SantaDamus.

Friends,
Health care passes its biggest hurdle on Christmas Eve. Now it goes from the Senate back to the cantankerous US Congress. See how Predictions for 2010 is on track with these current events.

Heirs of Nostradamus, Part 2

In Heirs to Nostradamus, Part 1, David Pitt Francis got a little Looney with the lunar calendar clues of Century 3 Quatrain 94, said to give the year of the penultimate interpretive tome on Nostradamus would come out no later than 1987-1988. However, the lunar calendar calculation had doomsday set for 1997. Since we are all still here — including yours truly who published his first book on the prophecies of Nostradamus in 1987 — we must admit now that we have been psychic cowboys on the trail of a bum-seer theory. That leaves us Quatrain 94 as a possible index-as-prophecy date for the next try.

I think many people published Nostradamus books in 1994, I know I did: Nostradamus the New Revelations. I recall Knut Boeser published his Nostradamus; V.J. Hewitt did her Nostradamus, His Key to the Centuries. She had some other key competition from Bardo Kidogo’s The Keys to the Predictions of Nostradamus. Finally, there was Francis W. King’s Nostradamus: Prophecies fulfilled and Predictions for the Millennium & Beyond.

My favorite prophecy yarn coming out in 1994 didn’t have to do with Nostradamus that much. It was John Dollison’s little book with an epic tongue-in-cheek title: Pope – Pourri: Little-known facts you may not remember from Sunday School, including why the Pope wears a pointy hat, the strange fate of the Singing Nun, what the Baltimore Catechism says, and why St. Lucy carries her eyeballs on a platter.

I’ll have to write a blog about her. Anyway, here’s Century 1 Quatrain 48 wherein we might find further (hopefully better!) clues than last time as to who is the A-One-in-Auguring interpreter of Nostradamus and when. Is it any time soon?

Here’s Century 3 Quatrain 94 again:

De cinq cens ans plus compte l’on tiendra,
Celuy qu’estoit l’ornement de son temps:
Puis à vn coup grande clarté donra,
Que par ce siecle les rendra trescontens.

For five hundred years more they will take notice of him,
Who was the ornament of his time:
Then suddenly a great revelation will be made,
Which will make people of that century well pleased.

Five hundred years more from what? Perhaps the end of his legacy, foreseen here?

Century 1 Quatrain 48:

Vingt ans du regne de la Lune passez,
Sept mil ans autre tiendra sa monarchie:
Quand le Soleil prendra ses iours lassez,
Lors accomplit & mine ma prophetie.

When twenty years of the Moon’s reign have passed,
Another will take up its reign for 7,000 years:
When the exhausted Sun gathers up its days,
Then my prophecy and threats will be accomplished.

Nostradamus (1555) 1 Q48

This quatrain might clue us in to the length of the prophet’s legacy. Roussat believes the astrological lunar cycle mentioned above is that of 1535 to 1889. Twenty years after 1535 is Les Propheties publication day, 1555. This could extend Nostradamus’ chronicle of human history beyond the ninth millennium.

Then again, the Nostradamus controversy (whether he is a prophet or a practical joker) is approaching 454 years in running at the time of this blog’s creation, in May 2009, the same month in 1555 when he published the first three volumes of his ten volume set of quatrains as prophecies. Just another 46 years and we will be at the 500-year publication anniversary. On the other hand, perhaps the prophet meant his birthday back in 1503. That means 2003 was the advent window.

Who then is Nostradamus’ number one homey of hoary hocus with the most interpretive pocus? Yo, Nostradamus, say what?

All interpreters of Nostradamus like to play “Nostradamus says.” Because of this I’ve often formed my responses to the question “What does Nostradamus say…etc.?” on email, radio and TV with the caveat, “Nostradamus hasn’t said anything for a long time. He’s been dead for nearly 500 years. What is true is that I’m saying something according to my understanding of Nostradamus.”

I wish more latter-day diviners of the long-departed seer would take this line of discretion.

Beware of the interpreter’s ego. I always try to keep this in mind. Still, it would be redundant to tag “in my opinion” to every interpretation made, so let me say up front that anything I write about Nostradamus’ prophecies is my interpretation. I won’t hide behind the etheric cop-out that I’m “channeling” his ghost, some New Age angel, dolphin or space alien-leprechaun. If I get it wrong it is my fault, not someone or something else’s.

I am partial to the winner of the “most favored interpreter” label being the one whose interpretations gain strength over the coming half-century. The jury will warm the benches and make their call about 46 years from now.

I don’t think I’ll be alive to see it in this current corporeal form, but I can predict this. In my future reincarnation, I foresee a lot of people thinking I look like John Hogue, (see below).

John Hogue

(24 December 2009)

Many of you have asked me what I think about Rathford’s book and the theory that Nostradamus had some all-encompassing key to unlock his cryptic prophecies faster than impish actress Audrey (Amelie) Tautou can say, “Da Vinci Code.”

Some answers gain more authority with time. My answer to Rathford and all those before and after him who attempt to find a code has not changed since I wrote the following opening extracts in the mid-1990s for my complete translation of Nostradamus’ prophecies, published in 1997, in a book entitled “Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies.”

The first passage gives some background. The second directly takes on the theory and the theorists who believe in Nostradamus Codes.

***

PASSAGE ONE:

GUIDELINES FOR READING NOSTRADAMUS

I was willing to hold my peace by reason of the injury, not only of the present, but future time as well, and refrain from writing because if the present kingdoms, sects and religions were to see the future kingdoms, sects and religions to come, and see how diametrically opposed they are to their pet fantasies, they would condemn that which future centuries will know to be true… Later… [I] decided to relinquish withholding my tongue and pen from paper by declaring in dark and cryptic sentences the causes of the future changes of mankind…by clouding them in obscure but, above all, prophetic language.

Michel Nostradamus 1555

I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.

Casey Stengle
Manager of the New York Yankees (circa 1955)

If Nostradamus was ever reincarnated as a baseball manager, the thought-and tongue-twisting Casey Stengle of the New York Yankees and New York Mets would be my first choice. Like Stengle, Nostradamus turns his native tongue into his own language, fashioning and discarding syntax and grammar rules one sentence at a time. Stengle’s retrograde thinking and dyslexic words of wisdom revolutionized baseball. Nostradamus’ peculiar pen has made him the unsurpassed king of prophets. In the dross of absurdities and calculated insanities Nostradamus hides the gold nuggets of authentic and unrivaled prophetic inspiration. Stengle’s fractured figures of speech were innocent utterances, whereas the seer of Salon, Provence, shaped his ambiguous messages with great care and forethought.

And Nostradamus’ obscurity conjures many results. For one thing, his writing is muddled enough to be taken any way one wishes. It befuddled the Church Inquisitors to the extent that Nostradamus accomplished something rare for authentic seers of his day — he avoided torture and execution as a magician and died peacefully in his bed. His ambiguities have kept the controversy of his prophecies alive, and even enhanced his stature as a seer in the centuries following his death (just as he predicted).

What Casey Stengle once said about managing a baseball team can be applied to Nostradamus’ success as an obscurer: “The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”

Nostradamus’ cryptic chronicle of the future has succeeded in distancing his attackers from the majority of his undecided readers. Defining his nebulous narrative is not unlike lying on your back in the grass and gazing at the shapes of puffy clouds. You see a giraffe. Your friend sees an elephant. You can argue with him. Your success at convincing the other depends on your eloquence, not on the reality of the cloud. People keep playing the same game with the misty mentality of Nostradamus. He understood that people love to project their prejudices onto the canvas of the obscure and that this passion in human nature for giving shape to ambiguities will always survive a skeptic’s attack. Nostradamus ensures his cloudy credibility by injecting moments of brilliant clarity that occasionally burn an opening in the general overcast of his narrative. We suddenly see names, dates, and intimate details of events as they happened — or will happen.

Nostradamus’ 36,200 weird words of prophecy are the molecules that compose the dark surface of his magic looking glass. On rare occasions we can peer into its surface and see the seeds of humanity harvested in tomorrow’s field of dreams. But the magic doesn’t end there. Nostradamus’ “glass” reflects both ways. His strange language, symbols, barbarisms, and insights can also be used as a projector of the hidden secrets of his interpreters, be they the commentators or the readers of his oracular opus. A study of Nostradamus is more than just another examination of fulfilled and yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecies; it can be an exploration into how we project our thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears on the future.

Before beginning a journey through time and our projections, it would be advisable to study some of Nostradamus’ grammar rules (or lack thereof), decoding techniques, and interpretive pitfalls uncovered during four hundred years of scholarship. In this way we can rub some of the fog off his looking glass to better see who or what is gazing back at us.

PASSAGE TWO:

Code-breaking Nostradamus

Contrary to the claims of many imaginative dilettantes and a few sincere theorists, no one has yet found the key to any single all-encompassing code that unlocks his secrets. After 22 years of study [make that 33 years, now] I conclude that a magician of Nostradamus’ intelligence would not be so stupid as to forge a weak link in the chain of his future legacy. At best there may be random devices and codes, but as we will see, even unlocking a random code conjures up more questions and mysteries than answers. It seems to be Nostradamus’ rule to keep’em guessing.

Some of the most entertaining books on Nostradamus’ boast about discovering some secret code. For instance, in 1991 authors Peter Lorie and V. J. Hewitt boldly claimed that they had made a complete scientific decodification of the prophet, from his chapeau of anagrams down to his syllable toes. With such a marketing hook I wondered why the promised “detailed” and scientific instructions were tucked away in the back of the book. The instructions brazenly asked the reader to comprehend Hewitt and Lorie’s “scientific” theories by taking a leap of faith beyond objectivity. The back cover boldly declares that Hewitt herself was foreseen by the prophet as the one who would unlock his secrets. So far this book is only remarkable in its remarkably detailed failures, such as Prince Charles’ failing to become king of England in 1993, George [H.W.] Bush failing to win a second term as president of the Untied States, and California not sinking into the Pacific Ocean at exactly 7 pm on 8 May, 1993.

Since that time Hewitt has struck out on her own and her declarations are far more cautious and open to interpretation. One no longer sees the dates for “decoded” prophecies listed on the cover of her books. There is much more use of “could” than “will” in her declarations these days.

I would cordially suggest to Hewitt, Lorie, or any future code-busters that they submit their claims to an impartial test. Anyone who believes he or she has decoded Nostradamus’ quatrains should send their selection of decoded quatrains, with down-to-the-day-and-minute declarations for the coming year, to a reputable metaphysical organization such as the American Society for Psychical Research. After one year those interpretations can be unsealed before an audience of debunkers, journalists, and true believers to test their veracity. After predictions are verified, then, and only then, should that author publish his or her book claiming to decode Nostradamus.

Rather than play hide-and-seek for some code to dispel all mystery, future translators might consider that Nostradamus may have intended that we apply the perspectives of our own era to his prophecies.

His own astrological makeup indicates that Nostradamus was not an ego wishing to be found out. But he was an alchemist of controversies. His obscurity has worked to keep alive for centuries what may be a practical joke or a true prophetic gift, or some combination of the two. Debunkers and blind believers alike ought to be aware that attempting to make the prophet fit their own preconceived ideas and prejudices and calling it his “real” intention, are futile.

Excerpts from
Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies,
pp. 11 – 12, 18 – 19.

John Hogue
(08 September 2007)