Nostradamus

The Wikipedia entry of the day is Nostradamus!

This has a rich personal resonance. When my kids were young my sister-in-law, once known as Sharon Wehner the dancer, now billing herself as Ariole K. Alei, said she believed that she had channelled messages from alien/spiritual presences. She wanted to approach Sting, the Dalai Lama and the Pope to inform them of the messages she had received, to bring about a great spiritual awakening of humankind. She felt that people near to her, by birth or marriage, had been reincarnated. Yours truly was believed to be the reincarnation of Nostradamus. My spouse and her parents seemed to think that Sharon didn't have the gods lined up in the right order, but they felt the same way. My failure to be open to their collective beliefs, whatever they were, became a sore point in my dealings with my wife, and her parents and their circle of friends. My judgment that their New Age beliefs in things like reincarnation were, shall we say, eccentric, and that they seemed to gullible and vulnerable to being pulled into pyramid schemes was answered by their judgment that I was negative, destructive, hostile and sick. Repent Harlequin said the tick tock man and all that.

Sharon/Ariole has moved on and become a personal coach and healer, a poet, and spirit guide. Her husband is involved in the same ventures. They used to brand themselves as matchmakers too, but now they offer life and relationship services.

One of the links on Sharon/Ariole's web site goes to the Liberty League (critical web site here) - a classic pyramid scheme, which has been sued for consumer fraud by the Attorney General of Arizona. If you repeat your mistakes, are you reborn?

I, Nostradamus, predict a hard fall for these fools.