Nostradamus (1503-1566)
(True name: Michel de Notredame or Nostredame)
The French physician and astrologer, whose prophecies have attracted the imagination for centuries, his predictive verses were studied by the Nazis during World War II. Besides his famous publication, Centuries, Nostradamus published in 1550 an almanac containing weather predictions.
The first edition of his quatrains appeared in 1672. In 1999, with the approach of the end of the millennium, apocalyptic fears raised new interest in the writings of Edgar Cayce, Jean Dixon, Nostradamus, and other prophets.
Sitting by night in my secret study,
Alone, resting upon the stool of brass,
A slight flame, going out of the solitude,
Makes me pronounce what is not to be believed vain.
The wand in hand, set in the middle of the branches,
From the wave I wet both the hem and the foot,
In fear I write, trembling in the sleeves,
Divine splendor: the Divine seated nearby.
(from Centuries, 1555-58)
Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, was born in St. Rémy, Provence into a well-educated Jewish family, who had acquired their property in the grain trade. His parents converted to Catholicism, which made Nostradamus both familiar with the occult wisdom of the Kabbalah and the prophecies of the Bible. Michel was the eldest son; Bertrand, the second son passed into oblivion - they both were duly baptized. At home Michel was educated in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, astronomy and other sciences. At the age of nineteen he was sent to study medicine at the University of Montpellier. In Avignon he had read works on magic and the occult. Like physicians at that time, he did not make a clear distinction between alchemy and pharmacy - for his doctorate in Montpellier in 1529 he defended various unorthodox remedies which he had used. After becoming doctor of medicine he worked for some time as a professor, and practised later in Agen, where he met the famous scholar Jules-César Scaliger, Lyons, and other places in southern France. In Agen he married; he had a son and a daughter and led an idyllic life for three years, until he lost his wife and children in 1538 during an outbreak of pestilence. Also his patients abandoned him.
Little is known of his wanderings in the following years. The Toulouse Inquisition accused him of heresy, and he sought contact with all from whom he could learn more about medicine, from Lorraine to Sicily. Nostradamus's reliance on sanitary precautions aided his growing renown as a healer. After returning to France in 1544 he published Le livre d'Orus Apollo. In 1547 he married Anne Ponsart Gemelle, a rich widow, and moved to Salon, near Aix, where he started to work on his famous astrological predictions PROPHÉTIES (Centuries, 1555-58). Alone in his study he used the power of scrying, or divination by concentration, using a bowl of water on a tripod as the focus of his attention. Perhaps he also used some narcotic herbs. The branches in the first quatrain refer indirectly, according to some interpretations, to Branchus, son of Apollo, the sun god patron of poetry and prophecy. Nostradamus said that the Centuries were written as a collection of prophetic quatrains with no chronological order, which has inspired his followers to arrange them.
The book, written in rhymed four-line verses (quatrains) in an obscure mixture of French, Latin, Greek, and Provençal with the time-sequence all jumbled, contained 353 quatrains, which were arranged in 'centuries' of a 100 verses. Nostradamus both copied St John's style and used orthodox Biblical chronology, which held that the world, created in 4004 BC, must last 6000 years until the final battle with Antichrist and the overthrowing of Babylon, leading to a New Age of peace and the Last Judgment.
In 1556 Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, invited him to court to explain a quatrain, which seemingly predicted the death of her husband, Henri II. In fact the wording of the verse was changed in later editions of the Centuries to fit the circumstances. On the accession of Charles IX Nostradamus was appointed royal physician-in-ordinary.
"Here rest the bones of the illustrious Michael Nostradamus, alone of all mortals judged worthy to record with his almost divine pen, under the influence of the stars, the future events of the whole world. He lived 62 years, 6 months and 17 days. He died at Salon in the year 1566. Let not posterity disturb his rest. Anne Pons Gemelle wishes her husband true happiness." (from a marble slab set in a church in Salon de Provence)
Nostradamus died in Salon, on July 2, 1566. He was buried in a wall of the Church of the Cordeliers in Salon. In 1791 his grave was opened, and his bones were reburied in the Church of St. Laurent, also in Salon. Since his death, more than four hundred books and essays about his prophecies have been published. His students have not been unanimous about the date which Nostradamus considered the very end of our planet - somewhere between A.D. 1999 and 7000. In one quatrain he wrote: "L'an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois, / Du ciel viendra un grand Roy d'effrayeur: / Ressusciter le grand Roy d'Angoulmois./ Avant aprés Mars regner par bonheur." ("In July 1999 a great, terrifying leader will come through the skies to revive (the memory of?) the great conqueror of Angoulême. Before and after war to rule fortunately." - Another version of the prophecy: "In the year 1999 and seven months there will come from the skies the Great King of Terror. He will bring back to life the great King of the Mongols. Before and after the war reigns happily.")
For further reading: The True Prophecies or Prognostications of Michael Nostradamus by Théophile de Garanciéres (1672); Les oracles de Michel de Nostradamus by Anatole Le Pelletier (1867); Michel de Nostredame, kaldet Nostradamus, en Undersögelse af hans Profetiers by Johannes E. Hohlenberg (1918); Opklaringen af Nostradamus Profetier by C.S. Billenstein (1920); Les Propheties de Nostradamus dévoilées by Dr. de Fontbrune (1937); Europas framtid enligt Nostradamus by G. Gustafsson (1956); Nostradamus by Edgar Leoni (1961); Prophecies and Enigmas of Nostradamus, ed. and trans. Liberté E. Levert (1979); Nostradamus: Unpublished Prophecies the Untold Story by Arthur Crockett (1983); Nostradamus 1: Countdown to Apocalypse by Jean-Charles de Fontbrune (1984); Nostradamus: Prophecies of Present Times by David Pitt-Francis (1985); The Mask of Nostradamus by James Randi (1990); Nostradamus: The End of Millenium by V.J. Hewitt (1991); Nostradamus: Predictions of World War III by Jack Manuelian (1996); Hamlyn History: Supernatural by Karen Farrington (1997); Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies by John Hogue (1997); Nostradamus and the Millineum: What May Be Coming by Perry Kane (1999); Comet of Nostradamus: August 2004- Impact! by R. W. Welch (2000) - SEE ALSO: Nostradamus - A Catholic Prophecy - NOTE: Famous Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung alleged that the prophecies of Nostradamus, in which he believed wholeheartedly, foretold the rise of Hitler. - Film: Nostradamus, dir. by Roger Christian (1994), starring Tcheky Karyo, Amanda Plummer, Julia Osmond, Assumpta Serna. - Prophecies in films and literature: In the 1960 film version (dir. by George Pal) of H.G. Wells's novel The Time Machine civilization on Earth is destroyed in a nuclear war in 1966. Fred Hoyle's first novel Black Cloud (1957) postulates the arrival of a sentient cloud af gas from space in the 1960s. "Big Brother" controls in 1984 in George Orwell's novel 1984. In 1997 the whole of Manhattan Island has become a security prison surrounded by Police Force in John Carpenter's film Escape from New York (1981). In 1995 Sam Beckett, brilliant physicist, disappears into the past via time machine in NBC's television series Quantum Leap (1989-93). A leathal virus wipes out 5 billion people in 1996 in Terry Gilliam's film Twelve Monkeys (1995). HAL 9000, the most advanced supercomputer is born, and guides four years later the spaceship Discovery to Jupiter in Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In 1999 begins the colonization of Mars in Ray Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles (1950). - Suomeksi ovat ilmestyneet mm. Pekka Ervastin teos Nostradamus ja Gagliostro (1961) ja Jean Jovalisten Nostradamus: aikamme profeetta (1981?). Liken kustantamana ilmestyi vuonna 2002 huolella toimitettu teos, Nostradamuksen ennustukset kommentaareineen, toim. Seppo Aalto & Veijo Minkkinen.
Selected works:
* ORUS APOLLO FILS DE OSIRIS ROY DE ÆGIPTE NILIACQUE, 1545?
* TRAITÉ DES FARDEMENTS ET CONFITURES, 1552
* LES PROPHÉTIES DE ME. MICHEL NOSTRADAMUS, 1555 - additional quatrains in 1557 and 1558, total 1040 plus eight posthumous verses
* EXCELLENT & MOULT UTILE OPUSCULE À TOUTS NÉCESSAIRE, 1555
* PARAPHRASE DE C. GALEN, SUS L'EXORTATION DE MÉNODOTE, 1557
* NOSTRADAMUS. LETTRES INEDITES by Jean Dupebe, 1983 |
