Yes, we're
talking about profits and the seeing into the future and
predicting things that are to come. Maybe perhaps yes, an
idea that goes back to the earliest days of religion,
(02:15):
right the oracle of Delphi, where wherein these priestesses would
sit over a fissure in the earth on a tripod
kind of stool and breathing the fumes from this fissure
and whisper predictions about what was to come. That's a
(02:36):
that is a very cool image and I wish I
could have seen that right. Funny story about the famous
oracles at Delphi is that the predictions or mutterings of
these priestesses were interpreted by their us we'll find. Yeah,
this is a commonality that we will seem among different profits.
(03:01):
And I should note that the people who were performing
these acts of divination, those were the specifically the oracles.
So the English word prophecy appears in Europe in the
mid twelve hundreds twelve, and it comes from the French,
the twelfth century word prophecy. So you can see where
(03:21):
they're connected. This goes all the way back to the
Greek um. This comes from a word that's profema, which
means to say beforehand, to to ford tell. So what
what we see is that even before then people have
(03:41):
been making predictions, right, Well, yeah, it's a fun thing
to do, right to just for an everyday human being,
all of you sitting in your cars or whatever you're
doing running, It's kind of fun to think what is
going to happen in the next five years, maybe the
next hundred years, just for somebody who doesn't even have
any kind of powers or you know, it is in
(04:04):
touch with some greater thing. Uh. I like to do it.
I like to sit around and go, oh, man, I
can see this happening in the next World War So
is there is there a connection ben between the word
prophecy and the idea of prophecy for telling the future
and the idea of like professing something or speaking out
about something, or being a professor for example, like someone
(04:24):
who teaches. No, uh no, that's that's an interesting question
because the idea of a profit not necessarily prophecy, but
profit itself is sort of one who speaks for the gods,
So it does have the to speak for right, So
(04:44):
professor would be more like declare publicly if that makes sense.
It does, so there is a relationship there, But I
don't know if a professor is necessarily speaking for God
or by divine inspiration. Hey, you guys ever seen a
prophetic professor like on the streets walking around in the city. Yeah,
(05:09):
there is a There is a group of people now
who are um pamphleting the streets regarding cell phone use
and cancer the w h O World Health Organization. But
what I was going to say, though, is I don't
want to misl you listeners by thinking the prophecy is
a Western thing. It should go without saying what we're
(05:31):
going to say it anyway, to be fair, that prophecy exists.
It probably predates writing because one of the earliest things
that man tried to do, or humankind tried to do rather,
would be to forecast the movements of the heavens and
to see if there were any correlation between the movements
(05:53):
of the sky and the movements on the ground. And
most of the earliest civilizations, many of which have been
lost to time, were oral traditions. So this had to
exist before the Western world. I mean, we can't be that,
you know, Western centric, but the stuff we're gonna hear
(06:14):
about usually concerns the Western world, and we'd like to
take a look at several world famous profits today. This
is our this is kind of our prediction show too, Hi, guys.
I was going to add that, you know, speaking of
not being originated in the Western world necessarily, I mean
I was thinking about the idea of like casting bones
or like looking at you know, in trails and things
(06:35):
like that and trying to figure out what the future is,
and I was just looking up oracle bones. Apparently that
goes as far back as like the Shang dynasty um
which was around two b C. And so they found,
you know, examples of these oracle bones that were used
to kind of like see into the future, things like
looking into flames, you know, for example, Yeah, that's divination rituals.
(06:57):
That's that's great. I wonder if that would also make
UM almost a separate show on its own too, because
you know, reading the liver or the entrails of a
goat or the tea leaves, you know, the tea leaves,
of course, And oh there's so many other different methods,
and one of which, if you live in the US,
(07:18):
you may be surprised to find, is still practiced today
in the modern age. Can anyone guess what it is?
Listeners will give you a chance, you guys are I
would think it was the palms? Though what reading of
palms or terroris? Oh? It's groundhog Day. It's the one
everyone participates in. Yeah, even though it's completely bunk. I ever,
tell you have several members of my family who lived
(07:41):
in Punkstani? No you didn't. Yeah? Can they still call
him punk Satani Phil? Or do they? I don't like
the Georgia Bulldogs. Bulldog when it dies, give add a
number to it, like I'm pretty sure? Okay, Wow, I'm
gonna I might be completely incorrect. The last time I
was there it was still punk satani Phille. It was
not the original. Oh yeah, it's like the Marlborough Man,
(08:03):
right exactly or Zoros. So let's let's get a few
things out of the way before we delve into this.
If you've already checked out our video and prophecy, then
you know some of what we're going to talk about.
We're going to mention some specific alleged profits or would
be profits or people who thought they were profits, and
(08:24):
then we're also going to look at some of the
stuff they said or again allegedly said, and whether it
measures up. So first things first, one of the big
questions that you might have is, well, if there are
true profits, and if they are true specific prognostications or
(08:47):
whatever of future events, then why do these future events
occur if they're still disasters? If someone says the Titanic
is going to sink, yeah, somebody's gonna stop that from happening, right,
because now we know, right, or do we? And why is?
Why is it's what's the old quotation we see through
(09:07):
the class darkly or something? Why Why does so much
of what is called prophecies seem to be kind of vague?
I mean, not to mention like time travel tropes and
books and television. I mean, you can't do it. You
can't keep Hitler from being born, you know, you can't
keep Kennedy from being assassinated. It's never gonna work. Something's
always gonna crop up against you, and you're gonna fail.
(09:30):
You know. Yeah, like that, that's a that's a perfect
point to you know, what is the nature of the
presence relationship with the future, right is it? Is it possible?
There's a great thing in um Stephen King book, And
I know Stephen King is divisive for some people, but
he wrote this book about someone who tries to go
(09:50):
back in time and stop the Kennedy assassinations. What I
was mentioned, Yeah, there's a great line in there. Always
says the past is obdurate, which which means that this
guys going back in time and he's trying to change
certain things, but even the little things are really really
hard to change. Yeah, it will not it's it will
not be changed. It resists change. Because this is the
(10:12):
only time, probably in my life, I've been able to
use this statement correctly. It is what it is. That's
that's it. That's the only time. So all right, So
let's let's talk about some of those problems with prophecy.
Skeptics like James Randy will tell us that most prophecies
only become predictive in the eyes of people looking back
(10:34):
in reference to something that already happened. What you mean,
it's some kind of postdiction, some retroactive divination, right, Yeah,
they're translated in a way that makes sense to the
recent events around them, exactly exactly. So, with with that
in mind, what we hope, what we hope to explore
today is whether there are prophecies that clearly delineated something
(10:58):
that happened in the future, Whether there were prophets who
did so, whether the at least in the cases we're
looking at, and uh, whether the other part is true,
whether the fans or the advocates or the believers in
these prophecies said years after an event, oh totally, you
predicted World War two. It's a lot of it too,
(11:20):
has to do with the language of the prophecy. And
one of the first ones we're gonna get into very
well known prophet and Nostradamus. His were almost written like
in the form of riddles or kind of weird little
aphorisms that you know, sort of like the fortune cookie.
You know, can you could apply it to something if
you choose. If you see an event and you say, oh,
(11:41):
you know, here's a thing it's kind of related. You
can make a jump on a leap and get there
if you want to um. Some of them are weirder
than others as well discuss, but again it's all about
the language and prophecy. Prophecies do tend not to be
this thing is going to happen on this day. It's
gonna be just like this. They're usually much more vague
and open ended. So so I've of a funny well
(12:03):
it's not. It wasn't funny to me, but it might
give everybody a chuckle. Uh. I have a funny story
about mister Damas. When I was a wee young tyke
one of my uncles who has always been into fringe
kind of theories, and he saw he's still a hard
person to read. He would occasionally just sent me books
out of the blue. And one of the books that
(12:24):
I received from him was a book about nostrodomass prophecies
for the End of the world. And this was probably
a book that was over my head at the time
and it was also on the cusp of the nine
Atlanta Olympics. So I read this one question was and
it had this strange um strange phrasing, but it was
(12:48):
something like in nine hundred and nineties six build your house,
sort of rock and sticks, war and fire will sweep
over the land. And they did like, oh, apostrophe e er,
which to me was super like super legit at the time.
And then I was convinced that the end of the
world or the end of the city would occur in
(13:10):
during the nine Olympics. And I was I'm being dead serious,
you guys. I was terrified to go into the city.
I was certain that this mass market paperback had accurately
predicted future. In a my mom made me go to
one thing and the rest of the time I stayed home.
Certain the bomb went off right, yes, exactly, And then
(13:34):
the there was a bombing at the at the Olympics
that year, but civilization soldiered on. But that must have
been creepy for you at the time to see on
the news or something here somebody talking about it. I
was convinced that the ancient wisdom of Nostra Damas had
saved my life and for and I was for a
(13:54):
couple of a couple of years, but then we started
to look at the interpretations and and a lot of
people are aware of Nostradamus, skeptics and believers alike. So
let's get into it, you guys, who who is this dude?
So his full name was Michelle de nostrodama Um and
went by the street name. I suppose you could say,
no Strodamus Um. One of my favorite hip hop names
(14:17):
of all times is Flastradamus. Yes, fantastic, just throwing that
up there, but um so. According to most sources, he
was born in December of fifteen o three and died
in fifteen sixty six. He made a living as like
an apothecary sort of, you know, exactly a pre curstorch
of pharmacists. But today he's much more well known, regarded
(14:39):
as a soothsayer or a prophet as we're talking about.
In fifteen fifty five he published a book called Li Profetise,
which remains relatively popular even to this day and has
been translated into numerous languages. Um today you can find
the full copyright free PDF of this in the public domain.
You can get it on an archive dot org courtesy
of the Library of Congress, though it should be O
(15:00):
did uh, And this was something I was going to
bring up. We're talking about how these things are interpreted.
They're also translated literally, quite literally, because the original version
was written in French. The Prophetisse and the one that
you can find that we mentioned that PDF is completely
in French. And you can just imagine the little nuances
(15:20):
they get lost as it gets changed over to English
or to Spanish or I mean, you know, in the
Romance languages. It might be even more similar. But then
imagine if it's translated let's say, I don't know, to
Mandarin or something like that, and people are using these
prophecies as and trying to translate them. Oh man. And
having been out of the college game for a minute,
it I'd only recently occurred to me again how important
(15:43):
um translators are for you know, works of philosophy, and
how you become like the pre eminent voice, you know,
in terms of translating in particular, you know, writer, and
because you are literally creating the interpretation of this work
that is going to be consumed and tall and you know,
passed around and a lot of times that we're interpretation
(16:04):
definitely applies. I mean it has to, and it goes
it goes back. That's so interesting because it goes back
to what we're talking about with oracles, right, Uh, the
the priests for the sibyl and in the interpreter, the
intermedient medium. Uh so, Uh, this is this is great
that we're getting to this part because it's not just
(16:27):
modern French. It's French from the fifteen hundreds, sort of
like like Middle English or something. It's difficult to it's
it would be very, very difficult, although I do love.
One thing I love about spoken French at least is
that everything rhymes. Do you guys ever think about how
easy it must be to wrap in French? Really interesting? Yeah,
(16:48):
you're right, I didn't think about that. But it flows,
it flows, it flows, it does. And so Nostradamis's predictions
are written, as we said, in this French, and they're
grouped in a peculiar way. They're grouped in four line
stanzas quatrains that um observe or maybe worn about vague
(17:09):
events or very symbolistic. Uh. The stands as themselves are
grouped into units of a hundred called centuries, and as
we said, it's all about the interpretations. So let's talk
about some of the specific prophecies that Nostra damis made.
Should we go ahead and jump right in to the
(17:29):
old September eleven attacks? Why not? Man, I'm not an
eight and a half the yards kind of guy. Okay,
that's where we're going. Uh, let's let's get into the
English translation that old Matt Frederick. Here o l apostrophe
Matt Frederick, or however you want to translate Frederick. Al Right,
(17:51):
here we go. Volcanic fire from the center of the
earth will cause trembling around the new city too. Great
rocks will make war for a long time. Then Arufsa
will redden a new river. Yeah. Rufsa's side note is
(18:12):
a nymph who turned into a fountain in her story.
Uh so that's one translation, but I don't know if
this is the same one. I found another version. Apparently
there were quite a few folks talked around about nine eleven.
This one has some similar ideas, but it's in the
city of God. There will be a great thunder, two
brothers torn apart by chaos. While the fortress endures, the
(18:36):
great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin
when the big city is burning. That is an interesting
one actually, because I've seen the imagery in their matches
up really well with what we saw on the news
and what kind of happened. What what I'm saying, it's
the fortune cookie men town. You know, you can fit
it in, you can totally box it in if you think, wow,
(18:58):
those are some big burly image is that he's talking about,
and like you can connect them with, you know, to
the Twins, the two buildings, the Fortress of the Pentagon,
which still stands. Also, the qualification of posting something on
the Internet is entirely the ability to have an Internet connection,
of course. And I remember this one. This was this
was right when everything went down and everyone was talking
(19:18):
about the Nostrongs connection. This one was totally doctored and
it is made up, but you may remember this. It
was two steel birds will fall from the sky on
the metropolis. The sky will burn at forty five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the Great New City. Immediately, a huge scattered
flame leaps up. Within months, rivers will flow with blood.
The undead will roam the earth for a little time.
(19:40):
Totally fabricated. Someone just took the flavor of Nostrodamus and
added maybe a couple of lines from one of the
quatrains and dumped this out and it was making the round.
I remember seeing this two steel birds, and they didn't
have steel See. I think I think the steel Birds
line is actually taken from another profit that we're going
to speak about a little later, that's definitely attributed to
(20:01):
Nostradamas at the time, it's completely bunk. And that's yeah,
that's another thing Nostre Damas also, all right, so we
know that there are some bunk translations. We know that
there are people who said, yeah, why don't I just
stick a line about New York in here? And so
what they end on that thinks, and that's why we
have Nostre Damas. This guy writing in uh the fifteen hundreds,
(20:23):
allegedly according to the Internet, saying stuff like New York
the eleventh day of the ninth month. And again not
the way any of these were laid out. Okay, I'm
gonna play. I'm gonna play Devil's advocate here for a
moment on the side of someone who perhaps can see
beyond the veil, for a moment in a fleeting glance
(20:45):
of something. Imagine that you have no context for what
New York City looks like, or if for what a
city or a building or anything that you're looking at.
It looks like like, imagine you're getting a glimpse of
a futuristic city hundreds of years from now, and you
have no idea what anything is. You don't know what
the names are, but you see two things that looks
(21:08):
similar to a plane for sure attacking something. I mean,
it's it's interesting to me imagining how I would write
down on a piece of paper or what I was
seeing if I could somehow see that and and potentially
a very cool literary device. I can't pick pick it
out right now, but I feel like I've seen that
before in a movie or in like a novel, whether
(21:29):
someone has had a prophecy and they describe it in
these kind of like very m rudimentary terms, something that
will happen in the future, which like the Great Turtle
will rise from the sea, and you know, things like
that where it's like maybe it's like a warship or something.
You know, it's like cargo cults then that we've talked
about before. Yeah, cargo cults. People will call UH what
(21:52):
it is. It's a term that might be somewhat defraudatory.
It can be for people who are living in isolated
areas in the Pacific Ocean, isolated islands, and they would
see cargo dropped and see airplanes for the first time,
and service members of various wars. There is there was
(22:13):
within your lifetimes, listener, there there was an active cargo
cult that worshiped Prince Philip UH and they would build
towers or radio towers and an attempt to summon these
things from the sky. Again, well he is kind of dreamy,
is he. Yeah, But just the idea that there's no
there's not a lot of context for for that group
(22:36):
of people who have seen something that's beyond their understanding
that has done something good for them. I thought it's
a great Yeah. I think that's a great argument. I'm
glad you make it because we've heard arguments about that
in biblical text, right. I can't remember if it's I
think it's Old Testament. Yeah, it's gotta be Old Testament
where Ezekiel has a vision of what he said earning
(23:00):
or file wheels within wheels, and that description is clearly
someone trying to be very specific about some but bizarre
spectacle but not maybe not quite knowing what it is,
which has led you know, ancient alien people to say
that it's some sort of visitation extraterrestrial. But that's a
(23:20):
story for a different day. It is, it is, it is,
But I just have thrown via Mona's that's one of
the coolest things. The the idea of the flying ships
for an ancient Indian texts, ancient nuclear war hunt. Dude,
the Nazis believed in it. It's also interesting to the
way you can sort of divide profits up into the
into two camps. I mean, you have these religious leader
profits that are communicating with said deities that are in
(23:42):
charge of whatever faith they represent, and then you have
these nostre dambist soothsayer type profits that are more about
looking at the big picture. They're not necessarily saying they
got a message from God. They're just saying they can see,
you know, beyond and seeing in the future. And they're
both kind of you know, considered profits, but they have
sort of have their own little game going on right well.
And yeah, and in no stredamis is time, it was
(24:06):
apostasy or the denial of religion technically it's like this
huge crime. So you know, it's it's strange when you
think about that too, because most of the prophets we
see have, or people who believe their prophets have some
sort of spiritual nature. And sometimes it's I'll say it,
sometimes they believe they have discovered it independently. But that's
(24:30):
the nicest way to say it. There's another one. Since
we started at nine eleven. Well, yeah, and and since
you said the Nazis did believe perhaps in the ancient
nuclear war, yes, uh, did Nostredamus predict the rise of
Hitler and the beginning of World War two? In the
(24:50):
place very near, not far from Venus, the two greatest
ones of Asia and of Africa, from the Rhine and
history they will be said to have come cries tears
at Malta and the Ligurian side Histor, huh, that sounds
pretty close. Yeah, but I don't think. I don't think
that's what there or perhaps Okay, I just have to
(25:13):
say it's a it's a river, right, Histor is a river,
The Rhine is a river. They are in Germany, or
at least on the western side of Germany. The Ryan
is there. And then the history. I don't know exactly
where it's the Latin name for like the lower stretch
of the Danube. Okay, okay, so yeah, so that that Sunds.
We're Here's just the show everybody, how different these translations
(25:33):
can be. We've got the original friends Shire, which I'm
not going to butcher, but then someone else translates it
to remember what um what we just heard from no earlier?
Someone else says, beast wild with hunger shall cross the rivers.
Most of the fighting shall be close by the history.
It shall result in the great One being dragged in
an iron cage, while the Germans shall be watching over
(25:55):
the infant rhine. What vastly? Yeah? Yeah, and so what
what part of that is fabricated? Right? Uh? So again,
you can read various interpretations of this, especially with no
Stradamus in mind, because there's so many, so many translations
that are people actually trying to transliterate. I mean, the
(26:19):
original is so innocuous. It's just it's like in a
place not far from Venus, like like it's how much
more vague can you be? And then it gets it
gets more specific, and they will be said to have
come cries tears at Malta and the Ligurian side. It's
just so open ended, you know that you can just
shoehorn whatever idea you want into that if you choose. Now,
(26:41):
is that what you think is happening? I think it's
what's happening with this other translation that you're talking about.
And I think, like you say, it's it's if you
get excited about the idea that maybe this guy really
did have something, your brain starts to make all these
leaps and fill in the gaps, and you know, kind
of like what is the confirmation bias? Kind of Yeah,
this this makes me think about so many other things.
(27:04):
We've looked at the psychotronics studies in the USSRUH in
the aftermath of World War Two, the various m k
ultra type experiments people have tried to conduct with or um.
Was it stargate with INGOs Swan, where people were trying
to access what they were certain was an extra sensory ability.
(27:25):
I'm not here to say that that stuff conclusively doesn't exist,
though it is true that governments have spent a lot
of money on things that ultimately didn't pan out. Well, yeah,
and that's why we had to do right. We talked
about this, but with the reason why the United States
government had to do research into this, uh, this this
(27:48):
subject is because it was being done by the other side.
And if the other side somehow unlocked psychic powers or
these you know, ways to see through buildings and perhaps
even moved to them and we didn't have it, oh
we're in trouble if they've got X men and we don't.
But yeah, but okay, I while I get that, it's
also somewhat disingenuous, and I know this is a bit
(28:10):
of a different topic. It's disingenuous, uh, at least on
the part of some members of the military the bureaucracy,
because clearly it's war is good for the winner's economy, right,
so it's also a way to rationalize more spending. We'll
watch out this week thing. I mean, remember, we live
(28:31):
in a country where mere decades ago someone said, what
if we could make a bomb, it would just turn
people gay? Yeah, what if? Why don't we just try
that and let's spend a couple let's spend a couple
of mill on it and just see if that's a
real thing. All right, So we should mention though one
(28:52):
common misinterpretation about nostradamis is that he created all of
his work independently. That is not true. He pulled. There's
pretty convincing evidence that he pulled from existing literature of
his time, histories, things like that. So a lot of
his work is referential, but not necessarily referring to future events.
(29:14):
It's referring to or alluding to existing works in his
time in the fifteen hundreds, similar to the way that T. S.
Eliot's The Waste Land refers so heavily and is so
elusive in terms of it how it leans on other
existing works. So some of these prophecies are these translations
(29:39):
or more amalgamations of other things. He didn't write this
all independently, and he didn't predict the end of the
world the Mayan cycle, which itself is kind of based
on a mistranslation. In Instead, he said his prophecies extend
from now to the year thirties, seven, nineties seven or
something like that is a long time from now, that's
(30:02):
a while, a really long time from fifteen five. But
his major astrological source at the time, Richard Rousseau, said
that forty two might be a date for the end
of the world. Uh I don't remember the arcane logic
they use, and three seven nine seven minus fifteen fifty
five when he published the book is twenty two two.
(30:25):
I don't know, man, I was gonna say one, that's
probably a better, better year. It's just so funny because
when you it doesn't matter who you are. I don't
care how popular you are among any circles. If you
just throw out a number like that, I don't know.
Well I'll throw I'll throw out a number for you.
Um well, I can't. I know this is weird because
(30:49):
I can't tell you much about the person who told
me this, but I am convinced by this source the
world is ending for someone or some group of people.
Every every day and every year. There are between fifty
and two hundred apocalyptic groups who believe that this is
(31:09):
it is a big finish. And without without being disrespectful
or dismissing these people's beliefs, I will say that there's
something inherently narcissistic and self center to assume that a
thing that existed for thousands of years is going to
(31:30):
stop that and you showed up just in time. Job.
I mean, it's there's something inherently not selfish but self
important about that And so far, the one thing that
all apocalyptic groups have in common is that they have
(31:55):
not accurately predicted the end of the world. You know,
my favorite end of the world um prophecy is what
are you guys familiar with the Church of the SubGenius.
So they celebrate this holiday every year in July fifth,
called X Day and UM. Initially X Day was supposed
to be the end of the world and was supposed
to be on July, at which point um an alien
(32:18):
race known as the exists or men from Planet X
would come to Earth and destroy the world and rid
the world of the quote normals or pinks or glorps
which or the non sub genii that inhabit the planet.
But you know, as as you know, from time time happens,
everyone makes mistakes. The creators of the Church of the
SubGenius got the calendar date wrong, uh and apparently looked
(32:41):
at it upside down. So it's actually going to take
place in the year eight six sixty one. Who So
that gives them plenty of padding there, you know, their
parties up until the new end of the world comes.
So I love I love SubGenius because it takes all
the wind out of these kind of endo the world
death conspiracies, you know, and just sort of like it's
(33:03):
a very tongue in cheek and I'm a big fan.
Well yeah, I again, you guys know that I have
a fascination with alternative religious beliefs. I guess is the
most fair way to dance around the word cults. But
the thing that fascinating to me is that there are
so many instances where someone predicts the end of the world.
(33:26):
And you know, apocalypse or of an apocalyptic event does
not necessarily mean the end of the world. We use
it that way in English today, but what it means
at heart is the revealing of hidden things. So that
revelation right the end of the world. It's become conflated
or synonymous in modern speech, but a lot of these
(33:48):
groups will talk more in terms of a great spiritual
revelation and when't they are wrong. If the date comes
and it passes, then there's a wealth of a plethora,
And I am using that word correctly of reasons that
the thing will have to be adjusted. So kudos to
the SubGenius Church for moving and giving themselves a little
(34:10):
bit of a buffer. I hope they make it to
the eight hundreds eight thousands. Okay, So next is someone
who might be a deep cut for some listeners. This
actually might be new to some of you out there,
and we hope you enjoy it. Let's talk about the
Nostradamis of the Balkans, as she is sometimes called. You're
(34:32):
gonna have to see her name. Baba Vanga, like Baba Yaga,
the Russian witch of folklore, but Baba Vanga born Vangelia
Pandeva Dimitrova in January nineteen eleven. She was in She
was born in what was then known as the Ottoman Empire,
(34:53):
and when she was born she was completely normal until
the age of twelve. Yeah, and allegedly, or at least
according to stories, she was blinded during a storm that
occurred when she was only twelve years old. I almost
wanted to seem blinded by the light. No, that's messed up, ben,
and don't do that well. Um, But yeah, So she
(35:15):
was missing for a number of days. At some point
she had that kind of mystical thing where she's disappeared
but now she's returned. Her eyes were when she returned
sealed shut, and her family couldn't afford to get them fixed,
couldn't take her to the doctor or the uh yeah,
let's say the doctor. So she was going to be
(35:35):
blind for the rest of her life, but yeah, she
was going to have that sense replaced, at least according
to her and her supporters. She claimed she began having
visions during the first few days of her disappearance, and
that's a super common trope in you know, historical accounts
of um prophets or sybyls, right, like, that's a thing,
I mean, the blind prophet, you know, yes, and mythology
(35:59):
and what and also yeah, in history and leaving and
not being seen for a period of time then returning
and then this completely changed the new things. And that
goes back to Joseph Campbell, right, I was saying when
that that that period of disappearances when you know, some
significant events took place and changed the person's perspective wherever. Yeah,
(36:21):
I would recommend Hero with a Thousand Faces or Heroes
Journey by Joseph Campbell to learn some more of that.
This happened in real life. She believed that because of
her visions in her quest, she could predict the future
and heal people using otherworldly powers and scientists and government officials,
not to mention the wealthy, came to visit her for advice.
(36:41):
According to the story, she served as an advisor to
the Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, who would ask her questions
to advance their cause. Right in the Great in the
Great Game of geopolitical intrigue, she was kept under surveillance
by the secret police, and politicians and businessmen would come
(37:04):
meet with her. And that I can believe because if
your secret police, you want to bug those conversations. Yeah,
even if even if what she's telling them is completely untrue,
just having those individuals in a room speaking, Yeah, we're
gonna bug that if we're in charge. So let's talk
about her specific prophecies. Right. According to The Independent, she
(37:27):
allegedly predicted the forty four US president would be black
also the last president, which is predictions of who will
be the last president are distressingly common. Uh, And I
think a lot of them are made up by people
on the internet. But as well, she has thought to
have predicted uh nine eleven. And we we have the
(37:47):
quote from the Guardian here, and here's that image that
seemed to crop up and that was attributed to Notre
damas horror, horror. The American Brethren will fall after being
attacked by the steel Birds, the wool will be howling
in a bush, and innocent blood will gush. So clearly
that steel Bird's imagery was pilfered from this and kind
of connected with some nostradamous lines and then you know,
(38:10):
thrown out there on the internet. Now, one study, uh,
one one study says that she was accurate. I have
a hard time believing this. This game from Dr Georgie Lozonov,
who is director of the Institute of I'm not making
this up. Suggest ology and parapsychology and Sophia Bulgaria and
(38:31):
uh he said that I like that word suggest ology,
suggests ologies. Sounds very subgenious. So there's also here's the thing.
Though this was a legit place at thirty staff members.
The Bulgarian government was paying for it. They thought that
a lot of Baba Anga's predictive abilities, especially the stuff
(38:54):
where she was looking for lost relatives and friends, were
pretty accurate. However, the issue with this is you can
find it in the methodology. You know. I'll post this
online if anybody wants to check it out. But we've
talked before about parapsychology experiments and how easy it is
to how easy it is to do something that renders
(39:17):
the experiment on sound um. Anyhow, there's also the additional
side note that many of the people who are close
to Bob a Vanka during her life claims she never
made prophecies attributed to her on the internet. She died,
and she left behind several other alleged predictions for the future.
(39:39):
Vice has a good Vice has a good article on it,
and we can check in with that maybe towards the
close of the show. Well, let's move on, because I
can't wait to see what other people say about Bob
a Vanka. But we would be remiss if we did
not talk about another um, another profit or seer that
you ladies and gentlemen asked us to check out for
(40:01):
a while now. Yeah, and it's also getting a little
bit closer to the present day, which is kind of cool.
So it's somebody that actually has stuff written down about them,
perhaps even books that are published with English that we
will be able to understand readily. Right. Oh, also, our
first English speaker that's correct of this of this run,
(40:21):
and that goes to Mr Edgar Casey, Casey was born
in March of eighteen seventy seven and passed away in
January of He had a pretty interesting alias, I guess
you could say, which was the Sleeping Profit, because he
would go into these trances, these kind of like fugue
states reveries when he was diagnosing illnesses or recounting ancient wisdom,
(40:44):
were just making these different predictions that that is fascinating
to me. And a lot of the I would say
pop culture references to a lot of things where someone
will go into a trance and then make a prediction
like this. I feel like it's especially in film, goes
back to maybe being influenced by this guy. Also some
of the theatrics of uh, you know, communicating with spirits
(41:07):
and the seance or something where you know, the medium
would sort of rock back and forth and enter into this, uh,
this trance like state and then be inhabited by the
spirit of a past loved one, you know. As we know,
a lot of that was you know, largely theater, but
definitely was a very impactful presentation for folks of the
(41:28):
time for sure. And as we said before, this guy
is very well documented, perhaps the most well documented profit
that we know of and we even know a lot
about his history growing up in early life. Right, yeah,
you can. You can find various different accounts. We'll read
one from someone who we'll we'll read one from Edgar
Casey on Atlantis, which was which contains several statements about
(41:53):
his beliefs regarding Atlantis, delivered under his trance, edited by
the director the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Hugh Lynn Casey,
a descendant. And we'll also talk about the A R
E a little bit too. So the thing is that, um,
he was supposed to be in his waking life, pretty
(42:15):
good husband's olive father, uh taught Sunday school, pretty nice guy,
gifted protect professional photographer, But when he was in a
trance he became a medical diagnostician, a prophet, a proponent
of biblical lore. So even as a child in Kentucky,
his parents said that he displayed powers of perception that
(42:39):
seemed to go beyond the five senses. At the age
six or seven, he told his parents he was able
to see and talk to visions, sometimes of dead relatives.
One of my favorite stories about him. His parents said
that he probably had no overactive imagination, but one of
my favorite stories is that apparently he was able to
learn by some sort of range osmosis uh. Sleeping with
(43:02):
his head on school books, he got a photographic memory,
which helped him advance rapidly in school. This faded uh
as he grew older, and he was only able to
complete complete the seventh grade of formal education. Uh. So
he started to develop a paralysis of the throat muscles
(43:22):
in and was in his early twenties. Doctors weren't able
to find a cause for this condition, so they tried everything.
They tried hypnosis too, and then, in desperation, Casey apparently
asked one of his friends to help him achieve the
same kind of trance he had used when he was
(43:43):
sleeping on school books as a kid. And then all
of a sudden, he uh did the old diagnose thyself
physician kind of thing, and he got medicine and recommended
a therapy that restored his voice, cured his throat. A
group of doctors came by and started asking him to
diagnose their own patients. One thing leads to another, Wow
(44:07):
really and uh yeah, and he becomes the sleeping profits.
So when he dies in forty five in Virginia, left
well over fourteen thousand documented stenographic records of the statements
he had given for more than eight thou and different
people over forty three years. So we got a lot
(44:27):
of stuff on them. So the Association for Research and
Enlightenment which we mentioned exists today. It is a nonprofit
organization founded to facilitate the study of his work. You
can see their website right now, it's Edgar Casey dot Org.
I mean, if you're driving or something, don't don't do
it while you're driving and see perhaps he has a
(44:51):
prediction that applies to you, or does he. Because here
is the thing about Edgar Casey, ladies and gentlemen, he
because he is so well documented, we also know a
lot of what he got wrong, not interpretively wrong, but
factually inaccurate. One example that really sticks out is that
(45:13):
he said the pilt Down Man was real, the Piltown
Man being a famous hoax where the jaw of an
orangutang was combined with the cranium of a modern human
to argue that there was this evidence of human evolution
in uh in the area of its discovery, which was
puilt out in East Sussex. So Edgar Casey, however, said
(45:37):
that this was evidence of an Atlantean race or a
someone who survived in Atlantis or was from Atlantis. UH
colonizer specifically, who had traveled to Britain. And in ninety three,
a little bit after Casey's death, it was exposed as
(46:00):
hopes he read through the Bible entirely each year and
this helped him reconcile his Christian beliefs with the metaphysical
stuff he he said while he was in a trance.
He's often called one of the founders of the New
Age movement. However, critics say that he UH. Critics say
(46:23):
that he cribbed some stuff from other authors like Carl
Young or Elena Blovotsky from the Theosophy movement. I don't
know if that's necessarily plagiarism, though. If it is a
real trance, people might just be free associating, you know
what I mean. We've all been in that area between
sleep and wakefulness, where sleep paralysis occurs and where thoughts
(46:44):
spring unbidden. You know, you're singing a song you love
and then realize it doesn't exist in the real world
and that your mind is writing it for you. I'm
pretty sure I'm there right now, man, So most of
the weirder beliefs about Atlantis come from cases. When you
hear people talk about fantastically advanced civilization brought to Ruin
(47:06):
by meddling with strange powers, some of that comes from Casey.
And if you would like to learn more about Edgar Casey,
you can again check out their website Edgar Casey dot org.
You can also, let's see, I would there are a a
ton of books. Yeah, there are a ton of books,
(47:26):
but I recommend looking at stuff from that society because
at least although they definitely are starting with the opinion
that the guy is correct, uh, they're also using the
actual translations, so you won't run into a nostrodamist thing
where someone made it up. Okay, that makes sense. So
start with the materials from Casey dot org and then
(47:49):
maybe move on to another spot, get some other books
and stuff like that if you really want to deep
delve deep into this. I do like the head or
the header on the pages. Edgar Casey's are a r E,
which stands for Association for Research and Enlightenment, acted since
nineteen thirty one. They do have a health SWAS center.
(48:10):
Did you mention that already? Because you can go you
can go there. I mean, if you really want to
get into this, head on out. Where is it? Where
is the main main office? Looks like it's in Virginia Beach,
Virginia Beach, Virginia, right, that's where he was living at
the time. To see what the what the scene is like.
(48:31):
It would be nice to be nice to visit that.
Here's another prediction that he got wrong. It seems that
the US were discovering Atlantean death ray as in a
death ray from the Law Civilization of Atlantis in nineteen
Got it wrong or did he been beat me to
the punch? We don't know at this point. Perhaps sometime
(48:53):
we will in the future. We do want to end, however,
on something a little bit difference. We're talking about secrets,
so let's not just talk about another secret. Let's talk
about three at once, and that would be the three
Secrets of Fatima. This is a little bit different because
(49:14):
it doesn't involve um, it doesn't involve lifelong career sort
of profits, you know, like Edgar Casey, No tre Damas
Baba Vanga spent decades uh making predictions. This, however, is this, however,
is something different that involves apparently divine direct divine intervention.
(49:39):
So these three young Portuguese shepherds le see A Santos primarily,
and then her cousins are visited by an apparition of
the Virgin Mary several times, starting on the thirteenth of
May nineteen seventeen. They said they were visited six times
between May and October that year. Now this apparition is
(49:59):
popularly own as our Lady of Fatima. She entrusted the
children with three secrets in July nine seventeen. Two of
these secrets were revealed in nineteen forty one at the
request of a bishop named Jose Alvas Correa del Silva,
and he wanted to assist with the publication of a
(50:23):
new edition of a book on one of the cousins.
As for the third secret, the bishop ordered her to
put it in writing. Lucia wrote it down, sealed it
in an envelope that wasn't not supposed to be opened
until nineteen sixty when it would quote appear clearer. The
text of this third secret was officially released by poop
(50:43):
John Paul the second in two thousand or or was
it because some people claim that it was not the
entire secret, and we will never know for sure because
only a few people were actually in control of that information, right. Yeah,
it reminds me of when we did some of the
(51:05):
we did some of our earlier episodes on the the
Restricted Material and the Vatican Archives, because the secret archives
of Vatican are real, but they're using secret in a
different way. It's still tricky though, because you can request
something if you know exactly what you're requesting. Yeah. I
(51:25):
feel like someone should make a list of all possible
things that could ever exist and then just submit them
daily to the Vatican. What what are the What are
the secrets? Yes, great question. Okay, So the first secret
is a vision of hell. I've got some of the text.
Our ladies showed us. A great sea of fire which
(51:47):
seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire
with demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning
embers all black and they're burnished bronze that goes on.
The second was a statement that World War One would end,
along with the prediction of another war during the reign
of Pope Pious. Uh, and then that would happen if
(52:10):
Russia did not convert to Catholicism. Yeah, So basically one
is a vision of health, one is about communist Russia, uh,
and then the third one. Though the third one, at
least the way it was published, was that there would
be an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul the second.
(52:34):
And that's the crazy thing there was, you know. So
the thing is that there actually was an assassination attempt
on Pope John Paul, which occurred on the thirteenth of
May nineteen one. You can see a video of that
if you wish and just head on over to YouTube.
(52:56):
And people have thought about this back in worth you
know that it is actually a prophecy or is it
just something that would happen because the Pope is up
there with the US president or other heads of state
who would be much more likely than the average person
to have an assassination attempt occur, perhaps even higher because
(53:18):
of the vitriol that you can have between religions. So
in June of two thousand, UH the that it can
finally release this uh, this secret. But there there have
been several other people who were involved with it who
(53:39):
said that um, that the the handwritten four page text
is not the real secret or not the full thing.
And they believe that the third Secret is actually composed
of two texts. One of those is the four page
published version. The other is a single page letter containing
the real truth. And their Italian journalists like Antonio soshi
(54:01):
Um who say that they have proof that there's a
second secret. All right, and here's here's just some of
the proof quickly. Uh Lucia Santo says she wrote the
message in the form of assigned letter to the bishop.
The text is supposed to contain words attributed to the
Virgin Mary, which the published one doesn't really the full secret.
(54:23):
Bishops working with Pope Pious, Pope John and Pope Paul
all commented that the text was written on one sheet
of paper, not four, and the full secret, according to
these people, contains information about the apocalypse, a great apostasy,
and Satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church. Who and then
(54:45):
you would hear I remember a couple of years ago
you heard a lot about, oh gosh, what is the
name of the pope that is prior to the one
we currently have. And then after Pope John Paul second
was Ratzinger rat Okay that I remember hearing lots and
lots of people talking about rattling here being this version
of these prophecies where he had infiltrated in his group
(55:08):
had infiltrated and they were evil. That's the thing about prophecies.
I mean, it's so easy to let your imagination run
wild and use it to confirm something that you already believe.
You know, like this pope feels like an outsider or
something right, and to be totally to be totally fair. Here,
one of the people who served as Vatican Secretary of
(55:29):
State until two thousand thirteen, a Cardinal Bertoni, wrote a
book called The Last Secret of Fatima, and he published
an Italian English and it has an interview that touches
on this where the journalists, a journalist named Giuseppe de
Carli is interviewing Um is interviewing the cardinal, and he says, well,
(55:51):
what about this rumor that you're concealing a one page
text of the Third Secret that predicts Rome will lose
the faith and become the throne of the anti Rist
and the cardinal I just wanna read this too, affair.
The cardinal says, that's absolutely crazy. Are you claiming that
the Prophecy of Fatima is about the apostasy of the
Church of Rome? And Fatima is a prediction of Rome's
(56:11):
transformation into the throne of the Antichrist. Despite the love
our lady capitalized our Lady of Fatima has for the
pope and the popes for our lady. Anyone can write books,
can based on conspiracy theories, on biased interpretations. Anyone can
take sentences out of context and present them as clues
to some supposed plot to avoid divulging the truth and
(56:31):
to transmit it in a code that only the initiates
can understand. No, the whole theory you allude to is
a fabrication, and this supposedly factual account is actually the
sort of device the Mason's used to invent to discredit
the church. I'm surprised that journalists and writers who claim
to be Catholic let themselves be taken in strong words,
really strong words. Sounds like somebody I don't. My brain goes,
(56:57):
oh boy, this guy sounds guilty, But well he might
also just be irritated with having heard that, right, I mean,
I can imagine how irritating that would be. But at
the same time, to fight back that hard, well, that's
also that's our That's where we're ending. Just because this
is this thing where it's not as far as the
Catholic Church is concerned, this is not a matter of interpretation.
(57:21):
This is a true for telling of an event before
it occurred. And the other three examples um k C,
Baba Banga and no Stradamis are all a little bit
more muddy. And I know we didn't get to everything,
but there's so many profits now. But it's is interesting
to have these prophecies like officially sanctioned by such a
(57:45):
you know, an important body as you know, the Holy
Roman Church. It's pretty intense. There are a lot of
there are a lot of interesting things that we could
talk about regarding the power structure of the Catholic Church,
not the faith or religion in any way. Uh, we've
discussed it a bit in the past, but there's just
some fascinating things I think we got into when we
were talking about possessions and the it's just some old
(58:11):
things that still exist now in the Catholic Church. I
mean referring to the official exorcise. Yes, yes, that is
that is a true and fascinating thing. We would like
your help, folks. Do you have any profits that you
would like us to look into in the future. Or prophecies,
(58:31):
because we'll tell you right now. One thing in our
experience that occurred was that it was surprisingly difficult to
find some of the actual like the what what our
some of our co workers would call the actual facts translations?
Uh and and to separate the chaff from the wheat,
(58:53):
you know, the internet echo chamber. But we would like
to hear some more people that we should check out.
And I gotta I gotta ask you guys. I know
that we went on some tangents and discovered some future
episodes we could cover, But what do you think about
upcoming prophecies? And what do you what do you think
(59:13):
we had talked about this before. Do you think that
software and big data will eventually be able to do
what human beings have been trying to do predict disasters
and changes, big global changes like that. I mean, we've
I think so, I think we're gonna get darn close.
I mean, I'm sure there are folks are at work
(59:35):
at it. Yeah, some of my whole professors actually, yeah, oh,
the the guy who's making the huge map or the simulation. Yeah,
that's super cool. Not to mention things like predicting trends
and you know, commerce in this doctor, I mean that's
the other world. But that's true. So how do we
get in on this? Well, if you know how to
(59:58):
do this, give us a write us an email. Will
tell you how to do that in a minute. Um right,
it's like they'll joke about time traveling. Time Traveler Club
meets here two days ago. Yeah, we meet every every
Wednesday or Thursday here, So come join us in the
you know, in the booth. We will allow you to
be on here every every time we record. Oh man,
(01:00:20):
what are we gonna do If somebody burst in and
uh Doc Brown style and claims to have traveled through
time or to have a prediction the future. I would
hear them out. Absolutely, I don't see the harm. I
would give John Feter my seat and give them a see.
We could just have them pull up another seat. No, no no,
I just said, hey man, you go in there. I'm
gonna stay out here. There's there's a chair, there's an
(01:00:42):
extra chair. I don't want any I don't know time radiation,
I don't know. I'm scared of that stuff. All right, Well,
we'll we'll table that for future discussion, barring any unexpected
time travelers arriving. It's almost time for us to head out.
Do you guys have any message for the New Year. Well,
(01:01:02):
I just want to say we all didn't die in
September of Uh. There were a lot of people and
predictions being made about something crazy happening at that time,
and they nothing happened. That's good. Or maybe we did
die and that we're just like on the Lost Island. Oh,
how could you tell? That's kind of cool if this
is the afterlife. I gotta say, Um, I'm I'm having
(01:01:23):
a good time. It's not so bad. It's not as
bad as I thought. See, maybe we've always been making
this podcast and we will always be making this podcast.
It's a flat circle, bro, what about you know? Oh yeah,
I don't know. Apparently you're supposed to eat black eyed
peas and color greens and it gives you good financial luck.
So I'm gonna give that a go. Um, mainly, I
(01:01:44):
don't know. No, it's been a good year. Um, still
biting this uh, this Christmas crowd here. So I I
hope that in the new Year that I don't have
a cold. I hope so too. Man. You know, I
was talking to one of my friends recently and she
said that people were not supposed to be lobster or
chicken on the New Year because something about like chickens
(01:02:06):
walking or how both animals move backwards or something. I'm
not sure. I didn't sort it out. But then also,
I have failed often to eat the collared greens and
black eyed peas bo. A friend of mine just suggested it,
and it's like, no, you just just do it. You
have to do it. Yeah, I wonder it's a Southern thing, right,
(01:02:26):
hop and John, Like Hop and John the Cuban side
of my family, we have to eat a certain number
of grapes right up to the Yeah, there's a to do.
That's cool. So there we are, guys. We hope that
you have adventures in the New Year's If you are
making resolutions, keep in mind that you are statistically more
(01:02:49):
likely to keep a resolution if you make it almost
any other month. Your birthday is really good for resolutions. January,
out of all twelve months, is the worst month to
attempt a resolution. Or don't tell anybody but your diary
or yourself or whatever it is that you use to
write down your resolution. Don't tell a single human being,
(01:03:11):
or make a resolution to start doing something in February
doing it in February, give yourself some breathing like that,
unlike the third February three third, So you have that
one day at the first, the second um in two days.
All right, So, folks, we're going to head out. If
you would like to hear our podcasts about predicting the
future through big data and software, you can find that,
(01:03:34):
along with every other podcast we have ever done, on
our website Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot Com.
You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook. We
are conspiracy stuff on both of those. Huge shout out
to the Nurdest for mentioning this podcast. Holy mackerel. Cool.
I know we're just honorably mentioned, but still thanks Nurnest.
(01:03:54):
It was very nice. It was very It was very kind.
You know that's because one of us one that usher
league game right what anyway, story for another day. I
don't mean to derail us. Uh. If you would like
to email us directly, all of our best ideas come
from you, So let us know what you think about
(01:04:14):
this episode and profits and prophecy, and also let us
know what you think we should take a closer look
at in the future. Our email is conspiracy at how
stuff works. Dot com from on this topic. Another unexplained phenomenon,
(01:04:35):
visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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