John Hogue

Astrology is just a map of the personality, but we are more than our ego personality. Life is sometimes a train and sometimes a car. Life is sometimes full of free ice cream and next a slap in the face. The questions I pose through meditation are "who is driving the car?" "Who is on the train?" "Who eats free ice cream one moment and is hit in the face the next?" Who is "this…THIS, ten-thousand times… This?"

John Hogue describes himself as a "world authority on Nostradamus" and a "rogue scholar". We describe him as woo-meister and bullshit artist. In a stopped clock moment of remarkable quality, Hogue had the foresight to title the biography he hosts on his website as An Idiot’s Autobiography.

Most of his "work" is focused on making future predictions based on Nostradamus, astrology, or a mixture of both. He makes a great many predictions in every direction; whenever possible he goes back and revises the ones that didn't pay off, and—lo and behold—some of his guesses actually stick.

Even other astrologers think Hogue is just making stuff up. Then again, astrologers can never agree on anything. Hogue has managed to garner what seems to be a comparatively small but loyal following; his 2015 book Trump for President: Astrological Predictions managed to become Amazon.com best-seller in the "prophecies" category, and his other books also seem to sell reasonably well. Some have even gone so far as to suggest he is the reincarnation of Nostradamus himself! His status as a crank is verified by many appearances on Coast to Coast AM.

Scrabble
[Nostradamus'] writing is muddled enough to be taken any way one wishes. His ambiguities have kept the controversy of his prophecies alive, and even enhanced his stature as a seer in the centuries following his death (just as he predicted). In an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Hogue guides the viewers through the process by which he arrives at his "predictions"—as it turns out, by playing one-man Scrabble:

In addition to replacing the "u" with an "a", he fails to mention how he obviously "reversed" the "b" into a "d", never mind the fact that "Saddam" is spelled with two "d"'s. The bill thus lands on one letter reversal, two letter replacements, and letter added outright. Hogue continues;

Though it is established that he can just replace letters as he sees fit, he decides to flip the "m" into a "w". The concept of a "silent "h" in Latin" is not only a gross oversimplification, it is also a red herring by Hogue, since he himself just spelled out the letters as "b-u-s"—with the addition of a "silent h", which he then instantly proceeds to say out loud in "busH". A "silent letter" does not mean: a letter you don't write yet somehow get to pronounce. A "silent letter" means: a letter you write but don't pronounce.

Thus, Hogue's mystifying technique goes as follows;
 * 1) Inserting a brand new letter into a word where it never belonged in the first place.
 * 2) Pronouncing said new letter out loud, allowing it to alter the phonetics for said word.
 * 3) Referring back to said insertion as having been "silent".

Finally, he tops it off by very clearly jumping back and forth between Latin and English rules for pronunciation; he claims the "silent "h"" belongs in the word in the first place in reference to Latin grammar rules, yet he uses that same Latin grammar rule to add the "h" that is required to get the full phonetic picture for the English (not Latin) pronunciation of the word in question ("Bush"). Besides, what happened to the "a"? Is it also "silent"?

Actually, this isn't "one-man Scrabble" after all, since Scrabble has actual rules; you can't just make shit up on the fly.

The game is quite easy to play. We note that if "Mabus" is reversed, the "s" is dropped at the beginning, an "a" is added at the end, and the "u" is replaced with an "o", "Obama" is clearly revealed.

Revisionism
I've read just about everything that John Hogue has written, particularly this book; [Holds up book] Nostradamus and the Millennium—very attractive book. On page 124, he names the Antichrist. And the Antichrist he names as Khomeni, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Shortly after that the Ayatollah died, so he didn't fulfil his duty to be the Antichrist, aaah, but that doesn't stop John Hogue! He doesn't pause for a second! He writes a second edition! [Pulls out identical looking book] Looks the same… just about the same, because when we look in here—oh! Gee, the Ayatollah isn't in here anymore! Who has suddenly become the Antichrist? Saddam Hussein. You can't rewrite your books after their predictions don't happen! But John Hogue apparently thinks that's kosher. Apparently, he thinks you can do that. [Shakes head in disapproval] I don't think so.

Hogue has an annoying tendency to retroactively change his predictions if when they conclusively fail to deliver, beyond all shadow of a doubt. In the 1987 edition of Nostradamus and the Millennium he names Ruhollah Khomeini as the Antichrist. Khomeini inconveniently died in 1989, so the 1991 second edition names Saddam Hussein as the Antichrist with no mention of Khomeini. Saddam has also inconsiderately died since, so in 2008 he named Osama bin Laden as the Antichrist—who has since also snuffed it. The current runner-up is Obama; judging from Hogue's previous predictions, Obama is now cursed and should very, very likely die in just a few years.

Geography skills
John Hogue: "At 45 degrees latitude, the sky will burn. Fire approaches the great new city.". Latitude 45 degrees—the only new city since Nostradamus' time that you could call great and new and vast, is the city that rests, uh, between 40 degrees and 41 degrees latitude—which is Manhattan, in New York. Now, that's a little off. James Randi: ...he's ! When [Nostradamus] said "the new city", he was referring to. He refers to it several times in his writings, and he makes it clear that he's talking about Naples. Not.

Who needs maps when you can shoehorn?

Presidential "predictions"
In his 1998 book 1000 for 2000 Startling Predictions for the New Millennium from Prophets Ancient and Modern he makes a great many predictions—among others, the results of presidential elections, and states that he's been right about this since 1968 (when he was 13).

Well, let's see how often he's right.

Note that these were all the predictions he made. No cherry picking! Still, there are people who claim that "he predicted the last 12 presidents correctly".