NOSTRADAMUS : THE HIDDEN PROPHESIES

Nostradamus, or more accurately Michel de Nostredame, was born in France in December 1503 and died there in July 1566. He was therefore a contemporary of Henry 8^th although it was two French monarchs of that name with whom he was actually associated. Firstly Henry 2^nd whose death he predicted and which led to his fame and more sensationally perhaps, predicting the ascent of a boy at the French Court to eventually become Henry 4^th.

Nostradamus! The name has an almost magical ring to it. Whether you’re a believer or skeptic, the very  mention of this astrologer, mystic, prophet or quack, whatever your persuasion… by his reputation alone quickens the pulse. In his early life he studied medicine and became a doctor who helped fight the plague, soon after which he claimed to have foresight and seriously turned to astrology, a hot topic of his day and one strongly bound up with two other big interests, that of astronomy and cosmology. Taken together they all served as a fascination for many, especially royalty and the nobility, for such things as horoscopes and predicting the future. In a way I suppose this was quite natural, both for monarchs with dynastic aspirations as well as dictators.

The first installment of his book, Les Propheties, was published in 1555. With its predictions and prophesies of world historical events it caused a sensation when it appeared and quickly became a bestseller. His services as astrologer were in immediate demand and he was summoned to Court by the French Queen Catherine de Medici to draw up horoscopes for all seven of the de Medici royal children. These prophesied that all her sons would be kings. Some might say that he was just an old smoothie, a bit like Disraeli and Queen Victoria; both men, coincidentally had Jewish backgrounds, but it certainly did Nostradamus no harm. Soon he was being consulted by a wide variety of powerful people who asked him for horoscopes, birth-charts and other astrological readings. He was definitely on the up and up with his influence at the French Court immense, especially after predicting the dramatic death of the King.

You can imagine the scene. Get it right once with superstitious febrile minds all hot to learn of their fate who believed that their future was bound up with mathematical calculation to predict planetary alignment and you were on a definite roll, and Nostradamus, though certainly no scientist like Galileo, certainly had a way with numbers. His second installment of prophesies was published in 1557 which appeared like the first in the form of four line verses or quatrains written in medieval French. The third appeared in 1558 and for some reason disappeared and was lost. However an Omnibus Edition of all his predictions appeared two years later, after his death in 1566.

All his predictions, with the patronage of royalty behind them, were a major hit of his time throughout Europe and have been in print ever since. He’s the greatest star in the astrological heavens with more written about him and his prophesies than the science of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton put together. Mysticism , prophesy and prediction have undeniable charm as modern mass media astrologers are only too well aware. Charm that is for certain categories of the emotional and spiritually needy.

His career as astrologer developed as a consequence of his interest in astronomy, particularly planetary alignment. Considering the event of 1524 he looked back to those of 1186 and 710 and consulting historical records noted that nothing major had occurred in those years and correctly predicted that nothing major would happen when the next alignment happened. In this he took his first step, hoping to predict and time future events by looking back to the past. The fact that in theory there should be no causal relationship between the two events cuts no ice for those needy enough to believe that there is!

Astrology was immensely popular in all the late medieval circles of wealth and power. It was a time prior to the emergence of science during the Renaissance, one where Catholic orthodoxy had reigned supreme in Christian Europe for centuries, and as a pseudo-science had a companion bedfellow in alchemy. Today astrology with its attendant tarot card companion is no longer the prerogative of royalty and the nobility but with the advent of industrialization, democracy and various personal rights has had its franchise of interest extended into the masses, today having a huge following! The predictions and prophesying of Nostradamus   hasn’t gone away. By no means! Predicting the future and prophesying events are of as much interest today as they ever were five hundred years back which is why millions of people the world over are interested in the man whose name has become synonymous with the power of prophesy. A man about whom thousands of books have been written along with tens of thousands of theories about what he actually prophesied and what has or has not come true.

There is today as much speculation about what he actually said as there is about what he didn’t say! It is actually possible to turn just about any one of the many hundreds of quatrains that he wrote into whatever way you want to see it. Interpretation of just about anything he said is so flexible that you can make it mean anything! That in writing about someone called Hister he prophesied Hitler and the Nazis… and there’s loads more of where that came from. Just about everyone and anyone connected with prophesy, futurology and interpretation gives themselves license to come up with something weird, wonderful and different so what we have now is a situation where thousands of people are making a living saying he meant this and didn’t mean that. In short, Nostradamus has become an industry for astrology junkies, even science fiction speculation specialists who say he was really an alien from the future who got left behind on some secret mission to planet Earth and having changed his appearance got on with life best as he could by pretending to make predictions when he knew about things all along! Oh, and if you think that I’m making it all up then please think again!

Some of his most important themes, however, are recurring and topical. A major one of his time was the relationship between Christianity and Islam, mainly due to endless military and religious conflict between the two warring faiths. Thus in his 1566 Almanac he predicted imminent major Muslim invasions of Europe. The theme was topical then and for good reason. Today there are many who might justifiably say that the man got it right with Muslim immigration into Western Europe over recent decades running at unparalleled levels and that population movement is only a precursor for something quite different. Of course, they will point out that Nostradamus said this 500 years back, but then it was just as big in his day as it is right now in ours! The fact that we in Europe have been living cheek by jowl with a seriously different culture with  dissimilar values for 1500 years now is nothing new and for the man to predict major future conflict between the two faiths is actually not a big deal. What is a big deal is that this conflict became subsumed for well over 400 years beneath British colonialism and empire. Beneath the rise of Imperial power, both British, French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as Russian, and with the collapse of this power, the conflict between the two faiths has reemerged with a vengeance. What Nostradamus didn’t do was provide any predictive analysis for the dynamics of the conflict. Something that cynics would point out that he was unable to do BECAUSE SUCH EVENTS HADN’T OCCURRED YET!

However, given the circumstances of the time in which he lived, with the rise of British, Spanish and Portuguese naval power in the first half of the 16^th century it wouldn’t have been such a big deal by such a clever astrological dick to have prophesied the rise of British and Spanish Empires in the New World and its possible consequences for checking any further Islamic incursion into Western Europe. Indeed one might have expected such a prediction from such a great prophet but alas no such luck. Not that I can see anyway!

My reason for writing about Nostradamus in this post however is something quite different than seeking to challenge, minimize or critically examine his prophetic power but to bring to the attention of both his supporters and detractors something quite new. Something altogether unexpected in our knowledge of the man’s life and work. Something indeed so unexpected to me that I can hardly believe my good fortune in making my remarkable discovery only recently, more by chance than anything else, not as a disciple in any way of the man’s thought. It all came about when I’d decided just a few months back to visit some relatives on my father’s side of the family living in Paris. It was at an in between time of some amicable conversation and my aunt’s marvellous cooking that I decided to take a vacation and after the usual tourist attractions made my way to the famous Bibliotheque National and using my British Museum Library Card sat in the Reference Library for a while running my eye over a folio of facsimile Vatican manuscripts which I’d summoned up from the basement.

The studious atmosphere around me was all most delightful and pleasant. Academics from all over the world  researching for papers or books. Much furious writing and working computer screens. I was clearly at the heart of so much scholarly research in the sciences and arts. Here I was at the very apex of Western scholarship and thought and what a privilege it was simply to be there! My mind returned from its wandering among my surroundings to concentrate on the folio placed on my desk, bound with a ribbon I noted and like the Essex lad I’d once been I’d had the immediate thought which I instantly sought to suppress… oh how fucking quaint… but found myself unable to do so despite my many years of scholarly study at some of our best Universities. Well notwithstanding the ribbon barring my way I undid it and began perusing the documents. These were a series of Vatican interdicts from the early 17^th century of materials deemed impermissible reading. Indeed unsuitable for contemplation or study, from the simply challenging to the plain nasty and damnably heretical. All hidden away under the clawing hand of the Inquisition with their authors gone to the stake.

Clearly some had escaped along with their works for I recognised certain names. However at the back of the file was another, somewhat smaller, though sealed, and like the larger marked with the obligatory large blood red cross at its front. I was instantly curious and looked for simple ways to open the file but was unable to do so, not without causing some damage. I referred the matter to one of the assistants present, presenting my credentials and asking where the original might be found. Quite naturally, as I learned, it had come up from somewhere deep in the basement.

I’d very much like to have a look at it, I said softly, speaking my best mediaeval French. I mean down there where it is… It would be so much more, well how should I put it, atmospheric you might say… Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. Why, I spoke the language she was doing her own part time research in… It was a most unusual request but then… Well perhaps it was possible…

Minutes later quickly following her through a kind of hidden doorway lined with books I made my way along a poorly lit passage then down a flight of wooden stairs clutching a railing for dear life. She seemed to know her way about I couldn’t help thinking. How many men had she had down there with her in the past I wondered and what were they doing? It was the Essex in me all over again! Cut it out, I silently said to myself, following close behind and now bending a little as the ceiling narrowed, all around me a thin layer of dust. At last, she came to a stop and turned to me. Well here was the place indicated in the records for the original folio, the facsimile of which I had up on my desk. I smiled at her graciously. She’d been altogether too kind. And there, true to the Library records it was, tucked neatly up on the shelf. May I, I asked, indicating my interest in taking it down for perusal.

Moments later I had it in front of me, going through the original ancient pages, last seen no doubt by Inquisitional hands. I felt that I was actually staring at history as my eyes ran over the documents. Not only staring at it but actually part of it and the decisions men made to ban, burn or simply hide important works of the time they felt too dangerous or threatening to be seen. List after list of names, plays, poetry, scholarly consideration, literature. It was all there in front of me on the original folio parchment. And there at the back the other much smaller file with its symbolic red cross. My hands trembled as I lifted it out, only this time, to my astonishment, it was actually open!

I can barely describe my emotions, even now. I looked across at my young French companion. Waiting for her to say something as I recall. She looked at me with those wide eyes of hers and slowly nodding her head gave me a look as if to say, well what are you waiting for, you wanted to see the original file… This was all true but quite frankly nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. It contained everything in the facsimile upstairs only here there was more. A solitary folio page inside another folder which bore the cryptic message on its front cover written in Latin. Translated I read it thus, Never to be Publically Known… and below was the Great Seal of the Inquisitor General of the time.

My feelings can be barely imagined. Never to be Publically Known… and here was I, a man of the 20^th century reaching back to what I wasn’t quite sure. I took it all in at a glance. A single sheet with four quatrain verses. In the blink of an eye there were names of planets set in strange cryptic verse which I read over and over. Nothing at first seemed to make any sense. The style was strange, almost predictive. Then suddenly I had it. Knew exactly what I was looking at even if I didn’t have any idea what it all meant. It was probably the handwriting more than anything else. I could only stare at the paper in wonder then turned to look at my companion, only a single word passing my lips…

Nostradamus, I said slowly, my intuition racing. These quatrains belong to Nostradamus! They were hidden by the Church. They were never to be seen by the public.

We looked at each other for a moment. I knew I was right. In the 1550’s and 60’s they allowed all his other predictions to be published but somehow not these. He’d died in 1566. They must have been written years earlier, possibly part of that final set of 1558 that had disappeared without trace. It was impossible to know for sure. Maybe they’d been studied by some Inquisitional Enquiry. A decision taken to have them all burned, yet for some reason they’d been removed, saved, hidden away. All these thoughts raced through my mind. Saved by whom? I could hardly imagine. My eyes ran to the top of the paper and I began reading, wanting answers. Wanting to understand more than anything…

Here they are, as I read them on that fateful sheet… Translated from the French,

Two dark nights will rise at dawn

devour the virgin and the corn
Saturn from east, Pluto north
when Luther over Rome comes forth

The old keep company with the new

as many first then late as few
With pestilence much gone to dust
our holy world then torn in two

Some say the glowing orb lies still

and all we are doth go around
While men of little worth grow great
proclaim new destiny and unholy fate

The blood and bread and wine betwixt

beginning and unknown end are mixed
And all eternal motion ruled by number
fixed… And faith itself now cast asunder

It was down there in that basement cellar with Madeleine that I felt my thoughts transfixed. Hers too I think as our eyes ran over the lines. I was still struggling to understand them, but where we were just wasn’t the place. It would be impossible to get them out of the building but that didn’t matter. The camera in my mobile would do it all. I quickly put it on flash, took the sheet twice then each quatrain separately. Seconds later I checked to see it was all there and that was it. Time to close everything up, put back and get the hell out. That we did and later that evening got to work in her flat.

Coffee on the table and the precious papers spread out under a powerful lamp we tried making sense of it all. These were four further prophesies. Clearly lost for hundreds of years. Hidden away as I’d already thought but the question was why? What was it that the Inquisition had read into them that made them so disturbing, so threatening? Guided by that as a clue we began going over them one at a time. The first quatrain, from its opening line as it seemed deliberately set out to be cryptic… Two dark nights will rise at dawn… Nights rising at dawn! Some joker! Devouring the virgin and the corn… It all gave a sense of turbulence and destruction. One figure of astrology coming from the East the other from the north both implied catastrophe. Finally Luther over Rome comes forth… This now made it all clear enough. There’d already been a sense of calamity but with the mention of Luther there was no longer any need for speculation. This was the Rome of Catholicism and the appearance of Luther from the north, one of the fathers of Protestantism, heralded religious conflict.  Seen as a whole these were not simply lines of prophesy but together pointed to a kind of  spiritual apocalypse!

Sitting there as we did we could see it all from our own historical time but for those reading the prophesy then it’s impact would have been frightful. A prediction of impending doom and more than enough to make them want to hide it away!

The second quatrain in a way seemed to run on from the first. The old keeping company with the new… Catholicism keeping company with the new faith… In a majority at first then losing ground to the new rival religion. All the chaos and destruction caused by the conflict between the two faiths with the unity of holy Christianity torn in two… Yes, this was now equally clear. The prediction of coming religious conflict and a world division within the Christian faith must have seemed terrifying to the fathers of the Inquisition who read it, especially then facing the challenge of Islam! It would have been regarded as outright heresy! Perhaps Nostradamus was too well established at the French Court for him to be questioned or worse so they covered it over with censorship. Hid it away like it never existed. Kept a serious eye on the prophet instead.

With our heads together over the table we concluded the same. Our interpretation seemed at once sensible and logical. The third quatrain however was the most interesting so far. Here, the glowing orb to which Nostradamus referred was clearly the sun! Some say the glowing orb lies still…  Of course, this was the notion that the sun was stationary and that the planets, particularly Earth, moved round it. This was something directly contrary to the teaching of the Church, namely that the Earth, along with God and the Church, were all at the center of the Universe and the Sun and its planets moved around it. To imply anything else was again outright heresy and it is not too difficult to guess who the men of little worth were. Indeed, the first men of experiment and science were those of astronomy like Galileo along with all the new thinkers and philosophers of the Renaissance with their new ideas about humanism, the value of personal thought and man’s place in the Universe. Such thinking was total anathema to the Catholic Church and the Inquisition of the time. Nothing less than damnable! The prediction of the coming triumph of such thinking was quite revolutionary. It could never be permitted to reach a wider public so there it was, down in some dusty old cellar hidden away in  a folder!

Madeleine and I stared at each other, both of the same mind. Not for too long if we could help it! The new great prediction could now be brought to the attention of the world! Yet there was also the fourth with its talk of the blood the bread and the wine… It all sounded very Catholic, but then between beginning and end, and all of it mixed… What on Earth did that mean? It seemed to place Christianity between a definite beginning and an unknown end in time. Just a kind of faith in an eternal scheme of things but here, having said that, Nostradamus gives us his last and perhaps greatest thought in these most heretical and radical of all his predictions. Namely that in the future, we would understand that such things as motion could be understood through science i.e. quantification by number rather than religious interpretation. As he said in his last line… And faith itself now cast asunder

This, perhaps, is probably the most extraordinary line of these four lost quatrains and in my opinion the most prophetic single line he ever wrote. It is entirely out of keeping with so much of his earlier thought and clearly demonstrates the personal distance he’d travelled . All eternal motion ruled by number fixed,  in other words quantifiable, and not just motion but implied here is so much more, even gravity if he’d gone any further. But then maybe he did. Maybe there was far more that was lost than we suppose. Newton perhaps, even Einstein! The names of these men of course could not have been known. Their ideas and thoughts perhaps, another thing altogether!

When we looked at all these considerations together they seemed to make wonderful sense and we congratulated ourselves on what we took to be our brilliant surmises. Everything seemed clear to us then. Our interpretations all seemed to fit. Not only had we discovered something new and amazing that day deep in the Library but with our minds on fire, had taken it forward. Taken the ideas of a man long dead to exciting new levels. What would he have said if he’d been with us, we wondered? Especially over a good cup of coffee or a bottle of wine. And in Paris of all places, one of the centers of revolutionary thought!

It had been a wonderful day and a wonderful evening. Two minds interacting together. Speculating, racing along new and exciting horizons after making discoveries. Conscious that they are the first. That they’ve been somewhere that no-one else has ever been! Maybe the old man found it too. Discovered the sense of being the first! That night we raised a glass to him and spoke his name well.

Today, not long after, I’m communicating our story to you. After ourselves you are the first to know, worldwide, over the web. To as many as we can free of charge. The way it should be.