by John Hogue

from The HogueProphecy Archive Website
1 May 2004
 

Friends,


For a few years-in-counting, some of you have been desperate to get my prescient gut feelings about whether a cosmic disaster falling from the skies will pulverize human civilization. Since 2001, I have received hundreds of letters inquiring whether Comet C/2001 Q4 - better known as "NEAT" from its acronym for the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking team of amateur and professional astronomers who discovered it - is a comet foreseen by Nostradamus that will strike the earth in May 2004. Rest assured, I will eat Nostradamus’ hat if NEAT even comes close to planet Earth. Its expected "near miss" in May will be over 30 million miles.

The inspiration for many of your frantic doomsday inquiries about this comet stem from a book published by Llewellyn in 2001, and authored by R. W. Welch, entitled "Comet of Nostradamus." Welch may have based this book’s theory that a comet would crash into the Aegean in mid-2004 on early - and faulty - trajectory calculations of astronomers of that day.

Let me reiterate what I said recently about Welch’s book first in an article posted on Whitley Strieber’s Unknowncountry.com web site, and later for Strieber’s subscriber cyber radio show Dreamland on 24 April 2004. A great comet - be it NEAT or any other that might surprise us unannounced - WILL NOT crash into the Aegean in mid-2004. This is just another Chicken Little tale fomented at the expense of Nostradamus’ prophecies. I predict that Welch’s theory will lay an egg.

It would appear that some of my interpretations of Nostradamus influenced Welch’s cometary disaster theory. Back in 1994, I referenced an interpretation based on several prophecies about a future comet or meteor strike in the Aegean Sea, off the Greek island of Ebboea. It is important to remember that Nostradamus NEVER gave a date for this event. There is only one astrological time window openly given by Nostradamus for a cosmic disaster in the future. Century 10, Quatrain 67 in Nostradamus’ book "Les Propheties" describes an apocalyptic rain of hail stones larger than an egg in May of some future year. The astrological configuration described in 10 Q67 is quite rare. It will take place in May of 3755! The sky may be falling someday, but not today! We may have to wait for a cometic or meteoric hammer fall in the Aegean, or anywhere else on earth, 1,751 years from now.

The sky will not fall on us, but in the second week of May it might illuminate a significant portent Nostradamus foresaw for America, its president, and their future in Iraq. It all depends on how bright Comet NEAT shines. According to the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams, people in the Northern Hemisphere in early May will see it rise in the western skies after sunset. It should be at its brightest in the second week of May, when it transits the constellation of Cancer. Current projections from the NEAT team forecast a brightness of the first magnitude - about as luminous as one of the brighter stars in the evening sky.

It will not be alone in Cancer when it makes its cosmic statement. Saturn is there also. Because of this, the passing of NEAT may have far more prophetic significance.

The 16th-century French seer in Century 6, Quatrain 24 of his magnum prophetic opus "Les Propheties" predicted that a "calamitous war under Cancer" would be fought shortly after the conjunction of Mars with Jupiter. The most recent conjunction of the two planets took place in June of 2002. America invaded and occupied Iraq early the following year. America was born under the sign of Cancer, as is its current president. Are they both marked for calamity? Perhaps the planet Saturn will be the judge. Saturn in predictive astrology is the planet of karmic payment (that is, reactions that come home to roost from positive or negative actions committed). Saturn is also the ruler of personal and cosmic reality checks. Resist reality and you will suffer. Accept reality, and Saturn helps individuals and nations evolve and transcend their negative actions.

Saturn is transiting Cancer since early June of 2003. It entered Cancer a little more than a month after the Cancerian president Bush declared principal military action in Iraq successfully prosecuted. He made this announcement with bravado, wearing a Navy flight suit, standing upon a US aircraft carrier flight deck under the shadow of a sign declaring "Mission Accomplished." There was reason to celebrate. A risky offensive into Iraq had only cost the lives of 117 US soldiers. America had overthrown an evil dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Then came Saturn into the sign of Cancer a little more than a month later. Its passing marked the sudden and unexpected rise of guerilla war in Iraq. The Iraqi celebrations in the streets of liberation from Saddam soon became demonstrations of frustration at bungled US occupation promises, and worse, open protest. As Saturn’s shadow crossed over the birth sign of America and its president, the Iraqi’s started calling liberators occupiers and US casualties steadily mounted after major military action they were told was over. One-hundred and nine US soldiers died before 1 May 2003. After 1 May 2004, America has occupied Iraq under the aspect of Saturn in Cancer and to date has lost 638 dead and over 3,500 wounded.

Astrologically speaking, Saturn is in its detriment in Cancer. That means many karmic road bumps ahead for America in Iraq and a rising polarization of the American public into liberal and conservative camps. The Cancerian president struggles against attacks hurled at his credibility. Saturn, the reality giver, exposes his grounds for going to war. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction poised to strike America. Saturn exposes detrimental revelations about President Bush’s decision-making process in one exposé book after another first from the released Secretary of Treasury, O’Neil, then a book from a fired national security adviser, Richard Clark. Bob Woodward recently published an implied revelation that the President makes many of his key decisions more from the instincts of his religious faith rather than gathered facts from CIA intelligence. The other day, photographs appear showing US male and female soldiers taunting and torturing naked Iraqi prisoners. The actions shame Americans and enrage the Islamic world. All of this is a product of the Saturn-in-Cancer effect in the president’s and the country’s astrology. And it will not be getting any easier any time soon. Both America and the president have 18 months to endure Saturn’s crawl through Cancer.

If Saturn is often seen as a portent of tough times, comets are believed to be messengers of great and often catastrophic change. Comet NEAT just happens to reach its brightest as it intersects with Saturn in Cancer from 14 to 17 May 2004. Nostradamus foresaw a comet that marks the onset of his 27-year war of the Third Antichrist - a global conflict fueled by international terrorism. If that comet is NEAT then it must do more than shine brightly enough to be recognized clearly with the naked eye of amateur astronomers. It must also produce a cometary tail significantly dramatic to rival the great comets of the past that anyone other than star gazers could not help notice. Thus, a bright cometary embrace of Saturn with the Comet NEAT in Cancer could date a descent into calamity for America and its president in Iraq. A bright comet’s tail could light the match of the next world war.

NOSTRADAMUS’ COMET PROPHECIES
Nostradamus referred at least ten times in his prophecies to cosmic portents. What follows is the index number of the prophecy with a short interpretation. For a full examination of the prophecies and my detailed interpretations, please read Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies

Nostradamus mixed his prophecies out of sequence to hide their meaning from those who would do worse with our future if they understood and acted upon them. Still, it often happens that prophecies describing a shared theme end up relatively close together in the ten Centuries (Volumes) of "Les Propheties." Note how five of the eight direct references to comets concentrate in Century 2. Could they be about one event?

(Century) 1 Q (quatrain) 69 --A meteor or comet "4,247 feet 3 inches in circumference" (500 to 1,000 feet in diameter) crashes into the Aegean Sea, "drowning great countries..."

2 Q15 --A comet passes when a financial scandal afflicts the rule of a twin-named pope. The passing of Halley’s Comet in early 1986 probably fulfilled this prophecy when Pope John Paul II endured the Vatican Bank Scandal.

2 Q41 --A comet or supernova blazes for seven days during a future nuclear war or act of nuclear terrorism that forces a future pope to change his abode. A number of other quatrains describe what sounds like a natural disaster or nuclear terrorist attack on Rome.

2 Q43 --A comet ("bearded star") appears when three great princes will be enemies. This was fulfilled in 1577 when a comet appeared just as Catholic King Henry III of France, and his off-and-on ally, Henry de Guise, leader of the Catholic League, fought the Huguenot (Protestant) forces of Henry of Navarre during the final year of the Sixth War of Religion. A shaky peace followed but soon collapsed. Later the three Henry’s fought a three sided civil war for the throne of France.

2 Q46 --After a great misery (possibly World War II) a greater approaches around the time of the millennium. This might be referring to what Nostradamus calls elsewhere in his prophecies a 27-year war of the Third Antichrist. This catalytic figure igniting the war he also calls "Mabus."

2 Q62 --This by far is the most famous comet prophecy because it foretells the emergence of the Third Antichrist - "Mabus" - at the time when a "comet will pass." The comet in question has to be a significant portent in the sky - not some little speck swallowed by the sun that only an astronomer sees in a telescope. Everyone has to see this comet in the skies! So far only two comets in recent history have matched this prerequisite: Halley’s Comet in 1986 and Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. One prophecy implies that Nostradamus’ 27-year war begins near or shortly after the "seventh" month of "1999." He might have meant the right "seventh" month (September) for the wrong year. If the terrorist attack on America on 11 September 2001 was be the "Pearl Harbor" event of the next world war, then the appearance of Hale-Bopp in 1997 is near enough in time to be the prime candidate for the comet of Mabus for now. In which case "Mabus" may be decoded as "Usama b"in Laden. Use Nostradamus’ laws of anagram to scramble the first name "Usama" to get "Maaus" (b)in Laden. Replace the redundant "a" with the "b," and you get "Mabus."

Perhaps there will be another comet coming in the future that shines in skies over which the war has already begun. Perhaps Nostradamus, ever the prescient poet, metaphorically implies the fall of a cometlike portent, rather than a literal comet as the marker for war. The Space Shuttle Columbia fell out of the skies just a few weeks before the Iraq War of G.W. Bush began. Is he "Mabus"? The law of anagram allows you to turn a "g" and a "w" upside down to make "m" and "a." Add "bus" with a silent Latin "h" and you get "Mabus."

2 Q96 --A comet or a description of a missile falls out of the sky near the Rhône river estuary in S. France at a time when "Persia" (Iran?) invades Macedonia (the modern day Balkans). The wording of this prophecy is vague enough to cover wars between Greece/Macedonia and Persia in the past or a conflict in the future.

4 Q67 --A "long" comet is seen in the skies when the world’s climate heats up, and "fires" of war and terrorist "raids" multiply. Astrological hints in this prophecy foresee such a comet appearing when Mars and Saturn are in Leo from June through July of 2006.

6 Q6 --Another reference to the destruction of Rome when a comet appears not far from the constellation of Cancer.

Presage 52 from the Almanac for the year 1560. The reference here concerns near-future events for France in the year 1560.

ASSESSMENT
Taken as a group, one could derive the following future scenarios:

COMET/METEOR STRIKE:

One related to a natural or cosmic disaster. The quatrains describe a comet or meteor striking the eastern Mediterranean Sea sending thousand-foot tidal waves sloshing back and forth across the coasts of the Near East, North Africa and Southern Europe. Thus the references to Rome’s future destruction from fires and "floods" might infer a tidal wave toppling the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. There are other astrological prophecies loosely hinting this for a time as far ahead as 3755 A.D.

[For a detailed explanation of the Aegean meteor or comet strike interpretation, please read Gaia’s Cosmic Shock Syndrome, pp. 223-224 in Nostradamus: The New Millennium]

TERRORIST ATTACK ON VATICAN WHEN A COMET PASSES:

Another possible future connotes a terrorist attack on Rome around the time of a comet’s passing. Indeed the "comet" itself may be Nostradamus’ labored attempt to describe the fiery plume of a missile falling out of the sky like a comet.

COMET APPEARS AT THE DAWN OF WORLD WAR III:

The appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1986, Hale-Bopp in 1997 may portend that the world war of NostradamusThird Antichrist is at hand. It is popularly believed that he dated the onset of war for July or September 1999. The war may have begun in September of 2001. A near miss but close enough, when one considers that the future, like the present, is not static. It is dynamic. Changes happen.

A DISASTER THAT "LOOKS" LIKE A COMET TO NOSTRADAMUS PORTENDS WORLD WAR III:

Nostradamus was human and often misread his symbols. Therefore we cannot rule out the Columbia Shuttle disaster as the comet falling out of the sky foreseen to mark the beginning of the 27-year war of the Third Antichrist. Columbia fell out of the sky in the month before the US invasion of Iraq. The US occupation in Iraq could turn out to be the catalyst of an escalation and spread of a global terrorist conflict. Therefore, Columbia’s fiery fall like a comet over Texas (the home state of the president waging such a war) is the cometary omen foreseen by Nostradamus.

COMPOSITE COMETS MISTAKEN BY NOSTRADAMUS AS ONE COSMIC EVENT:

It often happened that Nostradamus’ prophecies came to him like a traffic backup of visions on the freeway of time. For instance, his prophecies about an invasion of France from Germany incorporate details from both the 1914 and 1940 invasions. He incorrectly saw them as one. The appearance of Halley, Hale-Bopp, the comet-like fall of the Space Shuttle Columbia - and perhaps a dramatic near future appearance of a new comet, maybe Comet NEAT - could all be concentrated in the mind of Nostradamus as one cosmic portent for the Third World War of terrorism.

WHAT ABOUT COMET NEAT?
If NEAT would surprise us with as spectacular a display of fiery tail as Hale-Bopp in 1997 we could call it the comet of Mabus. A stunning Comet NEAT, like the cometary fall of Columbia over Texas, would portend something significant and ominous for President Bush and America in their future. Conjoined with Saturn, it would be a significant portent, given that the American president and Usama bin Laden are the current prime candidates for Nostradamus’ fearsome "Mabus."

Since 1986, I have been saying that the greatest danger of a Third World War comes from Iraq and the Middle East falling into civil strife and chaos. The flash point of this is American mishandling of the Shiite majority in occupied Iraq. The first significant Shia rebellion of Ayatollah al-Sadr’s Madhi militia is but a foretaste of worse things to come after the light Comet NEAT fades.