Most French commentators have recognized in Nostradamus' printed
poetry many words which constitute either straightforward
anagrams, or cryptic anagrams. Many of these words have even been
emphasized in the original editions by being printed in small
capital letters.
*
The word *CHYREN* is a good example of a cryptic anagram: it is
the word HENRY with an added letter C. The cryptic anagram is
defined as an anagram with a tolerance of one letter. Sometimes a
letter is added (as above), sometimes a letter is omitted. In the
word NOYR (black), the cryptic anagram for ROY (king) is found,
plus the letter N. In the word ROY, the reverse happens: the word
NOYR is the cryptic anagram, but with an added letter N.
*
NERSAF is FRANCE, as long as one recognizes the one-letter
substitution of an S for a C. And the straightforward anagram for
PARIS is... RAPIS. That one is easy to spot.
*
But few commentators have asked why Nostradamus made use of both
word-based anagrams, and word-based cryptic anagrams, just as few
of them commented on Nostradamus' use of small capitals in his
original editions. This last point is not surprizing, given that
prior to 1984 these original editions were largely unknown
amongst even the best commentators.
*
Having discovered that Nostradamus' texts are all made of line-
based cryptic anagrams, it was easy for me -- after the fact --
to see why Nostradamus had used anagrams: he had to leave at
least some clues to his readers of what he had done. So, he used
word-based anagrams.
*
But he had to lead us to the more obscure notion of multi-word,
or line-based, cryptic anagrams. One way to leave clues to these
more elaborate anagrams was for him to shift some letters in the
same line of text, and to do so *incorrectly*, so as to get his
readers to say: Hey! What's going on here?! Three examples of
such clues follow.
*
FIRST EXAMPLE:
*
The very top line of a given page from his 1555 Letter to Caesar
contains an oddity. In fact it contains *two* oddities, as if
Nostradamus was telling us: 'See? This is not my printer's fault.
I told him to move these letters around. Why? To show you the way
I constructed by hidden Prophecy.' So he wrote:
*
LINE 01 is l'vaage naturel & humani, tu verras deuers --------
*
French-speaking readers would have immediately noticed the two
oddities. As the sentence starts at the end of the preceding
page, we get to see that two letters are misplaced in that same
line of text. The sentence began with the words: « Que si tu... »
in the previous page. So, the 'correct' sentence should read:
« Que si tu vis l'aage naturel & humain, tu verras... ». The two
letters which are not at their proper place? The 'v' of 'vaage'
returns to the start of the line, to form the verb 'vis'; and the
'i' of 'humani' moves back one slot, to form the word 'humain'.
*
If his readers would have noticed these two 'mistakes', one
wonders why his printers had not. After all, both 'mistakes' were
on the very same line, at the very top of a page, making them
extremely easy to spot. Moreover, this edition had known at least
two different printings (nowadays, they are referred to as the
'Albi' copy and the 'Vienna' copy), in which case it would have
been very easy to 'correct' that top line. It was not corrected.
*
All of which leads to the conclusion that these 'mistakes' were
not mistakes after all, but were intended by the author and
faithfully printed by the printers.
*
SECOND EXAMPLE:
*
In the Benoist Rigaud edition, line 4 of quatrain X-86 is printed
thus:
*
----------- Et yront contre le roy de Babilon. ---------------
*
Here, we again have two 'mistakes', but this time, they cancel
each other. The 'y' of 'yront' and the 'i' of Babilon trade
places, and the 'corrected' line would read thus:
*
----------- Et iront contre le roy de Babylon. ---------------
*
This time, the printer can't be blamed, as the two 'mistakes'
cancel each other. The 'y' and the 'i' were interchanged. The
line reads the same, as both 'y' and 'i' sound the same. Why
would Nostradamus ask his printers to do this? He wanted to show
his readers that it is quite all right to move the letters on the
same line of text for the purpose of finding his hidden Prophecy.
*
THIRD EXAMPLE:
*
Take the Du Rosne September 1557 edition. Go to the 3rd Centurie.
Look at the top of each page. You will see the usual page number,
before or after the centurie number (depending on whether you are
looking at a page facing left or at a page facing right).
Normally you would expect to see, for the 3rd Centurie, something
like:
*
C E N T V R I E___I I I.
*
in small caps. Now look at page 52. Even though you are still
reading Centurie III, you see:
*
C E N T V R I E___I I.
*
Printer's mistake, right? Wrong! How do we know? Look at the
opposite page, facing right, page 53. What do you see?
*
C E N T V R I E___I I I I.
*
Don't forget that you are still reading Centurie III. Only if you
actually look at the book and see both pages at the same time,
one facing left, the other facing right, can you see that the
printers compensated their first 'mistake' by a displacement of
the omitted "I" from the top of page 52 to the top of page 53,
thereby committing yet another 'mistake'
*
Just like this "Babilon" and "yront", discussed earlier, anybody
can correct mentally these two 'mistakes'. But how can one turn
Centurie II into Centurie III, and then turn Centurie IIII into
Centurie III, without asking oneself: Hey! What's going on, here?
*
How can two apparent printer's 'mistakes' cancel each other
mathematically if they were made inadvertently? No printer could
have *inadvertently* created TWO mistakes which add up and cancel
each other (for the dim-witted, two Centuries III make a total of
SIX, which is the same total found in the total of the two
'mistakes' above, i.e. II plus IIII equals SIX.
*
Which leads the reader, the intelligent reader that is, to see
that these two oddities were not mistakes, but were *intended* by
the author of the book who wanted to leave us some clues that the
text found under these two screwed-up lines is encyphered. How?
In the very same manner: By moving letters in the same line of
text, a device otherwise known as the line-based cryptic anagram.
*
Clever, eh, this Nostradamus?!
*
------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Claude Latrémouille % -- "Claude! There ain't no stinkin' -- %
Le 31 janvier 2004- % cryptic anagrams in them dang verses,- %
APNCL#1412 -------- % ya hear?!" (A chorus of a.p.n. voices) %
------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
*
=== ===
=== CLAUDE LATRÉMOUILLE ===
===========================
--
*** ** ***
C L A U D E L A T R E M O U I L L E
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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| User: "Leigh_Bee" |
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| Title: Re: Nostradamus and... anagrams! |
31 Jan 2004 05:23:28 PM |
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(Claude Latremouille) wrote in message news:<bvf76j$rot$1@freenet9.carleton.ca>...
Most French commentators have recognized in Nostradamus' printed
poetry many words which constitute either straightforward
anagrams, or cryptic anagrams. Many of these words have even been
emphasized in the original editions by being printed in small
capital letters.
Yes but the anagram is Not the only tool in word play and as E Leoni
in 1961 plainly demonstrates (He being a professional Cryptographer)"a
fruit cake has more than nuts" from chapter on Rules of the Game:
Nostradamus states in several places in his Preface and Epistle that
he had deliberately obscured his prophecies and veiled them as heavily
possible. Why He did so is no mystery at all, and any reasonable
person think of many reasons: to avoid offense to the authorities of
Church and State, which might have involved his own summary
liquidation; to avoid the inconceivably wicked, not to mention
confusing, sacrilege of threatening to interfere with the fulfillment
of God's Will by disclosing it clearly in advance; and perhaps also
because of every prophet's quite human desire to reduce the number of
his failures to a minimum by use of mysterious and confusing
terminology. The important question is then not why but Nostradamus
goes about this These seem to be the principal answers:
1. The innumerable glaring examples of Latin syntax seem to offer
satisfactory substantiation for the theory that the quatrains were
first written in Latin, perhaps from a rough draft in French. What
kind of Latin? We find an example in one quatrain that was left in
Latin, the "Incantion Against Inept Critics," found at the end of
Century VI. Some commentator's call it liturgical Latin, others just
Low Latin. jean Leroux in his Clef' (1712) came forth with something
much more specific. He was convinced that Nostradamus had read a book
called Progymnasmata in artem oratorium by Franciscus Sylvius,
professor at the University of Paris. This book printed in 1528, set
forth in the greatest detail how to produce the most elegant Latin.
Leroux cites chapter and verse of Sylvius' book for ten instances in
which his precepts have been followed in this one quatrain alone. The
French translation of this "elegant" Latin is virtually verbatim. This
means that Latin syntax, not French syntax, prevails. It means, for
instance. that an ablative absolute construction loses its identity as
such in uninflected French, and yet requires the translation of an
ablative absolute,
By this theory it would seem that the proper sense of the quatrains
could best be derived by translating them back, verbatim, into Latin,
In his bilingual Janus in 1594, Chavigny did indeed give many of the
quatrains Latin, without, however, much more sense being made by them
by any Perhaps Chavigny, excellent classics scholar that he was, did
not use proper Latin. Or perhaps the theory is worthy of but limited
application. In any, case, this theory must be kept in mind, even if
its application by no means makes the quatrains much clearer.
1 Although the quatrains are nominally translated into French about ,5
per cent of the words are not recognizable as French today. About 2.8
per cent of the vocabulary is merely frenchified Latin (with slight
changes in the endings) if not pure Latin. Another 2.1 per cent
Consists of 01(1 French words.' The remaining 0.1 per cent consists of
words of Greek or Provencal origin .
2 Le Pelletier mentions Spanish, Italian, Celtic and Hebrew as the
source of many words, but there is only one Hebrew word 1096), a
sentence in Spanish (1025), and nothing from the other two tongues
that could riot be derived as well or better from Latin or Old French.
Perhaps the biggest source of confusion is in connection with words
identical with French words, but which the context shows to have
other derivation. Thus the word pont means, "bridge" in French, but we
find Nostradamus using it to mean "sea," from the Creek pontos. or
'Papacy" from the Latin pontifex (and derivatives). Although pie means
"magpie" French, Nostradamus used it as a derivative of the Latin
pius, "pious"
3. Anagrams were all the rage in Nostradamus' day, It is quite,
reasonable that he should have made use of them. Thus Chyren is put
for Henryc-us), Nersaf for "France," Rapis for "Paris," noir for roy,
"king," and (Mendosus for "Vendosme" (the actual Bourbon sub-branch
that came to the throne). In the anagrams latitude is provided by the
inter changeability, of and i,u and v, s and c, i and j. The use of
silent s instead of a circumflex similar variations of form in
accentation must also be noted. Although the perfect anagram required
the use of the same letters, Nostradamus seems to have allowed himself
the change of one letter, but never more than one.
Similar to the use of anagrams is the rise of enigmas. Prominent
amongst these are Aenobarbe, which means Bronzebeard but is also the
family name the of Antichrist Nero, symbol of pagan wickedness, the
Pourceau Mi-homme, which means "pig-half-man"; and various gentlemen
named after Roman gods, like Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.
4. Mythological and historical allusions veil several quatrains. One
quatrain refers to the story of Bellerophon and Proetus, another to
that of Jupiter and Phaeton. In the Epistle someone is called a second
Thrasibulus, so we must know that this gentleman was the leader of the
popular party at Athens who restored the democracy in 403 B.C. and is
therefore the symbol of a radical demagogue. 'As Old French was still
much in use in it is riot quite correct to consider this amongst the
deliberate obscurifications of Nostrdamus. many words could be derived
from either Latin or French equally one whole quatrain in (426) and
most of another (444),
5. References to many places are veiled by use of their classical
names or origin. Thus we find Port Phocen for Marseilles. founded by
the ' Phoceans; Byzantium for Constantinople or Istanbul; Agatha for
Agen; Lutetia for Paris; Bastarnia for Poland; Hister for the Danube;
Pannonia for Hungary; Lusitania for Portugal and many, many others.
6. Nostradamus makes ample use of devices variously considered as
grammatical, poetical or rhetorical, and derived chiefly from Latin or
Greek usage. Chief amongst these are-
a) ELLIPSIS, the omission of words which are understood. Thus qui is
used frequently for ce qui, "he who."
b) SYNECDOCHE, the part standing for the whole. Thus sword stands for
army at times, or Paris may stand for France. A common
non-Nostradamiam
contemporary example is "the Kremlin for the U.S.S.R. However, this
has been carried too far by some interpreters in twisting simple
statements into farfetched images.
C) HYPERBATON, the transposition or inversion of the natural order.
This is found throughout. The dividing line between it and the
previously mentioned use of Latin syntax is rather blurry.
d) APOCOPE, the omission of the last letter or syllable. In
Nostradamus, this amounts to abbreviation. We find Carpen for
Carpentras, Ast for Asti, Carcas for Carcassonne, etc.
e) SYNCOPE, the omission of a letter or syllable from the middle of a
word. Thus donra is used for donnera, lairra for laissera, monstra for
monstrera and Tamins for Tamisiens (those of the Thames).
f) APHERESIS, the omission of a letter or syllable from the beginning
of a word. Thus, verse is used for renverse, "overthrown."
g) EPENTHESIS, the insertion of a letter or syllable in the middle.
Thus xvc find Timbre for Tibre, the Tiber River.
h) PROSTHESIS, the insertion of an extra letter at the beginning of a
word. Thus, Aspire is put for Spire, a city in Bavaria.
i) METATHESIS, the transposition of letters or syllables. Thus Ucetia
is used for Uticensia, Latin name for the town of Uzes.
Within this framework, the majority of the words and phrases make
sense, and follow some sort of pattern. Nevertheless, Leroux's ,dew
that all the quat-rains are actually the epitome of polished
literature and contain no bar-barities is carrying things a bit too
far. There are many instances where all adjective does not agree with
a noun it obviously modifies and where a plural verb has a singular
subject, or vice versa. In this connection, Parker has made a
worth-while comment:
The obscurity imparted to the Centuries by the wilful use of anagrams,
ape-copation, prosthesis, epenthesis, and other disfigurations of the
written word is intensified by the numerous typographical errors which
could not fail to creep into the versions printed from manuscript
copies. In some cases the misprint was due to the illegibility of the
original; in others it was due to the desire of the compositor to
rectify what seemed to him incorrect; in the rest it was
due to the ordinary mechanical difficulties to which any printing is
subject. Moreover, such is the nature of the work that, in the absence
of any original manuscript or authentic corrected edition, it is
impossible to establish the true reading for many varying passages,
foi- the logical word, or rather, the Obvious one, is by no means
necessarily the correct one. . . . As a rule, it is seldom that a
slight change will make any, considerable difference in the meaning,
except for fantastic interpretations.
As Nostradamus himself says, the quatrains are composed out of "a
-poetic furor, rather than according to the strict rules of poetry."
No one will argue this point, for as a poet Nostradamus hardly ranks
very high. The meter is basically iambic pentameter, with varying
"male" and "female" lengths in the alternating pairs of lines.
However, there are instances where, notwithstanding all the crabbed
twists, the lines don't scan properly.
Punctuation does not seem to have been particularly dear to his heart.
What punctuation there is is probably the work of zealous printers,
who manifested wide disagreement. Nostradamus' aversion to punctuation
is particularly distressing in the case of the long-drawn-out Preface,
and the even longer Epistle.
SNIP> *
Which leads the reader, the intelligent reader that is, to see
that these two oddities were not mistakes, but were *intended* by
the author of the book who wanted to leave us some clues that the
text found under these two screwed-up lines is encyphered. How?
In the very same manner: By moving letters in the same line of
text, a device otherwise known as the line-based cryptic anagram.
*
Clever, eh, this Nostradamus?!
*
------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Claude Latrémouille % -- "Claude! There ain't no stinkin' -- %
Le 31 janvier 2004- % cryptic anagrams in them dang verses,- %
APNCL#1412 -------- % ya hear?!" (A chorus of a.p.n. voices) %
------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
*
=== ===
=== CLAUDE LATRÉMOUILLE ===
===========================
But we know, you have not independently verified, any of your
assertions.
LB
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