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The Prophecies Texts Biography The Prophecies of NostradamusTexts
The Oracles of Nostradamus by Charles A. Ward [1891].
Did Nostradamus predict the WTC disaster?
You be the judge.... Biography of NostradamusThe renowned prophet Nostradamus (Michel de
Nostradame) was born on December 14, 1503 in St. Remy, Provence,
France. Nostradamus came from a long line of Jewish doctors and
scholars. His family had converted from Judaism to Christianity in
1502, as a result of persecution on the ascension of Louis the XII.
After a classical education he studied medicine, herbalism and
astrology. During Nostradamus' lifetime the Black Death (today known as the bubonic plague) wiped out over a quarter of Europe. It is no wonder that a sense of apocalyptic terror fills Nostradamus' quatrains. Nostradamus
can indisputably be said to have been ahead of his time, at least in
terms of medical practice. His treatment of the Black Death involved
removal of the infected corpses, fresh air and unpolluted water for the
healthy, a herbal preparation rich in Vitamin C, and (in contravention
of contemporary medical practise) not bleeding his patients. Nostradamus
was successful in lessening the impact of the Black Death in the
capital of Provence, Aix. The grateful citizens gave him a stipend for
life. Nostradamus
began to write his prophetic verses in the city of Salon, in 1554. They
are divided into ten sections called Centuries (which refers to the
number of verses in each section, not to a unit of 100 years). The
Centuries were published in 1555 and 1558, and have been in print
continuously ever since. Nostradamus
had the visions which he later recorded in verse while staring into
water or flame late at night, sometimes aided by herbal stimulants,
while sitting on a brass tripod. The resulting quatrains (four line
verses) are oblique and elliptical, and use puns, anagrams and
allegorical imagery. Most of the quatrains are open to multiple
interpretations, and some make no sense whatsoever. Some of them are
chilling, literal descriptions of events, giving specific or
near-specific names, geographic locations, astrological configurations,
and sometimes actual dates. It is this quality of both vagueness and
specificity which allows each new generation to reinterpret
Nostradamus. Nostradamus
is said to have predicted his own death. When his assistant wished him
goodnight on July 1, 1566, Nostradamus reputedly pronounced, "You will
not find me alive at sunrise." He was found dead on July 2, 1566. Nostradamus
was interred standing upright in the Church of the Cordeliers of Salon.
However, his story does not end there; he was disinterred twice, once
on purpose and once maliciously. In
1700, his body was moved by the city to a more prominent crypt. When a
necklace was found on his skeleton bearing the date '1700', his body
was hurriedly reinterred. During
the French Revolution, in 1791, some drunken soldiers broke into his
tomb. The mayor quickly placated the mob by describing how Nostradamus
had predicted the revolution, and they replaced the bones in the crypt. However,
Nostradamus had the last laugh. In Century 9, Quatrain 7, he had
written: The
man who opens the tomb when it is found Reputedly,
the soldiers who desecrated his tomb for the final time were ambushed
on their way back to base and killed to the last man.
The Charles Ward book is in the public domain. |
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