http://www.sspx.ca/Angelus/2002_February/Nostradamus.htm
Nostradamus
Seer or Sorcerer?
John Sharpe
He is the second most-consulted personality on the Internet, a New Age
celebrity, a person who is quoted every time a cataclysmic global event
occurs, a name which comes up in the conversations with your neighbor
and even-maybe!-your fellow parishioner. Who and what was Nostradamus?
"=2E..The puerile, senseless, and useless predictions of fortune-tellers,
crystal-gazers, spiritualists and charlatans...may tell things beyond
human knowledge and yet within the scope of the natural knowledge of
demons, but not those things that are strictly speaking the objects of
prophecy."1
We are told by apologists for the modern world that we live in a time
that is unrivaled for its ability to provide us with information.
Universal education, widespread internet access, the proliferation of
newspapers, magazines, bulletins, both paper and electronic. But having
all of this information at our fingertips profits us nothing if none of
it is true. And most of it is not.
There is no better way to become acquainted with the modern overdose of
information than to try to form an accurate judgment about Nostradamus
and his famous predictions. We are inundated with books about his life
and times that are nearly useless, while we would be hard-pressed to
find one volume which could be categorized as truly edifying. And yet a
fairly recent bibliographical index2 to the available works on
Nostradamus includes 634 pages worth of titles! Among these of his
commentators, we find two varieties: those steeped in skepticism, who
attempt to dismiss him altogether by denying both revealed religion and
the existence of the supernatural;3 and those awash in superstition,
accepting the reality of Nostradamus's predictive power and accepting
all kinds of New Age and pagan nonsense along with it.4
What we'd like to have is a book written in a dispassionate and
rational tone that evaluates the facts surrounding Nostradamus's life
and predictions against the standards of the Faith and true
philosophy.5 We have not been able to find such a book, and chances are
that no such book exists. The few comments we have encountered from
Catholic sources offhandedly dismiss him as a charlatan (see inset next
page), probably because they assume that only the weak-minded and idle
would take much interest in him in the first place. But in this age of
information overload, perhaps we cannot be so confident.
Even Catholics are subject to the barrage of e-mails and websites and
newscasts and "60 Minutes specials" which marvel over Nostradamus's
writings. Couple this with the fact that an unprecedented crisis in the
Church has left all of us somewhat credulous in the face of prophecies
relating to the end times and a supposed final apostasy, and our need
for this ideal Catholic book is magnified a hundred fold.
Prophet, Diviner, Astrologer?
For now this article will perhaps suffice. By piecing together whatever
reliable information there is about the life and practices of
Nostradamus, by looking at the historical circumstances of late
medieval and early-Renaissance Provence (southern France) in which he
was raised and lived, and by evaluating all of the facts against the
sure standard of Catholic doctrine, we may be able to at least form an
educated opinion on this enigma of a man, and make a certain
determination as to the opinion Catholics should have of his writings.
Let's consider very briefly the biographical data on Nostradamus.6 He
was born Michel de Nostredame on December 14, 1503, in Saint-Remy,
Provence. Sometime around 1550, after his education in southern France,
travels in and around Europe, and a career as a physician, he settled
in Salon, which is in the west of Provence. His "prophetic" writings
appeared in verse form7 and were published in several volumes over a
number of years, the first being at Lyons in 1555 and containing four
sets of verses. Another volume containing a total of seven groups of
his verses was printed by 1557, and a third volume appeared in 1558
containing three final sets of verses, bringing the total to ten
distinct groups of published verses.8 He died eight years later in
Salon on July 2, 1566.
What was he-a prophet, a quack, or worse? How did he make his
predictions? Was he inspired by Almighty God, merely delirious, or
worse? The answers to these questions would give us enough to answer
the perhaps less interesting but ultimately more significant question:
Can a Catholic licitly have recourse to Nostradamus's "prophecies" to
satisfy a desire for knowledge of future events regarding the Church
and the world?
In order to correctly determine who or what Nostradamus was, and before
we can properly assess what we know about his life and his methods of
"prophecy," it is essential to understand the terms that might be used
to label him: prophet, diviner, astrologer. Fortunately, as they touch
on the supernatural-or at the very least involve theological and
philosophical conceptions-Catholic doctrine provides clear and certain
definitions of these terms, which we can use to properly orient our
look at Nostradamus.
Prophecy
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia and St. Thomas,9 prophecy is "a
divine light by which God reveals things concerning the unknown future
and by which these things are in some way represented to the mind of
the prophet, whose duty it is to manifest them to others."10 While it
may pertain in a general way to the past and present, it is, "in its
strict and proper sense,...the revelation of future events." Note that
an essential part of the definition of prophecy is that the knowledge
revealed to the prophet by God "...must be manifest either by words or
signs, because the gift of prophecy is given primarily for the good of
others and hence needs to be manifested."11 Thus St. Thomas says that
"prophecy consists secondarily in speech, in so far as the prophets
declare for the instruction of others, the things they know through
being taught of God...."12
Strictly speaking, anyone can prophesy, assuming God gives them the
means: "The recipients of prophecy may be angels, devils, men, women,
children, heathens, or gentiles...,Though moral goodness is most
profitable to a prophet, yet it is not necessary in order to obtain the
gift of prophecy."13Thus does the Catholic Encyclopedia remind us that
Balaam was a professional soothsayer and yet spoke what God told him of
the Chosen People in the land of Moab (Num. 23).14
Under normal circumstances, a prophet is noted for his holiness and
occasionally for the performance of miracles. This is in fact one of
the first distinguishing marks of true prophecy which we will consider
in order to be able, later on, to determine if Nostradamus deserves the
title "true prophet." The Catholic Encyclopedia points out that
prophecy is a gift granted by God normally to holy persons,15 and St.
Thomas further tells us that "an evil life is an obstacle to prophecy.
For prophecy requires the mind to be raised very high in order to
contemplate spiritual things, and this is hindered by strong passions,
and the inordinate pursuit of external things."16
Another characteristic of a true prophet is consciousness of a divine
mission.17 St. Thomas confirms that it is in the nature of perfect
prophecy for a man to know that he is being moved by the Holy Ghost.18
While he admits that there are cases wherein a prophet does not know
what the Holy Ghost means by words he is moved to utter (e.g., in the
case of Caiphas19), and that there are cases when a prophet is moved
without being aware of it,20 yet normally the prophet is conscious of
his gift of prophecy.21And in the event that the prophet "is unable to
distinguish fully whether his thoughts are conceived of Divine instinct
or of his own spirit...'they are very soon set aright by the Holy Ghost
and from Him they hear the truth, so that they reproach themselves for
having said what was untrue.'"22
Several of the characteristics of true prophecy apply specifically to
the content of the prophecy itself. It should be obvious that "the
prophecy must be conformable to Christian truth and piety, because if
it propose anything against faith or morals it cannot proceed from the
spirit of truth."23 The content of the prophecy must also be something
serious, relating to the good of souls or of the Church.24 The Catholic
Encyclopedia emphasizes the value of this and the preceding rule, which
"will help to distinguish true prophecies from the puerile, senseless,
and useless predictions of fortune-tellers, crystal-gazers,
spiritualists and charlatans."25 Finally, whether the prophecy is
"fulfilled in the way foretold" will be an additional indicator of its
validity.26
Can Nostradamus be called a prophet, then, in light of the teaching of
the Church? Absolutely not.
Nostradamus and his predictions fail to meet any of the criteria that
the Church proposes for true prophecy. As we will see in more detail
later, he was notorious for attempting to practice an occult form of
foretelling future events, and this does not make for exceptional
holiness. Furthermore, he does not claim to speak for the true God, as
a true prophet would, were he conscious of his divine mission.27 Nor is
his situation comparable to that of Balaam who spoke in the name of the
true God despite his being a soothsayer.28 Most convincing is the fact
that Nostradamus made no effort to proclaim his prophecy clearly and
openly, which is a duty binding upon all true prophets. The subjects of
his predictions had little if anything to do with a grave matter
relating to the good of souls or the Church;29 and the obscurity of his
writing makes it impossible to determine for certain what he actually
predicted.
Most of his predictions are so obscure that their content is almost
impossible to determine. Even convinced Nostradamians concede that it
is only by reading his predictions with the historical fact of the
predicted event in mind that the meaning of his words is made clear. It
is impossible to assess whether or not any of the events in question
were actually predicted and then fulfilled. This makes it only more
evident that Nostradamus was not prophesying in the great tradition of
the prophets of Israel and Christendom, because they always spoke
clearly, openly, and preached conversion and repentance. Nostradamus
does none of these, and we are left with wondering if he were merely a
charlatan or something darker than that.
We would do well at this point to examine the teaching of St. Thomas on
the knowledge of the future, for not only does prophecy imply a
knowledge of future events, but divination and astrology both represent
an attempt by man to predict the future using means other than a direct
revelation of God. It is useful, then, to understand what can be known
by men and by the angels (both fallen and good) of future events.
St. Thomas tells us that all created intellects (the intellects of men
and the good and bad angels) can know future events either from divine
revelation or from their causes.30 Of this knowledge of future events
from their causes, there are only two kinds: 1) knowledge of events
which necessarily follow from their causes, and thus can be predicted
with certainty (i.e., "I am certain the ball will drop when released
because gravity exists."); and 2) knowledge of events which in a
majority of cases follow from their causes, and thus can be predicted
conjecturally (i.e., "I am certain that I have allergies. Spring is
coming with its higher amount of pollen in the air, thus I will
probably sneeze more."). Events which proceed from unknown causes,
called "contingent events," which are casual or chance events or the
decisions and actions of rational creatures, cannot be known at all in
advance by the created intellect.31
God, conversely, knows future events not from their causes but rather
as they are in themselves in eternity:
In another way future events are known in themselves. To know the
future in this way belongs to God alone; and not merely to know those
events which happen of necessity, or in the majority of cases, but even
casual and chance events; for God sees all things in His eternity,
which, being simple, is present to all time, and embraces all time. And
therefore God's one glance is cast over all things which happen in all
time as present before Him; and He beholds all things as they are in
themselves, as was said before when dealing with God's knowledge.32
The knowledge of the future that is available to the created pure
spirits (angels and demons), though of the same kind as that available
to men, is available to them in far greater detail and accuracy. Of the
kind of events which usually follow their causes (No.2 above), the
spirits will be able to forecast with much more accuracy than men
"because their knowledge is broader, deeper, and more universal, and
many occult powers of nature are known to them."33 And even regarding
the third kind of future events, those contingent, spirits may wisely
conjecture about them because of their "wide knowledge of human nature,
their long experience, and their judgments based upon our thoughts as
revealed to them by our words, countenances, or acts."34
But for a mere man to predict with certainty the occurrence of a future
contingent event, he must be inspired to knowledge of the event by God,
at which point he becomes a prophet.35 If he has not the gift of
prophecy from God and yet he insists on foretelling the future with an
accuracy surpassing that which is given to all men by their intellect,
he will have no choice but to have recourse to illicit means.
Divination
Divination is "the seeking after knowledge of future or hidden things
by inadequate means. The means being inadequate, they must, therefore,
be supplemented by some power which is represented all through history
as coming from gods or evil spirits. Hence the word divination has a
sinister signification. As prophecy is the lawful knowledge of the
future, divination, its superstitious counterpart, is the
unlawful."36It is evident that the term divination strictly applies to
an attempt to obtain knowledge of the future by illicit means:
Divination is not, as we have seen, foretelling what comes from
necessity or what generally happens, or foretelling what God reveals or
what can be discovered by human effort, but it is the usurpation of
knowledge of the future, i.e., arriving at it by inadequate or improper
means. This knowledge is a prerogative of Divinity and so the usurper
is said to divine.37
St. Thomas identifies three categories of divination: 1) that with
express invocation of demons, 2) that which tacitly invokes the demons
and consists in the observations of other natural beings, and 3) that
which tacitly invokes the demons and consists in performing certain
acts.38 Nostradamus practiced both the second kind and some combination
of the first and third. In St. Thomas's categorization of the forms of
divination, none is free from intercourse with demons. Even where not
explicitly summoned, demons or the devil are "invoked tacitly when
anyone tries to acquire information through means which he knows to be
inadequate, and the means are inadequate when neither from their own
nature nor from any Divine promise are they capable of producing the
desired effect."39
The Church is not soft on divination. Her intransigence might be
explained by considering just why it is that all forms of divination at
least tacitly invoke the devil. When a man undertakes to do so, the
devil has a perfect opportunity to ensnare him and confirm his belief
in the system of divination and its alleged effectiveness, not to
mention that use of the technique implies belief in a knowledge coming
from somewhere other than God or his own intellect. St. Thomas confirms
that the demon will eagerly thrust himself into any practice whereby
men make "futile searchings of the future [,] in order to entangle
men's minds with vain conceits."40 In fact, St. Thomas calls the whole
"art" of divination nothing more than a "vain [invention] of the
devil's deceit."41 The Catholic Encyclopedia makes the same assumption
regarding the motives of the demons: "From a theological standpoint,
divination supposes the existence of devils who have great natural
powers and who, actuated by jealousy of man and hatred of God, ever
seek to lessen His glory and to draw man into perdition, or at least to
injure him bodily, mentally, and spiritually."42 A standard manual of
moral theology illustrates the Church's traditional condemnation of
divination:
..=2E.It would be fitting to define divination as a form of superstition
in which the devil is invoked explicitly or implicitly to aid man to
discover the occult. Therefore in all forms of divination there is an
explicit or implicit invocation of the devil.
Divination undertaken with an explicit invocation of the devil is
essentially a grievous sin; that which is accompanied by an implicit
invocation of the devil is a grave sin which admits of slight matter.
The reason for the first part of the statement is that by such
divination worship due to God alone is being offered to the devil, the
implacable foe of God. Moreover there is imminent danger of apostasy
and other grave sins.
The reason for the second part is that in such forms of divination,
although divine worship is not offered to the devil, intercourse with
him is encouraged....
No specific distinction is made between the various forms of
divination-whether accompanied by explicit or implicit invocation of
the devil since they are all reducible to worship of a false deity.43
St. Thomas adds, furthermore, that to foretell the future without
divine revelation is a usurpation of what belongs to God, who in His
Providence has intentionally and wisely hidden many things from us.
The term "diviner" is applicable to Nostradamus, as it is common
knowledge that he intended to predict the future and we have already
ruled out his classification as true prophet. We will look further at
his methods, to determine to what extent his work would strictly be
classified as divinatory and thus fall under the condemnation of the
Church.
Astrology
A form of divination according to St. Thomas's categorization,44
astrology is "the supposed science which determines the influence of
the stars, especially of the five older planets, on the fate of man
(astrologia judiciaria; mundane, or judicial astrology) or on the
changes of the weather (astrologia naturalis; natural astrology)
according to certain fixed rules dependent upon the controlling
position of stars.. .at the time under consideration. Judicial
astrology-the more important branch of this occult art-depended for its
predictions upon the position of the planets in the 'twelve houses' at
the moment of the birth of a human being."45
Being a form of divination, astrology possesses all of the common
characteristics thereof and is subject to the same condemnations. All
of the preceding on divination, therefore, applies also to astrology.
Lest anyone object that there is something truly "scientific" and
empirically valid about astrology, and thus argue against its being an
"inadequate means" of foretelling the future, St. Thomas draws the
distinction between forecasting what can be known with certainty
(meteorology or astronomy) and attempting to predict that which is only
known to God:
Wherefore we must consider what things can be foreknown by observing
the stars: and it is evident that those things which happen of
necessity can be foreknown by this means: even so astrologers forecast
a future eclipse....Now two kinds of effects escape the causality of
heavenly bodies. In the first place all effects that occur
accidentally, whether in human affairs or in the natural order....In
the second place, acts of the free-will, which is the faculty of will
and reason, escape the causality of heavenly bodies.46
Since, therefore, "it is impossible to acquire foreknowledge of the
future from an observation of the stars, except in so far as effects
can be foreknown from their causes,"47and accidental events or acts of
free-will are not in any way caused by the stars, it follows that these
kinds of events cannot be known in advance, except by God.
Having dispensed with its claim to "scientifically" predict man's
behavior based on the influence of the stars, St. Thomas reminds us
that astrology is based upon a false opinion and thus it too involves a
tacit invocation of the devil: "Accordingly if anyone take observation
of the stars in order to foreknow casual or fortuitous future events,
or to know with certitude future human actions, his conduct is based on
a false and vain opinion; and so the operation of the demon introduces
itself therein, wherefore it will be a superstitious and unlawful
divination."48 Furthermore, quoting St. Augustine, he issues a stern
warning for all Christians to beware of the lying spirits who are at
the root of many of the astrologers' prognostications:
..=2E..Hence Augustine says: "When astrologers tell the truth, it must be
allowed that this...happens through the action of unclean and lying
spirits who desire to deceive man, for they are permitted to know
certain things about temporal affairs." Wherefore he concludes: "Thus a
good Christian should beware of astrologers, and of all impious
diviners, especially of those who tell the truth, lest his soul become
the dupe of the demons and by making a compact of partnership with them
enmesh itself in their fellowship."49
That Nostradamus was an astrologer is beyond question. We will see how
his practice of astrology formed part of an overall practice of and
involvement with the occult. Even at this point, however, we can safely
conclude that Catholics should avoid reference to Nostradamus's work,
for they are rightly classified as superstitious and based on some
admixture of his own and the devil's deceit.
His Life and Times
An examination of the method used by Nostradamus in his attempt to
predict the future is at once an essential and challenging step in our
overall evaluation of him. It is essential because we'd like to know
for certain if he divined illicitly, rather than merely concluding so
because he was not, correctly speaking, a prophet. And it is a
challenging task because there is little in his own writing that
specifically addresses his method of prediction, and as a result the
hundreds of works on the man overflow with conjecture and speculation.
We are forced, therefore, to examine what others have written on his
predictive practices in light o/what we know about Nostradamus's life
and the culture in which he lived. In this way we will be able to
solidify our conclusion regarding his writings and activities, thus
confirming our position that no Catholic can licitly have recourse to
his writings.
We'll start with Nostradamus's ancestry. Edgar Leoni,50 our one
rational and serious source, relates the traditional story: Michel de
Nostredame was born of Jacques and Renee, respective children of Jews
Pierre de Nostredame (physician to the son of King Rene of Provence)
and Jean de Saint-Remy, noted physician to the King himself. Jacques
and Renee converted to the Faith, along with their parents, in response
to an edict passed in 1501 by Louis XII, King of France, who wanted the
Jews in Provence to convert or emigrate.51 Yet in a footnote Leoni
indicates that the research of Dr. Edgar Leroy of Saint-Remy, Provence,
has determined this ancestry to be a fabrication of Nostradamus's early
biographer Jean-Aime de Chavigny. Actually Michel's paternal forebears
for many generations were grain-dealers in Avignon; on his mother's
side Jean de Saint-Remy was a physician-turned-tax collector, and was
really his great grandfather. Either way, Leoni maintains that both
sides of Nostradamus's family came from families of converted Jews.52
There seems to be, however, a good deal of disagreement over the
identity of Nostradamus's maternal grandfather and what role, if any,
he played in Michel's education. Tradition holds that he was first
educated by this grandparent, and it is from him that Nostradamus "was
given his first taste of the 'celestial science.'"53 The two problems
with this possibility are: first, the true identity of this grandparent
seems to be a mystery; and second, if Nostradamus's grandfather were in
fact a grain-dealer rather than a physician, it seems hard to believe
that he would have given Michel the scholarly education he supposedly
received at his hand.
Taking the easier, second objection first, one of our more
superstitious sources seems to dispense with it easily: "...there were
plenty of quite humble Jewish trading families in 16th century Europe
who were collaterally or directly descended from learned rabbis,
physicians and philosophers, and the family of the prophet may have
been one of these."54 A reliable historical source makes this
possibility very likely: "...Provence was...filled with Jewish poets
and Jewish philosophers."55 Regarding the first objection, it has been
correctly observed that Nostradamus was very young (2 or 3 years old?)
when the relation in question died,56 which would have made any formal
education by him impossible. Beyond this, the best we can do is say
that the education of Michel by his maternal grandfather is something
that most sources admit as a possibility, but the identification of
Jean, the physician-turned-tax-collector, remains tentative, as he is
referred to as a grandfather, a great-grandfather,57and even
great-great grandfather.58
The issue of the mysterious grandparent is not a trivial one, for
"tradition also holds that his grandfather taught him Hebrew and
astrology."59 Furthermore, "many Nostradamus commentators believe that
his writings reveal evidence of a detailed knowledge of the Jewish
esoteric tradition called the Kabbala...It is quite possible that he
also learned this from his grandfather."60 If Nostradamus were a "true
Churchman"61 as some have claimed, the proposition that Nostradamus was
educated in and knew the Kabbalah would be hard to maintain. However,
the evidence seems to be against him in this regard. Walsh, the expert
historian of Catholic Spain and the Inquisition, calls him a Jew
outright.62 Modern Jews also claim that despite accepting baptism after
the edict of Louis XII, his family "continued to secretly follow their
religious tradition."63 And Jewish converts to Christianity maintain
the same: "the Nostradamus family decided to be baptized but secretly
held on to their former beliefs."64 At any rate, it is safe to conclude
that the conversion of his family to the Faith did not interfere with
the transmission of Jewish tradition to young Nostradamus.
His formal education was initially conducted at Avignon from around
1515 to 1522.65 According to Leoni, Nostradamus's' biographers say that
at Avignon he "showed the greatest interest in the study of the
stars."66 Between 1522 and 1525 he remained at Montpellier, working on
his baccalaureat in medicine and a license to practice. Nostradamus
would have found the atmosphere there quite conducive to the
maintenance of an attachment to Jewish tradition, or to the pursuit of
an interest in astrology or divination. Randi tells us that the faculty
"consisted largely of members of a local Jewish community."67
Astrological and other forms of occult knowledge would have been well
preserved there, for "the Jews, very soon after they were driven into
Western Europe, busied themselves with astrological questions, being
stimulated thereto by the Talmud."68 The University at Montpellier "is
said to have been founded by Arabian physicians when forced to fly from
Spain";69 a noteworthy fact because along with Jewish scholars, Arabian
scholars were "the representatives of astrology in the Middle Ages."70
The Crusade of Innocent III and the activity of the Inquisition, while
effective against the spread of Albigensianism specifically, would have
done little to change the cultural atmosphere of Languedoc and
Provence. The fact seems to be that both regions maintained, under a
Catholic surface, an atmosphere of heterodoxy in which Jewish tradition
could easily survive and thus ancient knowledge of astrology and
divination could easily be both obtained and developed. Provence's
"intimate relationship with Moslems and Jews," remarks a historian of
France, "had caused Occidental prejudices to vanish, and had delivered
it, without defense or criterium, to the disordered invasion of all
foreign ideas."71 And Languedoc, already known as the "Judea of
France,"72 was "a realm of innovation, of transition, of skepticism,
and of free thought."73
He left his permanent residency at Montpellier in 1525 when an outbreak
of the plague demanded his services in the other towns of Languedoc. He
eventually "came to Narbonne, where he attended the courses of the
celebrated Jewish alchemists who flourished there."74 During his
travels he returned for a time to Avignon, where he is said to have
spent many hours at the library, where perhaps he first came across
works on magic and the occult, "works which were to influence him
greatly."75
In 1529 Nostradamus returned to Montpellier where he secured a position
as a member of the faculty at the University after receiving his
Doctorate. Dissatisfaction with this quiet life led him to abandon it
again in 1532, and he wandered from town to town through southern
France until he settled down for a number of years in Agen, where he
was invited to meet the great Jules-Cesar Scaliger.76 Within several
years Nostradamus had a serious quarrel with the vain but learned
scholar, and they ceased to be friends. Randi speculates that
Nostradamus's interest in astrology might have been the cause, "for
Scaliger, in spite of his tumultuous lifestyle, was a genuine
no-nonsense intellectual."77
Prompted by a series of unfortunate events, which included the falling
out with Scaliger, the loss to the plague of his wife and two children
and a subsequent quarrel with his wife's family, and a summons to
appear before the Inquisition of Tolouse in 1538, Nostradamus set out
on a series of travels which took him around the western
Mediterranean.78 The order to appear before the Inquisition was
supposedly the result of a remark that he made to a workman who was
casting a bronze statue of our Lady; Nostradamus is said to have
remarked that he was only making devils. His apologists insist that he
merely meant that it was a poor statue, but, as Leoni observes, "...the
similarity of his words to the iconoclasm of the Protestants was
unmistakable."79 The excuse is plausible, but, unless there is
something else to keep hidden from the Inquisition, why flee the
country for six years merely to avoid having to explain and apologize
for a tactless yet supposedly innocent remark? But flee the country he
did, and that for roughly six years, from 1538-44.80
Leoni remarks of these travels that "there is much reason to believe
his round of calls included visits to alchemists, astrologers,
cabalists, magicians, and the like as well."81 Thoughts of settling
down in Marseilles brought him back to southern France in 1544, but the
plague kept him wandering from town to town just as it had done some
years before. When he came to Salon, he was evidently so pleased with
the climate and location (the town is situated between Marseilles,
Aries, Aix, and Avignon) that he never left.
His reception was not a warm one. It seems that his reputation preceded
him: "From the very beginning of his stay in Salon he was the subject
of abuse as a minion of Satan, as a Jew..., and as a suspected Huguenot
sympathizer."82 Whether this initial cold reception drove him to devote
himself seriously to astrology and predictions, or whether he had
already so committed himself and thus provoked the reaction he
received, Leoni and Ward both admit is a matter of conjecture.83Either
way, the charges of the peasants of Provence are revealing. What is not
in doubt is that "by 1550 he was launched into his prophetic (sic)
career."84 He converted the upper floor of his house to a study and
"after consuming all the books on astrology and magic on which he could
lay his hands,"85 he began a career of writing and fortune-telling that
would make him one of the most well-known prognosticators in all of
Europe.
A brief review of the predictions that he produced after 1550, when he
devoted himself wholly to his visions of the future, reveals the
following.86 He began in 1550 by publishing a yearly almanac containing
predictions of all kinds for the upcoming year. By 1555 he completed
the first section of the project which was to make him famous: a
collection of 1000 four-line verses, called quatrains, divided into
groups of 100, called Centuries. According to Nostradamus himself, this
work was to contain, in rather cryptic form, the results of the visions
that he had in his study at night, later "corrected" by astrological
computations and committed to writing. Three and part of a fourth
Century were published in 1555 along with a Preface to his infant son
Cesar (born of his second wife).
Despite his growing popularity among what Leoni calls the "leisure
classes" as a result of his yearly almanacs, the reaction from the
masses was not much different from his original welcome into Salon:
"The less-learned masses of the people could think only that the verses
contained gibberish straight from hell, and that Nostradamus was, as
they always suspected, a tool of the devil, to be feared and hated."87
The peasants were not the only ones to take issue with his predictions,
however. "Although the quatrains were all the rage at court, there were
also many educated people who joined the masses in vilifying
Nostradamus. Doctors and astrologers accused him of disgracing their
respective professions; philosophers objected to his premises; poets
reasonably enough objected to the miserable quality of his verses."88
The fourth Century was completed and published, along with Centuries
V-VII, sometime after the later part of 1555, so that by 1557 there
were a total of seven Centuries in print. Summoned to Paris by King
Henry II at the behest of the "lukewarm and questionable"89 Catholic
Queen Catherine de' Medici, who wanted horoscopes for her sons,
Nostradamus journeyed to and from the French capital during the years
1556 and 1557. Upon his return to Salon he completed his work on the
last of the Centuries, such that all ten centuries plus a dedicatory
letter to the king were finished by 1558. The manuscript enjoyed
limited circulation until the edition was published two years after the
astrologer's death on July 2, 1566.
Up Close and Personal
Examining the prevailing opinion regarding Nostradamus will help flesh
out the biographical data on this man of whom not much seems to be
known with certainty. While the available facts regarding what his
contemporaries thought of him seem reliable enough, we must be careful
to read what modern authors have to say in light of what those authors
take for granted. Most are superstitious and would reject all or most
of our doctrinal summary above. Nevertheless, their comments can be
very revealing when interpreted in conjunction with their own
(nonetheless erroneous) beliefs.
During his lifetime Nostradamus was considered at best an astrologer,
if not worse a sorcerer. Queen Catherine de' Medici summoned him to
Paris for astrological readings of her children. The Catholic
Encyclopedia calls him her "court astrologer."90 On the great marble
slab erected in his honor, after his death, in the Church of the
Franciscan Friars in Salon, we find the following words: "his divine
pen alone, in the judgment of all mortals, was worthy to record, under
the influx of the stars, the future events of the whole world."91 His
practice of astrology is further confirmed by a series of letters
exchanged between Nostradamus and amateur astrologer Lorenz Tubbe
during the years 1559 to 1562, which discuss the delivery of horoscopes
to Tubbe's patron Hans Rosenberger, a wealthy merchant of Augsburg,
Germany.92
We have already noted the popular sentiment of Salon, and the reaction
of the Parisians to one particularly interesting event was no
different. In 1559 the king was killed in a gruesome accident at a
jousting tournament, and the word at court and on the street was that
the accident had been predicted by Nostradamus in a quatrain of his
Century I. Leoni relates the reaction of the people just outside of
Paris: "...in the suburbs of Paris the populace burned Nostradamus in
effigy and called on the Church to do the same to the prophet
himself."93 Ward admits that "his proficiency in judicial astrology
would furnish matter of prejudice against him in the minds of many
learned men; the very devout suspected him of necromancy, and
familiarity with the Angel of Darkness"94 (emphasis mine). And an early
biographer (writing in 1656) lamented his being labeled "a necromancer
who communicated with the Angel of Darkness to obtain his visions."95
The court of Catholic Spain apparently had no use for him either. We
know that Phillip II burned a horoscope that Nostradamus had written
for him shortly before the battle of San Quentin in 1557. A letter
(Jan. 12, 1561), from Chantonnay (the Spanish ambassador to France) to
King Philip II, further illustrates the fact. "It has been remarked
that in one month the first and last members of the royal house have
died. These catastrophes have struck the court with stupor, together
with the warning of Nostradamus, whom it would be better to chastise
than to allow to sell thus his prophecies, which lead to vain and
superstitious beliefs."96
There is even some reason to suspect that his beliefs were not merely
vain and superstitious, but also heretical. "Nostradamus took care to
appear a faithful son of the Catholic Church, but," says Wilson, "his
sympathies were possibly with the Protestants."97 Not a trivial
sympathy to have in those days. Luther's doctrine had been condemned as
early as 1521 by the faculty of theology in Paris; since 1530, and
especially from 1534-36, the militancy of the Lutheran and Calvinist
heretics had grown considerably; and from 1538 onward the king (Francis
I) had resolved to suppress the heresy.98 Perhaps this sheds some light
on why Nostradamus was so anxious to avoid the Inquisition. By late
1559 more or less open hostilities had broken out between the heretics
and the State, and it is to these hostilities that he refers in several
of his letters to Lorenz Tubbe, the German for whose patron he was
preparing horoscopes. His letter of July 15, 1561, is most damning:
Here [in Provence] passions that had already been aroused burst into
violence between the Papists and the partisans of the true faith. On
Holy Friday, a massacre instigated by a fanatical Franciscan was barely
avoided. Like many persons suspected of Lutheranism, I was obliged to
take refuge for two months at Avignon.99
His heresy has perhaps little direct bearing on his activities as an
astrologer. It is not at all inconsistent, however, with his presumed
education in the Jewish mystical tradition. Kabbalistic attacks on the
Faith may have been well known to him as part of southern-French,
Jewish tradition.100 Familiarity with heresy would have been nothing
new, as there was between the earlier Albigensian heretics and the Jews
"a mediate and direct association...; between the two groups there was
an interplay of influence."101 And if he took his Jewish origins
seriously, he would ultimately have been well-disposed to anything that
represented an attack upon the Mystical Body of Christ. Finally, his
heresy would go some way toward explaining how he was able, with
considerable ease, to disregard the precepts of the Church regarding
divination and devote himself wholly to a practice that She condemned.
It remains for us to look in detail at the activities that supposedly
produced Nostradamus's numerous forecasts of the future.
Commentators from across the spectrum are consistent in their
assessment that he engaged in some kind of magic ritual in order to
obtain his "prophetic" visions. Leoni is characteristically direct:
"Notwithstanding all his protestations...he was obviously hip-deep in
magic."102 Even Ward, to some extent an apologist for Nostradamus,
concedes that "he seems to have gone through a good many of the magical
forms when he was about to devote the night to prophetical studies,"103
and he is elsewhere forced to admit that "there is a Pythic ring in all
he writes and says; a sub-flavor, too, of cabalistic lore far gathered
from those ancient compromising books which he saw fit to burn."104
The superstitious are no less certain that Nostradamus followed some
kind of occult rituals in search of visions of the future. King, who
sincerely believes in all kinds of occult practices, affirms that
"while Nostradamus may sometimes have aped the charlatan he was also an
authentic prophet (sic) and a practicing magician."105 He finds in his
writings "quatrains which...link Nostradamus with cabbalism, alchemy,
numerology, and even the black art of necromancy."106 And the
superstitious Ovason, notwithstanding the flawed worldview that would
allow him to make such a statement, says that Nostradamus's occult
knowledge and practice gave him "unrestricted access to the two worlds
of matter and spirit."107
Perhaps most revealing as direct evidence for Nostradamus's practices
are his own writings. The first two quatrains of Century I seem to
reveal something of his routine for obtaining the nighttime visions
which he would "correct" and refine the next day in light of his
knowledge of astrology. The exact content of these eight lines has been
the subject of debate by the superstitious and scholarly alike. Rather
than quote the two quatrains, we will merely list the elements to which
they seem to make clear reference:108
=B7 He works alone and at night;
=B7 He sits on or has nearby a brass or bronze seat or tripod;
=B7 He sees or becomes aware of a flame coming out of the
"solitude";
=B7 The flame causes (him?) to utter what "should not be believed in
vain";
=B7 A rod or wand is placed in the middle of "BRANCHES";
=B7 He moistens the hem of his garment and his foot;
=B7 Fear and a voice cause him to tremble;
=B7 A divinity sits nearby.
We can be certain that there is something disturbingly pagan and
foreign going on here. This is not a means to call upon the God of
Israel.
In fact it may very well be a means of calling upon another spirit from
a far different place. We have noted already that Nostradamus almost
certainly was familiar with Marsilio Ficino's translation of
lamblichus's De mysteriis Egyptiorum which was printed in Venice in
1497 and again at Lyons in 1547.109 The similarity between Nostradamus'
pagan ceremony and the means recorded by lamblichus to invoke the god
"Branchus" (marked out for special reference, all capital letters, in
Nostradamus' quatrain) can hardly be coincidental:
Now, the prophetess of Branchus either sits upon a pillar, or holds in
her hand a rod bestowed by some deity, or moistens her feet or the hem
of her garment with water, or inhales the vapor of water, and by these
means is filled with divine illumination, and, having obtained the
deity, she prophesies. By these practices she adapts herself to the
god, whom she receives from without.110
That Nostradamus consciously attempted to predict the future by means
of strange nocturnal rituals is confirmed in two other documents which
we have from his own hand. The first is the Preface to his infant son
C=E9sar; the second is the letter to Henry II of France dedicating a
later version of the Centuries to him. Between the two letters he
makes: seven references to being inspired with imaginative visions;
five references to revelations made to him through study of the stars;
four references to his "nocturnal activities"; one comment about going
into a trance; and two specific references to ritual magic. We'll look
closely at the most revealing statements. The general intent of his
letter is to explain to his son, even if vaguely, the method and
inspiration behind his predictions.
To C=E9sar he is fairly clear about what it is he receives at night in
his study: "As for the occult predictions that one manages to receive
through the subtle spirit of fire which sometimes, as the disturbed
intellect contemplates attentively the highest of the stars, surprises
one with the written pronouncements...."111 He confesses to being in
some sort of trance when he receives his visions: "...indivisible
timelessness (perceived) via epileptic trance, things are known (to us)
through the movement of the heavens." Later on he paraphrases
Iamblichus, as he did in the quatrains we discussed above: "For
intellectually-based understanding is incapable of seeing occultly in
what direction things to come will tend-other than through the voice
(that is heard) with the aid of the hem, and through the tiny flame."
From this passage it is clear that he professes to have the ability,
through his pagan ritual, to gain knowledge of things that are normally
unknowable to the human intellect. And a passage from his letter to
King Henry II confirms not only his use of the pagan ritual tools which
are mentioned in quatrains 1 and 2 of Century I, but also the "emptying
of the mind and soul" which is so typical of even modern New Age and
occult practices:112 "I freed my soul, mind and heart of all care,
solicitude and vexation through calm and tranquility of mind. All of it
harmonized and foretold through 'trepode aeneo' [the brass tripod]."
It must be admitted that both the preface and the letter to the king
contain several "disclaimers." In two instances he condemns magic "that
was long ago condemned by the sacred scriptures and divine canon," but
in one he asserts that astrology is excepted from those condemnations.
While he admits, in the preface, to having possessed books on "occult
philosophy [that] was not forbidden," he assures his son that "after I
read them I offered them to Vulcan [i.e., burned them] such that, while
he was devouring them, the flames that licked the air gave out an
extraordinary brightness, brighter than natural flame, illuminating the
house like the light of a flashing jet of fire as if (the building) had
suddenly caught alight." He protests once that he has no intention of
putting anything in writing that might be contrary to the Catholic
Faith, and warns in several other places that his prophecies will be
very vague, and even at times inaccurate! Finally, of the roughly 15
references to his "inspiration" by the stars or some other means (a
trance, the "hem," the "tripod," etc.], ten are accompanied with the
suggestion that the ultimate source of his supposed knowledge of the
future is Almighty God.
The problem is that his references to divine inspiration are almost so
vague as to be useless-at least useless as a demonstration of
orthodoxy. A typical example, this one from the preface to Cesar,
reads: "...all of it is predicted through divine inspiration and by
means of the angelic spirit that is breathed into the one prophesying,
pouring prophecies into him, illumining him, stirring his imagination
with various nocturnal visions such that, in the (more certain) light
of day he prophesies through the application of astronomy in
conjunction with the most holy revelation of the future-which consists,
moreover, in nothing less than the exercise of free will." It is hard
to determine exactly what Nostradamus means here. What is certain is
that the reference to "divine inspiration" does little to convince us
that he forswears all practice of pagan magic and sincerely believes
himself to be prophesying in the tradition of the Old Testament
prophets-which he himself denies, anyway: "Although, my son, I have
used the word 'prophet,' I would not attribute to myself a title of
such lofty sublimity for the present...." Even those who defend
Nostradamus are forced to concede defeat when trying to interpret his
references to rituals of pagan magic in an orthodox fashion.
One of our superstitious authors provides an explanation as to why some
authors refuse to meddle with facts to preserve their
Catholic-Nostradamus fantasies: "There have also long been those who
have considered it possible that Nostradamus was in fact an adept
magician, a man who, like the writer Eliphas Levi (1810-75), engaged in
mental gymnastics which enabled him to combine a qualified loyalty to
the Church with the employment of certain techniques derived from
ancient secret traditions."113"Mental gymnastics" which were no doubt
partly, if not wholly, designed to help him escape condemnation by the
Church. According to King, these intellectual games are on display in
the passage we noted above regarding Nostradamus's burning of his
magical books: "It is likely that [the] passage was written by the seer
with the intention of averting suspicion that he practiced cabbalistic
magic."114 Ovason suggests the same motivation, referring to the
section of Nostradamus's letter to King Henry II wherein he calculates
the dates of creation and other major biblical events up to the birth
of our Lord: "...It is difficult to understand why he went to the
trouble of publishing his own date for Creation, other than to
demonstrate his fidelity to the Catholic faith...it was God, and God
alone," Ovason continues, "who knew about the future. Nostradamus paid
lip-service to this concept in his Epistle to Henry II, no doubt to
protect himself."115
Our contention that Nostradamus attempted to use pagan ritual magic is
perfectly consistent with the details of his own life and the culture
in which he lived. A consideration of all the relevant facts produces a
coherent picture of the personal and cultural factors that would have
encouraged Nostradamus to pursue his desire to penetrate the veil of
the future using divinatory magic and astrology.
We have noted already the suggestion by one of our authors that
Nostradamus's writing shows evidence of an education in the Kabbalah,
an education for which one or both grandfathers would have provided.
Nevins, our Jewish physician-author, writing based upon John Hogue's
Nostradamus: The New Revelations, agrees: "Both of his grandfathers
were court physicians and were influential in Michel's education
participating in his instruction in medicine and herbal folk medicine
as well as the 'forbidden' arts of Kabbalah and alchemy." Commenting
upon the early development of Nostradamus's career, Nevins further
suggests that "he traveled widely, practicing medical arts by day while
at night participating in an underground network of alchemists and
Kabbalists."116 Additionally, a remark in Nostradamus's letter to Henry
II has traditionally been seen as a reference to this education in the
Kabbalah. Ovason explains: "When touching on the influences which
allowed him to write such prophetic verse, he mentioned what he called
'the natural instinct given by my progenitors.' This is usually taken
as referring to his Jewish background, perhaps even to the cabblistic
lore in which the Jews were so proficient."117 King, furthermore, sees
the same evidence in the predictive quatrains themselves: ".. .recent
historical research has shown that a number of 16th century books do
have a hidden structure derived from cabbalistic teachings, and the
Centuries may be another of them."118
Another passage from Nostradamus' preface to his son Cesar is also
revealing. In typical obscurity, it describes events that take place
(presumably the events which he is trying to predict) as belonging to
one of three categories: "For (those) divine works that are totally
absolute are performed by God; those that are medial, or contingent, by
the angels; and the third sort by the evil ones." As usual his meaning
is difficult, if not impossible, to discover. But it is hard to not
hear in this passage an echo of the Kabbalistic division of creation
into a "trinity of worlds" which, according to the Sepher Yetzirah, or
Book of Creation, proceed from God and the manifestations of His
perfections, which together make up the "first world." The three worlds
which proceed from God are: 1) the world of "creation" inhabited by a
single angel who governs the entire visible world, 2) the world of
"formation" which is peopled by ten ranks of angels, and 3) the world
of "action" or of "matter," inhabited by demons.119 It would be hard to
maintain that his comment reflects the Catholic Faith to nearly the
extent that it reflects this Kabbalistic teaching, which, furthermore,
was enjoying a renewed emphasis among the Jews of Europe "from the
publication of the Zohar, which, a Jewish writer tells us, 'from the
fourteenth century held almost unbroken sway over the minds of the
majority of the Jews.'"120
The Catholic Encyclopedia says that "all these esoteric doctrines of
the Kabbala are supposed to be contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, in
which, however they can be perceived only by those initiated into
certain hermeneutical methods (emphasis mine)."121 We would expect,
therefore, if our contention is so far correct, to find some indication
that Nostradamus was "initiated" into the methods or mysteries which he
attempted to employ in search of knowledge of the future. According to
Ovason, a real understanding of Nostradamus's quatrains requires an
understanding of the occult methodology he used, which includes the use
of a "linguistic system which has been favored by esotericists and
occultists for very many centuries."122 The commentator further
suggests that the purpose of this occult "linguistic system" was to
"allow conversing between initiates in a form which will not be
understood by the uninitiated."123 Still more sinister, Ovason notes
that there is a potential reference to the term "Son of the Widow" on
the cover of an edition of the Centuries published in 1668. He then
suggests the possibility that this is a hidden reference to Hiram Abif,
the master-builder of Masonic legend, and that the reference implies
that Nostradamus belonged to a secret school of initiation based on
Hermeticism and alchemy.124
We can be fairly certain from his own words that Nostradamus considered
himself an "initiate." It is almost impossible not to hear, in the last
quatrain of Century IV, a warning to the "uninitiated"-which, by
implication, intentionally and consciously separates him from the mass
of men, as a member of one of the numerous "groups of Initiates or
'Wise Men' [that] have existed," to quote Nesta Webster's excellent
volume on secret societies, "claiming to be in possession of esoteric
doctrines known as the 'Mysteries,' incapable of apprehension by the
vulgar...."
Let those who read these verses meditate them seriously! Let the
profane and ignorant vulgar not handle them! Let astrologers, fools,
and savages stand off! Who acts contrary to this, let him be cursed
according to the rites of magic.125
So what, ultimately, is the significance of Nostradamus's familiarity
with and acceptance of the teaching of the Kabbalah and his evident
initiation into an "occult linguistic method?" These factors, taken
separately and together, provide us with a clear indication that we
should take seriously his own reference to his use of magic ritual, as
well as the accusations of both his contemporaries and modern writers
that he intended to predict the future using occult, and, for a
Catholic, illicit methods.
Both the context and the history of the "subculture" in which
Nostradamus lived and moved make our assessment of his method not only
probable, but highly likely. His familiarity with the Kabbalah
subjected him to a number of influences which, converging, would have
encouraged him in his attempt to divine future events using some kind
of magic ritual. Webster says clearly that the spread of magic in
Renaissance-and late-medieval-Europe was a direct result of the
Kabbalah: "What is the explanation for the craze of magic in Western
Europe? Deschamps points to the Cabala, 'that science of demoniacal
arts, of which the Jews were the initiators,' and undoubtedly in any
comprehensive review of the question the influence of the Jewish
Cabalists cannot be ignored."126
The Catholic Encyclopedia maintains that the magical aspect of the
Kabbalah is merely a natural outgrowth of its esoteric interpretation
of the Hebrew Scriptures: "The theurgical...element of the Zohar..
..forms part of what has been called the 'practical' Kabbala, and
supplies formulas by means of which the adept can enter into direct
communication with invisible powers and thereby exercise authority over
demons, nature, diseases, etc. To a large extent it is the natural
outcome of the extraordinary hidden meaning ascribed by the Kabbala to
the words of the Sacred Text, and in particular to the Divine
names."127
The Kabbalah would not merely have provided Nostradamus with a general
inclination toward the practice of magic, but would have given specific
direction to his penchant for predicting the future. "The mystical
books which appeared in Jewish literature after the time of the Talmud,
that is, the books called the 'Sefer Zohar' and the 'Sefer Yetzirah'
(Book of Creation), are full of rules of divination dealing especially
with astrological meanings and calculations. The high reputation of the
Talmud and Kabbala among the Jews in the Middle Ages explains their
fondness for astrological speculations..."128(emphasis mine). And his
early interest in astrology would have reinforced, or could very easily
have contributed to, his later, more detailed Kabbalistic (and
therefore magical) studies. For the teachings of Ptolemy were the
foundation of "Arabo-Judaic astrology of the Middle Ages," and his
chief work, the Opus Quadripartitum, "was corrupted with Talmudic
subtleties and overlaid with mystical and allegorical meanings, which
were taken chiefly from the Jewish post-Talmudic belief concerning
demons."129
A glance at the atmosphere of southern France a little more than 100
years before the birth of Nostradamus is also revealing. The Catholic
Encyclopedia notes that the Albigensian heresy did not disappear until
the end of the 14th century. Any traces of the heretical mentality that
remained thereafter in Provence would have acted as still another
influence upon him in support of his pursuit of magic and the Kabbalah.
Firstly, the Albigensian heresy was itself inspired by several of the
Gnostic sects that were originally subject to a profoundly Jewish
influence.130In addition to the purely Jewish influence of the
Kabbalah, there would have been the contribution of Gnosticism itself,
which, the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us, encouraged divination in its
own right.131 The chronology of the world that Nostradamus included in
his Epistle to King Henry II "derived ultimately from ancient
Gnosticism."132
Despite the elimination of Albigensianism by 1400, we must recall the
Jews were enjoying a resurgence of influence due to the liberal
policies of King Rene, much as they had enjoyed under pro-Albigensian
King Raymond VI.133 Webster notes that, among other areas, in
"Provence... the Jews by the fifteenth century had become a
power...."134 Thus it seems reasonable to conclude that circumstances
would have conspired to preserve, at least within Jewish sub-culture
that surrounded Nostradamus, a Jewish and neo-Gnostic influence which
would have
made the pursuit of magic and divination something quite feasible.
Finally, we have a rather convincing statement from the chief skeptic
of all. In a footnote to his Henriade, Voltaire relates that "it was
ordinarily Jews that were made use of for magical operations. This
ancient superstition comes from the secrets of the Cabala, of which the
Jews called themselves the sole depositaries. Catherine de'
Medici...and many others employed Jews for these spells."135
True Prophet, Quack, or Sorcerer!
What then are we to make of Nostradamus? In order to answer the
question, we have focused almost exclusively upon the history of his
life and his culture, and upon what he and others have said about his
techniques of prediction. It will seem strange that we have avoided,
almost completely, reference to his "prophecies." We have done so for
several reasons. Firstly, his predictions are so vague as to be almost
useless. The keen Jesuit Fr. Herbert Thurston observed in The War and
the Prophets, that avoiding all orderly arrangement, either
chronological or topographical, and refraining almost entirely from
categorical statements, it is impossible ever to say that a particular
prognostic has missed the mark, whilst among the multitude of political
occurrences vaguely outlined, some quite startling coincidences are
sure to be observed in the course of years.136
Anyone can read into most of them almost anything, making a judgment
upon their accuracy almost impossible. Secondly, even if his
"prophecies" were perfectly clear and accurate, the question that
should interest a Catholic is how he predicted. If the how is illicit,
that is where our inquiry should stop. We shall therefore refrain
completely from passing any judgment upon the truth or falsehood of
Nostradamus's predictions. Suffice it to say that most are cryptic and
quite useless. To accurately interpret any that aren't would demand
that we refer to original quatrains, to avoid the contaminating
superstition of a modern commentator, and this in turn would require
"mastery of Latin, Greek, Old French, classical and medieval geography
and some Provencal."137 But why undertake such a project when we must
first determine whether or not we can licitly refer to his writings? It
is our assessment of his methods, therefore which we shall now examine
in light of the evidence which has been thus far presented.
There are three alternatives that present themselves as possibilities
in assessing Michel de Nostredame: true prophet, quack, or sorcerer. We
will look at them in that order.
Could he have been a true prophet, inspired by the true God? This we
have answered above. One of the essential attributes of prophecy, it
will be remembered, is that it "needs to be manifested," according to
St. Thomas. On this count Nostradamus fails miserably. While he
published numerous almanacs and works of "prophetic" quatrains, both
friends and foes of the astrologer are unanimous: "He intentionally
couched his prophecies in an obscure form, and he freely admitted that
his aim was to render his verses impenetrable prior to their
fulfillment."138 Jaubert, the biographer writing in 1656, said of the
predictions: "Without a very special genius, one may understand nothing
(emphasis mine).139 We also covered this point somewhat in the
discussion of Nostradamus's initiation into the occult; it is clear
that he wrote for a narrow and select audience, not for the world at
large. And Ward concedes this: "...his contempt for simple persons, the
ignorant, is very broadly marked. Men of knowledge are to constitute
his audience; the heaven of prophecy is in his opinion a region unfit
for children. He, clean contrary to the example set forth in St. Mark
(10:14), will suffer none such to approach him."140
The description "conscious of a divine mission," yet another
characteristic of the true prophet, is clearly not applicable to him,
in light of his lack of the first quality. It is impossible to be at
once conscious of being charged with the duty of revealing the secrets
of God to men and intent on disguising his revelation. Ward confesses
this truth as well, "...he is clearly no prophet in the old and Hebrew
sense of the word,"141as does Nostradamus himself in his letter to
C=E9sar.
On the next head, his prophecies have little to do with the good of
souls or of the Church; we note again in this regard that those who
claim to have "retroactively" interpreted his quatrains list various
and sundry events from the European political scene. Here we're at
somewhat of an impasse, however: the criteria of true prophecy which
mandates a general subject matter (something relating to the good of
souls or of the Church) assumes that the content of the prophecy can be
readily determined. So Nostradamus fails in this regard as well using
the same analysis whereby he failed the previous test.
Finally, given his confessed dabbling in the black arts along with the
damning circumstantial evidence supporting his propensity to do so, he
can be confidently denied the attribute of "exceptional holiness." St.
Thomas makes clear that God imparts to his prophets what He wills, when
He wills, and not in response to the carrying out of pagan rituals:
"'He,' namely the Holy Ghost, 'fills the boy harpist and makes him a
Psalmist; He fills the herdsman plucking wild figs, and makes him a
prophet.' Therefore prophecy requires no previous disposition, but
depends on the will alone of the Holy Ghost."142 We must remember what
St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom remarked, that the Prophets always
retained their self-consciousness and were never subject to the
disordered and degrading psychic conditions of the pagan soothsayers
and pythias; and, instead of enigmatical and puerile sybilline oracles,
their pronouncements were often sublime and always worthy of God."143
Having concluded that Nostradamus was not a true prophet of God and
Holy Mother Church, we can safely say that no Catholic should seek to
satisfy an idle curiosity about the future by consulting his writings.
Consulting any source other than Almighty God or His appointed prophets
for information about the future is to be solicitous, and thus to
jeopardize our trust in Divine Providence: "Under the New Law all
divination is forbidden because, placed on a higher plane than under
the Old Dispensation, we are taught not to be solicitous for the morrow
(Mt. 6:34), but to trust Him perfectly Who numbers the very hairs of
our heads (Mt. 10:30)."144 Consulting the works of a charlatan is and
always has been prejudicial to virtue: "In divination, apart from the
fraud of the Father of Lies, there was much merely human fraud and
endless deception, the predictions were generally as vague and as
worthless as modern fortune-telling, and the general result, then as
now, favored vice and injured virtue."145 And to consult the works of a
diviner or astrologer with the conscious expectation of knowledge of
the future is gravely sinful, as we noted above, and leaves us open to
the attacks of the devil, as St. Thomas reminds us: "As stated above (1
and 2), the operation of the demon thrusts itself into those
divinations which are based on false and vain opinions, in order that
man's mind may become entangled in vanity and falsehood."146
Having thus summarized what a Catholic should do regarding the works of
Nostradamus, what, then, is he to think? We are still left with two
alternatives: charlatan or sorcerer. The first possibility posits
Nostradamus as the quack who hoodwinked numerous generations by
predicting essentially nothing in very fancy form, maybe got lucky a
few times, and then hid it all behind an invocation of "Branchus."
In contrast to the current, New-Age fervor surrounding Nostradamus and
his works, this is a popular alternative for those with a critical
mind. His fame is no doubt a result of his clever use of vagueness and
obscurity in his quatrains, such that apparently successful predictions
are those that can be matched up with a fitting event after the fact,
while the others remain too vague to face any charge of failure:
"[Nostradamus] provided an ingenious system of divination in which the
misses can never be recorded and only the hits come to the surface. For
the reputation of the would-be prophet, such conditions are naturally
ideal."147 This seems a fair analysis in light of Ovason's confession
that not a single "prophecy" was interpreted correctly before the
event: ".. .we cannot think of a single case where a quatrain has been
accurately interpreted in advance of the event it predicts[!]"148 Some
are even less willing to give credit to the astrologer for post facto
coincidence of his predictions and actual events: "Out of a thousand
shots [he] has scored one direct hit and several ricochets."149 And our
modern skeptic is just as brutally honest about his complete failure to
predict anything correctly when he made the mistake of trying to be
understood:
In the prose section of the Centuries, Nostradamus wrote very clearly
and in excellent French, unlike the crabbed, mystical words and
construction of the quatrains. Not one of the many predictions
contained in the prose was correct, and they were all made for dates
that are now past, except the end of the world, which is happily placed
in the year 3797, according to some, and in 1999 by others.150
It is difficult not to sympathize a great deal with this
notion-Nostradamus's success being based upon his vagueness, and to say
that it is highly probable is a safe and fair conclusion. Walsh
certainly lends a great deal of weight to this position when he sums up
the career of the mighty Nostradamus as follows: "...he was one of
those versatile Jews who combined a certain medical knowledge with an
enormous aptitude for quackery and political intrigue."
What, then, are we to make of the numerous commentators who remain
strangely convinced that Nostradamus accurately predicted some
contingent events? Can it be that Ward is completely deluded when he
asserts that Nostradamus predicted 38 proper names in advance of their
appearance on the scene of European history, and that the full page of
political events listed by Ovason as successful predictions is based on
sheer superstitious ignorance? Well, that certainly may be the case.
Particularly when we bear in mind two things: 1) these commentators
assert that given quatrains refer to given political events or persons,
often based upon their own, who-knows-how-reliable knowledge of
European languages, history, and literary techniques and allusions, and
2) their assertions are not based merely upon their own translations of
Nostradamus but additionally upon their own findings of anagrams, puns
and other complex literary devices which they then associate with
events which have already occurred and persons which have already
appeared in history.
But there is another possibility that reconciles the incredulity of the
skeptic with the insistence of his followers that he saw the future:
Nostradamus either expressly or tacitly invoked the aid of demons to
aid him in his "futile searchings of the future."
The possibility corresponds both to his own testimony and that of some
of his contemporaries. It is consistent with the circumstances of his
life and his culture, and it squares completely with theological truth.
We know from his own admissions that he practiced a magic ritual of
sorts in order to call upon some "spirit of prophecy," which he appears
to have visibly seen or felt. The potential result of such activity is
stated clearly by St. Thomas: "When demons are expressly invoked, they
are wont to foretell the future in many ways."151 We have also noted
his own reference to the visions that were the supposed source of his
predictions. This corresponds with what we find in the Summa: "The
demons reveal what they know to men, not by enlightening the intellect,
but by an imaginary vision, or even audible speech; and in this way the
prophecy differs from true prophecy."152
At the same time Nostradamus claimed to "correct" the visions of the
future which he intended to commit to writing using "astrological
computations." Here again he leaves himself open to the influence of
the devil, as we have noted, for even when not expressly called upon
the "demons thrust themselves into futile searchings of the future, in
order to entangle men's minds with vain conceits."153
What, then, of the accuracy of the predictions he attempted to make by
this nefarious ritual? The Catholic Encyclopedia admits the possibility
that some things have been correctly foretold by diviners:
Unless we wish to deny the value of human testimony, it cannot be
doubted that diviners foretold some contingent things correctly and
magicians produced at times superhuman effects. The very survival of
divination for so many centuries would otherwise be inexplicable and
its role in history an insoluble problem. On religious grounds to say
that divination and kindred arts were complete impostures would be to
contradict Scripture.154
We know from our review of St. Thomas's teaching on knowledge of the
future that the angelic intellect (which includes that of the demons)
can know "...certain future things unknown to men, but known to him in
such manners as have been explained in I, Q.57, Art.3," where the
Angelic Doctor says that due to the angels' superior knowledge they can
often very accurately predict future events.155 Elsewhere he reminds us
that the demon "who intends man's perdition, endeavors, by his answers,
even though he sometimes tells the truth, to accustom men to believe
him, and so to lead him on to something prejudicial to the salvation of
mankind."156 Of course we should expect anything that comes ultimately
from the Father of Lies to contain a seductive mixture of truth and
falsehood-much like Nostradamus's predictions, according to the
combined opinion of both skeptics and believers: "Hence the teaching of
the demons, with which they instruct their prophets, contains some
truths whereby it is rendered acceptable. For the intellect is led
astray to falsehood by the semblance of truth....Wherefore Chrysostom
says: 'The devil is allowed sometimes to speak true things, in order
that his unwonted truthfulness may gain credit for his lie.'"157 And it
is this lie, or the great many lies, of Nostradamus which make us
certain that the inspiration for his predictions is not Almighty God
but rather His Arch Rival: "...Hence Chrysostom says that 'some
prophecy by the spirit of the devil, such as diviners, but they may be
discerned by the fact that the devil sometimes utters what is false,
the Holy Ghost never.'"158 Thus we have in the quatrains the same
hackneyed obscurity which attempts to disguise with human musings the
notable absence of real prophetic knowledge: "...except when God gave
them knowledge, their ignorance of the future resulted in the
well-known ambiguity of the [ancient] oracles"159(emphasis mine).
Catholic doctrine with regard to divination by the demons is clear on
two points. First, She reserves a healthy and characteristic prudence
where their activity is concerned: "The Catholic Church admits in
principle the possibility of interference in the course of nature by
spirits other than God, whether good or evil, but never without God's
permission. As to the frequency of such interference, especially by
malignant agencies at the request of man, she observes the utmost
reserve."160
Second, She makes it perfectly clear that any invitation extended to
the demons by man in a request for any kind of assistance or knowledge
is gravely illicit and repugnant to Almighty God. "All divination by
invoking demons is unlawful," says St. Thomas, who reminds us of the
words of St. Athanasius in this regard: "Hence Athanasius...says:
'=2E..it is wicked, while we have the divine Scriptures, to seek
knowledge from the demons"' (emphasis mine).161
Nostradamus himself, along with his works, which, according to Randi,
were placed on the Index in 1781,162 stand condemned for illicit
divination; not only do the facts of his life and culture suggest that
he practiced illicit, occult methods of prediction, but by his own
admission he used pagan rituals that resulted in his wild, nocturnal
imaginings, which he then corrected by the vain and superstitious
method of judicial astrology. Those who knowingly consult his writings
for knowledge of the future fall under the same condemnation, for "it
is written (Dt. 18:10,11): 'Neither let there be found among you... any
one that consulteth soothsayers.'"163 Knowingly consulting
Nostradamus's writings for real knowledge of the future would be a
tacit profession of faith in the efficacy of his methods. And such a
profession should be hateful to a Catholic:
Since the knowledge of futurity belongs to God alone, to ask it
directly or indirectly from demons is to attribute to them Divine
perfection, and to ask their aid is to offer them a species of worship;
this is superstition and a rebellion against the providence of God Who
has wisely hidden many things from us. In pagan times, when divining
sacrifice was offered, it was idolatry, and even now divination is a
kind of demonolatry or devil worship (d'Annibale). All participation in
such attempts to attain knowledge is derogatory to the dignity of a
Christian, and opposed to his love and trust in Providence, and
militates against the spread of the Kingdom of God164 (emphasis mine) .
It should not be a surprise to us that the Encyclopedia uses the phrase
"militates against the spread of the Kingdom of God," for ultimately
the diviner's attempt to surpass the limits which Providence has wisely
ascribed to humanity is nothing other than a vain attempt to accept the
offer which was made to our first parents by our Ancient Enemy: "...you
shall be as gods" (Gen. 3:5). The same offer is made to mankind by the
mysteries of the Kabbalah, and of all the Gnostic sects, both new and
old, with which Nostradamus was so intimately familiar and which would
exercise such a firm hold on the aspirations and imaginations of so
many revolutionaries.
At the heart of all revolutionary societies which claim to have
descended from the "ancient mysteries," there is a hatred of the Order
which God has established and a desire to bend or break His rules in
pursuit of the secret knowledge of the "initiates" which Satan offered
our first parents. We would expect, consequently, that examples of
disobedience and rebellion are held up as models to those who insist
upon the "perfection" of nature by humanity, as famous Freemason Oswald
Wirth explains: "...the Serpent, inspiring disobedience,
insubordination and revolt, was held accursed by the ancient
theocracies, while at the same time he was honored among the initiated,
who considered that there could be nothing more sacred than those
aspirations which lead us ever closer to the gods....The object of the
ancient mysteries was to make men like unto gods."165
Is it not ultimately the very same serpent who is worshiped when we
invoke his minions in an attempt to learn that which God has wisely
hidden? The connection is unmistakable, and it cannot be a coincidence
that a tradition within Freemasonry is that the magical Kabbalah was
passed to the original Babylonian astrologers directly from the Cain of
Genesis: "There was...the magical Cabala of the children of Cain, which
descended to the Sabeists, or star worshippers, of Chaldea, adepts in
astrology and necromancy."166
Let us then maintain the attitude of King Philip II of Spain who burned
the horoscope he received from Nostradamus, lest he be deprived "of his
judgment and prudence or his courage." Let us maintain the attitude of
Henry II of France, who is believed to have said, upon hearing that
Nostradamus predicted his death, "I care not if my death be in that
manner more than in any other. I would even prefer it, to die by the
hand of whoever he might be, so long as he was brave and valiant and
that I kept my honor."167 And to those who are fascinated with the
prognostications of Michel de Nostradame, let us rebuke them in the
fine words of boisterous yet clever Scaliger: "Credulous France, what
are you doing, hanging on the words of Nostradamus? What sort of Jewish
sorcery restrains your anger?...Don't you care that guilt stains your
honor?"168
To think otherwise is to risk grave sin, and to foster a mindset that
"militates against the spread of the Kingdom of God." Given this
opportunity, then, let us avoid at all costs "the tendency towards that
deification of humanity which forms the supreme doctrine of the secret
societies and of the visionary Socialists of our day," which Webster
attributes to the early Gnostic sects and those that inspired them. Let
us rather take up the standard of our Lord under all circumstances, and
in every detail-even when considering whose writings to consult; and
take our place, God-willing, at His side in that war which has raged
from the beginning "between the two contending principles: the
Christian conception of man reaching up to God and the secret society
conception of man as God, needing no revelation from on high and no
guidance but the law of his own nature."169
Of the devil and his lies let us remember just one single statement,
recorded in St. Luke, 4:34, wherein the demon confesses the Divinity of
our Lord Jesus Christ: "I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God,"
bearing in mind that the Father of Lies is nevertheless always a liar
and thus never to be trusted, even as we are reminded almost
unanimously by the Fathers of the Church who, commenting upon this
passage tell us that our Lord silenced the demon lest men should fall
into the habit of believing him. "In the end my Immaculate Heart will
triumph," our Lady told the children at Fatima, reassuring us that
final victory will be hers, over the lies and deceits of the Enemy. And
we can have no greater comfort, a comfort which obviates the need for
us to conduct any sort of "vain searchings into the future," than that
provided by the promise which our Divine Lord left to His apostles and
to us, recorded in St. Matthew, 28:20: "Behold I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world."
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1=2E The Catholic Encyclopedia (henceforth CE) (New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1907-1912; Online Edition Copyright 1999 by Kevin Knight),
s=2Ev. "Prophecy."
2=2E Robert Benazra, Repertoire Chronologique Nostradamique, 1545-1989,
(1990) (noted by David Ovason in The Secrets of Nostradamus [New
York:HarperCollins Publishers, 2001] on p.xxi).
3=2E The worst in this regard in English seems to be The Mask of
Nostradamus by James Randi (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990).
On p.64 of his work he makes the silly statement that religion is to be
found somewhere between science and magic, and is far more similar to
magic.
4=2E On this side of the coin Ovason's The Secrets of Nostradamus is by
far the worst. Ovason accepts as true, almost without distinction,
anything both pagan and ancient, not excluding reincarnation,
necromancy, and astrology. At the same time he commits serious factual
errors, contradicting the teachings of St. Thomas and the Church while
wrongly accusing Dante, King Philip II, and others of sympathy with the
occult.
5=2E As a rational and dispassionate work Edgar Leoni's Nostradamus and
His Prophecies (New York: Bell Publishing Company, 1961) stands out
among all the others. As can be expected, he omits any analysis of
Nostradamus in light of the Faith.
6=2E From Leoni, pp. 15-37.
7=2E The volumes contained four-line verses (called quatrains) in groups
of 100, and thus the books of his predictions were entitled The
Centuries, referring not to historical periods but rather the sets of
100 verses.
8=2E Randi, p. 19.
9=2E Summa Theologica (henceforth ST), II-II, Q.I71, Art. 1-3.
10. The Catholic Encyclopedia (henceforth CE) (New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1907-1912; Online Edition Copyright 1999 by Kevin
Knight), s.v. "Prophecy."
11. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
12. ST, II-II, Q.171, Art.l.
13. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
14. CE, s.v. "Prophecy, Prophet, and Prophetess."
15. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
16. ST, II-II, Q.172, Art.4.
17. CE, s.v. "Prophecy, Prophet, and Prophetess."
18. ST, II-II, Q.173, Art.4.
19. Jn. 11:49-52.
20. ST, II-II, Q.I73, Art.4.
21. "...For Gregory says: 'Sometimes the spirit of prophecy is lacking
to the prophet, nor is it always within the call of his mind, yet so
that in its absence he knows that its presence is due to a gift'" (ST,
II-II, 171, Art. 2).
22. ST, II-II, Q.171, Art.5. St. Thomas is quoting Gregory, "Horn, i.
Super Ezech."
23. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
24. CE, s.v. "Prophecy"; this rule follows from St. Thomas' remark:
"For prophecy like other gratuitous graces is given for the good of the
Church..." (ST, II-II, Q.172, Art.4).
25. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
26. CE, s.v. "Prophecy."
27. In fact according to Charles Ward (Oracles of Nostradamus), [New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940], p.30, a scholarly yet credulous
Nostradamus-sympathizer, he denies being such a prophet.
28. Num. 22. Balaam states clearly that he speaks only what the Lord
bids him speak, while Nostradamus was obscure in the extreme regarding
the source of his prophecies, and he specifically denied being a
prophet in the Old Testament sense.
29. It is claimed that Nostradamus predicted a laundry-list of events
in European history, among which are successions to royal power, famous
battles, and various political struggles. Cf. Ovason pp.58-59.
30. ST, I, Q.57, Art.3, ad 1. "Men cannot know future things except in
their causes, or by God's revelation. The angels know the future in the
same way, but much more distinctly."
31. St. Thomas develops this concept more at, ST, I, Q.57, Art.3 & 4,
and ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.l.
32. ST, I, Q.57, Art.3.
33. CE, s.v. "Divination."
34. CE, s.v. "Divination."
35. Per St. Thomas, "revelation of future events belongs most properly
to prophecy," and "...all those things that are the matter of prophecy
have the common aspect of being unknowable to man except by Divine
revelation" (ST, 11-11, Q.171, Art.3).
36. CE, s.v. "Divination."
37. CE, s.v. "Divination."
38. ST, 11-11, Q.95, Art.3.
39. CE, s.v. "Divination."
40. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.2. St. Thomas reiterates in Art.3 that the
demon is easily able to insert himself into any practice whereby man
attempts to foretell the future because of his ability to "foretell
certain future things unknown to men, but known to him in such manners
as have been explained in I, 57, 3."
41. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art. 1, ad 2. He paraphrases St. Augustine (De
Civ. Dei xxi, 8) here.
42. CE, s.v. "Divination."
43. Dominic M. Prummer, O.P., Handbook of Moral Theology (Ft. Collins,
CO: Roman Catholic Books, originally published in 1957), Chapter III,
"Vices Contrary to the Virtue of Religion" Art.3, DIVINATION, Number
432. Regarding the second form, Prummer adds that "this form of
divination is a venial sin if it is done a) through ignorance or
stupidity, b) for fun or pleasure, c) without firm conviction."
44. "The second class [of divinatory methods]... embraces judicial or
genethliac astrology, pretending to tell the future through the
stars..." (CE, s.v. "Divination"). Cf. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.3.
45. CE, s.v. "Astrology."
46. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.5.
47. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.5.
48.ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.5.
49.ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.5, ad 2.
50. Nostradamus and His Prophecies, pp. 15-16.
51. Arguably King Louis wanted to remedy the situation that had
developed under King Rene: According to Leoni (p. 15), "many Jews had
settled in Provence, which became the best of havens under the rule of
Rene the Good (1434-80)." In a footnote he tells us that "by the Edict
of 1454, they were authorized to practice medicine, commerce and the
arts; they could be fiscal agents; and they could observe the rites of
their religion with complete freedom."
52. Damon Wilson on p.89 of his The Mammoth Book of Nostradamus and
Other Prophets (New York, Carrol and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1999)
confirms this as well: "The Nostredame family originally belonged to
the Jewish faith, but had been Catholic converts for at least two
generations." The fact should not surprisie us, for Jules Michelet, in
his Histoire de France (1879), speaking of Languedoc, remarks that
"there were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or
Jewish grandmother in their genealogy" (quoted by Nesta Webster on p.75
of her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (Palmdale, CA: OMNI
Publications, n.d., first published in 1924).
53. Leoni, p. 16. Wilson confirms the tradition on p.90.
54. Francis X. King & Stephen Skinner, Nostradamus: Prophesies of the
World's Greatest Seer (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), p. 10.
Wilson seems to reconcile the two opposing traditions as well, on p.89:
"[the family] made a fortune through trade but, according to
Nostradamus's son Caesar, they were also respected as a line of
scholars and doctors."
55. Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements
(New York: AMS Press, INC., 1966), p. 143. Newman is quoting C.
Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares, ou Albigeois
(Paris: n.p.,1849), i, 68.
56. Ovason, p.24.
57. Ward on p.3 admits that Jean was either grandfather or
great=ADgrandfather, depending on the source consulted.
58. Referencing Nostradamus's letter to Hans Rosenberger of September
9, 1561, Ovason (p.65) notes "the astrolabe which seems to have been
given [to Nostradamus] by his great-great grandfather, Jean de
Saint-Remy." In the original Latin to which Ovason refers, Nostradamus
refers to this relative as "Magistri materni mei," which simply means
"my maternal teacher."
59. Wilson, p.90.
60. Wilson, p.90. "The term [Kabbalah] is now used as a technical name
for the system of esoteric theosophy which for many generations played
an important part, chiefly among the Jews, after the beginning of the
tenth century of our era... Several of its doctrines recall to mind
those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, the neo-Platonists of
Alexandria, the Oriental or Egyptian Pantheists, and the Gnostics of
the earliest Christian ages. Its speculations concerning God's nature
and relation to the universe differ materially from the teachings of
Revelation." CE, s.v. "Kabbala."
61. Ward, p.4.
62. William Thomas Walsh, Philip II (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and
Publishers, Inc., 1987) p. 196.
63. Michael Nevins, M.D., "Nostradamus," based upon Nostradamus: The
New Revelations, by John Hogue (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995),
online at the Jewish Virtual Library in the "Biography" section, a
project of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise:
http://www.us-israel.org/index.html. This article also appears on the
American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel's "Jewish Medical
History" under "Original Contributions."
64. "Did Nostradamus Prophesy Our Time?" based upon The Secrets of
Nostradamus Exposed by Ray Comfort (Living Waters Publishers, 1996)
online in the "Library" at From Messianic Testimony, A Christian
Witness to Jewish People: http://www.tmtestimony.org.uk/index.htm.
65. Leoni, p.17; Randi pp.12-13.
66. Leoni, p. 17.
67. Randi, p. 13.
68. CE, s.v. "Astrology." And from the same article: "The spread of
astrology [in Europe] was also furthered by the Jewish scholars living
in Christian lands, for they considered astrology as a necessary part
of their cabalistic and Talmudic studies."
69. Ward, p.3.
70. CE, s.v. "Astrology." The Encyclopedia further notes that "Jewish
scholars had, moreover, a knowlege of the most important works of
classic times on astrology and they became the teachers of the Arabs."
Henry Martin, Histoire de France (Paris: n.p., 1839), iv, 187, quoted
by Newman on p. 135. On p.352 Newman indicates that several famous
Jewish families and lesser scholars "assisted in transplanting into
Provence the Arabic-Jewish civilization of Spain."
71. Webster, p.75.
72. Newman, p. 135.
73. Leoni, p. 18.
74. Leoni, p. 18.
75. Leoni seems convinced that among the magical works to which he was
exposed was Marsilio Ficino's translation of De mysteriis Egyptiorum
which was printed in Venice in 1497 and again at Lyons in 1547 (pp.18,
24). The supposed author of this work was lamblichus, a neo-Platonist
who died 330AD (from CE, s.v. "neo-Platonism").
76. Leoni, p. 19. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Scaliger was
a "humanist, b. at Riva on Lake Garda in 1484; d. at Agen, France, 21
Oct., 1558. He was brought to France as physician to Antonio de la
Rovera, Bishop of Agen" (s.v. "Scaliger"). Leoni says he was
"considered second only to Erasmus as the most learned man in Europe"
(p. 19).
77. pp. 15-16.
78. Leoni, p.21. Ovason doubts (p.22 ) that he was summoned to appear
before the Inquisition, but Wilson confirms it (p.94).
79. p.20. Leoni adds the reminder that "Calvin was then in the same
area, completing his theological masterwork."
80. Leoni, p.20. Wilson on p.94 says he traveled for eight or nine
years.
81. p.20.
82. Leoni, p.23.
83. p.23 and p.9 respectively.
84. Leoni, p.23.
85. Leoni, p.24.
86. From Leoni, p.24-30.
87. Leoni, p.26.
88. Leoni, p.26.
89. Walsh, p. 196. Even Leoni calls her "superstitious and
astrology-conscious" (p.26).
90. s.v. "Astrology"
91. Ward p.20 and Leoni pp.37-8.
92. Randi, pp.103-13.
93. p.30. Leoni references Nostradamus's first biographer, de Chavigny,
as the source of the information.
94. p.27.
95. Ovason, p.57. He is referring to Etienne Jaubert.
96. Quoted by Leoni on p.31.
97. p.118.
98. From the CE, s.v. "Huguenots." The power that the heretics
possessed in certain regions of France should not be underestimated;
thus the CE observes that "in the sixteenth century the faculty of
theology [of the University of Montpellier] disappeared for a time,
when Calvinism, in the reign of Henry II, held complete possession of
the city" (s.v. "Montpellier").
99. From Nostradamus-Lettres Inedites (Geneva: n.p., 1983) by Jean
Dupebe, quoted by Randi on p. 110.
100. Newman gives us evidence for this contention on p.354: "A little
before the year 1240, at Montpellier, an anonymous author compiled a
Pentateuchal commentary: Leket Katzer, a compilation of old works which
contain numerous apologetical passages in reply to Christian attacks,
and interprets the Bible from the mystical point of view, using
Kabbalistic 'gematria' and 'notarikon.'"
101. Newman, p. 138.
102. p.107.
103. p.30.
104. p.40.
105. p.11.
106. p.80.
107. p.373.
108. For the original quatrains we are taking the French, with the
English translation, from Ward (pp.76-77), with the aid of a
reproduction of the original French printing at Lyons in 1555
(available at http://go.to/prophecies ) and the help of the unpublished
manuscript of Bob Ireland, a linguist by trade who is also a linguist
and 20-year amateur Nostradamus student.
109. Leoni, pp. 18, 24, 107.
110. Quoted by Ward on pp.82-3.
111. All citations from the preface to C=E9sar and the letter to Henry
II are from a text reproduced at http://go.to/prophecies which is
available along with facsimiles of each page of the original letter as
they appeared in the 1555 version of the Centuries.
112. Malachi Martin explained this very well in his preface to the
paperback edition of Hostage to the Devil (San Francisco: Harper San
Francisco, 1992), especially on p.xxi.
113. King, p. 137.
114 . King p.81.
115. p. 106.
116. Nevins, "Nostradamus," online at the Jewish Virtual Library.
117. p.375. On p.48 Ovason makes the noteworthy, if erroneous,
suggestion that Nostradamus's predictions were a reading, in advance,
of a record of history recorded by angelic intelligence, according to
the teachings of the Kabbalah: "In the cabbalistic tradition, the
angels who recorded the scrolling of the records were the Recording
Angels..." (p. 10). Furthermore, the "Jewish-Christians" at Messianic
Testimony (see footnote 67) relate that "Nostradamus believed that all
that he accomplished was through 'divine power and inspiration.' His
religious belief was that mankind, represented by Adam and Eve, fell
from union with God into a state of forgetfulness. The way back was by
studying the Tree of Life, a mystic path with ten levels of
consciousness. This is in fact the way of the Kabbalah, a Jewish system
of mysticism similar to some eastern religions."
118. p.81.
119. Cf. CE, s.v. "Kabbala."
120. Webster, pp.80-1, quoting Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, s.v. "Jewish Magic." She continues the quotation as follows:
"In [the Zohar] the Talmudic legends concerning the existence and
activity of the shedhim (demons) are repeated and amplified, and a
hierarchy of demons was established corresponding to the heavenly
hierarchy...."
121. s.v. "Kabbala."
122. p.6.
123. p. 124.
124. pp.25-26.
125. Quoted by Ward, p.76.
126. p.78. Later (p.79) she offers the same statement from another
source: "Indeed Eliphas Levi, who certainly cannot be accused of
"Anti-Semitism," declares that "the Jews, the most faithful trustees of
the secret of the Cabala, were almost always the real masters of magic
in the Middle Ages...." She is quoting Levi's Dogme et Rituel de la
Haute Magie( 1861)11, 200.
127. s.v. "Kabbala."
128. CE, s.v. "Astrology."
129. CE, s.v. "Astrology."
130. "...The contact of Christianity with the Oriental mind and
Oriental religions had produced several sects (Gnostics, Manichaeans,
Paulicians, Bogomilae) whose doctrines were akin to the tenets of the
Albigenses" (CE, s.v. "Albigenses"). On p.28, Webster quotes the Jewish
Encyclopedia as saying that Gnosticism "was Jewish in character long
before it became Christian."
131. s.v. "Divination."
132. Ovason, p. 102.
133. According to Newman (p.139), "...one of the principal complaints
against Raymond VI and his vassals was that he had entrusted to Jews
public offices "to the shame of the religion" [from a letter of
Innocent III]...The persistence with which the Councils followed up
this complaint indicates the influence which the doctrines of certain
Rabbis may have had upon the Albigensian heresy."
134. Webster, p.78.
135. Quoted by Webster on p.79.
136. Quoted by Leoni, p. 103.
137. Leoni, p. l13.
138. Ovason, p.xiv.
139. Quoted by Ovason on p.59.
140. p.39.
141. p.39.
142. ST, II-II, Q.I 72, Art.3. St. Thomas quotes a Pentecost homily of
St. Gregory (xxx in Ev.).
143. CE, s.v. "Prophecy, Prophet, and Prophetess."
144. CE, s.v. "Divination."
145. CE, s.v. "Divination."
146. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art. 5.
147. Leoni, p. 103.
148. Ovason, pp. 371-2.
149. Leoni, p.103; in a footnote to Fr. Thurston's comment he quotes
Parker, the most famous of Nostradamus skeptics, writing in 1920.
150. Randi, p.222.
151. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.3.
152. ST, II-II, Q. 172, Art.5, ad 2. It is worth remembering what St.
Thomas says of true prophecy: "...the prophecy whereby a supernatural
truth is seen by intellectual vision, is more excellent than that in
which a supernatural truth is manifested by means of the similitudes of
corporeal things in the vision of the imagination" (ST, II-II, Q.I 74,
Art.2).
153. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.2. It will be remembered that St. Thomas says
that "Now one makes use of a vain and false opinion if, by observing
the stars, one desires to foreknow the future that cannot be forecast
by their means." (ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.5).
154. s.v. "Divination."
155. "The angels know the future in the same way [as men], but much
more distinctly" (ST, I, Q.57, Art.3, ad 1).
156. ST, II-II, 95, Art.4. St. Thomas says St. Athanasius is commenting
on the words of Lk. 4:35, 'He rebuked him, saying: Hold thy peace.'
157. ST, II-II, Q.I72, Art.6.
158. ST, II-II, Q.I72, Art.5, ad 3.
159. CE, s.v. "Divination."
160. CE, s.v. "Occult Art, Occultism."
161. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.4.
162. p.50.
163. ST, II-II, Q.95, Art.4.
164. CE, s.v. "Divination."
165. Oswald Wirth, Le Livre du Compagnon, p.74, quoted by Vicomte Leon
de Poncins, Freemasonry and the Vatican (Palmdale, CA: OMNI/Christian
Book Club, n.d., first published 1968), p.88.
166. Webster, p.l1. She is paraphrasing Dr. Mackey's Lexicon of
Freemasonry, p.323.
167. Leoni, p.27.
168. From a letter that circulated in academic circles after the first
(1555) publication of the Centuries, quoted by Randi, p. 16.
169. Webster, p.30.
.
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| User: "thudeus" |
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| Title: Re: Nostradamus: True Prophet, Quack, Or Sorcerer? |
21 Feb 2006 10:45:23 AM |
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I am just a simple Christian. The bible is very clear about a number of
precepts which are vital to the edification of all mankind. Prophecy is
not one of them. But real prophecy confounds the experts. Isaiah quotes
the name of the Persian king who freed the Israelites 300 years before
the event. No modern day prophet has approached the accuracy of the
Hebrew prophets. Perhaps it would be more profitable to research their
message/. I refer to the first chapter of Isaiah, Michah 6.8 Matthew
23. These are the most poigniant reminders of what God expects and
incidently what is good for us.
Does anyone who reads this reply know of someone who is just (fair) and
is not respected by all who know him ? God digs that. Likewise what of
the person who is kind to others ? Are they not loved by many ? God
digs that also. Clinical trials have been done by comparing performing
acts of kindness with drug treatment of depression. Just being kind to
another person has been shown to be equivalent to 25 mg of
amitryptiline. What is set out in the prophets I have cited may or may
not be God inspired (I favor God inspired). What is certain about it is
that it is good advice for those who want to start living a life they
can be proud of. . Can the study of Nostradamus writings make a similar
claim ?
People are searching for a connection with a deeper world. where
heartfelt decency and innocence are precious jewels not things to be
discarded. Any prophet whose oracles dont point to the better place is
like a fruit tree devoid of fruit to a hungry man. All of us know that
our time is short most doomsday prophets display little skill in their
calling. On the other hand most of us need to be reminded that our
occasionally. The apostle Paul wrote that we shouldnt get involved in
meaningless controversies. i.e. Dont imerse yourself in what doesnt
feed your soul. I fail to see how diligent study of Nostradamus
writings can prophet your soul.
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Nostradamus: True Prophet, Quack, Or Sorcerer? |
21 Feb 2006 04:02:27 PM |
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In <1140540323.385760.323200@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, "thudeus"
<oldblasphemer@hypermax.com.au> wrote:
I am just a simple Christian. The bible is very clear about a number of
precepts which are vital to the edification of all mankind. Prophecy is
not one of them. But real prophecy confounds the experts. Isaiah quotes
the name of the Persian king who freed the Israelites 300 years before the
event. No modern day prophet has approached the accuracy of the Hebrew
prophets. Perhaps it would be more profitable to research their message/.
I refer to the first chapter of Isaiah, Michah 6.8 Matthew 23. These are
the most poigniant reminders of what God expects and incidently what is
good for us.
<snip>
When the NT was being written, they had access to the books that make up
the OT right?
I can be "prophet" that way. Gimme a copy of today's newspaper, I'll write
you a bunch of prophecies. And *every *one will have been fulfilled!
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
Churches are closing...
http://makeashorterlink.com/?M611110AC
Mardi Gras is rolling...
http://www.nola.com/mardigras/
Now, what was this about god's judgement?
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Nostradamus: True Prophet, Quack, Or Sorcerer? |
21 Feb 2006 04:02:45 PM |
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My only interest is in the validation of Nostradamus who cares how he
got his methodology, as he himself says it ALL comes from God.
LB
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| User: "Sanitys Little Helper" |
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| Title: Re: Nostradamus: True Prophet, Quack, Or Sorcerer? |
21 Feb 2006 04:08:35 PM |
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thudeus wrote:
I am just a simple Christian. The bible is very clear about a number of
precepts which are vital to the edification of all mankind. Prophecy is
| | |
