Return to sender, address unknown.
No such number, no such zone.
This time Im gonna take it myself
And put it right in her hand.
And if it comes back the very next day
Then Ill understand .....
source: Return to sender, Elvis Presley
Continuing with the idea that prophecies and time travel (sending messages to the past) are two sites of the same technology, let us take the following point of view.
Nostradamus listened to a specially prepared coded summary describing some of the main events that happen during the centuries ahead of his time. For this, he might have tapped into some kind of a communication channel using occult rituals. The sender of the visions exists in a time far ahead of ours. This sender uses some kind of device to broadcast through the communication channel verbal messages to the past.
If sending messages to the past is something that can be done with the help future technology, then the working of it does not fit the current accepted theory about time. It could also be that the only way to prove whether it can be done might be to try it, and actually send messages to the past. Visions might be the result of this kind of future time travel experiments to test the theory of sending messages to the past. What might be needed from a receiving prophet is no more than a simple confirmation of receipt.
Future knowledge might cause an alteration in history. Coding the messages might therefore be the only way to prevent the seer and others to 'hack' predictions before the event occur. In such case true prophecy is of no use for any prophet or contemporaries. Knowing this might even rob them from their motivation to participate in the first place.
If the purpose of sending a message to the past is to prove the a time travel theory and to receive back some kind of confirmation of receipt then it is conceivable that the only thing that the occult source wants from the prophet is to produce an exact copy of the communication on paper. The prophet must therefore not alter, interpret, add, subtract or transform the prophecy in any way. If the messages contains secret code then the sender could later decipher and use this secret part of the message when the receipt 'arrives' back in his own time.
The information could be coded so well that although a seer can receive the message and copy it, he cannot possibly understand its true meaning. It depends on the intention of the prophet how he would interpret these garbled messages.
If the intention would be to proof schizophrenia, voices in your head would get you a long way. If the intention is to communicate with the death these voices might be interpreted this way. The receiver might be able to interpret the coded messages as some answers he looked for. Effectively 'Shoehorning' the cryptic coded messages to fit his questions.
If the indicated communication channel really exists and psychics can tap into it, than it is still doubtful whether useful information might ever be retrieved from this channel. There might be a conflict of interest between the sending party and the receiving party. It might be that the sending party knows the receiving party's future, but at the same time there might be a threat that the receiving party could change the sending parties past.
Therefore to send useful 'receivers' information (clear predictions) through this channel might not be in the interest of the sender (it might change its past).
To send useful 'senders' information through this channel (instruction for writing a 'boring' confirmation of receipt) might be completely useless for the receiver.
Maybe the object of the sender is, to make the receiver believe that the information is useful, so that he desires to participate, fulfilling the role that the sender wants him to play.
It is clear that if the communication model has something of truth in it then sender and receiver live in complete different realities. The prophet expresses himself in terms of divine revelation, voice of prophecy, occult source, the chosen one, visions and the like while future scientists would express themselves more in terms like sender, receiver, medium, broadcasting, selection process, time machine, space-time continuum, worm wholes and the like. They will perceive, experience and interpret things differently. The same event will be perceived in complete different ways and described in different terms by each of them. Neither will be capable to completely understand the world of the other side.
Nostradamus might have listened to a specially prepared coded summary of future history. He might have tapped a communication channel using occult rites.
If the receiver would know the real intention of the message it might
take away its motivation to participate.