Prophecy update

Hard as it is to believe, we're over halfway through 2025.  On the one hand, it seems like it's flown.  On the other, any amount of time spent living through the Trump regime is going to feel like having your feet in the fire, so it's a mixed bag.

Maybe there's something in Einstein's theory to explain this, given that he said "time is relative" and all.

I thought this might be a good point to check in on our psychic predictions for the year and see how the psychics were faring.  We still have a bit over four months left to go, and the final scorecard won't be certain till December 31, so think of this as being a bit of mid-game analysis.

Some of them, however, go right down to the wire.  Like the TikTok clip of a woman running up to a couple on the beach in Saint Augustine, Florida, shrieking, "I know what's coming!", pointing to the waves, and then running away.  The guy who posted it said the video is dated December 30, 2025.  How that's possible, I have no idea.  In any case, he advised us all to "flag this post in case anything weird happens."

Of course, it works the other way, too.  If you pinpoint a date, it's much easier to prove wrong.  Despite an alleged prediction by Alexa that there would be a "strong 8.2 magnitude earthquake in the Philippines, along with an eruption of Mount Pinatubo," April 23 dawned and nothing had happened.  So the take-home message for would-be prophets is "keep it vague so no one can say you're definitively wrong."

That's the approach of Nostradamus, who couched his prophecies in such arcane, weird, and symbolic language that you can interpret them to mean pretty much any damn thing you want.  The 2025 predictions from the mysterious Frenchman are supposedly for "global conflict, natural disasters, and shifts in environmental patterns," which are a pretty good bet in any year, but also supposedly we're in for a "large asteroid falling from the sky, followed by a great fire on Earth."  Which would be hard to miss.  Thus far I haven't seen any sign of it, and NASA has assured us that of the asteroids it knows about, none pose an immediate threat.

None it knows about.  Or is willing to tell us about.  Amirite?  *slow single eyebrow raise*

In any case, so far so good on the giant asteroid front.  Although I have to say if it targeted Mar-a-Lago, I might be in the pro-asteroid camp.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gunnshots (Don), Psychic reading, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Then there's Baba Vanga, the blind Bulgarian mystic who according to some sources left behind enough prophecies at her death in 1996 to last us until the year 5079.  This is also a smart tactic, because not many of us will be around for that long, so saying "In the year 4537, a freak hurricane will flatten Hoboken" falls into the "unverifiable even in theory" department.  But fortunately, we have her predictions for 2025, and they include a few doozies.  Aliens are going to "make contact during a major sporting event," which sure would add some spice to the halftime show.  Medical science will take a huge leap forward when researchers figure out how to grow fully-functional human organs in vitro.  Physicists will discover a new energy source that is "clean, limitless, and unlike anything we've seen before."  And human telepathy will become a reality, meaning that we'll be able to communicate with each other with no intermediate medium necessary.

I don't know about you, but I'm not thrilled about this last one.  Exposing some innocent person to the chaos that goes on inside my skull just seems mean.  I explored the whole "telepathy is not pleasant" idea in my Parsifal Snowe Mysteries series (currently out of print but hopefully back soon), in the character of the tortured psychic Callista Lee -- who describes ordinary existence as being trapped in a crowded, noisy bar 24/7.  Keep in mind, though, that this series is fiction.

In any case, Baba is batting a big fat zero so far.

Then we have John Sommers-Flanagan, whose predictions include Superbowl LIX ending with the Bills beating the Lions 36-30 (the actual outcome was Eagles 40, Chiefs 22).  Otherwise, he chose to play it safe, saying we'd have rising temperatures and food prices, falling economic strength and consumer confidence, and that Trump will continue to be an ignorant, racist, authoritarian fascist-wannabe schmuck.  (Not in those exact words, but that's the gist.)  In any case, those all fall into the "Who Could Have Predicted This Besides Everyone?" department.  

So the predictions thus far have kind of been a bust.  Of course, to be fair to the psychics, we do still have four months for all of it to happen.  Me, I'm hoping Baba Vanga's aliens do show up.  At this point, I don't particularly care if they're hostile:

Alien: Ha ha, puny earthling, we have come here to slaughter your leaders, subjugate your entire planet, and rule you for all eternity!

Me:  Okay, go for it

Alien:  ... wait, what?

Me:  You heard me.  Hop to it, lazy, we don't have all fucking day

But given their track record (the psychics, not the aliens), I'm thinking we're probably going to remain stuck with the "leaders" we have.  On the other hand, if you live in Saint Augustine, Florida, you might want to stay away from the beach on December 30.  You wouldn't want to throw caution to the wind if this turns out to be the one time the psychics nailed it, and get eaten by Cthulhu or something.  As my dad used to say, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

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Thus sayeth the prophecy

I've wondered for years why people fall for conspiracy theories.

My surmise -- and admittedly, that's all it is -- is that when bad things happen, any explanation is better than there being no explanation other than the universe being a chaotic and capricious place.  Blaming the latest tornado outbreak on weather manipulation by the Bad Guys at least means there's a reason why communities were destroyed and lives were lost; otherwise it just appears that shit happens because shit happens, and nice people sometimes die and the world can be dangerous and unfair.

Which brings us to the death of Pope Francis, who died three days ago at the age of 88.

Even for many non-Catholics, Pope Francis seemed like a pretty cool guy.  He embodied tolerance, gentleness, humility, and a deep concern for our environment.  I didn't agree with his theology (obviously) but I did have a lot of respect for him as a person and a spiritual leader.

Now, it's not like his death was unexpected.  He'd been ailing and in a slow decline for months, and recently came out of a long hospital stay for double pneumonia.  Even so, the world's Catholics are in mourning -- and understandably anxious, in our current volatile world situation, about who will be chosen next to lead the world's 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.

And... also not unexpected... almost as soon as he died, the conspiracy theories started.

The first was that his death had something to do with a visit from Vice President J. D. Vance, who is nominally Catholic himself but embodies the exact opposite list of characteristics from those I listed for Pope Francis: intolerance, viciousness, arrogance, and a complete disregard for the environment.  I've seen a number of claims -- some tongue-in-cheek, others apparently quite serious -- that Vance did something to hasten the Pope's death because of Francis's condemnation of many of the Trump administration's policies.

I'm a little dubious, but I think we should deport Vance to El Salvador just in case.  He recently said he's fine with the "inevitable errors" that will come with eliminating due process, so he should have no problem with it, right?

Even more out there are the people who are now leaping about making excited little squeaking noises about the Prophecy of St. Malachi.  This curious document is a series of 112 phrases in Latin, each of which is supposed to refer to one of the Popes, in order, starting with Celestine II (who led the church from 1143 to 1144).  It was published in 1595 by Flemish Benedictine monk Arnold Wion, but Wion said it was actually from Malachi of Armagh, a twelfth-century Irish saint.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Andreas F. Borchert, Malaquías de Armagh (cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0]

Most modern scholars, however, think the whole thing was made up, if not by Wion, by someone in the late sixteenth century.  So any accurate passages that apply to the Popes from prior to 1595 or so shouldn't be looked upon as anything even close to miraculous.  It is, after all, easy to prophesy something after it's already happened.

Aficionados of the prophecy, though, have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to make the lines referring to events after 1595 fit to the Popes they allegedly are about.  #83, for example, which would correspond with Pope Alexander VII, translates to "Guardian of the Mountains," and Alexander's papal arms had a design of six hills.  Pope Clement X, whose line is "From a Great River," was allegedly born during a flood of the Tiber.  

When you get into the eighteenth century, however, things become dicier, because by that time the Prophecy of St. Malachi had become widely popular, so some of the Popes apparently did stuff to fit the prophecy rather than the other way around.  Pope Clement XI, for example, corresponds to the line "Surrounded by Flowers," and Clement had a medal created with the line "Flores circumdati," which is a pretty blatant attempt to make sure the Prophecy applies to him.

The reason the conspiracy theorists are getting all excited is that there are a total of 112 passages in the Prophecy, and -- you guessed it -- Pope Francis is the 112th Pope since Celestine II.  So, without further ado, here's the passage that's supposed to apply to Pope Francis:

Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.  The End.

It's hard even for the most devoted conspiracy theorist to see how Pope Francis could be "Peter the Roman."  He's not Roman, he's Argentine; neither his chosen papal name nor his birth name (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) contains any form of the name Peter.  The best they've been able to do is to say that his chosen name (Francis) is after St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis's father was named Pietro, but even for a lot of woo-woos this is stretching credulity to the breaking point.

Be that as it may, there are still a lot of people who think the Prophecy is serious business, and they are especially focusing on "the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed" part.  Because now that Pope Francis is dead, that means the rest of the prediction is imminent, so Rome is about to be hit by a massive earthquake or something.

I'm thinking it's probably not worth worrying about.  I mean, for cryin' in the sink, this is worse than Nostradamus.  Plus, it's not like we don't have enough real stuff to lose sleep over.  I'm not going to fret over a prophecy that couldn't even get the name and origin of the Pope right.

But for some reason, this kind of stuff thrills a lot of people, and I really don't see the appeal.  I guess it gives some mystical gloss to day-to-day events, rather than things happening because the world is just kind of weird and random.  In any case, to any of my Catholic readers, my condolences for the loss of your spiritual leader.  He did seem like a pretty cool guy, and I hope they can find a suitable replacement to step into his shoes.

But for those of you who live in Rome, no worries about the city burning down or anything. 

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Prediction conviction

I know it's been a tough year.  The pandemic, the final year of King Donald the Demented's reign, the fractious election and its aftermath -- it's a lot to pack into a twelve months.

So it's natural enough that a lot of us are looking forward to saying goodbye to 2020, although rationally speaking, there's no reason that going from December 31 to January 1 should mark any real delineation in world events.  The fact that the most commonly-used calendar in the industrialized world marks the year's end in the middle of winter doesn't mean it's any kind of real phenomenon.  If we went by the Jewish calendar, the Hindu calendar, the Mayan calendar, or any of a variety of other ways humans have gone about marking time, what we call New Year's Day would just be another ordinary day.

That hasn't stopped the prognosticators from doing what they do, of course.  Just in the last couple of weeks, a number of psychic types have revealed to us what 2021 is going to be like.  As you might expect, none of them agree with each other, which you'd think would give people a clue about their veracity.

But as I said earlier, there's not much of this that has to do with rationality.

Let's start with Nicolas Aujula, who warns us against getting too optimistic about any serious improvements in 2021:

I have had a couple of quite horrid visions – one of a male world leader being assassinated.  I couldn’t see who it was, but sensed it sent shockwaves through the world.  Obviously I hope that doesn’t come to fruition.  I’ve also had a vision of a world summit being plagued by a sex scandal and, a rise in far-right politics, particularly in southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and a volcanic eruption leading to major weather changes.  And I’ve had the words ‘pig flu’ come to me and seen images of mass panic.  I don’t think it will be another virus, but I can imagine the reaction will be alarmist, given what’s happened this year.

What stands out to me here is the volcanic eruption, which would seem to be a pretty striking predication if a month and a half ago there hadn't been an announcement from geologists that Grimsvötn, Iceland's most active volcano, is showing signs of another big eruption, and that it has a history of larger eruptions than nearby Eyjafjallajökull -- which had a 2010 eruption spewing so much ash into the air that it led to the cancellation of 100,000 airline flights. 

So that one just shows that Aujula knows how to read the news.  As far as the rest, when hasn't there been a political sex scandal?  And the "rise of far-right politics" isn't exactly a reach, either, since it's been going on for what, four or five years, now?

Then there's Polish psychic Adam A., who has some Poland-specific predictions whose likelihood I can't speak to with any authority, but also had two visions that are a little baffling:

• A large dark triangle soars over a city with low buildings.  There are no skyscrapers or other tall buildings here.  Cloudy water flows outside the city and it spills out.  A strong stream hits a mysterious triangle.

• Eight people are sitting at the table, debating a piece of paper crumpled into a ball.  One of the men has a mustache.  The paper ball starts to burn, and the fire takes the shape of a bird and goes to the sky.

Nope.  I got nothin'.

But when it comes to arcane predictions, no one can beat Michel de Nostredame (better known under his Latinized name of Nostradamus), the sixteenth-century mystic and astrologer who made pronouncements so weird and incomprehensible that you could interpret them to mean damn near anything.  Which, of course, is very helpful after the fact, because no matter what happens you can always go back and find something Nostradamus said that seems to fit if you squint at it in just the right way.  

Portrait of Michel de Nostradame, painted posthumously by his son César de Nostredame (ca. 1590) [Image is in the Public Domain]

He wrote in these little four-line stanzas called quatrains, and of course, there are people who are now trying to apply them to 2021.  Here are a few of their better efforts:

1) A famine

This one is supposedly predicted by this quatrain:

After great trouble for humanity, a greater one is prepared, 

The Great Mover renews the ages: 

Rain, blood, milk, famine, steel, and plague, 

Is the heavens fire seen, a long spark running.

So I think we can all agree that's clear as mud.  But predicting a famine is a good bet anyhow, especially given what we're doing to the climate.

Then we have:

2) A devastating earthquake in California

Once again, that's not a reach to predict.  Although even with stretching your interpretation, I have a hard time making this quatrain about California: 

The sloping park, great calamity, 

Through the Lands of the West and Lombardy 

The fire in the ship, plague, and captivity; 

Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn fading.

Okay, California is in the west, at least from the perspective of those of us here in the United States, but the only connection it has to Lombardy is that they're on the same planet.  And yeah, an earthquake is a "calamity," but I don't see what it has to do with ship fires, plagues, and captivity.

And don't even get me started about the whole Mercury in Sagittarius thing.

Finally, no cataclysm would be complete without:

3) A zombie apocalypse

You think I'm making this up.  Here's the pair of quatrains that supposedly predicts it:

Few young people: half−dead to give a start.
Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine,
And in an exalted place some great evils to occur:
Sad concepts will come to harm each one,
Temporal dignified, the Mass to succeed.
Fathers and mothers dead of infinite sorrows,
Women in mourning, the pestilent she−monster:
The Great One to be no more, all the world to end.

Right!  Sure!  I only have one question, which is, "What?"

I mean, I guess you could say that predicts zombies as much as it predicts anything, but I'm a little baffled as to why this one is scheduled for 2021.  Other than the fact that we've had pretty much everything else you can think of in 2020, so maybe a zombie apocalypse is the next logical step.

The article I linked has a bunch more of Nostradamus's predictions that supposedly apply to next year, and I encourage you to read it if you're interested in finding out more about what we're in for.  Suffice it to say that it doesn't sound like much fun.  But even with all this, I still can't help but be a little hopeful.  For one thing, it's looking like Donald Trump will finally be relegated to the Little Kids' Table of History, where he can tweet and throw a tantrum and dump his Froot Loops on the floor all he wants without bothering the rest of us.  We'll finally have a president who takes climate change seriously, although I'm under no illusions that the battle is won.

So I'm inclined to agree with the folks who are glad to see 2020 go.  At this point, my general feeling is: bring on the zombies.

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One of the most compellingly weird objects in the universe is the black hole -- a stellar remnant so dense that it warps space into a closed surface.  Once the edge of that sphere -- the event horizon -- is passed, there's no getting out.  Even light can't escape, which is where they get their name.

Black holes have been a staple of science fiction for years, not only for their potential to destroy whatever comes near them, but because their effects on space-time result in a relativistic slowdown of time (depicted brilliantly in the movie Interstellar).  In this week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week, The Black Hole Survival Guide, astrophysicist Janna Levin describes for us what it would be like to have a close encounter with one of these things -- using the latest knowledge from science to explain in layperson's terms the experience of an unfortunate astronaut who strayed too close.

It's a fascinating, and often mind-blowing, topic, handled deftly by Levin, where the science itself is so strange that it seems as if it must be fiction.  But no, these things are real, and common; there's a huge one at the center of our own galaxy, and an unknown number of them elsewhere in the Milky Way.  Levin's book will give you a good picture of one of the scariest naturally-occurring objects -- all from the safety of your own home.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Planet of doom

Here I was, thinking that the stupidest thing I'd hear all day was that windmills cause cancer and that the way to stop hurricanes is to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of one, when along comes my friend A. J. Aalto, the amazingly talented author of the Marnie Baranuik series, and asks me if I've ever heard of Planet 7x.

Well, I'd heard of the actual seventh planet (better known as Uranus) and I'd heard of Planet X, but Planet 7x was a new one on me.  A friend, she said, had told her all about it, and when I say "all" I mean it, because apparently it came in the form of a five-hour monologue while A. J. was trapped in a car with him.   "Planet 7X... is the reason for all bad things on earth," A. J. explained to me.  "He tried to explain the 'science' proving it, which hurt my head, but I was in no position to show him where he was going wrong.  I googled it just now—wow, a goldmine of woo.   Pure woo."

So naturally I had to follow suit.  And after a couple of hours of research, I think I'd amend "wow" to "what the actual fuck?"  Because this is a synthesis of about two dozen different realms of craziness, including apocalyptic prophecy, conspiracy theories, biblical literalism, Atlantis, gravity denialism (no, I'm not making that up), and various wackiness about supervolcanoes, asteroid impacts, the shift of the magnetic poles, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Mayans, the Black Death, Alexander the Great, invisibility cloaks, Ronald Reagan, and the Ice Age.

Oh, but he states outright that he doesn't believe in the Flat Earth.  That would be ridiculous.

Apparently this whole thing is the brainchild of one Gil Broussard, and this is where the whole thing gets an added frisson of weird coincidence, because Broussard hails from my home town of Lafayette, Louisiana.  Not only that, apparently Broussard got the idea for Planet 7x from two University of Louisiana physicists, Dr. John Matese and Dr. Daniel Whitmire.

So it's even weirder, because I majored in physics at the University of Louisiana, and I've taken classes with both of these guys.  I took Quantum Mechanics with Dr. Matese (whose name Broussard misspells "Matisse," which I guess is understandable enough), and Astronomy with Dr. Whitmire.  And what's even weirder is that I went "aha" when I saw their names -- because I knew why they'd inspired Broussard's kooky idea.

When I was an undergraduate, Matese and Whitmire were working on a (legitimate) theory that went by the unfortunate name of "Planet X," and in fact I heard them give a talk on it.  Their idea, which was persuasive enough to merit a paper in Nature in 1985, was that there is a large planet outside of the orbit of Pluto that periodically passes through dense parts of the Oort Cloud, thus gravitationally perturbing the orbits of comets and sending them hurtling inward toward the Sun.  This created regular spikes in cometary impacts on Earth, and were the source of mass extinctions.

Their theory hasn't stood the test of time especially well, and there's been no subsequent hard evidence that their Planet X even exists.  Furthermore, we have pretty good models for the causes of mass extinctions, largely triggered by supervolcano eruptions (e.g. the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps) and collision by asteroids (not comets), such as the one that left the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico.

But what Gil Broussard has done is take Matese's and Whitmire's theory and twist it out of all recognition.  Planet 7x (I don't know where the "7" comes from; it probably says somewhere on the website, but honestly, I only got through about half of it before pooping out) is in a highly elliptical orbit, and when it comes in toward its perihelion, it does things like send "plasma discharges" toward the Earth (I have no clue why), which not only causes craters and mass extinctions, but makes the magnetic poles flip.  This is all documented in the Bible, apparently, and explains such events as: the parting of the Red Sea (why a huge planet swooping by affected only the water in one location, I have no idea); the account of the battle against the Amorites where Joshua asked for an extra long day to finish Smiting the Enemy so God made the Sun "stand still over Gibeon" until the battle was over; Sodom and Gomorrah being obliterated, and Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt; the Tower of Babel "confusion of languages" incident; all the awful shit that happened to poor Job; and the eclipse that supposedly happened when Jesus died.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you -- the next time Planet 7x is scheduled to visit in 2021, and that's going to usher in the End Times as per the Book of Revelation, so that gives us something to look forward to.  How a large planet could generate the Seas Turning to Blood and Apocalyptic Horsepersons and Dragons With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, I have no idea, but apparently it can.

Which brings up a question I've always had; why would a dragon have seven heads but ten crowns?  By my math that means it has three crowns left over.  What would it do with those?  Put them on heads that already had crowns?  That image is appallingly asymmetrical.  Stack them on its tail?  Carry them in a dragon-sized backpack?  Maybe it doesn't wear all its crowns at once, and swaps out the spares when one of the crowns is at the cleaners, or something.  I dunno.

But I digress.

Anyhow, I encourage you to visit Broussard's website and read about it for yourself, because I can't possibly explain it fully enough for you to get the whole picture.  There are also excellent illustrations, including one of the Earth being zapped by a bolt of lightning from a very evil and threatening-looking orange planet, in the fashion of the Emperor trying to fry Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi.

So thanks to A. J. for sending me the idea, especially given that it originates with a Hometown Boy and references two people I actually know.  I'm going to need a double scotch to recover from the brain trauma of wading through the site, but that's not A. J.'s fault.

I mean, I think it wasn't A. J.'s fault.  Considering some of the stuff she writes, this could well be a diabolical plot to short-circuit important parts of my brain.  *gives A. J. a suspicious side-eye*  Maybe it's all part of a conspiracy against me.

Or maybe it's just the influence of Planet 7x approaching.  Who the hell knows.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is about a subject near and dear to my heart; the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.  In The Three-Body Problem, Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu takes an interesting angle on this question; if intelligent life were discovered in the universe -- maybe if it even gave us a visit -- how would humans react?

Liu examines the impact of finding we're not alone in the cosmos from political, social, and religious perspectives, and doesn't engage in any pollyanna-ish assumptions that we'll all be hunky-dory and ascend to the next plane of existence.  What he does think might happen, though, makes for fascinating reading, and leaves you pondering our place in the universe for days after you turn over the last page.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

ISON is Wormwood! Or Nibiru! Or not!

My younger son, who shares my interest in investigating wacky beliefs, sent me a perplexing email a couple of days ago.

"Look up 'wormwood,'" is all it said.

I responded, "Wormwood like the plant?  Wormwood like the junior devil in C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters?"

He came back with, "Wormwood like the comet."

So I obligingly did a Google search for "wormwood comet," and found out something that would be funny if the people who believed it weren't so sincere: there is apparently a growing number of ultra-Christian types who believe that Comet ISON is the "falling star" mentioned in Revelation 8:10-11:

Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.  The name of the star is Wormwood.  A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.

ISON isn't a star, of course, but taking the bible literally doesn't apparently stop people from taking it metaphorically when it's convenient.

(Photograph courtesy of the European Southern Observatory and the Wikimedia Commons)

Take a look, for example, at this site, which mixes so many different kinds of crazy that it's hard to know where to begin -- biblical literalism, astrology, the magical significance of names, conspiracy theories, theosophy, and what appears to be completely original batshittery.  As an example of the latter, take a look at this paragraph:

Biblically, Joseph (Israel) is at the Altar (Initiated); Gentiles are on the Porch (Un-initiated). I cannot stress enough Stay on the Porch!! The Mark of this Beast is real! The Hopi aka Welsh Gypsies continuing the Solar Cult of ancient Egypt correctly forecasted the arrival of White Men, Railroads, Interstate Highways and Jet Travel complete with Chemtrails described as Spider Webs; their prediction at Prophecy Rock will in all likelihood, come true as well! 

Besides that entirely incomprehensible paragraph, the site contains pages and pages of stuff that all leads us to one conclusion: ISON is Wormwood, and in a week or so we're all gonna die in horrible agony as part of the long-ago-foretold plan of the God of Love and Mercy.

Now, you might say that this website is just the work of one crazy person, which could well be true -- but stuff like this is popping up all over the internet.  Some people disagree, though, which should be reassuring.  On the site Escape All These Things: End Times Prophecies Made Plain, we are told that we are told that ISON can't be Wormwood because Wormwood is the "third trumpet" and the first and second trumpets haven't sounded yet, because we probably would have noticed if a third of the world's plants had been burned up and a great mountain had fallen into the sea.

On the downside, though, is the possibility that ISON could be the Planet Nibiru, a mythical planet that is best known for conspicuously failing to show every other time it was supposed to.  In one of the best examples of pretzel logic I've ever seen, take a look at this page from the bizarre site Before It's News, wherein we find out that all of the other non-appearances of Nibiru were because the Illuminati wanted to play a game of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to get us to let down our guard:

A few of those people could not live with the knowledge that millions of their fellow human beings were going to die in the future without even an opportunity to know what they were facing. There were a few who felt that the public had a right to know what was coming in order to make whatever preparations were possible. So from time to time there have been “leaks” of information. Little by little more and more information has been “leaked” until the whole grim picture has come together. In fact there were so many “leaks” of information about Planet X that some “brilliant insider” [Sic!] came up with the idea of planting disinformation designed to discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public. So in 2001, 2002, and 2003 there was all kinds of information about Planet X being deliberately “leaked” to the public. Much of the information being released at that time claimed that the coming of Planet X would occur in May of 2003, and the public should prepare themselves for imminent destruction. On the one hand “official” sources were denying the whole story, while on the other hand equally “official” sources were steadily “leaking” disinformation to the public. Their SCAM worked like a charm. When Planet X DID NOT show up in May of 2003, most people labeled the whole subject of Planet X a hoax and began ridiculing anyone who would even bring up the subject.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone come right out and say, "You should believe us because we have a record of being 100% wrong in the past" before.

Anyhow, I just wish everyone would stop freaking out every time something interesting happens in the world of astronomy.  ISON has the potential to put on a great show during the first week of December, and I, for one, would love it if it did.  Weather permitting -- always a dicey thing in my cloudy, snowy part of the country -- I'll be out there looking for it on the morning of December 3 through 6.

Even if it means that I have to "get off the porch."

Well, that should take care of your "Bieber Fever."

So San Francisco made it through yesterday without being obliterated.  I'm pleased about that, because San Francisco is a great place and it would suck if it was destroyed by an earthquake even if it is a hotbed of "sexual immortality" (as one of the prophecies of doom called it).

Of course, the same bunch of prophets also called it a "Bowl of Iniquity," which is just funny.  It sounds like the breakfast they serve in hell's deli, doesn't it?  ("Hey, hon, can I have another Bowl of Iniquity, with some milk and sugar?  Thanks.")

But of course, this failure of the Lord to keep his word and smite the hell out of California isn't going to stop the prognosticators of doom from moving on to the next Holy Warning.  In fact, a reader told me we already have one that has cleared the starting gate, and it's a doozy.  Ready?

FEMA has been caught in the act of sending shiploads of plastic coffins and other corpse-transport devices...

... to Puerto Rico...

... because there's going to be an asteroid impact in the Atlantic Ocean...

... causing an enormous, 200-foot-tall tsunami...

... in order to kill everyone at the October 19 Justin Bieber concert in San Juan.

Well.  I certainly can't top that.  And I have to state, for the record, that I can understand why the Lord might want to smite Justin Bieber.  Destroying Puerto Rico in order to do it sounds like it might be a bit of an overreaction, however.  On the other hand, if you read the Old Testament you'll find that this sort of thing happened all the time, with the Lord having a bad morning and smiting the shit out of everyone who happened to be in the vicinity, so I guess there's precedent.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways, after all, and if killing everyone in Puerto Rico is his way of dealing with Justin Bieber, then who am I to question it?

So, there you have it.  The next prophecy to look forward to.  Much more creative than a silly old earthquake, don't you think?  And just think!  If it's true, we'll never have to hear "As Long As You Love Me" again.

Smiting San Francisco

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but if you're a reader in the San Francisco area, you're doomed.

Today, in fact.

I know, I know, I should have warned you all sooner.  But I didn't even know until yesterday, and at that point, it seemed kind of late to start a wholesale evacuation.  So this is sort of a "thanks for your readership, hope you don't die too painfully."

You might be wondering how I know all of this.  It's a good question, and of course, the answer is that we have some self-proclaimed Prophets of the Lord who have said that God Almighty has told them that he's about to find downtown San Francisco on Google Maps and then press "Smite" on the Holy Keyboard.  The result, we are told, is that there will be an earthquake along the San Andreas Fault that will measure 9.7 on the Richter Scale (making it the strongest earthquake ever recorded), and a subesquent tsunami will pretty much obliterate anything that survives the initial shock.

Of course, in the scientific world, we always look for corroboration, don't we?  If I claim to have made some kind of groundbreaking discovery, then my fellow scientists will try to replicate my findings.  So just listen up, you naysayers: no less than three prophecies of doom have spelled out clearly that San Francisco has been Naughty In God's Sight, and as a result, the city is more or less screwed.

First, we have "Adam H.:"

This video is about what my mom has been telling me for the last day and a half.  She has been having dreams and visions about a large earthquake off the west coast of the United States.  She has had something like this happened to her once before.  It was right before the Japan earthquake and tsunami.  She basically predicted it.  It was pretty intense.  It was about two days before the event.  This one though she says she has seen numbers and dates and times.  It is early October in the daytime, sometime in the morning, on a Thursday.  The warning we are hearing is a 9.7 earthquake on the West Coast.

He was reluctant to pin down the date, but in the comments section he came out with it -- and today is, in fact, the day.

Then, we have the prophecy by "Pastor Joel:"

I received a call from a sister in the Lord (Kelly) who was frightened at a vision she had recently seen. She saw the upcoming date as October 3, with the Golden Gate Bridge breaking in half and going vertical, a huge tsunami covering San Francisco, an earthquake 9.7 in the city and water flooding the valley. Many souls perished. She felt compelled to warn people. Her fear came largely because she had seen a vision of the Boston Marathon Bombing the night before it happened.

As I was sharing these two events with my wife, she reminded me of a call she had received two weeks before. An intercessor friend (Margaret) from the East Bay area had warned Georgia not to go into San Francisco starting the last week in September through the first three weeks of October. Margaret had seen a tsunami and a devastating earthquake in the city, in a vision. Today Margaret told Georgia that many other intercessors have recently seen the same type of warnings.

Earlier this week, I was sharing some of this with our Tuesday Prophetic Luncheon Group. One of our sisters (Barbara) told me that the Lord had spoken to her clearly recently. He said that the “bowl of iniquity of San Francisco” was now full to the brim!

I didn't know there were "Prophetic Luncheons," did you?  What do you do at a "Prophetic Luncheon?"  Eat cold cuts and potato salad and jello mold, and speak in tongues?  What if you have a "Prophetic Luncheon" and the Lord is otherwise engaged?

It'd be kind of embarrassing to have a "Prophetic Luncheon" and then just sit around, munching potato chips for an hour, before finally giving up and deciding that if the Holy Spirit has anything to say, he would just have to wait until next month.

Then, finally, we have the alarming message from "Cindy Page:"

Wow! I have been given a date to “be prepared” (from the Lord) by October 2nd! In my dream there was chaos and madness going on. I asked the Lord when I should be ready. Will it be early October or late October? He told me the 275th day of the year, which is 10/2. I took that to mean the Lord wanted me to be ready by October 2nd.

In my heart I feel that shortly after October 2nd we are going to experience a great earthquake in California and we need to have food and water stored up. If possible, we should have enough for at least a month or two. If possible, be out of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay area by October 1-3 and again on October 23-24.

Of course, the danger in all of this -- for the prophets, not for San Francisco -- is in pinning down a specific date.  Especially a date that is really soon.  Because if you put it far enough ahead, you can stir people up for a long while before they get any kind of verification of whether you were correct or not, while if you say that disaster is going to strike today, you damn well better be right or you will lose any credibility you had.

Not that these folks have much anyway, of course.  I mean, even the seismologists can't predict earthquakes very accurately -- they can tell when a fault is showing signs of seismic stress, but they can't say anything close to, "And it's going to give tomorrow morning at 8:30."  Even the non-wingnuts don't quite get that, sometimes -- which is why six Italian scientists were jailed for malfeasance last year for failing to predict the L'Aquila earthquake of 2009, which killed 300 people.

The wingnuts, though... wow.  They just eat this stuff up.  If you don't mind doing repeated headdesks, go to the link I posted above, and read some of the comments.  A few of them questioned the prophets -- one even pointed out how many times (as in, 100%) that such prophecies have been wrong.  But the majority yammered out their thanks to god and to the prophets for giving them warning.  One will suffice, to get the flavor (spelling and punctuation is as written):

If you have made it here or have been led by Holy Spirit to this site, and this article be thankful and prepare. If any Christian will read thru the old testament you will see a pattern of the cause and effect of straying from the laws put in place by God. Sexual immortality, idol worship, and many other sins by the examples given in the Bible all resulted in judgement. We are blessed to know what is coming so we can prepare. We are supposed to stand thru the storm with a peace that only comes by knowing Jesus Christ. Our fellow brothers and sisters who may not be not be saved should be wanting what we have because we have peace thru the storm. Instead of criticizing take prophetic words to the Lord in prayer. .the Lord just may be trying to alert us to be ready so His light can shine thru us.

So, on the whole, they are wholly in favor of an earthquake obliterating the Bay Area.  But these are the same people who think that the whole Noah's Ark thing, with god wiping out virtually every human on Earth (infants included!) for some unspecified "wickedness," is an edifying story, suitable for telling children in Sunday school.

So I don't think this should come as any sort of surprise.

Me, I'm not worried, and I wouldn't be even if I lived in San Francisco.  An earthquake at some point is probably going to hit along the San Andreas Fault, plate tectonics being what it is, but the chances of it happening today are slim.  Of course, that is unlikely to shake the faith of the aforementioned wingnuts, who seem to forget about such failures nearly instantaneously.  And the next time god tells one of their prophets something -- a typhoon, maybe, headed toward Omaha on December 8 -- they'll be right back to believing it and thanking Jesus for warning them in time.

The trials and tribulations of Pope Francis

I have it on good authority that the new pope, Francis I, is either a spy in league with extraterrestrials, or else is an emissary of the Antichrist who will oversee the destruction of Rome.  Or possibly both at the same time.  It's hard to tell, frankly, because my source for this, an article called "Pope Francis: His Jesuitical, Extraterrestrial, 'False Prophet,' and Political Identities," doesn't seem all that certain itself.

And I have to admit that "good authority" may be a bit of an exaggeration, here.  This article was authored by none other than Alfred Lambremont Webre, who has previously claimed that President Obama has visited Mars, that the Earth would be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011 resulting in all of us being able to engage in "fourth dimensional sex," and that there is a brown dwarf star on the way that will reach its closest approach this year in July and which will trigger "massive electrical discharges" that will result in a catastrophic flood.  (None of us can see the approach of the star except for Alfred, apparently, because the government is hiding its approach from us with chemtrails.  He himself saw it using a "chronovisor," which is a machine that allows him to see the future.)

So, as you can see, he's not exactly the most credible witness right from the get-go.  Be that as it may, let's give him a chance, and hear what he has to say in his rambling diatribe.  Um, article.

Well, first, we have the obvious relevance of the date Pope Francis was elected:

March 13, 2013, the date of Pope Francis I nomination, was the 16th anniversary of the Phoenix Light, a massive space craft that overflew Phoenix, AZ. on March 13, 1997. March 13, 1997 is a significant event in the Exopolitical community that follows the Extraterrestrial presence on Earth.

Don't expect me to believe that's a coincidence.  Alfred either.  You just know that the College of Cardinals was sitting there, on the first day of the conclave, and one of them said, "Hang on... let's wait till tomorrow to decide.  Because then we'll be voting him in on the sixteenth anniversary of a random UFO sighting.  That will send a message, won't it?"  And all of the other cardinals said, "Amen, Your Holy Eminence, that sounds like a dandy idea."

Then, we have a bit about the "Prophecies of St. Malachy," about which I've previously written.  The last pope in the prophecies was one "Petrus Romanus" (Peter the Roman), who was supposed to be the Antichrist's right-hand man, and was going to be in charge of the church during the Tribulation.  So, there's lots of speculation as to whether Pope Francis is actually Petrus Romanus, even though he's not really Peter from Rome, he's Jorge from Argentina.  But hey, close enough, right?  After all, Alfred doesn't even touch on a much greater likelihood, which is that Pope Francis is actually George Bluth from Arrested Development:

Then we have a long, confusing bit about how Pope Francis, in his previous life as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was a Jesuit.  First of all, the Jesuits are somehow connected with research into extraterrestrials, so that's significant.  Don't ask me how.  Secondly, we all know how the Jesuits are an evil secret organization bent on world domination.  Alfred then tells us all about the "Jesuit Oath," which includes the following lovely passage:

[I] declare and swear that His Holiness, the Pope, is Christ's Vice-Regent and is the true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout the earth; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given to His Holiness by my Saviour, Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical Kings, Princes, States, Commonwealths, and Governments, and they may be safely destroyed. Therefore to the utmost of my power I will defend this doctrine and His Holiness's right and custom against all usurpers of the heretical or Protestant authority whatever, especially the Lutheran Church of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and the now pretended authority and Churches of England and Scotland, and the branches of same now established in Ireland and on the continent of America and elsewhere and all adherents in regard that they may be usurped and heretical, opposing the sacred Mother Church of Rome. I do now denounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince or State, named Protestant or Liberal, or obedience to any of their laws, magistrates or officers. I do further declare the doctrine of the Churches of England and Scotland of the Calvinists, Huguenots, and others of the name of Protestants or Masons to be damnable, and they themselves to be damned who will not forsake the same.

The problem is, the "Jesuit Oath" is a hoax.  It was a bit of anti-Catholic vitriol passed around by Protestant fear-mongers in the early 20th century (the same era that produced the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion).  So, really, these two pieces of nasty nonsense constitute two of the first-ever-recorded conspiracy theories.  The evil Catholics are trying to destroy the world!  No, wait, it's the Jews!  No, wait, its both!

In any case, the whole thing is wrapped up with aliens, somehow.  In a passage that should be enshrined forever in the Annals of WTF, Alfred writes:

One hermeneutical interpretation would have "the dragon" of the Book of Revelations identified as "Extraterrestrial civilizations that the False Prophet (putatively Pope Francis I) promotes to humanity. This role of a Jesuit Pope, promoting "Official ET Disclosure" along with other major institutions such as the United Nations and the major space-faring and extraterrestrial knowledgeable nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China, would certainly fulfill one dystopian view of extraterrestrial "Disclosure", that of a false flag extraterrestrial invasion such as was predicted by Dr. Wernher von Btraun [sic] on his death bed and related to Disclosure Project witness Dr. Carol Rosin.

Oh.  Okay.  What?

So.  Anyway.  I know that regular readers of this blog know me well enough to realize that I'm very far from a Catholic apologist.  I think a lot of the Vatican's policies are repressive, backwards, and medieval, and there's no indication that Pope Francis is anything but a party liner in this regard.  And there are, apparently, some questions to be asked about the new pope's past, especially his alleged complicity with abuses by the military junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.  But other than that -- for cryin' in the sink, leave the poor guy alone.  He's barely had a chance to do anything yet, good or bad.  It seems a little premature to conclude that he's going to sell us out to the extraterrestrials.  Or the Antichrist.  Or the evil Jesuits.  Or whoever.  My guess is that he'll just continue the same policies of the last pope, pretty much, and things will go on in the church as they always have.

So, anyway, I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for the time being.  And given that I'm an atheist, I think that's pretty generous, don't you?

Papal prophecies

Well, it's begun.

I knew that as soon as Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, the wingnuts would have a field day with it.  And sure enough, the woo-woo websites were hopping yesterday.  The words "conspiracy" and "prophecy" and "antichrist" and "apocalypse" were used.  Obviously, it couldn't be just what the Vatican said it was -- that Benedict was retiring because he was too pooped to pope.  No.  It had to be something much bigger than that.

Let's start with the fact that shortly after the pope announced his resignation, lightning struck St. Peter's Basilica in Rome:

According to a story in USA Today, experts have analyzed the photograph and found that it's actually not a fake (which was my first thought when I saw it).  On the other hand, I'm not ready to say it's a sign from god, either.  After all, according to lightning expert Martin A. Uman, there are over eight million lightning strikes in the world every day, which is a crapload of signs from god if that's what they are.  Maybe god's "smite" button is stuck on, or something.

But that's not where the nonsense stopped, unfortunately.  According to the site International Tribunal Into Crimes of Church and State, the pope's resignation was because "a European government" was planning on issuing a warrant for his arrest.  The upshot was that the "European government" had its sights set on the Vatican because "...Pope Benedict's complicity in criminal activities of the Vatican Bank (IOR) was compelling his eventual dismissal by the highest officials of the Vatican."

Because that's plausible.  We all know how much the Vatican complies with the demands of other governments.  If the president of, for example, Bulgaria were to ask for the pope's arrest, the Vatican would have no choice but to turn him over.  (Chaos would then ensue as other world leaders gave their two cents' worth, with Hugo Chávez demanding that everyone in Vatican City subscribe to Socialist Worker's Monthly, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad requiring that nuns switch to wearing burqas, and Kim Jong Un asking the College of Cardinals to adopt a "really sexy new hairstyle.")

Then the apocalyptoids began to chime in.  There was a prophecy, they said, made back in 1139 by a guy named Saint Malachy, who either received a vision from god or else had a really bad acid trip, and who claimed that each of the popes was fulfilling a prophecy.  Saint Malachy listed 112 popes, and said that the last one, "Petrus Romanus" (Peter the Roman) would reign throughout the Tribulation, and his reign would end with Jesus returning to judge us all.

Pope Benedict XVI was number... 111.

Dun-dun-DUNNNNN.

Of course, most modern scholars think that the "Prophecies of Saint Malachy" are a late 16th century forgery; even Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, an 18th century Spanish monk, thought the whole thing was ridiculous, noting that the "prophecies" prior to 1600 are extremely accurate, and the ones thereafter seemed like wild guesses.

There are a couple of hits, though, if you squinch your eyes up and look at the prophecies juuuust right.  For example, the prophecy for John Paul I is that he came from "the midst of the moon," and his month-long reign began during a half-moon.  (Okay, I know that half-moons happen twice a month.  Just play along, okay?)  Then we have his successor, John Paul II, whose line has to do with the "labor of the sun," and he was supposedly born during a solar eclipse and buried during a solar eclipse.  But even if eclipses aren't as common as lightning strikes, they're still pretty damn common, with between two and five occurring somewhere in the world every year.  So some date relevant to John Paul II would be bound to occur near an eclipse, no matter what.  The prophecy of Benedict himself requires yet a further reach; his is "gloria olivae," the "glory of olives."  And the best they could do with that was that Benedict was named after St. Benedict of Nursia, who founded the Benedictine Order, which has as its emblem a picture of St. Benedict holding an olive branch.

So, anyway.  Saint Malachy (or whoever forged all of this nonsense in the 16th century) says that the next guy, Petrus Romanus, will have a bit of a rough go:

In persecutione extrema S.R.E. sedebit Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oves in multis tribulationibus: quibus transactis civitas septicollis diruetur, & Judex tremêdus judicabit populum suum. Finis.

In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations: and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible judge will judge his people.  The End.

So the College of Cardinals had better be careful.  If I were a cardinal, I'd made sure to vote for a guy named "Steve" just to be safe.

Anyhow, that's the latest from the world of crazy quasi-religious prophecy.  It'll be interesting to see what happens next.  Myself, I'm guessing that the College of Cardinals will vote in a new pope, who will pretty much keep doing what they've always done, and everything will settle down, with no further lightning strikes, arrest warrants, or tribulations.  But who knows?  Maybe Saint Malachy was right.  The whole "terrible judge" thing sounds pretty dire.  Maybe I ought to invest in a smite-proof bunker.