Nostradamus

Michel de Nostredame or Nostradamus was a French astrologer, physician and seer, who is best known for his book Les Prophéties, which consists of 942 quatrains purporting to predict future events.

Nostradamus was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on 14 December 1503, and was one of the nine children of a local notary Jaume de Nostredame and his wife Reynière, a granddaughter of the physician Pierre de Saint-Rémy.  

Jaume’s family had been Jewish, but his father, Cresquas, a grain merchant and money dealer based in Avignon, had converted to Catholicism around 1459–60, taking the Christian name ‘Pierre’ and the surname ‘Nostredame’.

Nostradamus began studying for his baccalaureate at the University of Avignon when he was 14 but was forced to leave a year later when an outbreak of the plague closed the university. 

For several years, he travelled the countryside researching herbal remedies and working as an apothecary before enrolling at the University of Montpellier. He hoped to obtain a doctorate in medicine but was expelled because he had worked in a ‘manual trade’, i.e. as an apothecary. 

Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, encouraged Nostradamus to come to Agen in 1531. There, he married and had two children. In 1534, he resumed his travels throughout France and Italy after plague killed his wife and children.

In 1545, he assisted  Louis Serre, a prominent physician, in combating plague in Marseille, before confronting outbreaks in Salon-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence on his own. 

He married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde in 1547 and settled in Salon-de-Provence. There, the couple had six children—three daughters and three sons. 

From 1550 until  his death in 1566, he wrote one or more almanacs annually under the name Nostradamus. The almanacs proved immensely popular and he began to work as an astrologer for various wealthy patrons including the French queen, Catherine de’ Medici. 

He published Les Prophéties in 1555. This edition consisted of 353 verses or quatrains and was to be the first of three installments of a larger work of a thousand quatrains. Les Prophéties was divided into chapters or ‘Centuries’, with each Century containing a hundred verses. 

The quatrains were vague and Nostradamus further obscured the meaning of his prophecies with word games and a liberal sprinkling of Greek, Italian, Latin, and Provençal words in the French text. For some unknown reason, the last fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh ‘Century’ were never published.

Nostradamus suffered from gout for many years. This eventually turned into edema and led to his death in July of 1566.

He was buried in the Franciscan chapel in Salon but was reburied in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent in Salon-de-Provence during the French Revolution.

LEGACY

Les Prophéties, the work by which he is remembered today, received a mixed reception during Nostradamus’s lifetime. 

In the years since his death, Nostradamus has attracted many ardent supporters, and is often credited with accurately predicting major world events. Nostradamus’s detractors, on the other hand,  reject the notion that he had supernatural or prophetic abilities. 

His critics argue that his predictions are notoriously vague, and that most quatrains can be applied to a multitude of events. 

This site is for entertainment purposes and I take no responsibility for any actions based on my interpretations of Nostradamus’ prophecies. Although I try to present an objective appraisal of Nostradamus’ work, I leave it up to the reader to determine how successful I have been. I am not offended in the slightest if the reader chooses to reject any – or all – of the solutions I put forward. 

ORIGINS OF THE PROPHECIES

Some of Nostradamus’s more extreme critics have advanced the notion that his prophecies are based on historical events projected into the future using ‘comparative horoscopy’, i.e. the notion that events and planetary alignments are linked so that the same event occurs every time the planetary alignment repeats. Even astrologers regard ‘comparative horoscopy’ as complete nonsense.

As the quatrains are peppered with reference to Greek gods and mythological figures, one is left to wonder how Nostradamus arrived at the planetary alignments in these cases.  

But, there is no need to speculate because Nostradamus tells us the technique he us to arrive at his predictions.  In the first two quatrains of Century 1, he says:- 

Sitting alone at night in secret study;

it is placed on the brass tripod.

A slight flame comes out of the emptiness and

makes successful that which should not be believed in vain.

The wand in the hand is placed in the middle of the tripod’s legs.

With water he sprinkles both the hem of his garment and his foot.

A voice, fear: he trembles in his robes.

Divine splendor; the God sits nearby.

In other words, his knowledge of future events came to him in the form of visions while in a trance induced by staring into a bowl of boiling water. 

Nostradamus uses a variety of ancient sources and populates his quatrains with historical figures as well as divine and semi-divine beings.  He was a proud Renassaince scholar and expects those attempting to decipher his clues to have a good working knowledge of the ancient sources.

He makes this clear in Century 6, quatrain 100 when he says:-

INCANTATION OF THE LAW

AGAINST INEPT CRITICS

 May those who read this verse think upon it deeply,

Let the profane and ignorant herd stay away.

Let all astrologers, idiots and barbarians stay away,

He who does otherwise, let him be priest to the rite.

Moreover, this statement leaves no doubt that Nostradamus rejected astrology as a means of divining the future.

REASONS FOR OBSCURING HIS PROPHECIES

Some researchers say Nostradamus was afraid of being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition, but neither prophecy nor astrology were considered heretical unless they involved magic. And therein lies the problem, Nostradamus says his predictions are based on visions he received while in a trance induced by staring into boiling water. If true, then he had reason to fear the Inquisition.

 Although he was Imprisoned briefly in late 1561 for failing to obtain the prior permission of a bishop for the publication of his 1562 almanac, the Inquisition was not involved.

The critics overlook one very important point: prophecy is often obscure. And there is a very good reason for this – prophecy is most impressive if it does’t influence the actions of the person receiving the prophecy. For example, when the Delphic Oracle told Creosus he would destroy a great empire if he went to war with Persia, he failed to appreciate that the Lydian Empire, his empire, would be the one destroyed.

CONTINUING POPULARITY

Since his death, Les Prophéties has become far more popular than it was during his lifetime. Publishers have produced over two hundred editions of the book and authors have penned more than 2,000 commentaries. His far more fancied almanacs, on the other hand, are all but forgotten. 

Critics argue the vagueness and lack of dating ensures the survival of his predictions. They contend that too many people are happy to project their thoughts onto vague prophecies in search of validation. Equally, those who believe in the accuracy of the his prophecies usually link an individual quatrain with an important events after it has occurrred. There have been few, if any, instances where they predicted events based on the contents of the quatrains. Moreover, with every retrospective ‘hit’ added to his list of successes, Nostradamus’s fame as a seer spread far and wide.

But the picture painted by the critics overlooks those quatrains which clearly refer to real historical figures such as Napoleon and Hitler. The predictions are far more nuanced than most critics contend. In addition, some of Nostradamus’ ‘failures’ may be faulty interpretations of his visions. For example, if Nostradamus received a vision of a gravely ill person and wrongly concluded the illness was fatal, it doesn’t prove the vision was false. 

WHY DID NOSTRADAMUS WRITE LES PROPHETIES?

Nostradamus’s many critics seldom ask this important question. Wnen he wrote Les Prophéties, he was at the height of his fame and Les Prophéties, because of its lukewarm reception, served to diminish – not enhance – his growing reputation as a seer. 

Either Les Prophéties is one of the most elaborate practical jokes in history or Nostradamus’s real reason for publishing his prophecies has yet to be revealed.

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