Nostradamus (1503–1566) French physician and prophet whose far-reaching prophecies have caused controversy for centuries. A gifted clairvoyant, Nostradamus made approximately 1,000 prophecies, many of which are interpreted as having a reach into the far future.
Nostradamus was born Michel de Nostredame on December 14, 1503, in St. Remy de Provence, the oldest of five sons in a well-educated Jewish family. His parents converted to Catholicism, which exposed Nostradamus to both the occult wisdom of the Kabbalah and the prophecies of the Bible. As a child, he experienced visions, which he believed were a divine gift from God.
At home Nostradamus was educated in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and Astrology. In 1522 he was sent to Montpellier University to study medicine. He earned a degree and a license and went to work treating plague victims throughout southern France. He possessed an uncanny gift for healing and quickly became famous, despite opposition from fellow physicians to his unorthodox cures. He refused to bleed patients, and he made his own medicines. Some of his recipes, dating to 1522, have not survived.
In about 1534 Nostradamus settled in Agen, married, and fathered two children. He met Julius Cesar Scaliger, a philosopher and student of astrology who may have introduced Nostradamus to the art of prophecy. A few years later Nostradamus’s life and medical practice fell apart when the plague claimed his entire family. In addition, the Inquisition sought him for questioning concerning a friend of Scaliger. Nostradamus left Agen and apparently drifted around Europe for about six years. According to legend, his prophetic vision began to flower during this time, and he delved further into a study of the occult.
He settled down again, in Salon en Craux de Provence, where he married Anne Ponsart Gemelle, a wealthy widow who bore him six children. Sometime after 1550, he began to record his prophetic visions, which came to him by “the subtle spirit of fire,” delivered in fragments and accompanied by a voice from limbo which he believed to be the “Divine Presence.” He summoned the visions by Scrying every night alone in his study, gazing into a bowl of water set in a brass tripod. He began his sessions with a magic Ritual attributed to the ancient Oracles of Branchus. He touched the tripod with a wand, then dipped the wand into the water, and touched the tip to his robe. He recorded the things he saw and heard, often not understanding them.
Nostradamus feared being accused of Sorcery and brought up on charges before the Inquisition, so he phrased the prophecies in rhymed quatrains written in a mixture of Greek, French, Provencal, and Latin; some words were further disguised in anagrams. He arranged the quatrains in groups of hundreds, or “centuries,” which were not in chronological order.
The first prophecies were published in 1555 as Les Propheties de M. Michel Nostradamus and were an immediate success in aristocratic circles, gaining him the favour of Catherine de Medicis and cementing his reputation as a prophet. He published a second, larger edition of Propheties in 1558.
Once while traveling on a road near Anaconda, Italy, Nostradamus passed by a group of monks and suddenly knelt before one of them, Brother Peretti, a former swineherd. He addressed the monk as “His Holiness,” the title reserved for the pope. Forty years later—and 19 years after Nostradamus died—Brother Peretti became Pope Sixtus V.
Nostradamus enjoyed fame and success until 1566 when his health declined due to gout and dropsy. He died during the night of July 1 of that year and was buried upright in a wall of the Church of the Cordeliers in Salon. In 1791 superstitious French soldiers opened his grave. His bones were reburied in the Church of St. Laurent, also in Salon.
Nostradamus wrote 10 volumes of centuries containing 1,000 prophecies, but he inexplicably left the seventh volume incomplete. At the time of his death, he had been planning to write the 11th and 12th volumes. Scholars have puzzled over the prophecies for centuries. Some seem clear, while others have been subjected to widely divergent interpretations. Among the many great events of history which Nostradamus is credited with having foreseen are the Napoleonic wars; the history of British monarchs from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, including the abdication of Edward VIII; the American Revolutionary War and Civil War; the rise and fall of Hitler; the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy; and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He also foresaw air and space travel, including manned rockets to the Moon and submarines, that would be used for war. He is also said to have prophesied the development of the atomic bomb.
During World War II, Nostradamus’s quatrains, including fake ones, were used by both Axis and Allied powers for propaganda purposes. The Germans airdropped over France selected quatrains that they claimed foretold victory by the Nazis. The British countered by air-dropping quatrains over Germany and occupied countries which foretold the Nazis’ defeat. The U.S. government used quatrains in film shorts shown in movie houses that portrayed the United States as the torch of freedom for the world.
Nostradamus has been interpreted as predicting three reigns of terror created by what he termed three Antichrists. The first two have been identified by some as Napoleon and Hitler; the third remains open to interpretation, but the scenario is similar to the end times portrayed in the book of Revelation. New York City would be destroyed in a nuclear war that would take place from 1994 to 1999. This great war was to be presaged by famines, drought, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. After 27 years the Antichrist would be defeated and killed, followed by a 1,000-year golden age of peace. When the terrorist attack and collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City occurred on September 11, 2001, Nostradamians, as some students of his work are called, rushed to find validation for the event in his quatrains.
Nostradmus’s predictions continue to be the focus of both controversy and scholarly study. Believers say he indeed could see several centuries ahead, while skeptics say that his veiled language, as well as translations of his language, enable the quatrains to be fitted to many events.
FURTHER READING:
- Boesler, Knut, ed. The Elixirs of Nostradamus. Wakefield, R.I.: Moyer Bell, 1996.
- De Fontbrune, Jean-Charles. Nostradamus: Countdown to Apocalypse. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1980.
- Roberts, Henry C. The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus. New York: American Book–Stratford Press, 1969.
- Robins, Joyce. The World’s Greatest Mysteries. London: Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1989.
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy Written byRosemary Ellen Guiley Copyright © 2006 by Visionary Living, Inc.