{Nostradamus' Antichrist} is called 'Mabus...' there are a couple ways to decode that word. M-A-B-U-S, reversed, which was a common practice in the Sixteenth Century, becomes Subam. You can then always replace one letter with another, the "U" with "A"—Sadam.... it's quite possible Mabus... could be our own president. M-A-B-U-S, you can reverse the "M" to make a "W" and you have B-U-S with a silent Latin "H." —John Hogue, Nostradamian
I'm not sure what a "silent Latin 'H'" is supposed to be, but the rest of it is ridiculous.
John Hogue, one of the foremost Nostradamians, has written nine books and frequently appears on television and radio to defend Nostradamus to an increasingly incredulous general public. You can visit his Web site at www.hogueprophecy.com.
However, he can't seem to very accurately read Nostradamus himself: the old edition of Nostradamus and the Millennium says Ayatollah Khomeini "Mabus." After he died, a new edition was published—the only major change? Now Saddam Hussein is the Antichrist. Or maybe it's George W. Bush like he said before. You can never be sure, right?
An important thing to understand is that he wrote many, many vague quatrains that could mean a lot of things with enough liberties taken and they've had the better part of a millennium to come true. Further, Nostradamus' "predictions" are never explained until after the events happen. Even should he have forseen these events, what good are the predictions if only he could decipher them?
Don't just take my word for it. Here's the text of Century I, Quatrain 35, which supposedly "predicted" Henry II's death, along with my translation.
Le Lyon ieune le vieux ƒurmontera En champ bellique par ƒingulier duelle, Dans cage d'or les yeux luy creuera: Deux claƒƒes vne, puis mourit, mort cruelle. The young lion will conquer the old On the battlefield in a one-on-one (or strange) duel In a golden cage, his eyes will be pierced Two wounds at once, then he'll die cruelly
Le Lyon ieune le vieux ƒurmontera En champ bellique par ƒingulier duelle, Dans cage d'or les yeux luy creuera: Deux claƒƒes vne, puis mourit, mort cruelle.
The young lion will conquer the old On the battlefield in a one-on-one (or strange) duel In a golden cage, his eyes will be pierced Two wounds at once, then he'll die cruelly
My translation is flawed, I'm sure (I've never done any study of Old French), but there are plenty more around the Web, and they don't get much more specific.
At any rate, you have to be pretty imaginative to get Henry II out of that. The only thing that can be taken as coming true in more than a sense of vague symbolism is the piercing of the eyes.
All in all, Nostradamus is mostly built on the power of suggestion and creative interpretation. He continues to be popular because people like the idea of mystical future-seeing, even if it's useless until after the events. This is also why, for example, shows with women whose dreams "foretold" the catastrophic future (never mind all the nightmares worried mothers have that never come true) saturate daytime television.
"End of the World." Penn & Teller. Bullshit!. Showtime. Nostradamus. Sacred-texts.com. 18 June 2004 <http://www.sacred-texts.com/nos/>. "Nostradamus." Unsolved History. The History Channel. 16 June 2004.