by Nostradamus
Done by the men from the Tarpeian Rock :
Le faict patré par ceux du mont Tarpée,
Saturn in Leo, February thirteen.
Saturne en Leo 13. de Fevrier.
The “Chef de Fossan” was Hitler, born in the thirteenth degree in the sign of Leo. The master of the hunt (the limier) was Hermann Göring, commander of the German air force, while leurier, or rather levrier (the greyhound), designated Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS. According to Nostradamus, the leader of the bloodhounds or the leader of the greyhounds would cut Hitler’s throat. It was not clear which one it would be—and, frankly, this hardly mattered as long as the deed was done.
Interest in Nostradamus waned at war’s end, a by-product of prophetic fatigue and hope in a new postwar era, but the atomic age and the cold war soon generated their own anxieties. During the 1950s, Western media and publishers found intimations of both in the Prophecies. One could for instance discern the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in quatrain 2.91:
At dawn a great ball of fire shall appear,
Soleil levant un grand feu l’on verra,
So loud & bright as it rolls to the North :
Bruit & clarté vers Aquilon tendants :
In its burning globe screams of death they’ll hear :
Dedans le rond mort & cris l’on orra :
Witnesses dying by fire, hunger, sword.
Par glaive, feu, faim, mort les attendants.
In 1947 the author of the widely read Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus, one Henry C. Roberts, pondered the advent of atomic power via quatrain 9.44:
Flee, flee, O Geneva, every last one,
Migres, migre de Genesve trestous
Saturn’s gold for iron shall be exchanged :
Saturne d’or en fer se changera,
RAYPOZ shall wipe out all opposition,
Le contre RAYPOZ exterminera tous,
Before his advent, the sky’s signs shall change.
Avant l’a ruent le ciel signes fera.
Though Roberts did not explain what “RAYPOZ” meant, he concluded that Nostradamus warned “with terrifying finality…of the eventual destruction of our civilization by means of the release of atomic energy.” The last verse held out one last chance of controlling human destiny, however. Roberts tapped the mix of foreboding and hope that had underlain readings of the Prophecies for centuries.
Nostradamus’s predilection for colors made him a natural guide to the cold war. After all, quatrain 8.19 promised that
The reds shall work to put things right instead
Pour l’esclaircir les rouges marcheront
And quatrain 3.1:
The enemy red shall grow pale with fear
Rouge adversaire de fraieur viendra pasle
Red could plausibly denote all kinds of things during the Renaissance, including the robes worn by leading magistrates. The adjective’s meaning had shifted over time, but it retained its suggestive power.
Readers thus uncovered political forces such as Communism in the quatrains. But they also found leaders and celebrities galore—each one triggering a new burst of interest in Nostradamus. In 1963, a Chicago Tribune columnist suggested that quatrain 8.97 had predicted that three brothers would take over the government :
At the limits of the VAR power shall change,
Aux fins du VAR changer le pompotans,
Near its banks three fine children shall be born :
Pres du rivage les trois beaux enfans naistre.
Ruin to the people when they come of age,
Ruyne au peuple par aage competans
So altering the realm it shall grow no more.
Regne au pays changer plus voir croistre.
It was of course the Kennedys. The columnist devoted little attention to the dire third verse, but in the 1970s and 1980s interpreters claimed that quatrain 1.26 described the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy :
During daytime a great clap of lightning,
Le grand du fouldre tumbe d’heure diurne,
Ill omen from the bearer of tidings :
Mal est predict par porteur postulaire :
The following portent falling at night :
Suivant presaige tumbe d’heure nocturne,
Conflict in Reims, London, Tuscan blight.
Conflit Reims, Londres, Etrusque pestifere.
The president was shot down by a sudden thunderbolt in broad daylight, and his brother died in the early morning. The second verse referred to the many warnings and threats that both men had received during their terms. The last verse outlined the international repercussions of their deaths. In this quatrain, as in so many others, the individual and the collective come together.
In the early 1980s, it was French Socialist François Mitterrand and Pope John Paul II who turned Nostradamus into a global bestseller. A French pharmaceutical executive named Jean-Charles de Fontbrune had used philology and computer analysis to provide a new book-length interpretation of the Prophecies. His most striking commentary surrounded quatrain 2.97:
Pontiff of Rome, beware of approaching
Romain Pontife garde de t’approcher,
The city where the two rivers pool :
De la cité que deux fleuves arrose,
You shall come to spit up your blood here,
Ton sang viendras au près de là cracher,
You & yours, when the rose is in bloom.
Toy & les tiens quand fleurira la rose.
The pope’s blood would flow once the French Left gained power. The rose mentioned in the fourth verse—symbol of the French Socialist Party—was indeed in bloom following Mitterrand’s election as president in May 1981. Three days later came the assassination attempt on the pope. The quatrain appeared to announce other attacks, perhaps in Lyons, where two rivers come together (the Rhône and Saône). Less than two decades later, the death of Princess Diana drew attention to the second verse of quatrain 2.28:
The next to last of the prophet’s name
Le penultiesme du surnom du prophete,
Shall take Joveday as his day of relaxation :
Prendra Dial pour son jour & repos :
He shall wander far with his frenetic brain,
Loing vaguera par frenetique teste,
Delivering a great nation from taxation.
Et delivrant un grand peuple d’impos.
Many editions of the Prophecies refer to “Diane” in the second verse. This was probably a misprint for Dial, which comes from the Latin dialis: relating to Jupiter, i.e., to Thursday. In 1997, however, the reference to Diane alone mattered.
By then, interest in Nostradamus revolved once again around natural catastrophes and new geopolitical threats. In a 1981 docudrama called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, Orson Welles started a small panic in southern California by declaring that quatrain 10.67 foretold an earthquake and the destruction of Los Angeles :
So great the earthquake in the month of May,
Le tremblement si fort au mois de May,
Saturn in Goat, Jove, Mercury in Bull,
Saturne, Caper, Jupiter, Mercure au beuf :
And Venus, Mars in Crab, at Annonay :
Venus aussi Cancer, Mars, en Nonnay,
Bigger than eggs, hailstones by the handful.
Tombera gresle lors plus grosse qu’un euf.
Welles explained that the astrological configuration described in the second and third verses would next occur in Los Angeles in 1988. The earthquake did take place, but a year later and in northern California. The prediction had come close enough for some people.
Meanwhile, perceptions of geopolitical threats in the West were shifting from Soviet nuclear missiles to Muslims and Arabs. Nostradamus himself had lived during an era that looked at the Turkish empire with a mix of awe and trepidation. During the Renaissance, many readers of the Prophecies had been obsessed with this menace. The same was true in the twentieth century. In 1907, for instance, New York’s Metropolitan Magazine found evidence of “yellow peril
s” in quatrain 6.80:
The realm of Fez into Europe shall spread,
De Fez le regne parviendra à ceux d’Europe.
Burning its cities, slashing with the sword :
Feu leur cité, & lame trenchera :
Land & sea, the horde of the Asian lord,
Le grand d’Asie terre & mer à grand troupe,
Blue turbans most, shall hunt the cross to death.
Que bleux pers, croix, à mort dechassera.
These anxieties have grown yet more acute in recent decades. Quatrain 2.29, which had surfaced during the Napoleonic era, now warned about the “Great Invasion of the Orient” and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the “man from the East” who was imposing Muslim orthodoxy on Iran. Similarly, readers linked quatrain 6.33 to the Gulf War and the defeat of Saddam Hussein :
Bloodied by Alus, his remaining force
Sa main derniere par Alus sanguinaire,
Shall be unable to retreat by the sea :
Ne se pourra par la mer guarentir :
An army is feared between the two streams :
Entre deux fleuves craindre main militaire,
Black & wrathful, he shall inspire remorse.
Le noir, l’ireux le fera repentir.
Around the turn of the millennium, such disquiet melded with apocalyptic fears to associate Nostradamus with a series of real and imagined crises. A quatrain about 1999 (10.72) had loomed in the West for more than a century, announcing world revolution, social upheaval, or religious reckoning. It now grew ubiquitous :
The year nineteen ninety-nine, seventh month,
L’an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
The sky shall send a great King to defray
Du ciel viendra un grand Roy deffraieur
And restore the great King from Angoumois :
Resusciter le grand Roy d’Angolmois.
Before, after March, blessed be his reign.
Avant apres Mars regner par bon heur.
The first verse seemed to signal the lunar and total solar eclipses that would occur that summer. The second verse was linked to a “great King of Terror,” a grand Roy d’effrayeur, who causes dismay or fright. But the original verse initially mentioned a grand Roy deffraieur: in other words, a king who defrays. An apostrophe had mysteriously surfaced decades after publication and has remained in place ever since. The last verses have lent themselves to different readings, from an airborne attack on Paris to the fall of a Soviet space probe to the appearance of a savior figure.
This quatrain traveled around the globe—Nostradamian globalization in full swing—and reemerged partially days after 9/11. A verse attributed to Nostradamus shot across the Internet and brought the Prophecies to the top of best-seller lists in the United States and Europe and beyond: “From the sky will come a great King of Terror.” Quatrain 1.87 became equally omnipresent online :
Ennosigaeus, the fire at earth’s core,
Ennosigée, feu du centre de terre,
Shall set the New City all aquake :
Fera trembler au tour de cité neufve :
Two lords shall go on fighting futile wars :
Deux grands rochiers long temps feront la guerre,
New stream makes Arethusa blush with shame.
Puis Arethuse rougira nouveau fleuve.
Here were the fire in the new city and the battle between lords—the clash of Eastern and Western civilizations that, many believed, had broken out over the Manhattan skyline.
Nostradamus’s presence on the Internet, where quatrains are easily taken out of context and adorned with long interpretative disquisitions, may reflect a historical evolution. People’s relationship with the verses may grow less direct and tactile as they read isolated quatrains or Nostradamian exegetes rather than the full Prophecies. One may sneer at these interpreters and even relegate the verses to what the nineteenth-century journalist Charles Mackay called “extraordinary popular delusions.” But let us also appreciate the remarkable posterity of a book that has kept on sprouting new verses, new stories, and new ways of grappling with a world that is both bereft of meaning and overflowing with it. Besides yielding insights about prophecy and poetics, the Prophecies also provide a history of confirmation and anticipation, a history of interpretation and propaganda, and a history of the anxieties and aspirations that successive generations have projected onto cryptic verses. There is always another quatrain around the corner, promising to explain what seems unexplainable. In this respect, too, the book must be seen as extraordinary, though not only for the reasons that Mackay had put forward.
STÉPHANE GERSON
Notes
In preparing these notes I have drawn on, among other sources, Edgar Leoni, Nostradamus and His Prophecies (1961); Pierre Brind’Amour, Nostradamus astrophile (1993) and Les premières centuries, ou Prophéties (1996); Peter Lemesurier, The Nostradamus Encyclopedia (1997) and The Illustrated Prophecies (2003); Roger Prévost, Nostradamus: Le mythe et la réalité (1999); Bruno Petey-Girard, ed., Les Prophéties (2003); and Denis Crouzet, Nostradamus: Une médicine des âmes à la Renaissance (2011). I have cross-referenced the quatrains to provide a sense of the intricate internal echoes—or synapses—that pull the poem together.
RICHARD SIEBURTH
PREFACE TO CÉSAR
Following the example of Eugène Bareste’s 1840 edition of the Prophecies, most editors of Nostradamus have divided his preface to the 1555 edition, originally printed as a single unparagraphed block of prose, into numbered sections. To facilitate its reading, I have instead broken the text into paragraphs, following Nostradamus’s original punctuation and the overall cadences of his prose. All the passages in italics are in Latin in the original. Biblical citations are taken from the King James Version.
César Nostradame my son: César Nostradamus, born December 18, 1553, was fourteen months old at this point; his father was fifty-one.
Only those who are inspired: From Giovanni Pontano’s Italian translation of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, first aphorism.
unfortunate events that were to take place throughout the world: Translated from Savonarola’s Compendium revelationum (1495), contained in the Mirabilis liber of 1522—whose compendium of prophecies was an important source for Nostradamus.
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs: Matthew 7:6, from Savonarola.
thou hast hid these things from the wise & prudent: Matthew 11:25, echoing Savonarola.
as do the rays of the sun whose influence works upon bodies both elementary & non-elementary: Entire passage translated from Petrus Crinitus, De honesta disciplina (1543)—another major sourcebook for Nostradamus—here confusing the plural gods of the original with the singular God of Christianity.
It is not for you to know the times: Acts 1:7.
For those divine works which are totally absolute: Translated from Crinitus, De honesta disciplina.
For he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called Seer: I Samuel 9:9, after Savonarola.
For the secrets of God are inscrutable: This and the preceding paragraph translate Savonarola.
things can be known through the Herculean trances of epilepsy: The French reads “par comitiale agitation Hiraclinne.” Le mal comitial (morbus comitialis in Latin) was a term for epilepsy, from which Hercules (according to Hippocrates and Galen) was said to suffer. Cornelius Agrippa had also linked epilepsy to prophetic possession.
the voice heard at the hem by means of the slender flame: Cf. the introductory quatrain 1.2.
all things are naked & opened &c: Hebrews 4:13.
I can err, fail, be deceived: A Latin dictum also quoted in Nostradamus’s letters.
from now to the year 3797: The year 3797 would fall nine thousand years after the creation of the world in 5204 B.C.E.
Some might well raise their brows: This and the following two paragraphs are loosely adapted from Savonarola.
the world of letters shall undergo such a massive & incomparable collapse: Cf. quatrain 1.62.
/> the reign of Saturn shall return: This entire passage is inspired by Richard Roussat’s Livre de l’estat et mutation des temps (1550): “As for the present work and treatise, it will be divided into four parts: the first will show the conjunction marking the End of the World and Last Times…which shall take place after a period of seven thousand years…. The second part will demonstrate the end of the world through the movement and rule of the seven planets that are called wandering stars, each of which governs the world for the space of 354 years and four months…. Next Mars was in control, up to 6732 years and four months for the third time; and finally the Moon, which governs at present, took over its rule, which it should maintain until the year 7086 [i.e., 1887 C.E.]; and the Sun after it until the year 7441 [i.e., 2242 C.E.].” It was apparently by adding this latter date (2242) to the date of the publication of the first installment of his prophecies (1555) that Nostradamus in this preface to his son César arrives at the date 3797 for the fulfillment of his prophecies. As for the return of Saturn, Nostradamus follows Roussat’s claim that seven archangels governing seven celestial bodies will successively reign over seven periods of 354 years and four months.
which shall not vary from age to age: from Roussat.
Mohammedan dreamings: Pontano’s commentary on the first aphorism of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium speaks of the Mahometani as a species of prophets.
Then will I visit their transgression with the rod: Psalms 89:32, via Savonarola.
I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them: Jeremiah 13:14 and Ezekiel 6:11, via Savonarola.