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The debate over the enciphered nature of Nostradamus' poetry was
very much alive here in January 1998. The following is a re-post
of a three-way debate about it, between Raymond Lafontaine (who
had so many aliases that I lost count), Peter Lemesurier (alias
of Peter Ewart Britton) and myself.
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Newsgroups: alt.prophecies.nostradamus
From: (Claude Latremouille)
Subject: Jan 25 à Peter
Message-ID: <EnCHLy.8o1.0.queen@torfree.net>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 14:58:44 GMT
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[QUOTE]
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Responding to Peter in:
From: (Peter Lemesurier)
Newsgroups: alt.prophecies.nostradamus
Subject: Re: A few questions
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 10:41:31 GMT
Reply-To:
References: <En97Cs.IDM.0.sheppard@torfree.net>
<34C96392.E098C87@nexus.trident.org>
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tora <nexus@nexus.trident.org> wrote:
Claude Latremouille wrote:
To zero in on a few key points about Nostradamus and his
prophecy, the five questions below might be of some use.
One can answer them privately, or share the answers with the
readers of a.p.n. Here goes:
[ my snip ]
3. If your answer to Questions 1. and 2. is 'yes', is
it more likely than not, in your view, that he has
hidden in his published poetry a prophecy in prose (by
way of cryptic anagrams)?
PETER: No. There's absolutely no reason to believe that. For
heaven's sake, they're difficult enough as they stand... Be
interesting, though, to see how other readers respond to this.
CLAUDE: As to your third sentence, I agree, Peter, but it seems
to me that it is very difficult for a non French-speaking person
to have a feel for the decrypted text.
As to your first two sentences, I am almost tempted to frame them
as I cannot help but see the blatant contradiction between the
two, a contradiction which you obviously do not perceive.
As I was about to list the 'reasons' which would prompt a person
to conclude that Nostradamus' published poetry does hide
something, I ended up - as my first point - thinking, almost as
you state it:
"For heaven's sake, they're difficult enough as they stand... "
Yes, Peter, that would be the first reason to see that they hide
something. You and I are so used to the published text (I am
sure, like me, you have probably memorized a few quatrains, just
as a result of having dealt with them so many times, for so many
years) that we tend to forget the obvious: nobody has ever
written like that, ever!
What we tend to ascribe to ancient French is not so. It is
gobbledygook, but a so intelligent gobbledygook that we try to
understand what the good doctor wrote, and forget to ask
ourselves: why on earth did he write like that?
And for about 25 years, I too did not ask myself that question.
Only after having begun finding the anagrams did it strike me in
the face. And, for a while, I felt like a fool not to have
realized it earlier. But soon, I felt better... knowing that
hundreds of my predecessors, for more than 400 years, had also
not seen it.
So, yes, Peter, there is indeed a very good reason to conclude
that the published text hides something: grammatically,
lexically, poetically, etc., IT STINKS!
And yet, despite all these flaws, we can still guess what the
good doctor was talking about... after the fact. If that is not
the mark of a genius, I don't know what is.
But I do not seek to convince you. You have decided, for better
or for worse, to deny the cryptic anagrams, or that they actually
come from Nostradamus, and are urging me to abandon that crazy
idea.
Should we not ask ourselves the question, then: Why on earth did
he write his prophecy, if it is not for a practical purpose (like
the one I assert to have discovered: to warn Paris of its
destruction)?
[ another of my snips ]
5. If you answered 'yes' to all questions above, is it
more likely than not, in your view, that the events
written about in the anagrams will actually happen?
PETER: Once again, I didn't - and I have no means of judging.
However, they do seem more or less to fit what comes out of the
rest of the plain text. However, that may merely reflect a common
awareness of the likely future, rather than any suggestion that
it is a fair reflection of Nostradamus to play scrabble with his
prophecies. It may, in other words, simply be a reflection on the
common tea-leaf technique - except that in this case the 'leaves'
are the letters of the Prophecies. OK, use them that way if you
must - but don't then put it about that Nostradamus himself had
anything to do with it!
CLAUDE: Except for your last sentence, it also seems to me that
the mechanism at play, in the making of the cryptic anagrams - if
they have not been put there by Nostradamus himself - is as you
say. I call it a form of Rorschach <spelling?> test.
As to your last sentence, when you have answered fully ALL of the
objections I earlier posted to your own objections about the
presence of an entire prophecy in prose via cryptic anagrams in
the published poetry - and not merely keep silent about them -
should you pretend to state so categorically that Nostradamus had
nothing to do with it.
To start, you might ask youself the question: why did Michel de
Nostredame decide to call himself MICHEL NOSTRADAMUS? If you have
answered that question in a.p.n. after my explanation that it
hides the prophecy, I have not seen it yet; and if you have not,
why not?
[ another big snip ]
PETER [responding to Alef]: Claude has a wonderful knowledge of
Nostradamus and his texts, a Francophone's command of the
language, and great skill and patience in expounding what he
wants to say, and his abilities would be far better applied IMO
to helping the rest of us understand them than to re-writing them
entirely in the service of what (to me at least) seems to be a
very clever but totally crackpot theory for which - to be fair -
Claude himself is not entirely responsible.
CLAUDE: Only one point in this which I did not understand, the
last part: "...totally crackpot theory for which - to be fair -
Claude himself is not entirely responsible." Could you explain
further what you mean by the "... for which - to be fair - Claude
himself is not entirely responsible."
PETER: Incidentally, in response to Alef's characteristic piece
of innuendo, so far as I know Claude has never made a cent out of
his anagrams!
CLAUDE: Correct, Peter, I am - as we say - "in the red", as far
as that publication is concerned.
PETER: Alef seems so obsessed about this that I find myself
wondering whether at some stage he has had a book rejected by a
publisher...
--
Peter
CLAUDE: That is also what I had concluded earlier but recently,
in reply to a post in French, Alef replied in French, and I was
dismayed to see so many orthographic mistakes that I do not know
why Alef sometimes writes like this, both in French and in
English, while sometimes spelling much better than that at other
times (in English). It is almost as if there were two Alefs.
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[END OF QUOTE]
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------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Claude Latrémouille % -- "Claude! There ain't no stinkin' -- %
Le 25 janvier 1998- % cryptic anagrams in them dang texts, - %
APNCL#0130 -------- % ya hear?!" (A chorus of a.p.n. voices) %
------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
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=== ===
=== CLAUDE LATRÉMOUILLE ===
===========================
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