by J H Brennan
Although Nostradamus begins the epistle with the familiar claim that his prophecies were astrologically generated, in the second half of the quoted passage he admits to having owned “many volumes” of occult lore. The nature of these books is clear from his references to transmutation and incorruptible metals. They were works on alchemy and magic. He burned them, of course, but not before he read them. Even their destruction underlines their magical nature—they produced an unnatural flame. What were these books? Part of the answer may lie in the very first quatrain Nostradamus ever published outside of his almanac—Quatrain 1, Century 1—which reads:
Étant assis de nuit secret étude,
Seul, reposé sur la selle d’airain,
Flamme exigue sortant de solitude
Fait prospérer qui n’est pas croire vain.
(Being sat secretly at night in his study,
Alone, on the saddle of brass,
A small flame emerges out of the void
Causing a vain believe)4
This was followed by:
La verge en main mise au milieu de Branches
De l’onde il mouille & le limbe & le pied:
Un peur & voix frémissent par les manches:
Splendeur divine. Le Divin pres s’assied.
(Grip the Branchus wand in the middle
Wave it to wet the hem and the foot:
A voice quivering with fear:
Divine splendor. The Divine sits near.)5
It is worth noting that these verses echo, almost word for word, a passage in De Mysteriis Egyptiorum (“Concerning the Egyptian Mysteries”), which reads:
Foemina in Branchis fatidica, vel sedet in axe, vel manu tenet virgam, vel pedes aut limbum tingit in aquam et ex his modis impletur splendore divino, deumque nacta vaticinatur.
(The prophetess of Branchus sits wand in hand, places her foot and the hem of her robe in the water and in this way creates the divine splendor and calls the god by whom she prophecies.)6
De Mysteriis Egyptiorum was written by the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus (or possibly a member of his school) somewhere around the third century CE. It deals with a type of “higher magic” operating through divine agencies. Much of the text is concerned with the ritual evocation of gods, demons, and other spirits.7
The similarity between the text and Nostradamus’s opening quatrain is no coincidence. Further investigation of the prophecies shows that the conjuration of spirits was definitely one of his interests. The forty-second Quatrain of the first Century, for example, points to this as well as to familiarity with another magical tome:
The ten Calends of April, according to Gothic measure,
Are revived again by wicked people
The fire goes out and the devilish assembly
Looks for the bones of the Psellus demon.
The “Psellus” mentioned in the final line is Michael Psellus, the Byzantine philosopher, theologian, statesman, and Neoplatonist. His “demon” was a work he wrote in the eleventh century called De Demonibus (“About Demons”), which contained the following instructions for spirit conjurations:
The diviners take a basin full of water appropriate to the use of the demons. This basin full of water seems first to vibrate as if it would emit sounds nevertheless the water in the basin does not differ in appearance from natural water, but it has the property, by the virtue which is infused into it, of being able to compose verses which renders it eminently apt to receive the prophetic spirit. For this sort of demon is capricious, earthbound and subject to enchantments and so soon as the water begins to give out sounds, manifests its satisfaction to those who are present by some words still indistinct and meaningless, but, later, when the water seems to boil and spill over, a faint voice murmurs words which contained the revelation of future events.8
Here again, it is no coincidence that the final five words of the instructions link the conjuration to prophecy, as does Psellus’s earlier reference to “prophetic spirit.”
The two quatrains quoted earlier that begin the Nostradamus Centuries are not themselves prophecies. Instead, consensus scholarship has now concluded that they are descriptions of how his prophecies came about. The translation of Quatrain 1 is as follows:
Seated by night in secret study
Alone resting on the brazen tripod
As slender flame licks out of the solitude
Making possible what would have been in vain.
This was followed by Quatrain 2 :
The rod in his hand is placed in the center of Branchus
He moistens the hem of his robe, his limb and his foot
A voice causes his arms to tremble with fear
Divine splendor. The God sits close beside him.
What is being described here is a rite—and not any of the familiar Church rites to which Nostradamus so ostentatiously subscribed. Taken together, the verses summarize an extraordinary ceremony that involved a magical rod or wand, a brass tripod, a naked flame, and the appearance of a god in the midst of divine light: in other words, a ritual of evocation.
On the evidence of the quatrains alone, it would seem that the works of Psellus and Iamblichus were among the tomes “hidden from ancient time” that Nostradamus felt constrained to destroy. The “Branchus” referred to here—and in the Egyptian Mysteries of Iamblichus—is Branchus of Miletus (in what is now Turkey), a figure in Greek mythology who was fathered on a human woman by the sun god Apollo during a miraculous act of fellatio. The boy was walking in the woods one day when he met with his heavenly father and, struck by the god’s beauty, kissed him. The result of this impulse was that Branchus was instantly endowed with the gift of prophecy.
Based on this myth, the Greeks established an oracular temple jointly dedicated to Branchus and Apollo at Didyma, south of Miletus. The sanctuary was in charge of the Branchids, a group of priests named after Branchus himself, and the prophecies generated there were reputed to have been a heady mix of inspiration and madness.
The Branchids seem to have betrayed their trust, for they were reputed to have collaborated with the Persian king Xerxes when he plundered and burned the temple in 494 BCE. Persians and priests both fled to Sogdiana, an ancient Asian country centered in the Zeravshan River valley, in what is now Uzbekistan. But the sacrilege caught up with their descendants when Alexander the Great conquered the country with considerable slaughter in 328 BCE. Another of Alexander’s conquests, that of Miletus itself in 334 BCE, resulted in the oracle being resanctified. Due to the memory of their betrayal, no new Branchid priests were ordained. Instead, the oracle was administered by the municipal authorities who elected a prophet on an annual basis. Around 300 BCE, the Milesians began work on a new temple of Branchus planned to be the largest building in the Greek world but archaeological excavations in the early twentieth century showed it was never finished.
Iamblichus described the temple ceremony in these words:
The prophetess of Branchus either sits upon a pillar or holds in her hand a rod bestowed by some deity, or moistens her feet or the hem of her garment with water, or inhales the vapor of water and by these means is filled with divine illumination and, having obtained the deity, she prophesies. By these practices, she adapts herself to the god, whom she receives from without.
Elsewhere in his works, he mentions that the priestess at Delphi sat upon a tripod in order to receive a “ray of divine illumination.” Nostradamus mentions a tripod in his quatrains. He also wrote in his Epistle to César that the intellect could perceive nothing of the occult “without the aid of the mysterious voice of a spirit appearing in the vapor floating above the vessel of water and without the illumination of the magic flame in which future events are partly revealed as in a mirror.”
It is clear from this textural evidence that Nostradamus was indeed interested in magic, an interest prudently well-hidden in the era of the Inquisition. By his own admission, he studied magical books, and while he suggested they were works on alchemy, the content of his own qua
trains indicates that some were rituals of evocation linked to the art of prophecy. All of the evidence points to the Nostradamus prophecies being spirit driven.
This conclusion is reinforced by another of the stories attached to his legend. According to Hollywood-born author John Hogue,9 the widowed Catherine de Medici summoned Nostradamus to the Château Chaumont in 1560 and demanded further insights into the future. On this particular visit, the prophet elected not to carry on his pretense about judicial astrology and instead requested the use of a large room in which he would not be disturbed. There he traced a magic circle on the floor, fortifying it with holy names of power and angelic sigils. Before it he set up a magic mirror, a black concave surface of polished steel, the corners of which were traced in pigeon’s blood with the names YHVH, Elohim, Mitratron, and Adonai. At the stroke of midnight the queen entered the dimly lit chamber, filled by this time with clouds of incense smoke. Nostradamus led her into the magic circle, then began an invocation to the angel Anael, a spirit believed to grant prophetic visions.
The vision granted on this occasion was of a room that somehow abutted the chamber in which they stood. Standing in it was Francis II, the queen’s son. He walked once around it, then abruptly vanished. Nostradamus interpreted this as the boy’s impending death. Another of the queen’s children appeared, the boy who would become Charles IX. He circled the room fourteen times; Nostradamus predicted that he would rule for fourteen years. Then came the future Henri III, who walked around the room fifteen times, then François, Duke of Alençon, whose image was quickly transformed into that of Henry of Navarre, the man to whom Catherine was destined to marry her daughter Margot.
The interest of this story is not in the predictive accuracy of the vision—which may be the result of later embellishments—but in the fact that Nostradamus was thought to be so intimately involved with the highest in the land that he could safely conduct this necromantic experiment. The perception is largely correct. Nostradamus clearly did have friends in high places, friends who came to him for advice and were thus exposed to spirit influence one step removed. A similar situation existed in England, where an influential courtier also had the ear of his queen … and also communicated with spirits.
10. THE QUEEN’S CONJURER
My feet are swifter than the winds and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew … I am deflowered and yet a virgin: I sanctify and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not. Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean: make your selves holy, and put on righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets and burn their clothes and then I will come and dwell amongst you: and behold, I will bring forth children unto you.1
THE WORDS ARE THOSE OF A SPIRIT, REVEALING ITS ESSENCE TO THE Elizabethan magician, Dr. John Dee. Dee was the son of a minor official at the court of Henry VIII. He was born in Mortlake—now part of London, then a small village on the Thames—in the summer of 1527, a time when the Renaissance had spread out of Italy and opened up some of the best minds throughout Europe. He went to school at Chelmsford, then on to Cambridge at the age of fifteen. Like Nostradamus, he proved to be a natural scholar. His diary records that he would regularly spend up to eighteen hours a day in study. At the age of nineteen, he was made assistant professor of Greek and became a Fellow of the newly formed Trinity College. He also had a charge of sorcery leveled against him.
The charge followed his creation of a mechanical flying beetle for use in a play. He was fascinated by toys and did his work too well. Superstitious spectators insisted the beetle must have been powered by magic. Dee survived the accusations without much difficulty, but soon he really did take an interest in magic. He went to Belgium’s University of Louvain in 1547 and there came across Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, which influenced him profoundly. He developed an interest in the Qabalah, which had accrued Christian elements throughout the Renaissance. He also became friendly with Gerardus Mercator, the famous cartographer, and eventually brought back two of Mercator’s globes and several newly invented astronomical instruments to England. Before that, Dee visited Paris, where his lectures on Euclid proved so popular that he was offered a professorship. He decided to turn it down in favor of a return to England, then ruled by Henry VIII’s successor, the ten-year-old Edward VI. His reputation stood so high that the king’s advisers recommended a pension. Dee accepted, but promptly sold the right to the income in return for two rectorships.
Despite his fame and academic credentials, money was a problem for Dee. Influenced by the occult visionary Jerome Cardan, he began to study alchemy in the hope of changing base metals into gold. But alchemical apparatus was expensive, and his economic situation worsened after his patron, the Earl of Northumberland, was beheaded. Things brightened slightly when Queen Mary came to the throne. His talent for astrology attracted royal attention and he was required to cast horoscopes for the queen and her prospective husband, Philip of Spain. Perhaps his astrological calculations foretold the brevity of her reign for he made little attempt to curry the queen’s favor. Instead he made contact with Mary’s younger sister, Elizabeth, then a virtual prisoner at Woodstock. He cast her horoscope (which is preserved today in the British Museum) but slipped up badly when he showed her the queen’s birth map as well. This indiscretion was taken as evidence of a plot. Dee was accused of attempting to poison the queen or to cause her death by black magic. A trial for treason followed. Although finally acquitted, the force of the accusations kept him in prison until the latter part of 1555.
Three years later, Mary was dead and Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne. Dee’s original horoscope must have impressed her greatly, for she required him to calculate an auspicious date for her coronation. From that point on, he was firmly, if discreetly, established at court. He often traveled to Europe on mysterious missions for Sir Francis Walsingham, who headed Elizabeth’s intelligence service, and was assigned the code name “007” several centuries before James Bond. For six years, Dee engaged in these Continental wanderings, perhaps spying, perhaps simply searching for esoteric knowledge. In 1564, however, he returned to England and seems to have settled down for a full decade, living in his mother’s home at Mortlake and engaging in his occult pursuits. Among them was the use of a “magic mirror,” an autohypnotic device designed to produce visions similar to those seen in a crystal ball. In 1574, Dee married for the first time. His emotional involvement with the woman appears to have been slight, for he did not even bother to name her in his diaries. She died only a year later. On the day of her death, the queen visited Dee’s Mortlake home and demanded to see his “magic glass.” Dee complied, but the courtiers, lacking the clairvoyant faculties necessary to make the device work, found it more amusing than impressive.
Dr. John Dee, conjurer, Court astrologer, and close advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, was himself guided by the spirits he evoked.
Two years later, when Dee was forty-nine, he married for the second time. His choice fell on Jane Fromond, an attractive girl considerably younger than himself, who was lady-in-waiting to Lady Howard of Effingham. The marriage was both happy and fruitful—it resulted in eight children. Dee continued to study esoteric matters: his diaries are full of dream records, spirit rappings, and other mysterious phenomena. In May 1581, there came a turning point in his career. Dee stared into a crystal and saw a vision. It is important to realize that Dee was not a born clairvoyant. Indeed he frequently claimed he had no psychic abilities whatsoever. As such, he was much more impressed by an isolated visionary experience than any natural psychic would be. Dee plunged into crystal gazing with enormous enthusiasm but saw no further visions and was eventually forced to employ mediums to work the crystal for him.
But for all of his learning and experience, John Dee was a poor judge of character. His first choice of psychic was a man called Barnabas Saul, so notorious a rogue that some
modern historians speculate he had been sent by Dee’s enemies to discredit him. In any event, Saul did not last long. He got into trouble with the law, renounced occult experimentation, and vanished from the scene.
Dr. Dee learned very little from the experience. Two days after Saul disappeared, an Irishman walked into his life, introduced himself as Edward Talbot, and offered to extend Dee’s magical knowledge with the aid of fairies. Dee was dismayed by the thought of communicating with such pagan entities. Fortunately Talbot proved versatile, and when Dee confessed that what he needed was “help in my philosophical studies through the company and information of the blessed angels of God,”2 Talbot assured him he was just the man for the job. Dee led him to his study for a trial. Despite the odd nature of his researches, Dee was essentially a religious man. While Talbot had undoubted charm, part of his appeal may have been that he represented a soul to be saved. Dee lectured him on the evils of black magic and explained that he prayed for guidance before each of his experiments. Talbot agreed to do the same and, after a period of enthusiastic prayer, claimed he saw the face of a cherub in the crystal. Dee was suitably impressed and identified the entity as the Qabalistic angel Uriel.
It was the beginning of a lasting, intimate relationship that survived the revelation that Talbot was not Talbot at all, but one Edward Kelley, born in Worcester and a former student at Oxford before some undisclosed problem caused him to leave abruptly. When he met Dee, he was just twenty-seven years old.3 The relationship also survived an accusation of deception made by Dee’s wife, the discovery that Kelley was a fugitive from justice who had been pilloried in Lancaster for forgery,4 and the noticeable fact that he had had his ears cropped—a punishment reserved for coining (the shaving of precious metal from the edges of gold or silver coins). There were also suspicious connections with Catholicism and the possibility he might even have been a recusant priest.5