I’ve been working on my fantasy world and thinking about prophecies.  Setting aside any discussion of whether people can have future knowledge (through inspiration, psychic ability, or what have you), there’s still the question of how the prophet communicates what they see in a coherent and believable fashion. 

The early warning system.

Suppose a prophet is in a position to tell something really important.  He’s got to get people to listen, which isn’t such an easy thing if he sees something far into the future.  Chances are he’s communicating something which seems improbable or everybody would have figured it out.  He may be telling people something that’s hard for them to understand.  Say, warning of car, trucks, and horse-trailors in a day when people can’t imagine chariots that run by themselves and pull horses behind them on platforms.  You see the problem?

Last minute warnings.

The issue here would probably deal more with getting people to listen at all.  They may still find his supposition too fantastic (If you’d told me on 9-10-01 that people would dive a plan into a skyscraper so I shouldn’t fly the next day, I’d have sent you to a shrink) and therefore ignore it.  Another problem is that in a late warning, things may have gotten out of hand because the people ignored the early warning signs.  Or maybe not.  But just suppose people like society the way it is, then the prophet comes along and tells them the situation is about to go haywire on them. are they going to listen?  Not likely.  People who are already at the fringes of society seem the most likely to listen, as they have less to lose.  Those with power and influence are going to show him the door.  The fact that the prophet has only convinced the riffraff isn’t going to help his case.

So the prophet may make a wide variety of decisions when dealing with his prophetic warnings.  Suppose they use reverse psychology to get their warning heeded?  Suppose s/he refused to tell a soul, and just made private preparations?  Suppose they became the power behind the throne, or even became a villain in the public eye so the people would take action?  All the time knowing that they would be hated for what they’ve done, but it was the only way they could save their people.

Rambling thoughts, I know.  But this is the part of world building that’s most fun.

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