Nostradamus

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Nostradamus

Nostradamus, (December 14, 1503 – July 1, 1566)

bornMichel de Nostredame, is one of the world's most
famous authors of prophecies. He is most famous for his
book Les Propheties, which consists of rhymed quatrains (4-
line poems) grouped into sets of 100, called Centuries.

Nostradamus enthusiasts have credited him with predicting a

copious number of events in world history, including the
French Revolution, the atom bomb, the rise of Adolf Hitler and
the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Detractors, however, see such predictions as examples of
vaticinium ex eventu, retroactive clairvoyance and selective
thinking, which find non-existent patterns in ambiguous
statements. Because of this, it has been claimed that
Nostradamus is "100% accurate at predicting eventsafter they
happen".

Contents
• 1 Biography
• 2 Preparation and methods of prophecy
• 3 His works
• 4 Skepticism
• 5 Misquotes and Hoaxes
• 6 Nostradamus in popular culture
 o 6.1 Television
o 6.2 Film
o 6.3 Music
o 6.4 Comics
• 7 Sources

• 8 External links
Biography
Born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France in
December 1503, Michel de Nostredame was the son of a grain
dealer who was also a prosperous home-grown notary. His
family was originally Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism
during the previous century. Nothing is known about his
childhood, but at the age of fifteen he entered the University of
Avignon to study for his baccalaureate. After little more than a
year he was forced by the Plague to leave again. In 1529, after
some years as an apothecary, he entered the University of
Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine, but was
promptly expelled again when it was discovered that he had
been an apothecary, which was a 'manual' trade expressly
banned by the university statutes. He then continued work as
an apothecary, and created a "rose pill" that was widely
believed to protect against the the plague.

In 1531 he was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading

Renaissance man, to come to Agen. There Nostradamus
married a woman whose name is still in dispute (possibly
Henriette d'Encausse), but who bore him two children. In
1534, however, his wife and children died, presumably from
the plague. After their death he continued to travel, passing
through France and possibly Italy.

He settled down in 1547 in Salon-de-Provence, where he

married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde Gemelle and
eventually had six children - three daughters and three sons.
After a further visit to Italy, he began to move away from
medicine and towards the occult. He wrote an almanac for
1550, for the first time Latinising his name to 'Nostradamus',
and was so encouraged by its success that he decided to write
one or more annually. Taken together, they are known to have
contained at least 6338 prophecies (most of them, in the
event, failed predictions), as well as at least 11 annual
calendars, all of them starting on 1st January and not, as is
sometimes supposed, in March. He then began his project of
writing 1,000 quatrains, which form the supposed prophecies
for which he is famous today. Feeling vulnerable to religious
fanatics, however, he devised a method of obscuring his
meaning by using "Virgilianised" syntax, word games and a
mixture of languages such as Provençal, Greek, Latin and
Italian. For technical reasons connected with their publication
in three instalments, the last 58 quatrains of the seventh
'Century', or book of 100 verses, were never published.

The quatrains, written in a book titled "Les Propheties",

received a mixed reaction when they were published. Some
people thought Nostradamus was a servant of evil, a fake, or
insane, while many of the elite thought his quatrains were
spiritually inspired prophecies. Soon nobility came from all
over to receive horoscopes and advice from him, though he
normally expected them to supply the birthcharts on which
they were based. Catherine de Médicis, the queen consort of
King Henry II of France, was one of Nostradamus' admirers.
After reading his almanacs for 1555, which hinted at unnamed
threats to the royal family, she summoned him to Paris to
explain them, as well as to draw up horoscopes for her royal
children. At the time he feared that he would be beheaded, but
by the time of his death in 1566, she had made him Counselor
and Physician in Ordinary to the King.

By 1566 Nostradamus's gout, which had painfully plagued him

for many years and made movement very difficult, finally
turned into dropsy. At the beginning of July, after making an
extended will and a much shorter codicil, he is alleged to have
told his secretary Jean de Chavigny, "You will not find me alive
by sunrise." The next morning he was reportedly found dead,
lying on the floor between his bed and a makeshift bench.
Some biographical accounts of Nostradamus' life state that he
was afraid of being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition,
but neither prophecy nor astrology fell under this bracket, and
he would have been in danger only if he had practised magic
to support them. In fact, his relations with the Church as a
prophet and healer were always excellent. His brief
imprisonment at Marignane in late 1561 came about purely
because he had published his 1562 almanac without the prior
permission of a bishop, contrary to a recent royal decree.

Preparation and methods of prophecy

While Nostradamus was clearly familiar with recent Latin
printed editions of a range of esoteric writings, as well as
having a passing acquaintance with astrology, recent research
has shown that most of his prophetic work was based on
paraphrasing collections of ancient end-of-the-world
prophecies (mainly Bible-based) and supplementing their
insights by projecting known historical events and identifiable
anthologies of omen-reports into the future. It is thanks to this
that his work contains so many predictions involving ancient
figures such as Sulla, Marius, Nero, Hannibal and so on, as
well as descriptions of "battles in the clouds" and "frogs falling
from the sky". The end of the world, after all, was confidently
expected at the time to occur in either 1800 or 1887, or
possibly in 2242, depending on the system adopted.

His historical sources include easily identifiable passages from

Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch and a range of other classical
historians, as well as from the chronicles of medieval authors
such as Villehardouin and Froissart. Many of his astrological
references, by contrast, are taken almost word-for-word from
the Livre de l'estat et mutations des temps of 1549/50 by
Richard Roussat. Even the planetary tables on which he based
such birthcarts as he was unable to avoid preparing himself
are easily identifiable by their detailed figures, even where (as
is usually the case) he gets some of them wrong.
His major prophetic source was evidently the Mirabilis liber of
1522, which contained a range of prophecies by Pseudo-
Methodius, the Tiburtine Sibyl, Joachim of Fiore, Savonarola
and others (his Preface contains no less than 24 biblical
quotations, all but two of them in exactly the same order as
Savonarola). Further material was gleaned from Petrus
Crinitus's De honesta disciplina of 1504, which included
extracts from Psellus's De daemonibus and the De Mysteriis
Aegyptiorum..." (Concerning the mysteries of Egypt...), a book
on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th?century
neo-Platonist. Latin versions of both had recently been
published in Lyon.

While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have

burned all the occult works in his library, no one can say
exactly what books were destroyed in this fire. The fact that
they reportedly burned with an unnaturally brilliant flame
suggests, however, that some of them were manuscripts on
vellum, which was routinely treated with saltpetre.

Given that his methodology, clearly, was mainly literary, it is

doubtful whether Nostradamus used any particular methods
for entering a trance state, other than contemplation,
meditation and incubation (i.e. ritually 'sleeping on it'). His
sole description of this process is contained in letter 41 of his
collected Latin correspondence, as republished by Jean
Dupèbe. The popular legend that he attempted the ancient
methods of flame gazing, water gazing or both simultaneously
is based on an uninformed reading of his first two verses,
which merely liken his own efforts to those of the Delphic and
Branchidic oracles. In his dedication to King Henri II
Nostradamus describes "emptying my soul, mind and heart of
all care, worry and unease through mental calm and
tranquility", but his frequent references to the "bronze tripod"
of the Delphic rite are usually preceded by the words "as
though".

His works
 A copy of his Propheciesdated 1672, located at The P.I. Nixon Medical
History Library of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San
Antonio.

The Prophecies - In this book he collected his major, long-term

divinations. The first edition was published in 1555. The
second, with 289 further prophetic verses, was printed in
1557. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains,
was reportedly printed in 1558, but nowadays only survives as
part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death
in 1568. Thanks to printing practices at the time, no two
editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to
find even twocopies exactly the same.

The Almanacs - By far the most popular of his works, these

were published annually from 1550 until his death. Often he
published two or even three in a single year, entitled
eitherAlmanachs (detailed
predictions), Prognostications or Presages(more generalised
predictions).

Nostradamus was not only a diviner, but a professional healer,

too. We know that he wrote at least two books on medical
science. One contained an alleged "translation" of Galen, and
in his so-called Traité des fardemens (basically, a medical
cookbook containing, once again, materials borrowed mainly
from others) he included a description of the methods he used
to treat the plague - none of which (not even the blood-letting)
apparently worked. The same book also describes the
preparation of cosmetics.
A manuscript normally known as the "Orus Apollo" also exists
in the Lyon municipal library, where upwards of 2000 original
documents relating to Nostradamus are stored under the aegis
of Michel Chomarat. It is a purported translation of an ancient
Greek work on Egyptian hieroglyphs based on later, Latin
versions, all of them unfortunately ignorant of the true
meanings of the ancient Egyptian script, which was not in fact
deciphered until the advent of Champollion in the 19th
century.

Skepticism
Skeptics of Nostradamus state that his reputation as a prophet
is largely manufactured by modern-day supporters who
shoehorn his words into events that have either already
occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable, a process
known as as "retroactive clairvoyance". No Nostradamus
quatrain has been interpreted beforea specific event occurs,
beyond a very general level (e.g., a fire will occur, a war will
start).

A good demonstration of this flexible predicting is to take lyrics

written by modern songwriters (e.g., Bob Dylan) and show
that they are equally "prophetic".

Some scholars believe that Nostradamus wrote not to be a

prophet, but to comment on events that were happening in his
own time, writing in his elusive way - using highly
metaphorical and cryptic language - in order to avoid
persecution. This is similar to the Preterite interpretation of the
Book of Revelation; John the Apostle intended to write only
about contemporary events, but over time his writings became
seen as prophecies.

The well-known prophecy that "a great and terrifying leader

would come out of the sky" in 1999 and 7 months "to
resuscitate the great King from Angoumois" has been much
over-stated. The phrase d'effraieur (of terror) in fact occurs
nowhere in the original printing, which merely uses the
word deffraieur (defraying, hosting). On the basis of
Nostradamus's by-now well known technique of projecting past
events into the future, it therefore evidently refers back to the
restoration to health of the captive Francis I of France (who
was Duke of Angoulême) following a surprise visit to his cell by
his host, the then Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1525. No
less than five of the planets were in the same signs on both
occasions.

The bulk of the quatrains deal with disasters of various sorts.

The disasters include plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods,
invasions, murders, droughts, battles and many other themes.
Some quatrains cover these in over-all terms; others concern
a single person or small group of persons. Some cover a single
town, others several towns in several countries. All of them are
presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of
the world – a conviction that sparked numerous collections of
end-time prophecies at the time, not least an unpublished
collection by Christopher Columbus.

Misquotes and Hoaxes

Nostradamus' writings have frequently been misquoted and, in
some instances, even deliberately altered in order to "prove"
that he supposedly predicted various events – especially the
most recent and dramatic ones. There is a persistent tendency
to claim that 'Nostradamus predicted whatever has just
happened'. Since the advent of the Internet, many prophecies
have even been fabricated outright, therefore enhancing the
mystique of Nostradamus. For example, after the September
11 Terrorist Attacks, the following was circulated on the
Internet along with many more elaborate variants:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder,

Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning
As it turns out, the first four lines were indeed written before
the attacks, but by a Canadian graduate student named Neil
Marshall as part of a research paper in 1997. Ironically
enough, the research paper included this poem as an
illustrative example of how the validity of prophecies is often
exaggerated. For example, the "City of God" (why is New York
City the City of God?), "great thunder" (could apply to just
about any disaster), "Two brothers" (lots of things come in
pairs), and "the great leader will succumb" phrases are so
ambiguous as to be meaningless. The fifth line was added by
an anonymous Internet user, showing obvious alteration since
Nostradamus wrote his Propheties in four-line verses called
quatrains. Nostradamus also never actually referred to a "third
big war".

Sometimes, though, the hoaxes are tongue-in-cheek:

Come the millennium, month 12

In the home of greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader.

This was supposed, of course, to refer to the election of

George W. Bush as President of the United States.

To verify the authenticity of a purported Nostradamus

quatrain, compare the identifying number (e.g.: C1, Q25 or
'I.25' means Century 1, Quatrain 25) against an authoritative
version of Nostradamus's works, which will likely also contain
the original old French – or click on the appropriate link below
to see facsimiles of the originals. Even the Preface and the
Epistle to Henri II have been assigned numbers (e.g. PF50,
EP102).

Nostradamus in popular culture

Television

The television series Alias prominently features the character

Milo Rambaldi, a fictional Nostradamus-like prophet. In the
science fiction series First Wave, the protagonists use the
quatrains of Nostradamus to fight back against an alien
invasion. Nostradamus has also been parodied on Comedy
Central's Chappelle's Show.

Film

He is the subject of many films and videos, including:

• Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow at the

Internet Movie Database (1981)
• Nostradamus at the Internet Movie Database (2000)
• Nostradamus at the Internet Movie Database (1994)
Depicts Nostradamus's rise in influence, because of
success in treating plague and his predictions,
culminating in his appointment as court physician to
Charles IX of France.

None of them can be regarded as factual or reliable, though.

Music

Composer Robert Steadman has twice used Nostradamus'

prophecies in pieces of music: in the 1987's quatrains by
Nostradamus were juxtaposed with the Latin Requiem Mass
text and poems on environmental issues. And in 1999, he set
what was thought by some to be Nostradamus's prediction of
the end of the world for soprano and chamber ensemble in The
Final Prophecy.

In 2005, Dutch band Kayak released a rock opera

called Nostradamus - Fate of Man. English singer/songwriter Al
Stewart wrote a song called "Nostradamus", concerning the
prophecies, for his 1973 album Past, Present, and Future.

Comics

In an Italian Mickey Mouse story, Mickey and Goofy travel back

in time and by accident a young boy followed them back to the
present. The boy had to go back to his own time and his
memory of the future was erased, but before that he grabbed
pieces of books. The boy of course became Nostradamus and
the ripped pages from books explained his visions of the
future. The story was made by Massimo Marconi and Massimo
De Vita.

A Phantom story from 1983 by Ulf Granberg and Jaime Vallvé

featured an appearance by Nostradamus.

In the DC Comics Universe, Nostradamus was an ancestor of

Zatara and Zatanna.

Sources
• Randi, James, The Mask of Nostradamus, 1993
• Brind'Amour, Pierre, Nostradamus astrophile, 1993
• Brind'Amour, Pierre, Nostradamus. Les premières
Centuries ou Prophéties, 1996
• Dupèbe, Jean, Nostradamus: Lettres inédites, 1983
• Lemesurier, Peter, The Nostradamus Encyclopedia, 1997
• Prévost, Roger, Nostradamus, le mythe et la réalité, 1999
• Chevignard, Bernard, Présages de Nostradamus 1999
• Wilson, Ian, Nostradamus: The Evidence, 2002
• Clébert, Jean-Paul, Prophéties de Nostradamus, 2003
• Gruber, Dr Elmar, Nostradamus: sein Leben, sein Werk
und die wahre Bedeutung seiner Prophezeiungen, 2003
• Lemesurier, Peter, The Unknown Nostradamus, 2003
(biography)
• Lemesurier, Peter, Nostradamus: The Illustrated
Prophecies, 2003

External links
• ODP directory: Nostradamus
• Nostradamus Society of America
• General information, translations and illustrated tour of
Nostradamus's Provence
• Timeline
• Facsimiles of original editions
 • Facsimiles of many contemporary texts
• Online text of Nostradamus in translation
• www.nostradamus.org The Prophecies of Nostradamus
Newsgroup
• Snopes: False claims of Nostradamus predicting the
World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001
• Peter Lemesurier's website, including FAQs

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