Common misconceptions about 9/11 and Nostradamus's life and prophecies

A. No, so far as is known only his father's side of the family was Jewish - and his paternal grandfather Pierre de Nostredame converted some 50 years before Nostradamus was born!

Q. But surely he is supposed to have inherited his prophetic gift from the Israelite tribe of Issachar?

A. He always claimed that his gift came from his mother's side of the family, not his father's.

Q. Didn't he believe that the planets went around the sun even before Copernicus?

Q. Wasn't Nostradamus educated by his grandfathers, who were distinguished doctors at the court of King René of Provence?

A. No. For a start, his grandfathers were nothing of the kind (the story seems to have been invented by his admiring son César - who was rather given to such family propaganda - around a century later).
Secondly, his paternal grandfather Pierre was merely a merchant at Avignon - if a well-to-do one - while his maternal grandfather René de St-Rémy apparently died before the future seer was even born. And thirdly, the child seems to have been educated either by his father or by his maternal GREAT grandfather Jean de St-Rémy, who had indeed been a doctor - but only a local one, and apparently town treasurer to boot.

Q. But surely it's correct that he went to Montpellier in 1521 to
study medicine?

A. No. He himself states in his Traité des fardemens et confitures that he spent the years from 1521 to 1529 wandering the countryside in search of cures and remedies. There is no record at Montpellier of his presence there during this time - and when he finally turned up in 1529 he was promptly booted out again for having, as an apothecary, been rude about doctors! His written enrolment survives, as does the record of his expulsion again...

A. There is no actual record even of this, though he certainly worked as a physician.

Q. But he must have qualified, surely, if he went on to teach at the Montpellier Faculty?

A. Not only is there absolutely no record of his teaching there, but by 1531 he had turned up at Agen, so leaving no time for such teaching.

A. No. (Try telling that to Scaliger, whose wife she was!!) Her name was Henriette d'Encausse.

Q. But surely it is true that Nostradamus was persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition for heresy there?

A. It is said that the Inquisition of Toulouse invited him to explain to them a caustic remark he had made about the qualities of a bronze casting of the Virgin Mary - but there is no actual record of this.

Q. But he WAS persecuted by the Inquisition, surely - if not then, at least for writing his prophecies?

A. There is no record of his ever having been even investigated by the Inquisition for his prophetic activities: in fact he was always on the best of terms with the Church.

Q. But the Encyclopedia Britannica states that he was placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books in 1781, surely?

A. Yes - and Britannica is wrong, as also about several other matters relating to Nostradamus. His name is in fact nowhere mentioned in any of the Vatican's editions of the Index - and investigations of the 25 actual editions at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon have revealed that there was in fact NO edition of it issued in 1781! Indeed, his Almanach for 1562 even contains an open letter to the then Pope!

Q. But surely everyone knows that his religiosity was just a cover for his magical activities?

A. All the evidence suggests that he was in fact a deeply pious Roman Catholic with a strong leaning towards the Franciscan movement.
Take his secretary Chavigny's statement after his death:

He approved the Ceremonies of the Roman Church and remained faithful to the Catholic faith and religion, holding that outside it there was no salvation. He gravely reproved those who, having withdrawn from its embrace, were prepared to let themselves be fed and watered by the easy-going freedoms of damnable foreign doctrines. Their end, he asserted, would be evil and nasty.
Then take the fact that he gave money to the Franciscans, was on good terms with the Archbishop of Arles, stayed in Paris with the powerful Archibishop of Sens, treated various bishops, left money to two Franciscan convents, was buried in Salon's Franciscan chapel, and had a son who joined the order...
As for the supposed incompatitility between Christianity and magic, Renaissance thinkers were in fact still wrestling with the problem of how to reconcile pagan practices with Christian beliefs at the time, notably in connection with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel wall and ceiling: it wouldn't be finally decided in favour of the latter for some decades.

A. It depends what you mean by successful. He gained a reputation and made a lot of money out of it, certainly. But he himself admits that, during the outbreak at Aix-en-Provence, none of his methods actually worked.

Q. But surely I have read that he used advanced antiseptics, recommended exercise and a diet low in animal fats, and refused to bleed his patients?

A. The first three suggestions are the purest fantasy, while he himself admits in his Traité that he DID bleed his patients - and that it didn't work! His celebrated 'rose-pills' (for which he offers the recipe in the book) seem to have been used purely as a prophylactic. There is no actual evidence that his methods differed much from the traditional ones - apart from his known keenness on running water, which may possibly suggest that he instituted new regimes of public hygiene.

A. No. Their style and language make it perfectly obvious that they were written in around the time of Napoleon, whose reign they pretend to prophesy (no doubt that's why Napoleon constantly carried them around with him!). Orval (on the Belgian frontier) was in the middle of a war-zone between France and the Holy Roman Emperor in 1542 - so it is highly unlikely that academic travellers such as Nostredame (as he then was) would have ventured anywhere near it at the time.

Q. When visiting Italy, he recognised a young Franciscan friar as a future Pope, and knelt before him. That proves that he was a true prophet, doesn't it?

Q. But then, on returning to Salon, he turned to writing his Centuries?
A. No. He first wrote his cookbook (the Traité des fardemens et des confitures) and started on his series of annual Almanachs, with which he continued until the end of his life. Both were in fact much better known and more widely bought than his later Propheties.

Q. And their predictions for the weather and crop prospects were always right?

A. No, in fact they seem to have been far more often wrong than right - sometimes calamitously so.

A. If people kept buying them it was presumably because they hoped that next time they might be!

A. Wrong. 'Centuries' was merely a generic description of the ten books of 100 verses that it was designed to contain. Its actual title was Les Propheties de M. Michel Nostradamus.

Q. And he wrote them by scrying with the aid of a bowl of water or a magic mirror?

A. There is no evidence whatever that he used a bowl of water for scrying - or a magic mirror, for that matter. The bowl of water (as you can see from his first two verses) was purely for dipping his feet and the hem of his robe into after the model of the Greek oracles- if indeed he ever did anything of the kind, and wasn't merely quoting the practice in order to establish his credentials as a prophet in the ancient mould. If applicable, it seems to have contained water giving off aromatic fumes. As for the 'mirror', he simply states that his visions came to him comme dans un mirouer ardant (as in a burning-mirror - i.e. a concave mirror used for concentrating the sun's rays). Try looking into a shaving mirror sometime and you'll see what he meant!

A. Nobody knows - though he implies that he used the classical techniques of theurgy, which amounts to much the same thing. However, he was a truly magical line-shooter, so you can never be sure!

A. Well, not to the extent that he was capable of casting accurate horoscopes like those of the professional astrologers of the day. As they themselves constantly pointed out and his surviving horoscopes still reveal, he was prone to put planets in the wrong houses and (according to the astrologer Videl) the sun in two different parts of the sky at once, and never did get the hang of interpolating for time or place on the basis of the noon figures given in the published tables for Ulm, Bologna, Venice or wherever. That, in fact, was the main reason why the professional astrologers of the day so despised him, and why he in turn dissociated himself from them in verse VI.100, claiming instead to be a simple 'astrophile' ('star-lover') who was directly or indirectly inspired by God Himself. In the light of this claim, though, he did specialise in (and was much respected for) doing 'intuitive readings' or interpretations of the professional astrologers' charts, which he often specifically asked his clients (including the royal family) to supply HIM with. Even when he did do his own charts, it was always on their figures that they were based (Regiomontanus, Stöffler, Pitatus, Carellus, Leowitz - all of whose original figures are easy to identify from the particular charts in which they are used). He even had a copy of one set of them (Stadius, 1564) with him on his death-bed.

A. Well, in his Epistle to King Henri II he did claim that, when divinely inspired (whether directly, via the planets, or via his guiding spirit or claimed Guardian Angel [Michael, naturally!]), he was capable of not erring, failing or being deceived. But then, in his letter to the Canons of Orange of 4th February 1562, he pointed out that, as a human being, he could quite easily do all three. Which of course poses the interesting question...how, as a human being, could he be absolutely sure of when he was being divinely inspired?!

Q. One way or the other, though, he did manage to write his prophecies - in code?

A. No, he wrote his prophecies in rhyming verse. Code this may seem to those unfamiliar with 16th century French poetry (many of whom fail to notice even that it is in verse!), but none of the various 'code' theories has ever managed to gain the general support of serious commentators on the subject.

A. So did most writers of the time - but only occasionally, and for the most part solely in respect of proper names, which they did rather like to disguise, whether for fun or for self-protection. They are always obvious in any case - mainly from the fact that they make absolutely no sense if read as ordinary words.

Q. But surely Nostradamus's use of huge numbers of Latin and Greek words suggests that he was up to something?

A. Not necessarily - and he really didn't use as many as all that, except when quoting from Latin. Generally speaking, he gallicised them. Using classical words was all the rage at the time. Educated people could understand them perfectly well (they also knew what his frequent references to classical history and mythology were about). Nostradamus merely pushed it to extremes in order to veil his meaning from the ignorant. Evidently he is still succeeding!

Q. Can't I get at his meaning by translating each of his words into English with my pocket French-English dictionary, then?

A. No. This doesn't work even with modern French texts. And it sure as hell doesn't work with 16th century poetry - least of all Nostradamus's!! Always try to remember that he was writing poetry, not legal documents - and he was not thinking about how it might translate into English, either!

A. He wasn't. Contemporary correspondence makes it perfectly plain that it was in 1555, shortly after his first edition appeared - though it was not because of it, but because of what he had recently said about the royal family in his Almanachs.

A. No, he rode on horseback - probably one of a train of royal pack-horses reserved for the royal mail. Coaches had not yet come into general use - not least because there were no roads for them to travel on. Even the Queen rode in a litter, not a coach.

Q. ...and was questioned by her on the meaning of verse I.35, about the King's approaching death in a duel?

Q. But surely writers such as Cheetham and Hogue disagree with you on much of this, as does the Orson Welles film/video?

A. Unfortunately their biographical accounts are all ludicrously inaccurate, and do not square with the documented facts. Most of their assertions seem to be based on unsourced rumours originally floated in print during the 19th century in the absence of any known reliable contemporary evidence.

A. No. Granted, his secretary Chavigny later assumed that that was what it was about, and altered the verse to fit - so starting the long and shaky tradition that you could retrospectively fit Nostradamus's predictions to anything you liked. But in fact what we know as Presage 141 (actually it is number 152) is specifically dated for November 1567 - whereas the seer in fact died in July 1566. So even if this verse WERE a prediction of his death, he got the date wrong...

Q. But surely it is at least true that Nostradamus was buried upright so that people should not walk on his body?

A. There is absolutely no evidence for this, nor is any provision to this effect contained in his will.

Q. But isn't it the case that, when his body was dug up at the French Revolution, they found a medallion around his neck bearing the exact date of the exhumation?

A. No. This is a pure urban myth with no evidence whatever to back it up - as the wonderful ability of the alleged date to change from account to account more than amply demonstrates!

1. I don't seem to able to find any books on Nostradamus. My bookseller just doesn't seem to stock any. Has the seer gone out of fashion, or don't they think he's important?

A. Virtually all Nostradamus titles sold out after 9/11, when the rumour was put about that Nostradamus had prophesied it. He hadn't, of course (see FAQ re 9/11 below), but they continue to sell like hot cakes…

2. Presumably the editions of Nostradamus that are currently available in the bookshops are reliable? Do they give the correct French?

Roberts (1947) merely did the best with what he had, which was Garenciere's hopelessly corrupt 1672 version, itself based on a very late edition.

Leoni, similarly (1963), hadn't seen any originals, so made good with late reprints by Le Pelletier (1867), plus other reprints, whose spelling he freely modernised (!!).

Cheetham at least had a copy of the original 1568 version, which she reprints pretty accurately (X.72 included), even though her translations are often pretty hopeless.

Hogue quotes a 1568 version, which he seems to edit somewhat (!!), and so his books make various errors, as well as feeding in all his pet ideas about his favourite world terrorists and gurus...

Fontbrune's books use the very late 1605 edition, and unapologetically read known events into their French interpretations (which are in turn translated into English by Alexis Lykiard, and so even further from the original).

Paulus's book fails to identify the edition he is using (evidently a pretty corrupt one!), even for the few French verses he selects, let alone to translate or interpret them reliably.

By contrast, my own Nostradamus Encyclopedia does reprint in transliteration (though I say it myself!) the relevant parts of the original 1555, 1557 (November), 1568 and 1605 editions in sequence.

3. I have heard that the original manuscripts of Nostradamus's writings still exist in the Vatican Library. Is this true?

A. No. They have long since disappeared - probably at the time of printing. But various of the original printed editions are still held in many of the world's major libraries, including the Vatican - though no American library has an original copy of the Propheties.

Bethesda N Library of Medicine, Harvard University, Montreal Osler Medical, Chicago (John Crerar), Philadelphia Krauth and Yale Medical School all have copies of the Traité des fardemens. Chicago Newberry Library has an antedated copy of the Propheties bearing the date 1568, but actually printed in 1605, Harvard City has a 1611 printing, Harvard University has both 1610 and 1611 editions, Ithaca a 1611, New Brunswick University a 1611, New York Columbia University a 1611 and Washington City a 1611 - though unfortunately all of these are very late and consequently corrupt (among other things, as regards X.72!). Ann Arbor University, Urbana Illinois and Washington Folger have odd copies of his annual Almanachs.

A complete list of world-libraries with original Nostradamus editions can be found on pages 126-7 of the Nostradamus Encyclopedia.

To be sure of originals (e.g. of verse X.72), your best plan would be to approach the biggest world collection (2000+ items) of Nostradamia at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France (Fonds Michel Chomarat) and ask for a photocopy (in the case of X.72) of page 71 of Part 2 of the original Benoist Rigaud edition of the Propheties dated 1568 (mention X.72 as well, just to be sure!). (And if you don't trust even them to send you genuine photocopies - though why they would wish to falsify the evidence I can't imagine! - you'll just have to go there yourself!). Alternatively, Mario's site at
http://run.to/nostradamus

A. They first appeared in Vincent Seve's edition of 1605. Seve may have been related to Nostradamus through the latter's daughter Anne, who is known to have married one 'Pierre de Seva'. All Seve says about them in his covering epistle to King Henri IV is that he has "verified and checked" them.

Computer analysis and the fact that he published them as Nostradamus's apart, there is very little to go on. There are all kinds of similarities of vocabulary and symbolism which suggest that they may be genuine - possibly unpublished drafts that Chavigny found lying around in Nostradamus's room.

The doubts centre around the fact that (a) they have six lines and (b) their style differs from that of the Centuries. On the other hand, had they been written by a forger, the likelihood is that he would have kept both the style and the verse form as close to the original as possible. The only "forger" likely to have been confident enough to alter the style and format completely is thus... Nostradamus!

5. Surely Nostradamus can't have ignored the future of somewhere as important as America in his prophecies, can he?

The Epistle to Henri II shows Nostradamus describing his prophecies as: for the most part composed and harmonised with Astronomical calculations relating by the year, month and week to the regions, countries and most of the Towns and Cities of all Europe, taking in those of North Africa and part of Asia Minor, as modified in respect of those regions that come closest to all these latitudes

Now there's little or no dispute about what the first bit means. However, there is some room for discussion about quite what he means by the last bit. As I see it, he's referring to the horoscopic technique (demonstrated in the Nostradamus Encyclopedia) whereby the repetitions of ancient events are allocated slightly re-adjusted latitudes in the light of the changing declination of the sun during the year. This would fit in with the assumption that 'climats' (from Greek 'klima' = 'slope', and thus elevation of the sun, and thus latitude) equates with latitude as conventionally understood today. There is some evidence for this.

On the other hand, N also seems to use the word to mean something much closer to 'astrologically determined region within a given latitude' - since the tradition at the time was to allocate countries and regions to given signs more or less at random (France and England, part of Germany and a whole list of others - some in the Middle East - were allocated to Aries, for example). You can find at least one example of this in the Preface to César.

The former possibility would support the view that a prophecy can thus apply to anywhere in the northern hemisphere with the corresponding latitude. The latter would suggest that it can normally apply only to those regions that appeared in the standard lists - and all of which fall within those outlined by Nostradamus.

By way of secondary evidence, all Nostradamus's place names also fall within those same regions - except three. One is 'Tartarie' (V.54) - i.e. the area covered by the former Mongol empire (but then this did extend into the Middle East, and even into Europe). Another is 'Carmanie' - part of Persia. The third is 'Americh', which is mentioned only once (X.66) and may merely be a misprint for 'dame erist'. This, then, would tend to support the second, more restricted view above.

6. Doesn't there have to be some dark, significant reason why
Century VII is incomplete?

A. No. The odd number of quatrains in this Century may simply be the result of contemporary publishing practice. I originally suggested that 42 was merely the number of quatrains that the publisher had room for without going into a further section of 16 pages (in which books always were - and often still are - put together) which might remain less than full. However, there was in fact room for three more verses on the last page (122), and with another 16 pages he could (at six-and-a-bit verses per page) actually have completed the 7th Century. So it looks as if VII.42 was merely where Nostradamus had got to when the book went to print - or else as if that was simply where Du Rosne decided to stop.

There was no problem with this, as the work was clearly being produced in instalments anyway, and the customer/retailer would then be at liberty to bind them together (such books at the time were produced unbound so as to save weight and space on the backs of the pack-horses that distributed them across the country: it was for the retailer or customer to do the binding).

As for why the seventh Century never got published in full, I can only surmise that Chavigny simply couldn't find the rest of it when he came to publish the complete work in 1568 - or possibly Du Rosne (who thought he had the rights to the whole thing) got a bit irked and refused to return any bits he still had when Chavigny switched to Rigaud as publisher for the 1568 edition. And so Chavigny simply cobbled together the two previous editions to make an 'omnibus edition' of them.

7. Given that Nostradamus wrote in French, can't I can just look his words up in a modern French-English dictionary? I mean, it's not correct to say that he sometimes used words in their original Latin senses instead of their French ones, is it?

1	Nostradamus's verses are so Latinate that some people think (almost certainly erroneously) that he actually wrote them in Latin, then translated them into French (of a kind!).
2	Certainly his syntax - far from being just haphazard gobbledygook -- is closely akin to that of the Roman Virgil, and not like that of modern French at all, which is why his verses were NOT generally understood by the less educated people of his time - or of ours, for that matter!
3	That being so, it wouldn't be at all surprising if he had used his actual words in Virgilian ways, too. However, there is more...
4	Nostradamus's latter-day secretary, Jean-Aymes de Chavigny, was sent to him specifically by Jean Dorat, who was a leading classical scholar, famed in his day as an interpreter of Nostradamus (could the two facts be connected?!), and known as the father of the group of poets known to this day as the 'Pléiade'.
5	Especially did Dorat encourage Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, two of its members, to publish their linguistic manifesto entitled the Deffense et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse in 1549 - just before Nostradamus started on his prophetic work. It had explosive, revolutionary effects on the whole contemporary use of the language.
6	One of the central themes of this immensely influential manifesto (which would eventually influence even Shakespeare's use of English) was that French should (in tune with the whole spirit of the Renaissance) be enriched with many borrowed Latin and Greek words, and re-cast largely in Latin mould.
7	This meant, among other things, using even French words in the senses and linguistic patterns in which the ancients had used them. Ronsard wrote that he was very proud of having done this (Encyclopedia p.98). Moreover, these uses were far from being 'old-fashioned': to people at the time they were the very latest thing! This being so, and classicisation consequently being all the rage, it would have been very surprising indeed if Nostradamus had not participated in it - as, indeed, all his writings clearly indicate. 'Disguise' didn't necessarily come into it: it was simply the way things were done at the time (even if, probably for reasons of concealment and self-protection, he did take it to excess!).

8. But how can anybody understand Nostradamus if they can't translate him using ordinary dictionaries? Surely you can only establish what he meant if you do a strict, word-for-word translation?

A. Admittedly, there are quite a few people who seem to imagine that Nostradamus only makes sense if he is translated into English - and, in particular, that French words mean English words.

In fact, of course, they don't (ask any French person who has never learnt a word of English, if you don't believe me!). Still less do 16th century French words - let alone Nostradamus's 16th century French words! Still less, of course, French idioms or expressions of any era, ancient or modern.

Consequently, rendering each word literally - even if it were possible - has little or nothing to do with translation, which involves expressing to speakers of the other language the exact meaning of the original text in such a way as to convey no feeling of awkwardness or foreigness that wasn't in the original. This has very little to do with word-equivalents - though no significant original idea should of course be omitted, and none added.

This, then, is the job of a translator, not a fool with a pocket-dictionary! And, in particular, any translation of the Prophecies that is not in verse is by definition not a proper translation!

While conversely, if you ask, literally translated, for a 'hot dog' in France, you might just get a warm chihuahua...

... and of course President J F Kennedy, in announcing to the people of Berlin that 'Ich bin ein Berliner', very nearly identified himself as what Americans call a large jelly donut (in British English a jam doughnut) - 'very nearly' because, in context, there was in fact no such confusion.

But then context is another thing that literal, word-for-word translation ignores completely, even if (as is not normally the case, I'm afraid!) it has the right dictionaries to hand...

From all of which it follows that the mere fact that you have a series of rough modern English word-equivalents to hand doesn't mean that you are then justified in applying modern English syntactical and contextual criteria to it and imagining, by way of establishing your proposed 'meaning', that they were ever Nostradamus's.

A. Everybody is mistaken, then! 'Hister' was in fact the classical name for the lower Danube. In the Propheties it is mentioned five times (II.24, IV.68, V.29, and Presages 15 and 31). On two of them (II.24, IV.68) it is coupled with the Rhine. IV.68, in fact, is specifically about rivers. Rhine and Danube used together to form the NE frontier of the Roman Empire. Two of the other references (Presages 15, 31) are specifically to the years 1557 and 1558. And in his Almanachs Nostradamus specifically to 'the river Hister, which is called Danube'.

Incidentally, Hitler was born at Braunau-am-Inn, which (as its name suggests) is on the river Inn, some 30 miles from the Danube at its nearest point (i.e. more than a day's journey in Nostradamus's time), and not even in the valley of the Danube at all...

10. But surely Nostradamus agrees with the Bible that there are to be three Antichrists?

Neither the book of Daniel nor St John's Revelation mentions the concept at all - so if you choose to link it to anything there, it is you who are making the link, not the Bible!

As for Nostradamus, he mentions the term 'Antechrist' (perfectly normal French for 'Antichrist') seven times:

He doesn't mention a 'third Antichrist' at all - not even at VIII.77. This is the one that starts (transcribed into modern letters):

(since if he had meant this, Nostradamus would have written 'tiers', not 'trois') still less:

with all Erika Cheetham's speculations about the Kennedys, because that doesn't fit the grammar (besides, dear old Edward hasn't been obliging enough to get himself assassinated yet!).

11. But Nostradamus does name Napoleon and Hitler as the first and second Antichrists, right?

While the fact is rather striking that the last US ambassador to Saudi Arabia was Raymond E Mabus, Governor of Mississippi, it is probably more relevant that Jan Gossaert de MABUSE, the Flemish painter, diedon October 1st 1532. In that same year the Emperor Charles V finally managed to push back the Muslim Ottoman hordes from before the very gates of Vienna - thus 'avenging' their previous 'laying waste of man and beast alike'. In the same year, too, there was a particularly bright comet - though not Halley's, which had returned the previous
year. The astrological situation between 14th and 18th September 1532 Julian (it seemsto have been N's normal practice to take the situation shortly before the event, as though trying to pinpoint the 'causes' rather than the event itself) had

The next time the same situation occurs (I have not so far managed to find a match involving Jupiter and Saturn as well - but N seems normally to have been satisfied with such five-planet matches) is between 18th and 23rd October 2002 (Gregorian) - which is when, if we follow N's normal logic, the same sequence of events ought therefore to follow too. It should therefore involve the death of a prominent painter, a comet, and the halting or throwing back of a Muslim invasion - apparently somewhere to the south of Lisbon.

A. It seems very unlikely. Even in Nostradamus's lifetime it was well understood that 'Chyren' was an anagram for (King) 'Henri[c]'- generally the contemporary King Henri II. The seer was not even the only one to use it (Dorat, Chavigny's old tutor, also did so in print). The references to CHYREN in the Propheties (the capitals are a dead giveaway of an anagram or other 'special' treatment in Nostradamus) seem to be to the future Henri V, the expected Christian saviour of France. The surprising association of 'Chyren' with 'Selin' (i.e. 'lunar', Muslim') at VI.27 may be more perceived than actual: other verses containing both words make it clear that the two are distinct, and quite hostile to each other - so the verse's syntax presumably has to be other than it appears at first sight, unless the
reference is merely to the fact that Henri II had a coat of arms with the moon on it.

14. What about the Man with the Blue Turban at II.2 and IX.73? He
has to be the Antichrist, doesn't he?

A. You've evidently been watching too many Orson Welles videos! No, he's simply a Muslim leader who has some kind of feud with another Muslim leader whose turban is white. The two verses (which seem to be a 'pair') both imply this, as well as siting their quarrel in France (which is interesting, to say the least, with its obvious relevance to the Muslim invasion of Europe that Nostradamus was always predicting) and they reflect Nostradamus's Almanach for 1556, which makes it quite clear that the 'blue turbans' and 'white turbans' are in fact merely feuding Muslim sects.

15. The reference to the 'road of the hollow mountains' at X.49 has to be about the poisoning of New York's water-supply, doesn't it?

A. Relax. It has nothing to do with New York. The 'garden of the world' is Eden, which means 'delight', which is 'plaisance' in French, which is the name of a village on the road north from Villeneuve (= 'new city')-sur-Lot to the Dordogne, with its caves and the village of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, with its hollowed out church and tombs...
All that the quatrain predicts is that someone ('he', not 'it') will be immersed and poisoned at Plaisance - which of course lies in an area that at one time was very familiar to Nostradamus during his time at Agen.
No indication of who - until, that is, someone can find the companion-verse...
This is one of Nostradamus's many obvious 'local' quatrains, in other words. His horizons were a lot smaller than many people often give him credit for. There is absolutely no excuse for imagining that they all apply to huge world-events.
And do remember that he himself states in his Epistle to the King that most of his prophecies are about Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, together with nearby astrologically related regions...

16. But at least verse VI.97, with its references to the 'new city' at 45 degrees and 'fire from the sky' is all about New York?

A. No, Nostradamus's New City is not New York. The city (he says) is at latitude 45 degrees. New York is at 40 degreees 40' - nowhere near it, in other words.
The inveterate twisters of Nostradamus's words will, of course, fiddle with the figures to try and make him say '40.5 degrees' (notwithstanding the fact that the decimal point system hadn't yet been adopted in Europe in his day, and that nowhere else in his mathematical caclulations, public or private, is Nostradamus known to have used it), just as Erika Cheetham fiddles with the geography to try and make him refer to New York State (notwithstanding the fact that he is referring perfectly clearly to a new city). But I'm afraid it won't wash.

Neither will the various attempts to make the verse refer to TWA flight 800. The crash occurred on or about 40 degrees 40' North, which is of course 40.67, not 40.5 degrees.

Neither, incidentally, will the further, quite separate attempts to link the verse with Baghdad. Baghdad lies on longitude 44 degrees 26' East - of Greenwich, England! - but longitude could not be calculated accurately in Nostradamus's day, and would not be calculable for another couple of hundred years. Besides, where you do suppose he would have calculated it from? Not Greenwich, surely?!

'New City', in Nostradamus, would normally mean a city whose name means new city. It could be Naples (Greek 'Neapolis' = 'new city', but it lies on 40 degrees 50' North), Villeneuve (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, in Nostradamus's own stamping-grounds of SW France, is comfortably within the 45th degree), Villanova (Villanova d'Asti in northern Italy is on 45 degrees), or Vilanueva (of which there are many in Spain). He constantly plays this kind of trick. For this same reason, though, It couldn't mean Belgrade.

Given that Nostradamus states perfectly clearly in his Letter to Henri II that his prophecies mainly apply to Europe, taking in North Africa and part of Asia Minor (i.e. the Middle East), together with nearby latitudinally-related areas, and that all his place-names except two fall squarely within that area, it seems extremely unlikely in any case that any of his prophecies apply to American cities.

Since Villeneuve-sur-Lot was within N's local area during his time at Agen, it seems by far the most likely, unless he was really referring to Naples and nearby Mount Vesuvius, and merely got his figures slightly wrong...

17. Isn't there good evidence in Nostradamus that World War III was due to start on July 4th 1999?

A. No, this idea is based on a well-known but quite disgraceful interpretation of I.58 (can't trace whose it is!) which fails to recognise that 'Alquilloye' - described in line 3 as celebrating its festival - refers to the Italian city of Aquileia, and instead insists (wrongly) that it means 'eagle'...which, of course, has to mean the USA (rather than all the dozens of other countries, naturally, that have the eagle as their symbol!!)...which in turn has to mean that the reference is to 4th July!!

In fact the verse merely states that the birth of a set of Siamese twins by Caesarean section will mark the submission by Fossano and/or Turin in Italy to the leader of Ferrara on Aquileia's feast-day.

As a direct result of the above travesty, the whole of Japan (where Nostradamus is inordinately popular) was in a state of almost apocalyptic panic about it during 1999 - to an extent which could actually have had practical effects on such things as the stock exchange...

18. But surely we are entitled to suggest any reading of the prophecies we like? I.58 included?

A. Think about it! As a result of fools promulgating the above idea, Japan was during 1999 (as I said) in a state of near-panic over it. Express your ideas, by all means, but do have some responsibility and carry out some proper research!
In case you don't believe me, consider the results of this sort of idiocy in respect of X.72 on the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult. In 1989 its leader, Shoko Asahara, came to Lyon to consult my colleague Michel Chomarat (guardian of over 2000 original Nostradamus books and articles in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon) and to take microfilms and photocopies of the original Nostradamus texts. Over the next 6 years hopeless misinterpretations of these (rather like the one reported above) featured in all their books predicting the end of the world. In 1995, in order to help bring it about, they then bombed the Tokyo subway with Sarin gas, killing and injuring many people.

Is that the sort of thing you want to provoke? Because if you do, the responsibility will surely be yours, not Nostradamus's.

19. Doesn't verse X.72 predict a King of Terror from the sky - either a comet, an asteroid, the Cassini space probe, the Mir space station, a solar flare, the 11th August solar eclipse, or else the Antichrist in person?

20. Is Roberts right in suggesting that X.72 is about the 'King of the Jacquerie', then (and if so, what does it mean?)?

A. 'King of the Jacquerie' is a term dreamt up by Henry C Roberts in his Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus of 1947 as part of his translation of line 3 of quatrain X.72.

Quite where he got this bizarre rendering from - bizarre even for him - I cannot imagine.

The original French says 'le grand Roy d'Angolmois'. This means, perfectly literally, 'the great King from Angoumois' - which is the area around Angoulême, in western France. Since the former King François I of France (monarch during much of Nostradamus's life) was duke of Angoulême, the description would fit him perfectly, and might suggest the advent of 'another François I'.

The Jacquerie, on the other hand, is the name given to a peasant rising that took place in 1358 around Beauvais, in Normandy, in protest against widespread English pillaging of the country. It lasted six weeks, and 20,000 peasants were killed before order was restored. The word 'Jacquerie' comes from the term 'Jacques Bonhomme', a popular French term for the ordinary peasant - a bit like 'Joe Soap'

From Beauvais to Angoulême is around 300 miles, even in a straight line! There is no conceivable connection, in other words, between verse X.72 and this event.

For a detailed consideration of this verse, please once again see the main FAQ (section 14).

21. But your own suggestion that X.72 is about the Pope is no better, is it? I mean what's all this 'comparative horoscopy' that you keep prattling on about?

A. The expression 'du ciel' ('of/from heaven' or 'of/from the sky') suggests, as elsewhere in the Propheties, that this big-spending or even appeasing ruler has some kind of divine authority. Far from being some kind of Antichrist, then, the figure concerned looks rather like the Pope himself, or else like a 'reincarnation' of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. See section 14 of the main FAQs.

By way of the former possibilitity please see the following extract from the Nostradamus Encyclopedia:

"Born in around the year 540, Gregory rose to early prominence, becoming Prefect of Rome in 573. The following year, however, he threw up a promising career to become a monk. On doing so, he gave up his Sicilian estates for the foundation of monasteries and surrendered his mansion in Rome for conversion into a religious house. That mansion stood on one of the seven hills of Rome known as the Caelian Hill (Mons Caelius), named after the Caelius ("heavenly") family. Already, then, he had distinguished himself not only as 'du ciel' ("of Caelius"), but also as a 'deffraieur' (a funder or payer out).

"In 578 Gregory, now one of the seven deacons of Rome, was sent on a mission to beg for help from the Emperor against the Lombards (Langobardi) who had just defeated the related Gepidae on the Danube with the aid of the Avars - an oriental tribe possibly of Mongol origin - and were now invading Italy. Indeed, they had already overrun the plain of the Po and were in the process of setting up their capital at Pavia. Despite six years of effort, the Emperor not only refused to make peace with the invaders, but Gregory was forced to return to a Rome that was threatened by invaders who, in effect, had merely been encouraged by the exercise. In 590 he was nevertheless made Pope and soon distinguished himself by organizing a massive relief programme for the refugees currently flooding into the city ('deffraieur' again). For the invading Lombards was still on the march and were eventually to reach Rome itself. Indeed, he managed to save the city only by buying them off the last moment ('deffraieur' yet again, but this time definitely in the sense of "appeaser").

"!In every respect, then, Gregory fits the picture painted by the prophecy. He had come from the Caelian Hill (du ciel). He was a great ruler, and (as Pope) a 'heavenly' one at that (du ciel again). He was a notable philanthropist, and an appeaser into the bargain (deffraieur in both senses). And he saw the very war that he had attempted to damp down resume again in earnest."

Yet, as I say, the Emperor Charles V is another possible candidate- in the event, possibly an even better one. Section 14 of the main FAQs refers...

22. When Nostradamus talks about a new 'siecle' and so on, he has to be talking about the new millennium, the beginning of the next century and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, doesn't he?

A. No. For a start, the word 'siecle' meant 'cycle' or 'age' at the time - not 'century', as it does today. And quite apart from that, the whole contemporary concept of centuries and ages was quite different from ours. There follows an extended quote from my unpublished book TheNostradamus Files:

"The trepidation of the equinoxes
In dealing with the question of the planetary cycles themselves, we are in mathematically much more competent hands than Nostradamus's. And in the first instance we have to deal with the so-called 'trepidation of the equinoxes'. This was a supposedly observed, but actually fallacious, disturbance in the gradual equinoctial precession - i.e. the gradual apparent movement of the vernal sun through all twelve signs of the zodiac over a period of some 26,000 years as the result of the earth's gyroscopic wobble.

"This alleged disturbance was put down to the movements - or 'titubation' - of a previously unknown eighth celestial sphere, just inside the primum mobile (the outermost sphere that was regarded as the heavenly power-house of the entire system of ancient and medieval cosmology). Systems for calculating its effects went back as far as ancient Egypt in the first century BC, but a more significant source for Nostradamus was the so-called Alphonsine Tables worked out by Jean de Murs in the 14th century and edited and republished by Luca Gaurico in the 16th. These deduced from it a total period, or trepidation-cycle, of 7000 years.
"Presumably in order to mirror the four seasons of the year, this period in turn was divided into four supposed sub-periods by the brilliant and much-respected Pierre Turrel, Rector of the schools of Dijon, in 1531. Starting with the Creation, these terminated respectively with the Flood, the Israelite Exodus, the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the projected end of the world. Turrel's ideas in turn were avidly taken up, plagiarised and amplified in 1549 by the Paris-trained Richard Roussat, a bachelor (though not doctor) of medicine who based his calculations on the figures of the church historian Eusebius (c. 264-340 AD) and the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735), and as a result came up with dates for these climactic events of 5200 BC, 3450 BC, 1700 BC, 50 AD and 1800 AD respectively. Moreover, as his published letters reveal, this system was adopted almost lock, stock and barrel by Nostradamus though he was careful in his letter to César to add the rider that the last date particularly would apply only if God wanted it to:

'As to the visible celestial judgement, we are still in the seventh millennium which brings everything to an end, and nearing the eighth . . . when the celestial images will complete their journey, and the heavenly movement will make our earth stable and firm, and will no longer vary from age to age: and yet these things shall be only when His will shall have been accomplished, and not otherwise. ' [tr. Lemesurier]

"The angelic cycle
But the trepidation-cycle was by no means the only cycle that was supposed to be in play. A further cycle, also linked to the then-supposed length of the larger, equinoctial cycle, was based on a so-called 'year of (lunar) years' lasting precisely 354 years and 4 months. First expounded by the Jewish poet and scholar Abraham Avenezra or Ibn Ezra (1089-1167), it proposed that there were seven such 'years' in a cycle (of which there had already been two complete ones to date), each ruled over by one of seven archangels and associated with one of the seven planets in the reverse order of the days of the week with which they were associated. Following the publication of this system in Venice in 1507, it was taken up the following year by Johannes Trithemius (the immensely influential Abbot of Spanheim) in his celebrated De Septem Secundeis, then by Scaliger's former mentor Luca Gaurico (1522). Turrel and Roussat both duly jumped on the bandwagon, too, in their case basing their chronology on the classical Eusebius. This gave the following proposed dates for the current, or third cycle [spellings are Trithemius's, as per William Lilly's 1647 translation of his De Septem Secundeis]:

"Thus, the age of Mars had come to a close, and that of the moon begun, some twenty years before Nostradamus wrote his Propheties, just as Century I.48 records:

which might seem to imply (in accordance with the alleged trepidation cycle above) that, following the subsequent age of the sun, he expected some kind of 'end of the world' to occur shortly after 1880.

"Far from it, however. Towards the end of his treatise, Trithemius had written in bold letters, 'The future Series of this Revolution requireth Prophecy' [De Septem Secundeis, 1508, tr. William Lilly, 1647], and possibly he was hinting here that the series might well run on into a fourth cycle. Certainly in his Préface à César Nostradamus made it quite clear that the world would go on until at least the year 3797. He also stated that there was at very least one further age of Saturn to come - a positive Golden Age, at that - and possibly, too, a further age of Mars:

'For now that the planet of Mars is completing its cycle, and at the end of its last period, so it will take it up again . . . And given that we are currently ruled over by the moon, subject to the omnipotence of Eternal God, before it has completed its full circuit the sun will come, and then Saturn. For according to the signs in the heavens the reign of Saturn shall return . . .' [tr. Lemesurier]

In this he was merely echoing Roussat, who in 1550 had floated the idea even more unambiguously:

'After this Mars was in charge for the third time until 6732 and four months (= 1533): and after that the Moon, which rules at present, took power, which it should continue to exercise - in order to complete its normal period of 354 years and four months - until the year 7086 and eight months (= 1887): and after it the Sun until the year 7441 (= 2242): and after the sun Saturn, too, should reign for a fourth time, always assuming that the world does not end or come to a conclusion in the meantime.' [tr. Lemesurier: interpolated dates are Brind'Amour's.]

"We thus need to extend our table of ages into a fourth cycle if we are to accommodate both this and Nostradamus's proposed terminal date of 3797. This gives the following [spellings are Trithemius's, as per William Lilly's 1647 translation of his De Septem Secundeis]:

... which would assign to the fourth cycle a theoretical end-date of 4722 - or some thousand years after Nostradamus's proposed terminal date (the presumed period of Heaven on Earth during which, in biblical terms, 'Satan shall be bound', perhaps?).

"Naturally, the very suggestion that there might be a fourth cycle - or even the start of one - scandalised orthodox astrologers such as Videl:

'You show yourself up as an even greater ass when you try to speak of the secret sciences and say that now that the planet of Mars is completing its cycle, and at the end of its last period, so it will take it up again . . .: it is thirty years now since Mars completed (its cycle), and then the moon took over power, as is evident and probable. But to say that it will take it up again? That is exceeding all bounds, in that even the Angels themselves know nothing about it'." [Translation copyright © Peter Lemesurier 1999]

Oh, and he never mentions the Age of Aquarius, by the way- which is just as well, since it's not due to start astrologically until 2371 or so (as you can check for yourself with a computerised ephemeris)...

...with its reference to a 'round mountain' rolling over great countries. has to be about a coming asteroid hitting the earth, doesn't it?

A. No, sorry. This one's just a flood in the area of Mount Olympus (described in line 1 not as 'round', but as 'seven stadia in circumference'), as VIII.16 below (an evident 'companion-verse') confirms: the cause appears to be a major earthquake somewhere between Corinth and Ephesus (II.52, III.3). Nostradamus wasn't aware that comets or meteors were even vaguely like mountains, and he had certainly never heard of asteroids! What does the 'rolling' is the 'inundation', not the mountain: the intervening colon is purely the printer's insertion (see last section of this FAQ). The companion verse reads:

'HIERON' is apparently a deliberate blind (hence the capitals, indicating something 'special'!) for 'Hieson' (contemporary spelling of 'Jason'), and 'Fesulan Olympique' is just a Nostradamian geographical pun on 'Olympe fessan' - i.e. 'Olympus broad-of-bottom', as per the previous verse above!

Though some have made the link instead with the former tyrants of Syracuse whose name, similarly, was Hieron...

A. He refers to "la comete"at II.62, to an "astre crinite" (hairy star) at II.15, to an "estoyle chevelue" at II.43 and an "estoille chevelue" at VI.6, and to "au ciel...feu courant longue estincele" at II.46. But none of these is specific as to identity or date.

26. But surely Nostradamus predicted the present crisis... [fill in as appropriate!!]?

A. Why should he have? That, certainly, is the usual assumption. But usually all that it reflects is the proposer's own hopeless lack of perspective regarding current events in the light of the long tapestry of history!

A. Probably not. It comes from the Gallic name for Amiens - 'Samarobriva', and seems to be a reference to the independent status of Amiens in the no-man's-land during the contemporary wars between France and the Holy Roman Empire to the east.

28. Don't Dolores Cannon's books give a good representation of what Nostradamus's verses mean? After all, unlike any other author, she claims that Nostradamus explains them to her directly. So far as I remember, her books even contain English translations...

A. The translations (which, naturally enough, her 'Nostradamus' often doesn't recognise!) are mainly quoted directly from Erika Cheetham (!), then amplified with the aid of Dolores's psychic regresssion subjects, who are allegedly in touch with 'Nostradamus'.

Unfortunately, though, whoever this character is often doesn't remember having written the verse under consideration, or even know what it is about. In the case of IV.27, for example (Bk 2), he even fails to recognise four prominent landmarks around his own birthplace of St-Rémy and starts blithely prattling on about Egypt...!

I can't help wondering whether the 'contact' isn't in reality Michel Nostradamus le Jeune, a well-known imposter of the time...

Curiously, though, while this 'Nostradamus' character is possibly a figment of their imaginations, they do sometimes seem to be in direct touch with a possible scenario for the future. But if you want actual information about Nostradamus, Dolores Cannon's books are, I'm afraid, the last place you are likely to find any!

29. Failing some kind of code, there has at least to be some secret key to the order or sequence that we are meant to read the quatrains in, doesn't there - some way of determing the precise date when each is supposed to come true?

A. Possibly he didn't want a precise date to be determined? I mean, if it were, and if he were proved wrong, the books wouldn't sell any more, would they? He was no fool!

Nevertheless, various systems have been proposed. Some try to extract dates from the verse numbers. Some count numbers of letters in words. Some propose dates (and thus sequences) based on complicated graphs. Others (including myself) try to do it on a 'jigsaw-puzzle' basis, working from apparent summary-verses, calendar datings, astrological datings, comparative horoscopy, common themes, phrases, place-names and other vocabulary.

Unfortunately, though, none of these is entirely reliable, and most are plain silly.

It seems that Nostradamus simply wrote his prophecies as they came to him, in no particular order. He seems, on the basis of his other work, to have been far too vague, confused and numerically incompetent to do much else!

30. To find out what Nostradamus's verses are saying, isn't it sufficient just to take a look at them and see which events (whether past or expected) happen to fit?

'Tis true, not having the wit - let alone the 16th century French - to work out what Nostradamus did say, nor the historical knowledge to place it in its true cultural context, many people (especially those who don't even know French in the first place) simply go to the published popular interpretation that best fits their fears/hopes/wishful thinkings, then assert that that author's translations 'must' be right (notwithstanding the fact that the author quite often doesn't know 16th century French either!), and finally tweak them a bit further just to rub the point home.

Or alternatively they rather daringly do go to the French (generally a very late, corrupt and thus unrepresentative edition), but with nothing more than a pocket French-English dictionary - then simply take the meaning of each word that best suits their thesis or agenda!

There is also the point that, to most people, Nostradamus's prophecies represent a kind of indeterminate chaos - and (as with the stars in the sky, for example) the human psyche just can't resist trying to make recognisable patterns out of them. And since what we recognise is by definition what we already know, the temptation is irresistible to 'fit' them to past events, present crises and common expectations.

Result - next to nobody manages to spot what Nostradamus actually is (or might be!) saying...

31. But surely the very way he wrote - obscure, twisted, not like normal language at all - deliberately invites us to read into them whatever turns us on?

A. No - he was merely writing in Latinised verse, and most modern people are simply unfamiliar with how to read it.

It has always been standard practice for prophets to write in verse or some kind, or 'prose on tiptoe' (as Dylan Thomas defined poetry). Besides, it allows for all kinds of ellipses and unusual words and constructions, and it makes it easier to remember - and harder for editors to tamper with! On top of that, he may well have gained a measure of 'inspiration' from the verse-form itself, with the end of line 1 determining the end of line 3, and line 2 having to get from one to the other while at the same time determining the ending of line 4. It's as if he felt that the words themselves were 'inspired'.
Even his critics wrote in verse! Conrad Badius (1562) [in my translation!] wrote of him:

(Similarly, I have no appoinment with my dentist unless she either tells me where and when, or unless she describes the circumstances exactly...)

Since, apart form the 141 published Presages (all of them dated for Nostradamus's own time), there are only about a dozen and a half verses that carry a date, and since, in the cases of the Sixains and verses VI.54 and VIII.71, there is some doubt as to what time-datum they refer to, that leaves less than half-a-dozen verses for more recent times bearing a definite date. Of these I.62, X.91, I.49 and III.77 seem to me to have been abject flops - though some people do manage to put forward what seem to me distinctly recherché arguments in their favour! This leaves only the prediction of a new world order in 1792 in the Epistle as a pretty good bullseye - referring (as it appears to) to the establishment of the new French Republic in that year.

Much therefore has to hinge on the exact, though undated prediction of unique events. In this category I would suggest Sixain 52's clear reference to the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, IX.49's apparent one to the execution of Charles I, IX.20's apparent (though more dubious) prophecy of Louis XVI's flight to Varennes, X.22's of the abdication of Edward VIII, VIII.77's possibly of the Gulf War and IX.16's of Franco.

33. But isn't it true that Nostradamus used a different calendar from ours, and so his years don't mean the same as ours anyway? Didn't his year start in March?

A. No, as all his annual Almanachs demonstrate, it started on 1st January, just like ours. And given that, in them, he published no less than eleven calendars of his own, presumably we have to believe him! However, he and his contemporaries did use the Julian calendar, which was 10 days behind what our present Gregorian one would have given. At the present time the difference has built up to some 13 days - so his 'seventh month of 1999' (X.72) in fact refers strictly to 14th July to 13th August. It certainly doesn't refer to September, as some ill-informed observers like to suggest on the basis of the word 'sept' (French for 'seven') in line 1.

A. Far from it. I'm just trying to get at the truth about him. That involves following the evidence wherever it leads, without preconceptions. If anything is demolished, it is merely the common, ill-considered idiocies about him. Consider my work on Nostradamus's translation of the Orus Apollo, for example...:

1	The content of the Orus Apollo is clearly little more than a lot of old wives' tales about (a) Egyptian hieroglyphs and (b) the birds, bees and flowers - tales in which Nostradamus presumably at least half-believed. This suggests strongly that he had no idea either of (a) Champollion's 1822 decryption of Egyptian hieroglyphs or (b) modern zoology. In other words, he emphatically did not know everything that was ever going to happen.
2	Nostradamus's spelling in the Orus Apollo is not much like the spelling in the published Propheties, and there is for the most part no punctuation at all. Most of the time he spells the French impersonal 3rd person pronoun - in English, 'one' - as 'ont', which is something that never happens in the Propheties. Quite frequently, too, 'un' comes out as 'ung', which in the published Propheties occurs no more than a couple of times at most - possibly the last remnants of the way he had originally written it. This suggests to me quite strongly that the spelling and punctuation in the Propheties is not Nostradamus's, but that of his printers. This would tie in with Brind'Amour's report that typesetting was normally done from dictation - which makes sense, since having one man do the reading of the manuscript andthe typesetting (look at text, dart to type-cases, find setting-stick, set letter, look back at text, smudge it with inky fingerprints...) is a positive recipe for losing your place, missing out words and whole verses etc...
3	It is perfectly obvious from the vague logic and syntax of the Orus Apollo that Nostradamus, far from having the brilliant, incisive intellect of a Shakespeare or a Francis Bacon, or even of a Rabelais or Ronsard, was in fact a pretty confused, shambolic and credulous character, not untypical of scholars of the day, when it came to dealing with abstract, theoretical or esoteric matters-and thus hardly likely to have been the brilliant, omniscient prophetic genius that he is sometimes supposed to have been.

Q. Did Nostradamus predict the attack of 11th September 2001 on New York City?

A. Only once - at quatrain X.66, which you can check for yourself on the websites listed below - and even that is doubtful, since it seems more than likely, on historical reference-grounds, that 'd'Americh' at the end of line 1 should really read 'dame erist' (see below). Apart from that, he himself insists in his covering letter to King Henri II that his prophecies are mainly about Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. Only two other of his place-names fall outside that area.

Source: The brutal military campaigns against Scotland mounted by King Edward I of England (ever since known as the 'Hammer of the Scots'), which grew out of the power-vacuum that resulted when King Alexander III of Scotland died and the kingdom fell to his granddaughter Margaret (ever since known as the 'Maid of Norway'), who herself died on her way back to Scotland from Norway to claim her crown in 1290. This was the same year when Edward notoriously expelled all the Jews from England - which might explain why Nostradamus knew about it, presumably from his family. The verse, in other words, has the standard Nostradamian format of 'omen plus corollary': just as Edward I mounted a brutal and ruinous invasion of Scotland as a consequence of the premature ending of Margaret's reign - so causing King Robert the Bruce eventually to embark on his famous counter-campaign as recorded in Froissart's Chroniques - so the rebellious Antichrist (rebellious, this time, against the Word of God) will conduct an equally brutal and ruinous invasion of Europe, as predicted by Nostradamus's prime source, the Mirabilis liber. Compare I.9, I.75, II.24 for the invasion, and I.47, I.76, II.9 for the Antichrist. The 'icy winds', one imagines, simply reflect the warm Provençal Nostradamus's idea of what the weather away up there in snowy Scotland's 'island' must be like...

Q. But what about the famous 'Fire from the sky hitting the New City at 45 degrees' prediction at VI.97?

A. New York City is not at 45 degrees latitude (it's all of 300 miles to the south), and the 'New City' (Nostradamus never tires of playing with the literal meanings of place-names) is far more likely to be either Villeneuve-sur-Lot in France or Villanova d'Asti in Italy ('Villeneuve' and 'Villanova', like 'Naples', both mean 'new city') - which are roughly at 45 degrees North. If, though, Nostradamus was really thinking of 40 degrees 50' North, rather than 45 degrees 00' North , then he is clearly talking about Naples (Greek 'Neapolis' = New City), with the 'fire from the sky' the volcano of nearby Mount Vesuvius. In this case, though, the first phrase would have to be read as 'Cinq-[ante] et quar-ante degres...' (i.e. fif[ty minutes] and forty degrees): see below.

Source: Once again, on the face of it, the Mirabilis liber's gruesome invasion-scenario: see I.9, I.75, II.24. The given latitude suggests either Villanova d'Asti in northern Italy or Villeneuve-sur-Lot in south-western France. On the other hand, the last line is more reminiscent of the Norman invasions of southern Italy and Muslim Sicily in the 11th century (see II.16) - but this would make Nostradamus's latitude incorrect, since the 'New City' would be Naples (Greek Neapolis, 'New City'), which lies at 40o 50' North, rather than 45o 00' North. However, line 1 could conceivably be intended to read 'Cinq- & quar-ante degrés' (i.e. 'fif[ty minutes] and 40 degrees), which would be correct. Meanwhile the subject would instead be the Mirabilis liber's promised Western counter-invasion (see I.55), rather than the original Muslim invasion itself, and the 'fire from the sky' would inevitably be an eruption of nearby Vesuvius that, in Nostradamus's view, is destined to mark it (compare I.87).

A. No. On no other occasion does Nostradamus use decimals - even though in his Almanachs he constantly deals with fractions of degrees - and they have never been expressed in this way in French. Besides, the decimal point system had not yet been adopted in Europe at the time.

Q. But what about all the Nostradamus quatrains that people keep posting on the Internet about 9/11?

Q. What about "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb", "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning" - Nostradamus 1654." ?

A. None of this was written by Nostradamus - and he would have been .. er... 150 years old in 1654! If you doubt it, ask whoever sent it to you for the verse-number and/or the original French.

Q. What about "In the year of the new century and nine months, from the sky will come a great king of terror...the sky will burn at 45 degrees. Fire approaches the great new city...In the city of york there will be great collapse, twin brothers.Torn apart by chaos while the fortresses fall, the great leader will succumb; the third big war will come when the big city is burning."

A. It's a garbled mixture of carefully selected lines from two different Nostradamus quatrains (X.72, which in the original doesn't even mention a 'King of Terror' - see third website listed below -and is about 1999 [!!]); and VI.79 (see above) - plus a bunch of other lines that are not by Nostradamus at all.
Anybody can garble quotations like that - even with the Bible... Er... "And he went and hanged himself (Matthew 27:5). Go, and do thou likewise (Luke 10:37)."

Q. How about: "Earth-shaking fire from the center of the earth. Will cause the towers around the New City to shake, Two great rocks for a long time will make war, And then Arethusa will color a new river red."

A. The original French verse says absolutely nothing about towers. The expression 'autour de' is simply the French for 'around', and even 'au tour de' [masculine], as printed, cannot possibly have anything to do with the French word for 'tower', which is feminine. A more reliable (and artistic) translation of I.87 would read as per below. Line 3 is in fact based on a French expression ('faire la guerre aux rochers' - 'to make war on the rocks') which simply means 'to struggle fruitlessly'. 'Deux grands' means 'two nobles'.

Source: A so-far-unidentified account in the classical annals of one of the nine known eruptions of Mount Vesuvius overlooking Naples (Greek Neapolis = 'New City') following the one that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79 - given that this produced mainly ash, rocks and pumice, rather than the lava flow evidently described in the last line. The last of these before Nostradamus's time occurred in 1036. Julius Obsequens (29) reports a similar eruption - though of Etna - in 126 BC: 'Mount Etna, with an earthquake, sprayed forth fire from its summit . . . '. Like the 'omens' of 1554 (a two-headed kid, a two-headed infant and the celebrated Salon meteorite), Nostradamus is projecting the eruption into the future as an omen of an imminent civil war that will, like the volcano, produce a 'red river', but this time presumably of blood. Possibly, too, he is associating it with the Mirabilis liber's prediction of: ' . . . battles, tribulations, bloodshed, earthquakes, cities in captivity.' (Prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl)

A. Relax. It's nothing to do with New York. The 'garden of the world' is Eden, which means 'delight', which is 'plaisance' in French, which is the name of a village on the road north from Villeneuve (= 'new city')-sur-Lot to the Dordogne, with its caves and the village of Aubeterre('Dawn of the World')-sur-Dronne, with its hollowed out church and tombs...
All that the quatrain predicts is that someone ('he', not 'it') will be immersed and poisoned at Plaisance - which of course lies in an area that at one time was very familiar to Nostradamus during his time at Agen.
As I pointed out earlier, this is one of Nostradamus's many obvious 'local' quatrains, in other words. His horizons were a lot smaller than many people often give him credit for. There is absolutely no excuse for imagining that all of his predictions apply to huge world-events.

Source: Unknown, but clearly based on the Inquisition's known methods of assassinating suspected heretics at the time, as confirmed in Nostradamus's own correspondence for the early 1560s, and applied to an unidentified victim at the village of Plaisance just north of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, on the road to the Dordogne with its famous caves - and especially, perhaps, the village of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, with its celebrated rock-hewn church and tombs.

A. No, unfortunately not, especially as the film is based directly -and rather fancifully - on the book. Erika performed a valuable service in making some of the original French texts available worldwide for the first time - but, alas, her 16th century French wasn't up to translating them reliably, and her credulity got in the way of her interpreting them reliably.

Q. Is there to be no Antichrist with a blue turban, then, calling down nuclear missiles on New York, as in the film?

A. Not if Nostradamus himself is to be believed. For him, the target of the Antichrist was always going to be Europe - and, moreover, he would eventually be defeated. He also makes it quite clear in his 1566 Almanach that the 'Blue Turbans and 'White Turbans' are simply feuding Muslim sects.

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