Introduction
The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them
changes both the maker and the destination.
-- John Schaar
The Practical Nostradamus
This book combines future expectations for the early years of this millennium, integrating the prophecies from Nostradamus's, famous ten-volume work the Centuries, with visions offered by modern authors and scientists, economy experts, and journalists. The idea is to create a book that explores the sixteenth-century prophet's extraordinary ability to see far into his future and at the same time to exemplify the future envisioned by contemporary individuals, many of whom have spent years mapping trends that are likely to occur in what is now an immediate future through the early part of this century. What we find in this prophetic partnership is a remarkable synchronicity.
Michel de Nostradame was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century into a Jewish family in France. His family was forced to convert to Roman Catholicism because of the threat of the Spanish Inquisition, a powerful, militant delegation of the Holy Roman Church that roamed Southern Europe rooting out what the Church believed to be anti-Christian behavior. This was defined so as to include the work of witches in the rural areas of a world that still functioned on a pagan foundation, albeit more than a thousand years after the birth of the Christian faith. Some would say, probably correctly, that this "cleansing" was nothing more than prejudice against women, because for the most part it was women who passed the Wicca magic from one generation to the next. But there was also a great deal of occult practice among men, who still secretly studied alchemy, the occult, and astrology -- the three cornerstones of ancient belief. Nostradamus was to become one of the most famous of these practitioners.
Nostradamus was carefully educated in the arts of the occult and provided with all the Judaic background to his true faith as he was brought to adulthood by two loving relatives, his uncle and grandfather, who also encouraged him into the medical profession. He grew up to be a brilliant and innovative doctor, living at a time when the bubonic plague was blitzing Europe, especially in France, where Nostradamus lived, and in Italy, where he spent much of his life. Dr. de Nostradame studied the ancient natural cures and introduced them to his contemporaries in France. He used, for example, crushed and dried flower petals and oils. These provided vitamin C and other health-giving properties to the suffering, who might otherwise have been subjected to "bleeding" by doctors who typically appeared on the doorstep of a patient's home with a necklace of garlic around their neck and pieces of garlic stuffed up their noses in a vain ploy to prevent the ghastly plague from spreading. Even the young Dr. de Nostradame recognized the foolishness of these bizarre attempts at medicine, and successfully reverted to the pagan cures used by the Wicca tradition for thousands of years.
Though there are stories of how Nostradamus discovered his rather special gift even at an early age in small events such as predicting birth dates and the sex of unborn children. In adulthood, he focused instead on his medical practice, curing thousands of plague victims in his hometown and beyond. He was also, however, a skilled and successful astrologer, so much so that his work came to the attention of the French royal family. Catherine de' Medici, King Henry II's queen, was a politically powerful woman with strong interests in the occult, which she hid behind a Roman Catholic public persona. She summoned the astrologer to Paris, providing transportation for him on a journey that took more than a month (a journey Nostradamus complains about vociferously in his writings). He brought his astrological ephemeras to read the charts of the court nobles, his perfumes and cosmetics to bring youth to their skins, and he made one of his most famous prophecies, that Henry II would die in a so-called fake jousting tournament. The prophecy was, needless to say, not at all popular with the king, but Catherine was so taken by this enigmatic prophet that she adopted him as her unofficial adviser in matters of the future. The death of Henry occurred almost exactly when Nostradamus predicted, four years later, and under the precise circumstances he had described: with a splinter from a spear to his eye through his jousting helmet. This, of itself, established Nostradamus as the world's greatest living prophet of the time.
Nostradamus's Methods
Nostradamus's most important written reference for the methods of the magical aspect of his work was a Latin translation, published in Venice in 1497 by Marsilio Ficino, of a book by a fourth-century philosopher named Jamblichus. In his book, compiled a thousand years before Nostradamus lived as a documentation of all the magic of the ancient world, Jamblichus provided rituals, devices, potions, methods, and all manner of secrets. His goal was to save the rituals and devices of the ancient world against the impending Christian era, which the author feared, with good reason, would attempt to drown pagan practice.
An edition of Ficino's translation of Jamblichus was published in Lyons, close to Nostradamus's home in Salon, in 1549, at the time when the prophet was scribbling his prophetic verses in the middle of each night. (Documentation left behind by Nostradamus's son, César, and his helper, Chavigny, contends that the original prophecies were scribbled on pieces of paper during trance sessions, mostly in the middle of the night and with the help of occult magic and large quantities of nutmeg, which affects the body and mind in a way similar to modern ecstasy drugs -- though the quantities of nutmeg required were ingested over long periods of time and in very large amounts.) Nostradamus's methods of using water gazing, trance, and other rituals are precisely documented in the Centuries, the opening verses of which are almost literal French versions of Ficino's Latin translation of Jamblichus.
The following morning the scribbled prophecies would be gathered up and transcribed into legible script by Nostradamus's helpers. Nostradamus would then "fix" them in time and space, using what was considered to be the science of astrology for the temporal aspects. His visions were literally pictures of the future, and needed to be organized somehow in the sober light of day, his precise knowledge of the future positions of the planets serving to provide this requirement. The end result, a series of extensive notes and commentaries, was then turned into the verses, or quatrains, written in French, Latin, and other languages to disguise their content. These verses were arranged in chronological order at that point, dating from Nostradamus's lifetime on to 3797, the year he tells us the planet Earth will die or cease to contain human life.
The last step was to jumble the verses out of temporal sequence and organize them into the order in which they appear in the Centuries. This was done to prevent the Roman Catholic Church authorities of the time from comprehending the prophet's work, thus avoiding the Spanish Inquisition, he hoped. Nostradamus was as much at risk from militant Church authorities as any witch.
In the coming pages of this book, for each event in each year or series of years, the English translation of the original is provided with the interpretation. To confuse the authorities of his time, Nostradamus deliberately clouded his work in obscurity, using prophetic language, anagrams, complex and hidden dating methods, astrology, obscure names and locations, and arcane terminology. This has been taken into account in the translation and interpretation of the verses.
It is not that Nostradamus did not want us to understand him, for his whole philosophy was that if we could see the future, we could alter it beneficially. But the whole tradition of magical and mystical understanding was intrinsically inhibited by the need to work hard in order to succeed. The doctrines of ancient alchemy exemplify this tradition. If it wasn't enormously difficult, then it wasn't enormously useful. Even the relatively young Christian religions are filled with astrological and alchemical references borrowed from much older religious doctrines and beliefs -- mystical traditions that influenced Nostradamus more profoundly than Catholicism. As mentioned above, Nostradamus was Jewish by birth and studied the ancient Cabalistic understanding of God, which still contained a good deal of alchemy and other pagan rituals as a major part of its doctrines. The basis of what we might call mystical camouflage is that the essence is shrouded in mystery, indeed, ultimately unknowable. But we can dig into these depths and be rewarded if we understand the smoke and mirrors employed. And although you will not be asked to comprehend all this bizarre camouflaging, it is of interest to learn something of how it works.
Decoding the Prophet
1. Anagrams. One of Nostradamus's favorite methods of disguising his prophecies is through the use of anagrams, in which he scrambles words like crossword clues. Henry II becomes "chyren," which, when unscrambled, becomes "Henryc," the Latin version of the name. Colonel Khaddafi is "Adaluncatif," which we can turn into "Catafi Luna," or Khaddafi of the Crescent Moon (the crescent of Islam). 2. Obscure names and locations. In one of his most famous verses, Nostradamus refers to a place called "Angoulmois," a location in the France of his time, in relation to the date July 1999, which is specifically mentioned in the same verse. The area is also known as Angouléme, and during Nostradamus's lifetime the Count of Angouléme was also King Francis I (the king who followed Henry II). A man in Francis's court, Giovanni da Verrazano, was sent by his king to dis...
