Nostradamus Goes High-Tech : French Computerize Their Belief That Fate Is in Our Stars, Not Ourselves

In France, where a single star in Michelin’s influential guide can determine the prosperity of a restaurant, it is only fitting that guidebook, as well as celestial, stars play a decisive role in the lives of astrologers and soothsayers.

When the first edition of the “Guide to Fortune-tellers and Astrologers” appeared here in 1983, astrologer and medium Ariane d’Athis was not even included in the book. In the most recent annual edition, however, D’Athis received a three-star rating--one notch below the highest grade.

“It’s helped my business tremendously,” the 45-year-old fortune-teller said. “I never pay for publicity, so being reviewed in the guide has been very important for me. With so many astrologers and fortune-tellers around, every little thing helps.”

No One Keeps Records

The exact number of seers in Paris is as difficult to nail down as the future itself. There are laws outlawing fortunetelling, but no records on the number of Paris’ prognosticators.

According to the “Guide,” written by two French journalists, there are about 25,000 soothsayers in Paris--not counting the city’s 2,000 sorcerers. By comparison, the capital has 7,500 physicians, 2,700 dentists, 2,800 butchers and 1,600 bread-and-pastry makers.

From 8 million to 10 million Frenchmen visit fortune-tellers, astrologers, graphologists and sorcerers each year, spending a total of $500 million to $600 million, according to recent estimates in Le Nouvel Observateur, a respected weekly news magazine.

This large-scale fascination is hardly unique to the French--even though France in the 16th Century was home to Nostradamus, one of history’s most celebrated fortune-tellers. Around the world today, particularly in Africa, South America and the Far East, fortunetelling and astrology play far more important roles in everyday life.

Land of Some Logic

The Gallic passion for forecasting the future is surprising, though, given the traditional French penchant for enlightened reasoning and Cartesian logic.

In a recent 11-page cover story on the occult in France, Le Nouvel Observateur reported that “today, all over, one truly sees that rationalism is cracking up.”

Under the headline “France Bewitched,” the magazine described the phenomenon as “an enormous irrational wave that is swelling on the horizon that will break soon--sweeping away our closely held beliefs.”

Christian Bertaux, an ethnologist who teaches a course on the “Dimensions of Divination” at a faculty of the University of Paris, agrees that France is currently undergoing “a crisis in rationality.”

“The great certainties of earlier centuries are no longer absolute, so the French are now doing things they never would have done before,” said Bertaux, 40, an expert on African rituals that supposedly divine the future.

“In the face of economic, political and social uncertainty, we are seeing a growing reliance on fortune-tellers and astrologers. Divination is being practiced everywhere and it is taking on new, modern dimensions. Chicken sacrifices are out, and computers are in.

“The logic of mathematics and computers,” Bertaux went on, “marries well to traditional astrological and divination techniques.”

Enter, Astroflash

On the Champs-Elysees, for instance, Astroflash, a computer-based astrology firm, serves more than 300 customers each day. At lunchtime, a line often spills out of the store as people wait to have their futures foretold by a massive IBM computer that churns out more than 360 miles worth of horoscopes and colorful birth charts each year.

“The two best sellers in France are the Bible and Astroflash,” Roger Berthier, the company’s owner said with a grin. “Astrology is the meteorology of life. Computers have made weather forecasting more scientific, and that’s what we’re doing for astrology.”

Long before the advent of high-tech fortunetelling, France was home to Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, the physician and astrologer in the court of Henry II.

In his obscure, rhymed prophesies under the title, “The Centuries,” Nostradamus--according to various and conflicting interpretations--is said to have predicted the accidental death of Henry II of France in 1559, the execution of Charles I of England in 1649, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the French Revolution.

One couplet, for instance, has been interpreted to foretell Adolf Hitler’s final days deep inside his Berlin bunker. “With fire flying overhead,” Nostradamus wrote in 1555, “trouble will befall the besieged Great Chief, and inside there will be such insurrection that despair will overcome all.”

Today, Nostradamus remains a source of mystery and fascination for the French. Throughout the year, many flock to the southern town of Salon-de-Provence, where Nostradamus lived his last years and is buried.

Arcane Group

“It’s unbelievable how many people come and visit us,” said historian Rene Chapus, curator of the home of Nostradamus. “We have visitors from all of France and the world,” said Chapus, 72, an active member in the “Friends of Nostradamus” society.

Nostradamus is not the only prognosticator to have been consulted by French potentates. King Louis XI, who ruled France from 1461 to 1483, never made a move without first consulting his fortune-teller, Galeotti.

And Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife regularly consulted Mlle. Lenormand, a popular seer who accurately predicted that Napoleon would die in exile on St. Helena.

More recently, according to Serge July, editor and publisher of the daily newspaper Liberation, four horoscopes were prepared for former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing before the 1981 elections. They could not have done much good, since three mistakenly predicted that he would win.

Current French leaders are rumored to see fortune-tellers and astrologers; however, the soothsayers refuse to divulge the names of clients.

“I never reveal their names, but I assure you they are important,” said Jacqueline Mallay, a psychic who, according to the “Guide to Fortune-tellers and Astrologers” is regularly consulted by France’s top officials.

“I tell them what the future holds in store, and if they choose to act on my advice, so much the better,” she said. “But normally, they never listen. They don’t change, even if I warn them.”

Celestial Decor

On French radio, fortune-tellers and astrologers get top ratings by giving helpful life-style tips to hundreds of thousands of listeners. In one broadcast, for instance, an astrologer explained to her audience how to decorate homes in keeping with the signs of the zodiac: pink walls and thick curtains for Libras, cork walls and floor tiles for Capricorns.

A fall, 1981, survey conducted by Sofres, the leading French polling firm, found that 60% regularly read their horoscope in magazines and newspapers. Roughly 36% said they believed that the stars influence personality types, and 25% accept the predictive power of astrology.

In a bustling bistro on the Left Bank of the Seine recently, a palm reader made her way through a crowded restaurant--moving from table to table, conferring with lunchtime diners. And in the popular bookstore Gilbert Jeune, shoppers crowd into a section set aside for books on the occult. In a special display case next to the books, crystal balls, Tarot cards and other mysterious trinkets are also for sale.

On another level, graphology--the study of handwriting as an expression of an individual’s character--is an established discipline here.

Air France regularly employs handwriting analysts to predict how candidates for employment will perform in junior executive positions. “Graphology is considered a serious science by Air France,” said Penton Spring, a company spokesman.

Danielle Thibault, who is responsible for hiring young Air France executives, emphasized that handwriting is only one of many criteria used to judge about 4,000 candidates for employment each year. They are also interviewed by two psychologists and a panel of three Air France executives.

Graphology, she said, is used to appraise--among other things--an applicant’s maturity, social aptitude, potential, capacity for decision making, self-confidence, dynamism, objectivity, professionalism and efficiency.

Profitable Stuff

Graphology, at least, is tolerated by French law but only when used to appraise an individual’s character. For all its popularity, fortunetelling in France is entirely illegal.

As far back as 1584, the city of Bourges, in central France, passed a straightforward law proclaiming: “You will not tolerate sorcerers and you will have them killed. All persons who consult a soothsayer will be punished with death.”

In the 17th Century, King Louis XIV issued a decree against fortune-tellers, sorcerers and magicians after La Voisin, a soothsayer, was burned in 1680 for poisoning at least 2,350 people with what she called “inheritance powder.”

Today, the voluminous French penal code stipulates that fines can be levied against “people whose job involves divining and fortunetelling or interpreting dreams.”

The code also orders the imprisonment of people who pretend to have extraordinary powers or who “breed feelings of hope or fear regarding accidents or all other chimerical events.”

Do as We Say ...

But the laws are ignored, even by the lawmakers.

“Fortunetelling will never be stopped because they pay to much in taxes to the treasury,” explained Gilles d’Ambra, editor of the glossy monthly magazine, Vous et Votre Avenir (You and Your Future). According to Le Nouvel Observateur, fortune-tellers and astrologers paid more in taxes in 1983 than did doctors, lawyers or architects.

At France Cartes, one of the largest manufacturers of Tarot cards in the world, sales have increased 20% to 30% each of the last four years. And a new astrology magazine is scheduled to hit the racks shortly, joining five other French periodicals that focus exclusively on fortunetelling and the future.

Though fortune-tellers and astrologers say their business is growing because of the human need to calm the anxieties that accompany modern social, economic and technological change, psychic Jacqueline Mallay has another explanation.

“It’s all in the stars,” she said. “France is coming under the turbulent influence of the planet Uranus, which means there will be a great increase in the devil’s work in our country.”

“When we leave the influence of Uranus, things should return to normal, confidence will rise, and the people perhaps will again look to themselves for answers, instead of to us and to the stars.”