|
|
|
|
2 Q1 Toward Aquitaine [France] the British
make assaults, By these same partners great
incursions: Rains and frosts will make the
terrain unsafe and uneven, Against the port of those of the
Crescent they will make mighty invasion. Nostradamus warns future generations
of the great evils of modern warfare. World War I inspired a prophecy of huge battles
fought by vast armies (the size of a whole country’s population in this day), and
stretching across thousands of miles. Instead of knights in dazzling armor and
baggy-sleeved pikemen, Nostradamus sees the hell of the Western Front with its perverse
and uneven lunar landscape sculpted by the rain of countless artillery shells, where the
terrified soldiers of the future, surrounded by swollen corpses, die like rats in a barbed
wired wasteland. In the final line he transports us 1,000 miles east, to the approaches of
Istanbul (port of … the Crescent), where the sun beats down on soldiers
scrambling up the steep cliffs of the Dardanelles to die under the rasping tattoo of
Turkish machine-gun fire. 2 Q2 The blue [turbaned] head will inflict
upon the white [turbaned] head, As much evil as France has done them
good, Death from the great antenna hanging
from the branch, When [he is] seized the king will ask
how many of his men have been captured. Would we of the 20th
century be able to describe the unfimilar media tools of the 24th century as
well as Nostradamus conveys the link between modern-day imaging antennas and information
gathering implied in this quatrain? He describes here a near-future event, perhaps a coup
d’état in the year 2002 (Q2). Similar references in other quatrains to blue
head could imply a coup by a blue or black turbaned Shi’ite Ayatollah of Iran
against a Sunni Muslim leader (white [turbaned] head). It
could stand for either the blue-turbaned Afghan rebel leader, Heckmediyhar, or the blue
turbaned Taliban guerillas who have extended their Islamic holy war beyond Afghanistan. A
third possibility is of the blue-capped United Nations forces inflicting some military
reprisal on the white headed or white turbaned leader. A death is broadcast on television (antenna
… from the branch – ie from a tower or aerial). Nostradamus is perhaps
trying to describe this strange image suspended before his eyes in the oracular bowl or
Branchus (branch[us]). A number of national European
television stations in France and Greece call themselves Antenna. 2 Q3 Because of heat like that of the sun
upon the sea, Around Negroponte the fish will
become half cooked: The inhabitants will come to make the
first slice into them, When [in] Rhodes, and Genoa their
[food] will fail. Sunrise in th afternoon. That is how
the citizens of Athens in the next millenium might have described what happened if they
had lived. At 3 o’clock the eastern horizon glowed brighter than daylight,
flash-burning then retinas of dwellers along the Aegean coast. Mintues later, Athenian ear
drums would be perforated by an explosion as loud as 2,000 one-megaton hydrogen bombs.
Next, the deafened citizens of Athens would behold a new mountain range rising into the
sky and falling in the form of sea water over the eastern hills. The day the asteroid
fell, the oceans fell upon Athens from the sky! If an asteroid spears the Aegean, the
waters off Evvoia would flash-boil all marine life, sending a plume of steam higher than
earth’s mountains because of the … sun upon the sea. The resulting
cloud of dust could block out the sun’s rays for many months or a few years causing
global crop failures and a catastrophic famine that could kill billions (their
[food] will fail). 1 Q4 From Monaco as far as Sicily, All the coast will remain desolated: There will remain there no suburb,
city or town, Which the Barbarians have not
pillaged and violated. Initially I tended to support
Lamont’s view – written in 1942 – that this is for South France and the
shores of Italy, soon to be ravaged during invasions of Europe. In the subsequent year
Anglo-American forces would land on Sicily, and in the following year invade the Italian
coast with devastating effect at Messina, Salerno and Anzio. Nostradamus admits that his
vision of future events is clouded, so he may have mistaken the Allied invasion of Italy
and France during World War II for some future raid of Barbary Corsairs closer to his own
time. This does not rule out future application – perhaps a nuclear terrorist attack
by the Algerians or Libyans following the same attack route. Another important clue to
identity of Nostradamus’ Third and final Antichrist is the proper interpretation of
the Nostradamian word Barbares, which can be read as either Barbarians or Barbary, ie the
regions of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya where the Barbary coast pirates had their ports (at
Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli). Drop the letter b and barbare becomes an anagram for the word
“Arrabe” or “Arabe”. As we will see in other quatrains, who or what
that word represents is another key to the trigger of Armageddon. Currently, the most
likely candidate for a barbare or Barbary leader is Libyan strongman Muhammar Qadaffi.
Although he has been relatively inactive on the terrorist scene since 1986, prophecies
forewarn us not to ignore his terrorist or his large scale Pan-Arab ambitions. 2 Q5 When weapons and plans are enclosed
in a fish, Out will come a man who will then
make war: His fleet will have traveled for
across the sea, To seem to appear at the Italian
shore. This continues the terrorist theme of
the last quatrain. In several places Nostradamus makes it clear that there’s Libyan
(Barbary) connection to a future (terrorist) invasion of Southern Europe. Muhammar
Qadaffi, an admitted protector and supporter of Abu Nidal and other terrorist
organizations, also possesses five Soviet-made Foxtrot Class diesel powered attack
sumbmarines in his fleet. Whoever the man is with plans and special weapons to make
war, his underwater journey to destiny may be dated in the hidden double meaning
of the first line: When Mars and Mercury are in conjunction with Pisces.
This astrological conjunction took place 5-6 April 1994 and again on 23-25 March 1996,
just as the two planets left the sign of Pisces within a day of each other and Mars (the
god of war) entered Aries the sign of war. In both cases fortunately no terrorist incident
took place. The latter conjunction saw a threat of war between mainland China and Taiwan
over the latter’s democratic elections. 2 Q6 Near the harbors within two cities, There will happen two scourges the
like of which was never before seen: Famine, pestilence within, people put
out by the sword, Cries for help to the great immortal
God. In other quatrains Nostradamus may reveal the date(s) when a new and terrible nightmare weapon would obliterate two port cities: 6 August 1945, the day Hiroshima was irradiated and perhaps even 9 August the day Nagasaki suffered the second nuclear attack. Turn the 6 upside down and you get the date for the bombing of Nagasaki three days later on 9 August. The words of this quatrain capture some of the prophet’s horror while witnessing the two Japanese ports sacrificed on the altar of the dawning nuclear age. In cannot be ruled out however that this is the third quatrain in the sequence describing a nuclear terrorist attack from North Africa by submarine, rather than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – in which case the indexing could stand for 2006 or 2026. 2 Q7 Between several carried away to the
Islands, One to be born with two teeth in his
throat: Dying of famine, the trees stripped
of leaves, For them the new King, novel edict
hammers out. For centuries islands off the
Southern French coast were used as penal colonies for criminals as well as political
prisoners. It is also alleged that Louis XIV was born with two teeth already formed.
Perhaps he wasn’t the only one. A mystery about a man of noble birth forced to wear
an iron mask hs intrigued people of centuries. The identity of this man has never been
revealed, leaving many to speculate that he was Louis XIV’s twin brother, who was
kept hidden from the public eye. Voltaire in his Siecle de Louis XIV states that upon
taking the throne in 1661 Louis XIV had a young prisoner of above average height and of
“extremely handsome and noble appearance conveyed with the utmost secrecy to the
castle on the island of St Marguerite in the sea of Provence.” Voltaire continues:
“On the way there this prisoner wore a mask, the chin-piece of which had steel
springs to allow him to eat with it on, and
the order was to kill him if he took it off. He stayed on the island until 1690, when a
trusted officer named Saint-Mars, the governor of Pignerol, was made governor of the
Bastille and went to St Marguérite to get him and conduct him to the Bsatille still
wearing the mask.” This mysterious prisoner is said to have died in 1703. The last
two lines describe a siginificant event in the first half of Louis XIV’s reign the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. 2 Q8 Temples consecrated in original Roman
fashion, They will fling back the rude
foundations Taking their first and human laws, Chasing, almost all the cults of the
Saints. Three posibilities for a religious
revoluiton are brewing within these lines. The first takes us back to Nostradamus’
own time when the Huguenot movement tried to strip the church of its pontifical airs,
opulence and crowded coult of saints and return it to the early virtues and simplicity of
the early Roman Church when the Apostles of Christ ministered and walked the Earth. The
second takes us ahead to the French Revolution in the 1790s. Robespierre led a rebellion
against the Catholic Chruch, seizing its lands and banishing the nuns and priests from
churches and monastries. He put a neo-pagan Cult of Reason in its place and established a
Feast of the Supreme Being celebration to fill in the void left when the feast days of so
many saints were nullified. The third takes us into our own future in the early 21st
century when the Catholic Church is pressured globally to reject its opulence and
corruption and return to the humble virtues of the early Christian Church. If, however
Nostradamus literally means a new religiousness to be forged in Roman fashion
this may stand for the continued spread of today’s neo-pagan and nature religions.
Much of ancient Roman religion derived its first and human laws from the
simple religion of the Etruscans. Theirs was no more a worship of the godliness in
Existence rather than any particualr deity or drove of demi-gods and goddesses. It was a
celebration of life rather than a death cult of crucifixion and retribution in the
afterlife for sins. 2 Q9 Nine years the rule of the slim one
will hold in peace, Then he will fall into such a bloody
thrist: On account of him a great people will
die without faith and law, Killed by one with a great deal more
nobility. If we can target just who the slim
one is we can unlock the secrets of this quatrain. Let’s say that Nostradamus
has the cycle of time correct; the Cheetham’s interpretation could, successfully make
an interesting stretch that slim describes the vegetarian Adolf Hitler. He
did have a nine year run of spectacular political and military successes from 1933 through
1942, until the Allies dealt him his first serious military disasters at the battles of
Stalingrad and El Alamein. But the stretch marks on the haunch of his interpretation will
protest too mcuh if Cheetham calls this nine-year reign a peace. World War
II was already three years old and had harvested 15 million deaths by 1942. One could
salvage this interpretation if it proposed an alternative future that failed. It is well
documented that Hitler told Mussolini during the late 1930s to be ready to start war
around 1942-43. Shortly after the Munich Pact in 1938 Hitler changed his mind and move
D-Day for world conquest up to the summer of 1939, to get the jump in the military
modernization race on his adversaries. If Hitler hadn’t changed his mind, his Third
Reich would have known nine years of peace before the conflict. In either case the one
with greater nobility who defeats Hitler in the aristocratic President Roosevelt of the
United States or the true and blueblooded aristocrat the prime minister of Britian Winston
Churchill. If Nostradamus is applying this description of slim to the
broader beamed Fuhrer of the warring 1940s he does so with images he might have conjured
of Hitler as an underfed tramp in the streets of Vienna in the early 1900s and later
during World War I as the wolfish lean and mean German soldier messenger running the
gauntlet of an artillery bombardment in the trenches. 2 Q10 Before long everything will be
organized, We await a very sinister century: The lot of the masked and solitary
ones [the Clergy] greatly changed, Few will be found who wish to stay in
their places. The people of the 20th
century have the dubious distinction of being numbered, recorded, categorized, mobilized,
unionized and institutionalezed unlike people of any century before. The foundations of
Nostradamus’ world – the unquestioned divine right of the kings, rigid adherence
to class distinctions and the unassailable sanctity of the Church – have all been
transformed, adapted or swept away. God is either dead or is a woman; nuns want to be
priests and priests want to marry. The once all powerful royal houses of Europe are little
more than museum pieces and targets of ridicule and contempt. All this is shadowed by the
enormous expansion of technology. Historians estimate that in the past century we have
made as many quantum changes in human civilization as the previous ninteen. The sounds and
sights of our times must have left the prophet pulling his white beard in disbelief. As
Nostradamus’ vision reaches our modern, cosmopolitan times, the future loses its
focus on his native land and encompasses a world that has become as he says in 1 Q63, a
small place, in which the convulsions of history, for good or evil, affect
everyone more completely than ever before. 2 Q11 The following son will succeed the
eldest son, Such a great height as far as the
realm of privileges: His harsh glory will put everyone in
fear, But his infants will be ejected from
the realm. This would make sense in relation to
Edouard Alexandre, Duc de Anjou (the future Henry III) if he had been the second son of
Henry II – but is was Charles IX who came second. Anyway, Anjou was chosen king of
Poland in 1573, through the country’s notoriously careless and archaic privileges
system. But the last two lines could just as easily describe his older brother Charles IX
as they do Anjou during his reign as Henry III. Charles appeared to his people as harsh
for acceding to pressure from his mother, Catherine de’ Medici and his advisors and
ordering massacre of Huguenots of St Bartholomew’s Day. Henry III was less feared
than reviled as an incompetent king. Neither brother left heirs to be ejected from the
realm, unless the rumors of historical novelists are true that Charles IX sired bastard
children in a secret marriage. I imagine that Nostradamus is trying us up in a convolution
of overlapping brothers and generations of the House of Valois. If we return to line 1, we
can conjure up the father of our first two subjects, Henry II who was the second son in
line to the throne until his elder brother, the Dauphin Francois, died of pleurisy in
1536. The dizzying pinnacle of kingship and its privileges were not expected by Henry II
and like his sons to be, he too was somewhat unprepared to succeed his father, Francis I,
to the throne. Certainly Henry II waged wars against Charles V that could be characterized
as harsh in their glory. Especially harsh was the catastrophic
defeat of the French at St Quentin. His infant sons would be ejected from the realm –
poetically at least. Death would carry off the three sons of Henry II, extinguishing the
Valois. An alternative to the Valois debacle could be argued for the heirs of Napoleon.
Napoleon Bonaparte had at least two boy children. The first was an illegitimate child from
his affair with the Polish princess Marie Walewska (note the notorious privileges
link). The second was his legitimate heir, the King of Rome, issuing from the Empress
Marie Louise, formerly a princess of Austria. Napoleon had a harsh glory as
a conqueror and empire builder and he did put the old “Boney” fear in every
European Royalist during his 14 year reign. His infants would never rule. The bastard son
grew up in Poland and the legitimate one returned with his mother to become a consumptive
prince of Austria, dying at an early age. 2 Q12 Eyes closed, opened to antique
fantasy, The habit of the solitary ones will
be put to nothing: The great monarch will chastise their
frenzy, Ravishing the treasure in front of
the temples. We return again in the Outlaw Master
theme of Nostradamus’ eight clues to a spiritaul catalyst of a new religious
revolution. The priests of the mainstream religions hold in common their angry reactions
to today’s spiritual gurus and revolutionaries. Line 1 links us to 1 Q96 in which a
new spiritual visionary comes with his eloquent criticisms of fossilized religious
traditions to harm the rocks of dogma rather than the people.
In the 21st century the hold of the priesthoods of many established religions
on humanity will be shaken. Rebel mystics such as Osho, Krishnamurti and Gurjieff have
predicted that within the next hundred years religions as we have known them will fade
away because man will be simply man and not burdened with the separatist labels of Hindu,
Muslim, Buddhist or Christian. The great monarch could equally apply to the
mysterious man from the east (2 Q29, 10 Q75). In Eastern mysticism a
spiritual master is characterized as one who truly is a king or emperor. They are known as
the great monarchs of meditation or as avatars or even as Lords or Kings of the Full Moon.
The treasure in front of the temples is the future youth of the world who will hear their
message. 2 Q13 The body without soul and no longer
to be sacrificed, Day of death put for birth: The divine spirit will make the soul
happy, Seeing the word in its eternity. Here is a rare glimpse of
Nostradamus’ view of the afterlife. With this quatrain one can understand why
Nostradamus – encased in his swelling, aged body was able to suffer the agony of the
final stages of pulmonary edema and await death serenity. Soon the body’s pains and
agonies would be cast off from the ascendant soul, the sacrifice of calumny and hard
labors ended, his occult mission accomplished. Death’s day, which some believed he
had marked in his private ephemeris, would be a day of rebirth into the spirit (although
one cannot help wondering if the wording of line 2 implies some understanding of
reincarnation by the prophet). In 1554 Nostradamus foresees himself on his deathbed,
biding his time with each faltering breath until the moment when the divine spirit he so
arduously sought in prophetic trance would enfold his soul upon its release from corporeal
existence. With the final death rattle, one of history’s greatest time travelers is
free of the past and the future to dwell in the eternity of the “now.” 2 Q14 At Tours, Gienne, watched over, the
eyes will be keen, They will discover from afar, the
great serene lady: She and her suite wil enter the port, Combat, thrusts, sovereign power. Tours and Gienne are both on the
Loire. The great serene lady is the Queen Regent, Catherine de’ Medici,
who watches over her son and the realm with the keen eyes. Ten years after Nostradamus
penned these words, watchmen on the walls of Salon, Provence would glimpse her serene
majesty from afar approaching the town to enter the gate of Avignon with a
retinue of 800 nobles, courtiers and soldiers on her journey of Pacification. In the end,
the journey pacified no one. The Wars of Religion would resume again, with the issue of soverein
power as much the cause of conflict between the royal houses of Valois, Bourbon
and Lorraine as the issue of religion. 1 Q15 A short while before the Monarch is
murdered, Castor, Pollux in the papacy, a
bearded star: Public treasure by land and sea is
emptied, Pisa, Asti, Ferrara, Turin, property
prohibited. In one complex verse Nostradamus
describes and dates a sequence of events that perhaps relate to the Vatican Bank Scandal.
We see the murder of John Paul I, the rise of his successor and the transit of
Halley’s Comet in 1986, when world attention about the Bank scandal reached a cliamx.
Castor and Pollux is a good example of Nostradamus’ using
the classics to paint layers of meaning with very few words. The twins of Gemini may be a
poetic description of two popes side by side with twin names (John Paul), who will run the
papal ship of state. According to classical lore one twin was divine while the other was
all to human and corrupt. Other prophecies might support the interpretation that
Nostradamus views the second John Paul with disdain. For now the list of towns and the
property prohibited in the final line is unclear. Most of the perpetrators of the Vatican
Bank scandal were located in Rome and Milan. Perhaps we will see a future financial
scandal involving the Vatican connected with banks in these Italian cities. 2 Q16 Naples, Palermo, Sicily, Syracuse New tyrants, celestial lightning
bolts, explosions: Forces from London, Ghent, Brussels
and Susa, Great slaughter, triumph to create
holidays. This represents the Allied invasion
of Sicily and Italy in World War II. The new tryants are Mussolini and
Hitler, who wage blitzkrieg (lightning war). The white hot shells of German 88-mm guns
cracking through the air at a low trajectory over Italian battlefields would certainly
appear to the prophet as celestial lightning bolts. Line 3 descirbes some of
the Allied contingents from Britian, Belgians fighting with the Free French contingents
and later the Italian anti-Fascist units, represented by the synecdoche of Susa.
To this day we celebrate the victory of 100 million Allied soldiers and remember the
slaughter of 50 million people in two holidays: VE Day (Victory in Europe) and VJ Day
(Victory in Japan). 2 Q17 The campus of the temple of the
vestal virgins, Not far from Ethne and the Pyrenees
mountains: The great conduit is hidden, evil
within North blows up rivers and vineyards
bruised and destroyed. Leoni believes this is another
example of a “strictly local” quatrain “suggesting an event that
Nostradamus once witnessed.” We must uncover the ruins of a Roman temple to the
hearth goddess Vesta, near the little town of Elne, which lies ten miles north of the
Spanish broder and ten miles of Perpignan. Line 3 is quite and doesn’t fit well with
the others, urging me to speculate that lines 3 and 4 are completely different prophecy.
One can describe conduict in different ways. It can be a condui, duct, a tunnel or tube.
Perhaps it is the mountain pass over the Pyrenees. It could even be a water passage and
therefore stand for the Midi Canal, which is around 38 miles north of Elne. To me the great
conduit could be the Channel Tunnel, the great Eurotunnel between Calais (France)
and Folkestone (England). Dan le male could have a double meaning for evil within
and within the trunk, implying a bomb in a suitcase set to go off in a vehicle traversing
a tunnel. North could be an anagram, a person’s name or even something as simple as a
direction, to the north. The Channel Tunnel has been described by one
security expert as “a security nightmare – a prime terrorist target.” Its
creators pin their hopes on the new Sycoscan X-ray system, which can scan a container
turck in two to five minutes. Another system is planned that will allow security guards to
see three-dimensional images of a container’s contents and determine the chemical
composition of the materials inside a suitcase. 2 Q18 New-fashioned and suddenly violent
rain, Will suddenly impede the two armies: Celestial stone, discharges and
conflagrations make the sea gritty, The death of the seven suddenly by
land and sea. The first two lines reminds me of the
first use of Stalin’s top-secret Katyusha rocket launches outside of Smolensk in
1941. The wailing phalanx of missiles falling from the sky caused the advancing German and
Soviet forces to retreat. The last two lines could describe any number of naval battles
and barrages from World War II. Nostradamus’ gritty seas bring to mind oil slicks and
the detritus of sunken battleships. The stones are artillery or naval shells. This time
the seven are not the Valois children – they are the seven full members
of the Axis Alliance: Germany, Italy, Japan, Finaland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. 2 Q19 Newcomers build a place without
defense, Occupying a place [which] until then
[was] inhabitable: Meadows, houses, fields, towns, to
take at pleasure, Famine, plague, war, extensive arable
land. The newcomers are the Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust who established their own state in the “Promise Land”
of Palestine. Prior to the Holocaust the slow but steady colonization of Palestine by the
Zionist movement gave rise to the Jewish pioneers establishing communes (kibbutizm), which
were always vulnerable at attack from hostile Arab neighbors; thus the term without
defense. This early experience of vulnerability, compounded by the horrors of the
Holocaust, has understandably deepened the Israeli feeling of being without defense
in a hostile gentile world. It can be argued that the cryptic phrases until then
[was] inhabitable dates the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 as the beginning
of a period when the Holy Land is in danger of annihilation. The Jewish state was achieved
at the price of Palestinians’ expulsion and since its establishment, Arab-Israeli
wars have raged in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982; the Gulf War occurred 1990-91. The
quatrains’ meadows, houses, fields and towns taken with pleasure could be criticism
of Israel’s policy of occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan heights.
The final line of this prophecy could be a warning to a people once persecuted of the
consequences of becoming persecutors themselves. The final line hints at horror and hope.
Perhaps Nostradamus’ apocalyptic sequence of famine, plague, war …
will result from this regional doomsday arms race. If we are fortunate, a continued
strengthening of global government and ethics, ensuring security and peace for Arab and
Jew, will monitor the creation of a regional nuclear free zone, creating a happy future of
extensive arable land for all those living in the Middle East. Famine,
plague, war, extensive arable land is another of Nostradamus’ litanies about
a sequence of apocalyptic events. A great slaughter over disputed territories, perhaps
those of the Middle East or any number of ethnic civil war, is either endured or it is
prevented by new breakthroughs in agricultural genetics, creating a second Green
Revolution that can feed the starving Middle East. 2 Q20 Brothers and sisters are captives in
diverse places, Will find themselves passing near the
monarch: They contemplate his attentive
offspring, Unpleasant to see the marks on chin,
forehead and nose. In September 1557 a number of
Huguenots, of high and low birth, were captured in a raid on the rue St Jacques in Paris.
Accompanied by his children Henry II visited the prisoners. He was displeased to find so
many of these heretics had been brutalized by their captors. 2 Q21 The ambassador sent an envoy by
biremes, Halfway, repulsed by unknown ones, Reinforced with salt will come four
triremes, Cords and chains packed up at Evvoia. Biremes are galleys with two banks of
oars, triremes with three banks. Salt is used a number of ways in Les Propheties, for
anything from taxes to clever wit to even meteorite strike. The latter applications may be
implied here. A number of quatrains could be descriptions of meteorite crashing into the
Agean off the coast of the island of Evvoia or Negroponte as it was named after the
Venetian colony seized by the Turks in 1480. Another translation of Negerpont gives us the
Black Sea. This could make the quatrain a prediction for the Ottaman Turks’ opening
up the Bosphorus to Christian mariners. Or perhaps the galleys are a metaphor for the
current dispute by the Russian Federation with Ukraine over divvying up the Soviet Black
Sea Fleet. The packed up ropes and chains are the mooring lines and anchors of mothballed
Soviet warships. 2 Q22 The aimless army of Europe will
divide [break up], Collecting itself near the flooded
[submerged] island: The Arton fleet’s ranks will
fold up, Navel [center] of the world by
greater voice [vote] substituted. The aimless army is the
Warsaw Pact, which disbands as the Cold War comes to an end. Line 2 could be a play on
words of Manhattan Island, New York, the international capital of the Untied Nation, which
is seen here recovering after an earthquake or tsunami. The submerged (Manhattan) island
could even describe New York by the 2020s, when the rising oceans expected as a result of
the greenhouse effect will begin to flood the city. D’Arton is both a near anagram
for D’Nato (of NATO) and for Dayton, Ohio home of the Dayton accords where the
current adversaries is Bosnain conflict finally agreed to a peace treaty, later officially
signed in Paris toward the end of 1995. Nostradamus gives us an amazing double message,
since NATO troops are pledged to enforce the peace of the Dayton agreement. The poetic
meaning of nombril (navel) is center, ie the capital of a new global government. This
could still be the United Nations on the flooded island of Manhattan, negotiating
solutions for the second great challenge of the near future – ecological disaster
caused by overpopulation and overconsumption. 2 Q23 Palace, birds, chased out by a bird, Very soon after the upstart prince: Although the enemy is repelled beyond
the river, Outside seized, dragged along, upheld
by a bird. These birds symbolize a
power sturggle between monarchies of Europe between 1555 and World War I. They are the
eagles of the Holy Roman Empire and Imperial Spain of Nostradamus’ time. The eagle
was also one of Henry II’s emblems. Centuries later eagles would be used by the First
and Second French Empires of the Bonapartes. Also worth considering are the double headed
eagles used by Russia and the Austrian Empire. But the bird could instead be
a description of some future flying vehicle beyond the prophet’s ability to describe.
Perhaps a future leader is seized outside a palace and hoisted into the air into a
helicopter. 2 Q24 Beasts ferocious with hunger will
cross the rivers, The greater part of the battlefield
will be against Hifter, Into a cage of iron will the great
one be drawn, When the child of Germany observes
nothing. Hifter is probably the most famous
enigmatic name coined by Nostradamus, encapsulating the name and childhood residence of
Adolf Hitler in one word. Hifter is the Latin name for the River Danube, near the shores
of which Hitler grew up in Linz, Austria. A total of over 100 million men from more than
50 nations were united against the Axis forces of Hitler and his allies, Italy and Japan.
Using Europe’s vast rivers as natural obstacles was a major part of Hitler’s
Fortress Europe defense plan, especially on the Eastern Front. Titanic battles thick with
the thunder and tumult of planes, tanks and tens of thousands of artillery pieces were
fought by the Soviets in crossing the Volga (Stalingard 1942), the Neva (Leningrad 1943),
the Denieper (Kiev 1943), the Danube (Budapast 1944 and Vienna 1945) and the Oder (Berlin
1945). From the Western Front came the two great battles to cross the Rhine: Arnhem 1944
and the Battle of Rhine 1945. The third line most likely alludes to the fare of Mussolini,
who actually was encaged (see 9 Q95). The final line is a coda to the madness of a Germany
bewitched by the Third Reich. From its inception, most of its children were members of the
Hitler Youth, which had as its major goal re-programming the minds of the German children
to dissociate them from many of the laws and ethics respected by peace loving nations.
Hitler even said that he wanted the children of Germany to become good “German
Barbarians.” 2 Q25 The foreign guard will betray the
fortress, Hope and shadow of a much higher
marriage: The watchman deceived [and cut down],
fort seized in haste, Loire, Saone, Rhone, Garonne, mortal
outrage. The defender of a fortress is General
Bazaine, who in 1870 retreated to the fortress of Metz rather than press his advantage
over the Prussians gained in a bloody battle at Gravelotte and St Privat. Bazaine would
stay in Metz and effectively take out 170,000 desperately needed soldiers from the
campaign. His indecisiveness allowed the German alliance to invade the heartland of France
and win the Franco-Prussian War. Conspiracy buffs of the 19th century try hard
to pin more than military incompetence on Bazaine’s actions. Many Guals vented their
spleen at Bazaine during his court martial in 1872. Charges of treachery were made and
even a claim that Bazaine had received bribes from the Prussians, who promised him power
and riches if he stayed put in Metz and let the Prussians encircle Napoleon III’s
forces at Sweden. This accusation was never proved; he was however charged with derelecion
of duty and sentenced to life in prison. One can poetically call Francois-Achille Bazaine
a foreign guard, since he lacked the élan and the looks expected from a
member of the officer class. Although he was personally brave, he was the spawn of
low-class tradesman and his uniform strained and wrinkled over his swelling paunch as he
rode hunched over in the saddle. 2 Q26 Because of the favor that the city
will show, To the great one who will soon lose
the field of battle: Flying the Po position, the Ticino
will pour forth, The blood, fires, deaths, drowned by
the blow of the blade’s thrusting edge. I lean towards Prieditis’ view that this concerns the final battles in the Italian campaign of World War II. I would add that the Po and Ticino rivers were forded in several places by the Allied forces. The overflowing of the Ticino could wax poetic for the overwhelming Allied attack on Mussolini’s rump Fascist republic at Salo. Milan is the city favored here as the scene mentioned in other quatrains of Mussolini’s final indignity; his body was abused and mutilated, then hung upside down high over the angry mob for all to see. 2 Q27 The divine word will be struck from
the sky, One who will not be able to proceed
farther: The revelation – the secret shut
away, Such that they will walk over and
ahead [of his dungeon]. Quatrain 2 Q27 through 2 Q29 return
us to the theme of the eight clues to divining the founding father(s) of the 21st
century’s spiritual revolution from the East. What follows is certainly not the only
interpretation possible, but to me line 1 implies the divine word of a
spiritual teaching or the utterer of these words himself, who is struck down from the sky.
He is on a journey in a plane that either crashes or is not able to proceed further
because it has been prevented from taking off from the runway. As strange and cryptic as
this quatrain sounds a recent event in the life of one conetmporary spiritual rebel can be
applied to every point in the quatrain. In late October 1985 tensions were running high in
the spiritual commune city of Rajneeshpuram. The cars of dozens of state and government
agencies choked the parking lots of the downtown area. It was now becoming clear to the
followers of Osho that these men, who had come initially to investigate the crimes
committed against the citizens by one of their own, Ma Anand Sheela, were using this as an
excuse to position themselves to freeze the assets of the commune and its citizens and
close down the city itself. During Osho’s long battle for his residential visa the
Regan administration had spent millions of dollars seeking evidence of his involvement in
immigration fraud committed by over 100 foreign disciples. Charles Turner, the chief
federal prosecutor in the immigration case against Osho, openly admitted to The Oregonian
newspaper that their main objective was to use the law for political ends. The federal
government wanted “the Bhagwan” out of America and his commune destroyed. Former
Attorney General Ed Meede was quoted as saying that he wanted Osho isloated from his
people. An informant in the federal prosecutor’s offices told Osho’s lawyers
that there was a secret indictment for his arrest. Turner denies it existed. Osho’s
lawyers say they tried to negotiate a peaceful transfer of Osho into custody but Turner
would not discuss it. Rumors of public arrest and numerous death threats convinced Osho to
fly out of Oregon. One government plan in particular was confirmed by investigative
reporter Max Brecher (author of A Passage to America), who interviewed and taped all the
major players and the National Guard generals responsible for preparing a Waco-style
attack called Operation Serenity on Osho’s commune. Brecher told that Osho has said
that his flight across America was not an attempt to avoid justice and leave the country
(he knew his Lear jet was not capable of international flight), but was his attempt to
take his people out of harm’s way. Given what Brecher has uncovered about Operation
Serenity, the government’s planned invasion of a city of 5,000 people by 8,000
national guardsmen with armored cars, supporting a helicopter attack on Osho’s
private residence in the center by special SWAT teams, would have made the immolation of
David Koresh’s Waco commune appear minor in comparison. Once Osho’s Lear jet was
airborne it was tracked and communication was allegedly jammed. I have read Bercher’s
transcripts and listened to audiotapes of FAA controllers actually jamming the jet’s
radio transmissions. The radio messages from his lawyers advising him to reroute the jet
back to Oregon are jammed, even though one is supposedly free to travel without
interference until under indictment or warrant. The jet lands in Charlotte, North Carolina
for refueling. Its occupants get a nasty surprise. They are immediatley surrounded by
dozens of guns pointing at them. US Marshals, yelling at the top of their lungs, arrest
Osho and his attendants without a warrant and his Miranda rights are not read to him. He
is roughly treated, chained and placed in a filthy holding cell smeared with blood and
excrement below ground in the Charlotte County Jail. Did Nostradamus see this modern
mystic’s persecution when he wrote this verse? Osho’s passage over America is struck
from the sky. Whether he did actually contemplate evading justice by flying to
Bermuda or not will never be known. It is accurate to say that wherever he was planning to
run he was not not able to proceed farther. Osho and his spiritual revelations
are shut away in a holding cell that is underground. Jailkeepers and
disciples alike walk over his dungeon. For the next few days the world news
broadcast images of Osho in leg and waist irons trying to raise his manacled hands pressed
together in a namasté blessing to followers, reporters and jailers alike, serene and
undisturbed by the harsh treatment. He endured 12 days of detention and persecution as he
was flown across America from one secret (underground) cell to another until
he reached Portland, Oregon for a hearing, after which he was released on bail. For three
of those 12 days, he has disappeared inside the American prison system. Not even his
lawyers knew his whereabouts (the secret shut away). Osho later related that
during the three “lost days,” which it turned out he had spent in the Oklahoma
City Jail, he had been forced to sign in under an assumed name, then thrown into a cell
with a man dying from infectious herpes. Later he was given bread with an odorless,
tasteless spread, which he later assessed to be poisoned. The final line may hide a more
figurative message to Osho’s disciples. They must walk over and ahead
– that is, move on without their master’s physical presence to guide them. Soon
after Osho returned to Portland he was deported from America on an Alford plea, which
allowed him to maintain his innocence. Without his presence, the commune soon disbanded
and its people scattered all over the world. Within four years Osho was dead. After his 12
days in jail, Osho’s health began a rapid decline. By January 1990 the 58-year-old
seemed to have aged 20 years. His beard became as white as that of a man in his late
seventies. Medical examinations by a number of noted physicians and toxicologists came to
the same conclusion – that he had somehow been poisoned by heavy metals around the
time he was under US custody. During the first days of his incarceration in the Charlotte
County jail, Osho was interviewed by Ted Koppel of ABC’s Nightline. Osho claimed he
was not fleeing the country and that he was “disappointed” with the US
government. He called the “world’s greatest democracy” a
“hypocrisy.” 2 Q28 Second to the last of the
prophet’s name, Will take Diana’s day as his day
of silent rest: He will travel far and wide in his
drive to infuriate, Delivering a great people from
subjection. Gautama the Buddha proclaimed that
the wheel of Dharma – the dynamo for human spiritual revolution – would be
turned once every 25 centuries by a world teacher to generate humanity’s shift to a
new state of consciousness. Another turn is due at the end of this millenium. Buddha used
the Sanscrit word Dhyana or Dhyan for meditation, a name which corresponds to the French
pronunciation of Diana used by Nostradamus. Diana is the goddess of the
Moon. One of Nostradamus’ main clues about the man who will initiate this turn of the
Wheel concerns of decoding his name. Apparently the world teacher’s second or middle,
name means “moon.” For instance, Osho – one of the candidates used –
to be known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; Rajneesh means “Lord of the Full Moon.”
In this full legal name – Rajneesh Chandra Mohan – the middle or second to
the last name, Chandra also means “moon.” Clue 5 also referred to a people
linked to Hermes, the moon and meditation and a teacher from the East coming to the West.
Perhaps the teacher travels or will travel around the world. Perhaps his drive to
infuriate orthodox belief and his controversial message and actions will keep the
teacher on the move. A number of the 20th century’s most rebellious
mystics from the East have used modern conveyances such as oceans liners or have later
become avid jet setters throughout their drive to infuriate the status quo
religions. Yogananda, Gurdjieff and Meher Baba traveled by ocean liner from the East to
Europe and America. Prabhupada flew to the West by plane; so did the Western-born mystic,
Adi Da Santosha, when returning from sacred pilgrimages in the East. Osho and J.
Krishnamuti are probably the most travelled gurus to date. Krishnamutti spent most of his
long life sharing his concept of “witnessing” with tens of thousands of
followers on six continents. In only six months, between November 1985 and May 1986, Osho
flew from America to Cyprus, India, Nepal, Greece, France, Sweden, England, Ireland,
Canada, Senegal, Uruguay, Jamaica, Portugal and back to India. Many of these eastern gurus
claim to liberate their followers from the conditioned behavior that makes them medicore
cogs in society’s machine. For example, Osho once said, “God is unknown. Truth
is unknown. Beauty is unknown. Love is unknown. But the fearful mind always cling to the
known. It does not go beyond the drawn line. It walks on the beaten track. The fearful
person becomes mechanical and he is no different from the drudge. Religions teach fear:
fear of hell, fear of sins and fear of punishment. Society teaches fear – fear of
dishonor. Education teaches fear – fear of failure. Simultaneously there is greed
attached – greed for heaven, greed for the fruits of virtue; greed for respect,
position, reputation, success and rewards. All greed is the other side of the coin of
fear. This way the consciousness of a person becomes full of fear and greed. The fire of
jealousy and competition is aroused. The fever of ambition is created. There is no wonder
if, in all these circular patterns, life is waisted. Such education is dangerous. Such
religions are dangerous. Education is that which teaches fearlessness, stabilizes one is
non-greed, gives energy to rebel, gives courage to accept the challenge of the unknown.
Education should not teach jealously and competition, but love; it should not encourage
the insane speed of ambition, but the natural and self inspired growth. But this can
happen only if we accept the uniqueness of everyone’s individuality.” 2 Q29 The man from the East will come out
of his seat, Passing across the Apennines to see
France: He will fly through the sky, the
rains and the snows, And strike everyone with his rod. In two major quatrains about a man
from the East there are allusions to the iron rod of Hermes. This rod is often interpreted
to be a nuclear missile, a reading that makes a man an agent of Antichrist. But
interpreters should also remember the occult significance of Nostradamus’ choice of
vocabulary. The Hermes reference links the rod to the caduceus wand, the Western mystical
symbol of enlightenment. The rod has to power of transformation, liberating the truth
inside the individual. This man from the East wields the rod like a Zen stick to jolt the
world into waking from its illusions. From this we can infer that Nostradamus is
describing an Eastern teacher who strikes out at the world therfore be unpopular with the
mainstream culture. He might use unusual and unorthodox devices to stir people up,
disturbing the “status codes” of social and religious behaviour in our
materialistic times. During Osho’s world tour he was expelled from Greece in early
1986 due to pressure from the Greek Orthodox Chruch and the American Embassy. It may be no
more than an interesting coincidence that his flight plan closely matches
Nostradamus’ escape route four centuries before. Osho crossed the Apennine mountains
of Italy to indeed see France. His Lear jet landed in Nice and
was immediately surrounded by police with automatic weapons. After refueling, it was
forced to take off at gunpoint to travel over the rains and snows
of the Alps to Sweden. Juliet Forman relates in her book Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: One
Man Against the Whole Ugly Past of Humanity (Rebel Publishing House), that once the
harried guru left Nice, his attendant, Swami Dhyan John, remarked that Osho, in a makeshit
bed, surveyed the snow covered Alps bathed in morning sunlight rolling beneath his jet and
a few moments later turned to Dhyan John and said, “Maybe if the world ended,
existence would be better off and we could start again.” Flight pattern forecasts
aside, several other Eastern mystics could vie for the title of Nostradamus’ man
from the East. Swamis Vivekananda and Yogananda were 19th and early 20th
century pathfinders of Eastern mysticism as is Jiddu Krishnamurti. Meher Baba and his
European disciples traveled extensively through France and Italy during the late 1920s and
made their way across the Apennines, thorugh Nostradamus clearly implies a
journey by air rather than by train or automobile. 2 Q30 One who the infernal gods of
Hannibal, Will cause to be reborn, terror to
all mankind: Never more horror nor the newspapers
tell of worse in the past, Then will come to the Italians
through Babel. From the spiritual messenger from the
East of the last quatrain, Nostradamus moves us to the other end of the spiritual spectrum
introducing us again to the Third and the last Antichrist. He appears to be a Middle
Eastern or North African terrorist who might obtain enough nerve gas or plutonium to take
the world hostage. The prophet supplies clues to this Antichrist over several quatrains.
Here he hints at his place of birth, religion, military theater of operations and throws
in a tantalizing clue to his link with Mabus in 2 Q62. A good place to start
our prophetic detective work is by playing one of Nostradamus’ favorite word games of
factual hide and seek: the decoding of classical metaphors and ancient names to find their
modern parallels. The Punic and Phoenician peoples worshipped an all powerfull God they
called Baal or Lord. Each region gave him a personalized name. Nostradamus may be hinting
that the Antichrist comes from the modern day region that in fromer times was a colony of
the wide ranging ancient Phoenician empire – an area that today includes Tunisia,
Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and Syria. Nostradamus’ most famous doomsday
prediction (10 Q72) warns future generations of a King of terror descending
from the skies in July 1999. The holy terror linked to Mabus and Hannibal’s so called
god could point to an important location for the final Antichrist.
Hannibal’s Baal was called Hammon, the patron deity of Carthage. When Baal Hammon has
been angered, he is described as a reigning Terror from the skies (10 Q72).
The Romans had a custom of adopting the patron of gods of a conquered nation and
Latinizing their names. After the Romans had sacked the city of Carthage at the close of
the Third Punic War in 146 BC, they built their own city over its ashes and renamed it
Thurbo Majus. The enigmatic name M-A-B-U-S may stand as a classic anagram for
“Majus,” another link to the Antichrist and the infernal gods of Hannibal.
The chief headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) lie just a few miles
outside the ruins of Thurbo Ma(b)us’ city. There still remain a few radical factions
in the PLO dedicated to destroying Israel and establishing a Palestine state over the its
remains, rather than along the West Bank of the Jordan river. These same freedom fighters
(or Baal’s terror-ists) have a reputation for considering any means to obtain their
demands, from diplomacy to nuclear and chemical blackmail (terror from the skies [10
Q72]). The idea of newspaper was inconceivable in the time of Nostradamus. This fact makes
it clear to anyone reading today’s newspaper stories about Saddam Hussein, Abu Nidal
or Muhammar Qadaffi or the bombing of the New York World Trade Center, that these clues
have contemporary relevance. In these quatrains Nostradamus may be hiding a warning of a
future plague of world terrorism – mainly based in North Africa and the Middle East.
The worst scenario is of a handful of terrorist sanctioning nations draging the world into
nuclear war as early as 1999. The final line links us to a series of disturbing quatrains
warning of this Antichrist’s leading a nuclear terrorist attack on Italy from a
submarine. The Anitchrist gets his support from Babel, an ancient name for
modern Iraq. 2 Q31 In Campania the Volturno River of
Capua will do so much, That one will see only water covering
the fields: Before and after the long lasting
rain, Except for the trees one will see
nothing green. Here is another quatrain describing
an era of floods followed by drought. This time waters overwhelm the banks of the Volturno
river and the city of Caupa is flooded. This may be another warning for humanity to become
more ecologically sane; otherwise, terrible floods to come from the climatic disruptions
in the 21st century will wash over the Earth. 2 Q32 Milk, blood, frogs prepared in
Dalmatia, Conflict given, pest near Balennes The cry will be great from all of
Salvonia, Then will be born monster near and
inside Ravenna. This may be a return to the
Antichrist/nuclear terrorist theme from 2 Q30 or a warning about some future plague. Line
1 stands for chemical or biological warfare prepared on the Dalmatian coast (the Balkans).
The conflict is either a resumption of the Bosnian struggle in the latter half of the
1990s or a new and wider Balkan war in the early decades of the 21st century.
Acccording to the superstitions of his day, Nostradamus foresees a grotesque baby animal
or human being born in Ravenna, Italy as a portent of the new Balkan war. A wider
interpretation of the great cry issuing from Slavonia would cite this as a prediction of
either the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 or some future nuclear meltdown at a Russian
or Eastern European reactor. It could also mark an outbreak of more extensive ethnic wars
across the former Soviet Union, where germ and chemical warfare agents are widely used.
Monstre in Old French can mean monster or a divine omen sent by the gods to a pagan seer
through a (de)monstr(ation). Rather than a monster child a divine omen will be born
in the vision of some future clairvoyant in Ravenna. If today’s future gazers often
wax divine or monstrous is their decriptions of wonders to come 500 years in our future,
how difficult it must have been for a man of the 16th century to describe
weapons, machines and plagues of the 20th century or 21st century?
Although it is popular among interpreters to divine biological or chemical weapons from
the cryptic phrase milk, blood, frogs it is also true that practitoners of
folk medicine in Nostradamus’ day often described lymphatic fluids and semen as milk
and blood was the vitality giver or the immune system. Peasant healers
blamed frogs for all viral diseases. With this is in mind, the riddle of milk,
blood, frogs becomes a description of the modern plague of AIDS, which infects the
blood and lymphatic system cheifly through contact with semen or from intravenous drug use
or blood transfusions. 2 Q33 Through the torrent which descends
from Verona, About the time when the Pau [and Po
rivers] will guide its entry: A great wreck [in Italy] and no less
in the Garonne, When those of Genoa will march
[against] their country. This may be part three of the grim
future forecast for Italy and the Balkans during the 21st century and for
global warning. The torrent devouring Capua also overwhelms Verona. Other floods run down
the Pau in France and the Po river valley in nothern Italy. Videos made by survivor of the
great floods in Provence and Genoa in the early 1990s convey the image of Mother
Nature’s naked and raging wave cascading down the Alpine valley in a frothing cloak
of wreckage and crushed cars. Climatologists expect the storms producing such floods to be
50 percent stronger by the middle of the 21st century. Ecological breakdowns
could lead to social breakdown. Perhaps we have case here of Genoa seceding from Italy. 2 Q34 The senseless wrath of furious
combat, Will cause brothers to draw their
swords at the table: They are separated, wounded,
curiously, The proud duel will come to harm
France. Mortal hatred has burned in the hearts of many a French prince in the last four centuries. The fratricidal intrigues of Henry III against his brother the Duc d’Alecon could be characterized as a duel or deadly competition, if not a literal duel with swords. This does not rule out a private incident seen through Nostradamus’ magic but too far removed or repressed by courteirs of both young men to end up scribbled on the parchment of a contemporary historian. 2 Q35 Within two lodgings at night the fire will take hold, Several within suffocated and roasted: Near the two rivers it will happen for sure: Sun, Sagittarius and Capricorn will be exterminated. Nostradamus promises a fire will take place in Paris (near the two rivers of the Marne and Seine) during the sun’s transit of Sagittarius and Capricorn in November and December. One problem – the year isn’t mentioned. It is a stretch, but the closet I can come to the date is the early October 1994, when a mass murder suicide of a Christian doomsday cult known as the Order of the Solar Temple took place. Fifty three charred bodies were found in the temple’s two burned out compounds one is Grangessur-Salvan east of Geneva, Switzerland the other is Chiery a small village just north of Montreal, Canada. Monteral, like Paris is a city near the confluence of two rivers, the Ottawa and St Lawrence. 2 Q36 The letters of the great Prophet will be seized, And will fall into the hunds of the tryant: His enterprise will be to deceive his King, But his thefts will very soon trouble him. James Randi (1990) speculates that in 1629 the aged son of Nostradamus was desperate to collect a selection of Latin letters of his fathers for safe keeping, because a few of them betrayed open sympathy for the Protestants. The lines of this quatrain could record the sins of the father burdening the conscience of the son. César finally did recover the letters (which can be found translated into French by Jean Dupèbe in Nostradamus – Lettres Inedites). Perhaps if these letters had fallen into the hands of a contemporary Inquisitor instead of a modern debunker, César’s life and reputation might have been threatened. The last two lines may implicate César new nephew, Vincent Seve, for creating a fake set of 58 Sixians (six line poems) attributed to the hand of Nostradamus. The first edition of the Sixians was presented with a letter from Seve to Henry IV on 19 March 1605, at the Chateau de Chantilly. In the letter Seve says the long lost manuscript was presented to him by a certain Henry Nostradamus. There is no record of any Henry Nostradamus elsewhere in the prophet’s papers or letters; Nostradamus however, did have two brothers who may have sired this “Henry.” Perhaps this deception of false prophecies and plagiarizing of his father (his thefts) weighed heavily on César. His father had made it clear in his Epistle to Henry II that his prophetic gift would not be transferred to his descendants. Perhaps this was a fact César secretly resented and the hurt little boy hidden deep inside the subconscious of the old historian had guided his hand to forge some prophecies. Another guilt ridden myth maker adequately described by the quatrain would be the Nazi astrologer and Nostradamian Karl Ernst Kraffi, who was responsible for writing interpretations of Nostradamus for publication by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry that predicted Hitler’s victory over France. In 1941 Krafft’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. In that year Rudolph Hess, Nazi Party official and follower of the occult, flew to England on a self – deluded errand of astrologically and psychically approved peace. Hitler instigated a purge of occultists and astrologers and Krafft was imprisoned. While in prison he was coerced by the Gestapo to continue his writing of National Socialistically correct interpretations of Nostradamus. Krafft was sincere in his examination of his prophecies and his gift for astrology and interpreting Nostradamus had opened doors for him in the Reich. Now his inability to find a genuine prediction supporting Nazi victory stretched him tight as a string. Finally he succumbed to a nervous breakdown and in January 1945 died from typhus while on his way to Buchenwald concentration camp. 2 Q37 Of this great number that one will send, To succor those besieged in the fort, Plague and famine will devour them all, Except seventy who will be destroyed. Very general. At first glance it could describe a doomed relief force sent to a besieged fortress, who succumbs to the same pestilence and famine that is devouring the fortress defenders. However, on second examination this one may be the preface to the following quatrain’s more modern-sounding forecast of the great loss of life in Russia and Eastern Europe when two rulers are reconciled. 2 Q38 A great number of people will be condemned, When the monarchs are reconciled: But one of them will be so embarrassed and harmed, That they will hardly remain allies. The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, signed in 1939 was a tacit agreement between that Nazi and communist dictators to postpone war between their two nations. It suited Stalin to believe Hitler’s promises, because it gave him time to start modernizing his backward armed forces. In Hitler’s bible, Mein Kampf, he had made it clear that after France and England were sufficiently devastated he would turn his forces east and attack Soviet Union in some Armageddon like showdown between the Aryan master race and the “sub-human and godless” communists. Like so many other world leaders, Stalin was content to believe that Hitler was bluffing when, in fact he had been telling the truth. Stalin ignored intelligence reports of mass movements of German forces near the Soviet Union’s western frontiers. Even after acquiring from a crashed German reconnaissance plane the plans of Hilter’s imminent invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin remained deluded that Hitler would not strike so soon. But Hitler relentlessly proceeded with his plans in a way that even his general staff found difficult to believe. After defeating France and isolating England and just two years after signing the non-aggression treaty, he hurled 3,800 tanks and three million men across the Russian border. In his memoirs Nikita Khruschev relates how a chagrined Stalin, contemplating his greatest blunder and faced with catastrophic military losses, confined to Khruschev that they had turned Lenin’s revolution “into shit” (so embarrassed and harmed). As the prophecy states, many people would be condemned as a result of the German – Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. It paved the way for the rapid conquest of Poland by Germans from the west and Soviet troops invading from the east. Millions of Jews would be trapped. On 22 June 1941, Stalin’s self deception ended at the news of a surprise German offensive along a 1,000 mile front. Within the first year of combat he would loose 20,000 tanks, 15,000 planes; 6 million Soviet soldiers would be killed, wounded or missing. Million of Soviet POWs were condemned to death by starvation in German concentration camp. In three years of battle on the Eastern Front 2.5 million Germans and 21 million to 27 million Soveits would be killed and vast numbers of Jews and Slavic peoples from that Eastern European war zone contained within the Hitler-Stalin Pact would die in Hitler’s concentration camps. 2 Q39 A year before the Italian conflict, Germans, French, Spanish for the fort: The school house of the republic will fall, Where, except for a few, they will be choked dead. This is about the burnout of hostilities in the Spanish Civil War just a short time before the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The Italian conflict is a synecdoche for the date Mussolini finally entered World War II, June 1940. In the previous year Franco’s Falangist forces, assisted by thousands of Italian Fascist soldiers, routed the Loyalist army and captured the fortified city of Barcelona on 26 January 1939. A number of Frenchmen fought on the Loyalist side in international brigades. Line 3 waxes poetic for the fall of the Loyalist government, which capitulated to Franco on 28 March 1939. Despite pleas by Britian and France for leniency, Falangist tribunals condemned thousands of loyalists to death by firing squad and by hanging. 2 Q40 Shortly afterwards, not a very long interval, A great roaring storm will be raised by land and sea, The naval battles will be greater than ever: Flames, creatures which will make more upheaval. Marshal Foch, one of the finest French generals of World War I, was asked his opinion about the Treaty of Versailles when it was being drafted in 1919. “It is not peace,” he replied, “but an armistice of 20 years.” It can be argued that the harsh terms it inflicted on Germany sowed the seeds for revenge, opening doors for opportunity for hate mongers like Adolf Hitler. World War II followed exactly 20 years later in 1939. This brief interval left the victorious allies of World War I unprepared for the war of Nostradamus’ Second Antichrist – the fearsome Hitler – who would unleash the storm of modern warfare and open the hell gates of concentration camps. His 16th century mind could only indentify the Stuka dive bombers, battleships and panzers as new creatures. 2 Q41 The great star will blaze for seven days, The cloud will cause two suns to appear: The huge dog will howl all night, When the great pantiff will change lands. The collision of 21 fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levi with Jupiter took place over seven day period in July 1994. The peak viewing time for the passing of the comet Hale-Bopp will be approximately one week in Spring 1997. Because Hale-Bopp is ten times larger than Halley’s Comet, one can expect the most significant light show since the great comet of 1812 foretold doom of Napoleon’s Russian campaign. The second line can read either two suns to appear or the sun to appear double. Nuclear explosions have been described as double suns. The huge dogs may have links to Nostradamus’ Great Dog and Dohan, his version of Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog. The pope is forced to leave Italy. He is most likely to final pope of Nostradamus’ and St Malachy’s prophecies, Peter of Rome. 2 Q42 Cock, dogs and cats will be fed with blood, And from the wound of the tyrant found dead. At the bed of one other, legs and arms broken, He who had no fear of dying – cruel death. Pretty blood and pretty obscure. Too obscure for me, but Leoni provides us with an interesting answer. The ancient Gallic cock symbolizes France. It appeared on the banners of the French Revolution. The dogs and cats sated in blood are the mobs standing at the guillotine executions led by Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. Between 12 July and 28 July 1794, the blood thirsty mob watched the guillotine’s blade slice the heads of 1,285 victims. Leoni adds that even the tryant Robespierre “took fright at the horrors that were being perpetrated.” Leoni continues, “Oh 16 July he renewed the Committee of Public Safety. Too late; Robespierre was arrested, but freed by the troops of the Commune who took him to a strange bed in the Hotel de Ville. The National Guard recaptured him and he was shot in the jaw, not limbs. After a long night of agony he was executed without further trial on 29 July at the Place de la Revolution, now known as the Place de la Concorde.” 2 Q43 During the appearance of the bearded star, The three great princes will be made enemies: The shaky peace on earth shall be struck from the skies, The Po [or Pau], the winding Tiber, a serpent placed on the
shore. The orthodox interpretation would cite this quatrain for the great comet of 1577, the final year of the sixth War of Religion, when the three great princes would be Henry III, Henry de Navarre and Henry de Guise. The concessions stipulated by the Peace of Bergerac were not honored by Henry III and the shaky peace was broken in a seventh War of Religion in 1580. The final lines does not support this slant as well as the first. This time the serpent cannot be Catherine de’ Medici. There is no record of her being sent to Rome by boat. A futuristic interpretation would see the three great princes as metaphors for leaders in the First, Second or Third Worlds or as we will examine in quatrains describing Armageddon, an alliance of three terrorist sanctioning nations destined to fight amongst themselves. Peace being struck from the skies could link the King of Terror of 10 Q72 with the man of evildoing (3 Q60) commanding the submarine fleet. Perhaps a psychotic in the Abu Nidal organization can curry covert support from Libya or some future Islamic republic of Egypt. For a time in the early 1990s Nidal even had offices, plus tacit support by America’s chief Arab ally, Saudi Arabia. The future may see a Libyan or Egyptian submarine, under cover of darknes, deposit a band of PLO commandos and their serpent – a metaphor for a stolen nuclear device or homemade atom bomb – off the Italian coast at the mouth of the Tiber river. Even a nuclear plant in northern Italy’s Po river region could be the scene of a terrorist attack. One of Italy’s two nuclear power plants is at Caorso, a town two miles south of the Po River near Cremona. Another possibility would greet the new millenium dawn with a shaky peace on Earth. The next window for world war takes us into the 2020s, when ozone holes could open the way for deadly cosmic rays into our grainbelts, killing of civilization’s ability to feed itself. Add to this the exploding population of 8 billion to 10 billion hungry people and furthur climatic desruptions from a rising sea level caused by the greenhouse effect and one would certainly see even the most solid peace agreements struck, as it were, from the skies. 2 Q44 The eagle pushed back around the tents, Will be chased there by other birds: When the clash of the cymbals, trumpets and harness bells Will restore the senses of the senseless lady. Several times Nostradamus identifies Napoleon by the glided eagles on his army’s standards. He continues this play on birds in this reference to the chief forces opposing Bonaparte during the German campaings of 1813, symbolized by the double headed eagles of the Austrians, Russians and the eagle standards of the Prussians. He was chased back into France by these birds and he was forced to abdicate by April 1814. All Europe celebrated his defeat (cymbals, trumphets and … bells). The senseless lady is Marianne, the symbol of republican France, brought back to her senses by the Bourbon restoration. 2 Q45 Too much the heavens weep for the Androgyne procreation, Near the heavens human blood shed: Because of death too late a great people re-created, Late and soon comes the awaited help. A rare prophecy of interplanetary war in our distant future? Within another century genetic engineering will allow humanity to branch off into different species. An androgynous “hu-womb-man” race will emerge … perhaps an off-word creation of future human societies dwelling on other planets or in deep space station colonies. There may be a war in space that extermintaes this androgynous race of humans, but their genetic seed is preserved, allowing them to be re-created either through artificial insemination with other human species or with the aid of artifical womb technology beyond our current understanding. 2 Q46 After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches. The great motor of the centuries is renewed: It will rain blood, milk, famine, iron and pestilence, In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a trail of sparks. The first great misery for mankind is World War II. The next is World War III, expected to take place around the time the great motor of the centuries is renewed, at the millenium. Contrary to the hopeful signs of a new world order of peace that burgeoned at the end of the Cold War, collective prophecy down through history remains adamant that there will be a third world war either in the 20th century after Christ or at the beginning of the 21st. The fact that most casualties of a global nuclear war will come from starvation instead of the blast or radiation effects has not been overlooked in Nostradamus’ nightmare scenario of Armageddon, the final battle. Furthermore, a wave of global famine in the wake of gross overpopulation may be the cause of the war. The rain of blood could be rain choked with radioactive dust. Survivors of a chemical or biological weapons attack sometimes describe the detonation of warheads as a milky rain. The fire dragging a trail of sparks could be a double pun for the transit of either a great comet just prior to World War III or the missiles destined to be used in such a war. Halley’s Comet in 1986 was a miss; Shoemaker Levi’s collision with Jupiter in 1994 also passed without a world war. This leaves the next comet calling card of Armageddon to the visitation of the Comet Hale-Bopp in the spring of 1997, the closet cosmic omen so far to pass near the millennium, when the motor of the centuries is renewed. In the year 1946 America shipped a number of V-2 rockets, along with the scientists who created them, from Germany to the deserts of the American South-West for further testing and development. Perhaps we can yet avoid some near future nightmare in which we destroy ourselves by lethal chemical weapons – whose action could be aptly described by the 16th century eyes as a rain of blood and milk. There may be still some time to forestall an aftermath of famine, war and disease carried across the skies by the descendants of V-2 rockets, today’s intermediate range and intercontinental ballistic missiles. 2 Q47 The grief stricken, great old enemy dead from poison, The sovereigns mastered by the infinite: Stones rain, hidden under the fleece, Through death articles in vain are unburdened. A grieving enemy succumbs to poison during the time of a great meteor shower. This could be linked to the distant events of the final conflagration of Earth in AD 3755-3797 (see 10 Q67). The sovereigns in that case could be the future superhuman and spacefaring races that master the infinite void of space. The source of the meteor shower is the river of stars known as the Milky Way. The key to this stretch of an interpretation is to know how far Nostradamus takes poetic license with the word articles. A person can be called an article or he could be indicating objects or treaties being discarded. It could even be the jettisoning of cargo into space. 2 Q48 The great force who will pass the mountains, Saturn in Sagittarius turning toward Piscean Mars: Caches of venom [poison] under the heads of salmon, Their chief hung with a yarn of twine. Soviet forces were in the midst of their pullout from mountainous Afghanistan around the same time Saturn was in Sagittarius and Mars was turning in and out of Pisces in May – July and October of 1988. Line 3 attempts to describe the fish-shaped shell of biological warheads used by the Soviet Air Force and artillery against the Afghan rebels and civilians. The former Afghan leader, Najibullah was hanged by Taliban fundamentalist guerillas in the late 1996. The final line does not exclude a similar future fate for any number of warlords from rebel factions fighting over the rubble and scraps of Afghanistan such as Ahmadshah Massoud or his arch-enemy the blue turbaned Heckmediyahr. 2 Q49 The councilors of the premier monopoly [or conspiracy], The conquerors seduced by the inhabitants of Malta: Rhodes, Byzantium on account of them exposing their sphere of
influence, The pursuing noblemen will be needing land. This all sounds like an account of the loss of Rhodes to the Ottomans during which the surviving Knights of Saint John evacuate to Malta. It could also cover the seige of Malta and the significance of the changing spheres of Ottoman and Christian influence in the Mediterranean. 2 Q50 When those of Hainaut, of Ghent and of Brussels, Will see the siege laid before Langres: Behind their flanks will be merciless warfare, The ancient wound will do worse than enemies. The men of Hainaut, Ghent (the principle city of Flanders) and Brussels (the capital of Barbant) join forces with the Spanish troops attacking Langres on France’s 16th century frontier. Within two years of the prophet’s death, these same men of Flanders, Barbant and Hainaut would turn on their Spanish masters and begin waging on 80 year war to liberate the Spanish Netherlands. 2 Q51 The blood of the just will be demanded at London, Burnt by lightning fire in the twenty-three the sixes [66]: The ancient lady will fall from her high place, And many of the same sect will be killed. Many interpreters believe that twenty-three the skies in an accurate through figurative prediction of the year of the Great Fire of London 1666. Six in plural could be 66. The fire broke out on 1 September, in the sixes, which could alternatively target the correct decade, the 1660s. Nostradamus’ love for complex verbal and numerical puns cannot, however be ruled out and sixes might mean the number of man and sin, “666.” The quatrain supports the date with details of the fire itself and continues elaborating on 2 Q53’s great lady metaphor. This time it is the ancient lady, a personification of St Paul’s Cathedral. The Church falling to Protestantism is symbolized in a more graphic warning: the roof of St Paul’s will collapse from heat onto the faithful who seek shelter within its stone walls from the firestorm devouring their wooden houses. This quatrain is Number 3 in James Randi’s list of debunkable quatrains (see The Mask of Nostradamus, pages 189-93). He begins by splitting poetic hairs. The Benoist Riguad edition does use fouldres (lightning strike) rather than feu (fire). Nostradamus however believed that plagues could be acts of God, that the poetic fire burning Protestant London could be a bolt from God. It is true that English people never called St Paul’s Cathedral the old lady; it is an Old French collquialism for cathedrals, used by our old French prophet. Randi spins a shrewd new slant for lines 3 and 4, that the ancient lady stands for Queen “Bloody” Mary of England rather than for the Church or a cathedral. Mary ordained that England be purged of Protestants. She began burning them in neat groups of six on 22 January 1555. Randi correctly points to the publication of this quatrain in May 1555, four months after Mary begins burning, but this in itself does not objectively prove that Nostradamus was hiding a current event in a prophecy. We do not know when Nostradamus delivered his manuscript in the glacially placed mail of his day. We do know that he began writing the first three centuries around April 1554. We are given speculation as evidence that Nostradamus would have known the intimate details of events in England, such as people being bundled for the fire in sixes. This accusation by Randi hinges on the speed with which news traveled in the 16th century. An average journey from Paris to Salon, Provence, took three months – one month if the Queen sent news by Royal post of Nostradamus, which of course couldn’t have happened because she was many months away from reading Les Propheties and even knowing he existed. The French ambassador to England might have sent his letters as fast as he could over the Channel to Paris, but mail is known to have taken one month to six weeks to travel that route. Now add another week for the news to spread through the court, a week for it to spread to the citizens of Paris and finally add three months for it to reach Nostradamus in Salon and you get four months. For Randi’s assumption to be right, the news would have had to reach Nostradamus four months before it happened! How else would he have enough time to write it in his manuscript and send it by bullock cart mail to his publishers in Lyons, who would then spend painstaking months typesetting and binding copies of his books to make the May 1555 release date? I would not deny Randi’s slant if it were the fulfillment of a near future prediction. At the very last, scholars of Nostradamus have mistaken a near future prophecy about the burning of 300 Protestants by Bloody Mary for a more distant future prophecy about the London Fire. 2 Q52 For several nights the earth will shake, In the spring two great efforts together: Corinth and Ephesus will swim in two seas, War set in motion by two valiant in combat. Interpreters usually apply this prophecy to the war between Holland and England in 1665-67. But since no superquake lasting several days occurred at this time, it may have a future connotation for Greece and Asia Minor. The Aegean region has experienced a dramatic increase of earthquakes; the 1980s registered 15 quakes measuring at 6:5 or higher of the Richter scale. The last fatal quake took place in the Gulf of Corinth in June 1995. Ephesus has also suffered from severe earthquakes during its history. Earthquakes can represent wars. Greece (Corinth) nearly waged war with Turkey (Ephesus) in 1995. Disputes over Aegean islands off the coast of Ephesus may result in armed conflict between them in the near futre. In early Christian times Ephesus was home of the first church of the Apocalypse. So Ephesus in a troubled state could also suggest that before too long the Apocalyptic view of Christianity will have an identity crisis, especially if doomsday does not take place between 1997 and 2001. Ephesus was also a province of Rome’s Asia and could represent Asia in general by synecdoche as being in a troubled state or quaking. Nostradamus was probably aware of the legendary seven sleepers who were supposed to have awakened after centuries to find Ephesus living under a Christian government. This might be a link to references to the seven or the seventh millenium in other quatrains, pointing to the year 2000 as a beginning of an era of religious renewal. 2 Q53 The great plague of the maritime city, Will not cease until there be avenged the death: Of the just blood, seized and condemned without a crime, The great lady is outraged by the pretense. Many Londoners thought the plague of 1665 was a punishment from God for Parliament’s murder of Charles I (9 Q49). Whatever the true cause – divine retribution, mass suggestion or simply bad sanitation – Nostradamus the royalist potrays the plague that carried of 68,596 Londoners as a scourge come to avenge an innocent king. The great lady is contemporary slang for either a Cathedral ot the Catholic Church, who is outraged by the rise of Protestantism after the plague. 2 Q54 Because of a foreign people and remote from the Romans, Their grand city much troubled in the pursuit of water: Daughter without too much [of a] different domain, Captured chief, the lock not having been picked. Wars in the next century may be fought over food and water rather than God and politics. Here we have Rome running out of water because of global pollution and overuse of Earth’s dwindling fresh water sources. Rome is attacked by distant foreigners; who they are is unclear. According to the Manila based Asian Development Bank, at least two thirds of the world’s urban population growth will occur in Asia. In China and India alone, some 800 million people will move into cities in the next 25 years. Exploding urban population will certainly exceed water supplies in hundreds of Third World cities such as: Bejing, Mexico City, Calcutta, Bombay, Bangkok and Lagos. The second half of this quatrain is more obscure. Perhaps we have someone whose capture is more existential. He is a future pope or a global leader who has become a prisoner of circumstances beyond his control, such as overpopulation and the global water storages. The daughter suffers the same limitations. Line 4 can also read Captured chief, the ironworks not having been robbed or … not having led a wild life. 2 Q55 In the conflict the great man of little worth, Will commit an astonishing deed at his end: While Hardie sees what is needed, He stabs the proud during a banquet. The plague of French civil wars over religion would be concluded over an incident foreseen by Nostradamus 40 years before it happened. The Duc de Mayenne, Henry de Navarre’s last rival for the French throne, feared the growing spread of Les Seize or the Sixteen Parliamentarian movement, from Paris to other major cities. The Sixteen stands for the Catholic leaders of the sixteen quarters of Paris who had seized the capital to preserve the Catholic faith. With the assassination of Henry III this new leadership disrupted the old Catholic League and moved to fill the void left by the assassination of Henry de Guise and to prevent Mayenne from taking the crown in the name of the Catholic League and the House of Lorraine. Radical elements of the Sixteen pressed even further, to overthrow the institution of the royal rule itself. Let us decipher this remarkable quatrain line by line. In the conflict the great man of little worth, Will commit an astonishing deed at his end. Mayenne planned a banquet for the entire People’s Parliament to quiet their suspicions. He had them all murdered the following night. Nostradamus switches the sequence of events in the last two lines. Line 4 says: He stabsthe proud during a banquet. Line 3 is the chronological end to this quatrain: White Hadrie sees what is needed. Again, Hadrie is an anagram for Henry de Navarre, who capitalizes on Mayenne’s blunder by becoming a Catholic. “Paris is well worth the Mass,” he declared, uniting France by simply changing his religious party label. 2 Q56 One whom rats and weaponry did not know how to finish, Death on the bills of the Samme struck from the sky: The abbé will die when he will see ruined, Those of the wrecked [attack] attempting to seize the obstacle. The French sommet stands as a double pun for summit and the River Somme, where one of World War I’s bloodiest trench battles was fought. On 1 July 1916, the British “Big Push” began after a thunderous artilery barrage. A hundred thousand men charged for the summit of the Thiepval Ridge, where they fell by the tens of thousands to German machine guns. The survivors who reached the hills were struck from the sky by German artillery. On that first day alone 19,000 British were killed out of a total of 60,000 casualties. By December they had pushed the Germans off the ridge, but no breakthrough was achieved. Five miles of penetration had cost the British 420,000 men, the French 195,000 and the Germans a shocking 650,000 men. The abbé may be one of any number of chaplains serving with the British Expenditionary Force that Nostradamus’ prophetic eye has fixed itself upon. Perhaps the cleric dies shortly after watching the first disastrous attack. 2 Q57 Before the battle the great man will fall, The great one to death, death too sudden and lamented. Born imperfect, he will swim the greater part of the way, Near the river of blood the ground is stained. Perhaps these quatrains imply an alternative destiny for young Kennedy’s Camelot, in which America never knew a Vietnam war or the social breakdown of the 1960s. President Kennedy was known for his imperfect moral conduct as well as a congenitally imperfect adernal system and lower back. Perhaps if he had not been assassinated we would have also known him as the president who went the extra mile to end the Cold War and who championed the black American advance toward equal civil rights to its completion. If JFK had lived, Senator Johnson would have fallen into political obscurity as a two term vice president, rather than become the slain President’s successor and the captain of a failed administration overwhelmed by the debacle of Vietnam. After John Kennedy’s tenure in Camelot ended in 1968, the political dynasty would continue with Robert Kennedy. With the Cold War over, Robert’s dream of bringing peace to the Middle East might have been realized by 1976. Maybe then, Senator Edward Kennedy would have had the time to mature and be a president through the tutelage of his living brothers, rather than struggle along as a psychological victim of assassination’s tragedy. President John F. Kennedy may have defined that murdered future when he once said, “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not a peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on Earth worth living, the kind of peace that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life on their children – not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all time.” A longer lifespan for the two brothers would have given us all much more time during which the effort would have existed to bring about a Global Village by the 1990s. But their future was terminated and we now live with the ever cleaner and always present danger that we will have to face Armageddon before the new millennium because the Cold War ended a generation too late! 2 Q58 With neither foot nor power, nor sharp and strong teeth, Across the globe in the fort of port(land) and woolly native: Near the front gate, foul transfer, Moon shining, little great one taken away. This one a full of specifics but open to all kinds of interpretations. Cheetham thinks the little great one taken away is Napoleon. Fontbrune believes the myth that it is young Louis XVII busted loose from the Temple prison during the French Revolution. The quatrain comes together if we apply it to the “Eight clues to a religious rebel” theme. Line 1 depicts an old or vulnerable spiritual leader who is captured without defense (Clue 1, outlawed teacher). Line 2 identifies someone who has traveled around the world extensively (Clue 7, infuriating traveler). The man shining (Clue 8, his name) could also be a poetic description of his silent and spiritual demeanor. The only Eastern guru (with bad teeth) who fits this interpretation is Osho, who was arrested in the United States in 1985 and shuttled for 12 days through the US penitentiary system. For three of those days his whereabouts were unknown to his followers and lawyers (foul transfer). Later it was proved that Federal officers at the Oklahoma County Jail tried to force him to log himself in under a false name. The jail records show a “David Washington” signed in someone else’s handwriting above Osho’s unique Sanscrit signature. Osho also claims to have been poisoned there while waiting to be transferred to jail in Portland (foul transfer). He did arrive in Portland, where he was released on bail. American national television was filled with images of the little, frail and beaming Indian mystic – chained in wrist, waist and leg irons – being hustled from one jail to the next. The Old French lainé comes from the Latin lana, meaning “wool”, the word nay (born) in Latin in natus, an extension of which in nativus or “born a native.” In other words a wolly native. 2 Q59 French fleet through support of the great guard, The great Neptune and his trident soldiers: Prey upon Provence for the sake of sustaining a large host, More war at Narbonne, from javelins and darts. The great Neptune is not an Islamic invasion fleet in Nostradamus’ time or in our future. This invasion happened in August 1944. Neptune for the 1,000 British and American vessels used to transport and sustain over a million men in their invasion of the French Riviera. Narbonne is farther south-west down the coast from the landings in Provence and did not see any significant action during the campaign. This does not rule out an alternative future potential never accessed by destiny, for fighting in the streets of that city. 2 Q60 The Punic [Libyan] faith broken in the East, Great Jordan and Rhone, Loire and Tagus will change: When the he-mule [the Democrat?] will be satiated, Fleet sprinkled, blood and bodies will swim. The day will come when the treachery of Libyan, Algerian or North African terrorism will cease to cast its giant shadow over peace efforts in the Middle East. Line 2 uses rivers to symbolize the countries that will undergo great social and political changes when the peace is finally a reality: Israel, Jordan, France and Spain will change. The He-mule is the Democrat American President Clinton on the Jordan river signing the Palestinian peace around in 1995 with Yasser Arafat of PLO. Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and King Hussein of Jordan. From this first step may issue either a millenium of peace or an unknown fleet or armed forces sprinkled with chemical agents in a renewed war by 1999. Elsewhere there are references to a fleet being destroyed in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf (See 6 Q44). It is not clear whether the fleet is Western or Middle Eastern. 2 Q61 Bravo! Men of theThames, Gironde and La Rochelle, O Trojan blood [of France]! Killed at the port by an arrow On the other side of the river the ladder placed on the
strongpoint, Points of fire great slaughter on the breach. If we take the World War II slant, then here Nostradamus approves of Allied victory in Normandy. He mixes British, Americans, Poles and Free French forces together as men of the Thames. Mention of the two towns on the southern western flank of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall has little military significant unless this was an optional Allied invasion route never pursued. Indeed the Allies helped the Resistance cells in La Rochelle and around the Gironde so the Germans would think a diversinary invasion was imminent in the spring of 1944. The arrows may be a few of Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 rockets, which began falling on the French dock workers at Cherbourg and other French ports once the allies had liberated Normandy. Line 3 tries to describe the ladderlike floating bridges extended across French Rivers by the Allies. This especially covers the climax to the Normandy campaign when the southern pincer of the US Army forded the Orne river and overwhelmed the German stronghold at Argentan during the battle of the Argentan – Falaise pocket. This allowed the Americans to link up with the British pincer grinding down from the north to trap over 60,000 German infantry and all the heavy equipment and armor of the German Seventh and Fifth Panzer armies. The final line describes the flash of artillery and tanks and lightning stingers of the strafing allied planes inflicting great slaughter upon the German armor and infantry units choking the roads. Again and again frantic German armor units charged in human waves, trying to break through to the east, only to fall in heaps of dead before Allied machine gun positions (great slaughter on the breach). When it was over the devastation was so great that an Allied officer said, “It was as if an avenging angel had swept the area, bent on destroying all things German.” The Argentan – Falaise pocket saw more than 220 panzers, 860 artillery pieces, 130 antiaircraft guns and 7,130 vechiles destroyed and 2,000 horses and more than 10,000 Germans slaughtered. 2 Q62 Mabus will soon die, then will come, A horrible undoing of people and animals, At once one will see vengeance, One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass. Nostradamus’ Third Antichrist has yet to be positively identified. In contrast with his certainty about Napoleon and Hitler, Nostradamus is less clear who this third tyrant is. Perhaps this is an example of his prophetic mypoia that enabled him to be clearest about events of local or European history. When contemplating future events in more distant lands the prophet’s vision tends to be cloudier. What does come through clearly is the fact that this Third and final Antichrist is not a prominent European leader. He may even be a minor player in a future conflict, an insignificant terrorist like Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian nationalist who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering World War I. The man we know as Mabus may be some obscure future terrorist who, if he is not identified and retrained in time, will trigger World War III and the extinction of civilization as we have known it (see 2 Q30). The time we have left to positively decode who or what Mabus is and how to prevent the foretold terrible destiny, may already have passed. The final line could date the beginning of his legacy of terror around the time of appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1985-86; this however desn’t rule out a later appearance during the collision of the comet doesn’t rule out a later appearance during the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levi in July 1994 or the comet Hale-Bopp for the spring of 1997. The latter is expected to be ten times larger than Halley, making it a primary target for Nostradamus’ dating, especially since it appears so close to the end of the millenium. In 2 Q30 I proposed that Mabus is a cryptogram for Thurbo Majus, the classical Roman name given to the infernal god of Hannibal, an important clue to the Third Antichrist. Bardo Kidogo (1994), with his extensive etymological knowledge, moves along our detective trail from North Africa to Iraq and Iran. He sees Mabus as a cryptogram for Megabyzus. We will concentrate on only one of the two ancient Persians with this name cited by the Greek historian Herodotus. Gobrayas Megabyzus was one of several conspirators who overthrew a Zoroastrian priest (or magus) who had usurped the throne of Persia. Megabyzus wanted to disband the monarchy, but his co-conspirator Darius obviously talked him down from this lofty ideal and he later helped Darius Emperor of Persia. Later, as the Persian governor in Europe, Megabyzus showed himself to be a real tyrant with a flair for terrorism. His favorite modus operandi was to attack enemy states of Persia from within. He sired to notorious Zophyros who betrayed Babylon to Darius. An argument could be made that upon this classical foundation Nostradamus is building a prophecy for the near-future debacle of Saddam Hussein from within, by a Persian (or Iranian) ally. Tomorrow’s Mabus/Megabyzus could successfully attack with his Raypoz weapon in some act of nuclear terrorism. Many people have asked whether Saddam Hussein is Mabus. I suggest a little experiment. Take a piece of paper and write “Saddam” backwards to get “Maddas.” Now hold in front of a mirror. If you are a dyslexic as I am you will soon see “Saddam” and wonder if Nostradamus spelled his approximated name backwards to get “Mabus.” By following the rules of anagram, take one d out of “Maddas” to get “Madas,” then reverse the word d to get a b for Mabus. 2 Q63 Southern Italy and Sicily will subjugate very little, Pau, Marne and Seine Parma will sink: He who will erect the great walls against them, The great one will lose his life from the least at the wall. The closest historical application would be the Maginot Line, built during the 1930s to satisfy the illusion of the French people that such a white-elephant fortification spawned from a World War I mindset could stop the mechanized German army of a modernized war machine. The best way to read this quatrain is backwards starting with line 4. The great one losing his life is poetic for the French leadership of the Thrid Republic, losing their political lives and reputation after the fall of France in 1940, when it became clear that the “impregnable” Maginot Line, with all its billions of dollars of siege guns, six-storied underground cemet forts and troglodyte armies, couldn’t stop the breakthrough of even two modest German infantry attacks. The rivers of line 2 represent France, which will sink in spirit and burn with defeat with the fall of the Maginot Line in the east and the invasion of the German panzers through the Ardennes and Flanders from the northeast. But revenge is promised in line 1, when the Free French and their Anglo-American allies invade Sicily and souther Italy in 1943. 2 Q64 The people of Geneva to dry up with hunger and thirst. Hope near at hand will come to fail: On the point of trembling will be the law of the Cevennes. Fleet at the great port cannot be received. John Calvin, a native of Cevennes, established a Protestant Vatican of sons in Geneva, Switzerland. His chief disciple, Theodore de Beze, was born at Vezelay, also in Cevennes. This attack in prophecy could be aimed at Beze, who had earned the prophet’s ire for publishing the famous distech:
Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est;
Et falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus. The Latin pun-ishment is mostly lost in the translation, which in bland English reads: We give that which is our own when we give false things; for it is in our nature to deceive; And when we give false things, we give but our own things. I would like to offer more rouge-scholarly translations, one that attempts to return the spirit and poetry to Beze’s Nostradamus pun: Nostradamus comes false – Ah, damn us. When he “noses up” to damn us with his deceptions; For it is our nature – damn us – to note a damn falsehood! None of Nostradamus’ forecasts of imminent doom of Calvin’s Geneva ever materialized. No siege took place requiring a fleet of boats coming from across Lake Geneva to victualize its citizens. Line 3 is accurate. Cevennes, the birthplace of Calvinism, suffered a full-scale revolt after the revocation of the Edict on Nantes in 1685. 2 Q65 The sloping park, great calamity, Will be done through the land of the West and Lombardy: The fire in the ship [the Papacy], plague and captivity, Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn’s scythe will cut. Ever since the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, seismologists have made disturbing discoveries of blind-thrust faults running under downtown Los Angeles. One of them is called the Elysian Park blind fault, which runs from Elysian Park right under the Doger baseball stadium. This fact brings to mind the 6 Q88 New City earthquake prophecy in which a theater or stadium full of people collapses in a quake. Line 2 further ties this quatrain to another frightening European temblor (described in 9 Q31) which inundates south-western England and shakes north-eastern Italy arounds Mortara (near Lombardy). Line 3 links us to 2 Q93, which tells the tale of Vatican destruction by fires and tidal waves during the papacy of the last pope. 2 Q66 The captive escaped through great dangers. In a short time the great one has a change of fortune: In the palace the people are trapped, By a good omen, the city is besieged. This finishes Nostradamus’ story of Napoleon’s escape from Elba in 1815 (see 10 Q24). The little band of a few hundred sailors and 1,000 grenadiers had sailed through the Gulf of Genoa, hugging the coastline, and debarked at Cannes. On the road to Grenoble they were stopped by the fifth Infantry regiment. Napoleon stepped in front of their pointed bayonets and said, “Soldiers of the Fifth, if you have come to shoot your Emperor, then here I am.” The command to fire was given, but no one fired. Instead they break ranks to join Napoleon. By this time his growing band reached Paris, Louis XVIII and his Bourbon supporters has fled. A triumphant Napoleon was carried up the stairs of the Tuileries into his bed. Journals of the day report that th crowds were so large that the gendarmes couldn’t clear the Tuileries for many hours. But fortunes would change in a short time for the great Napoleon. Exactly 100 days after taking power he suffered his greatest defeat at Waterloo, bringing the armies of Europe into Paris for a second time in little over a year. For Nostradamus, the 16th century monarchist, Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo is a good omen, for it anticipates the return to the throne of the royal house of Bourbon. 2 Q67 The blond one to the forked-mosed one will come to confide, Through the duel and will chase him out: The exiles, within will restore, Committing the strongest to the marine positions. Definitely a restoration theme – but which one? La Pelletier applies it to the restoration of Louis XVIII to the French throne after the fall of Napoleon in 1815. I tend to agree with Leoni, Cheetham and David Pitt Francis, who believe it describes the showdown between James II (the forked nosed one) and the blond prince William of Orange for the British throne during the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. In November 1688 William landed his army, unopposed, in south-western England. James, at the head of his own army, threatened a battle, but by this time his credibility and support was low that only blood spilled in their duel was from the severe nosebleed he suffered. From his strong marine positions, William methodically advanced to London. Jame II went into exile in France and William of Orange accepted Parliament’s demands and became the first constitutional co-monarch of England, William III, with his wife Mary (James’ daughter). 2 Q68 In the North, the efforts will be great, Upon the Ocean will be the open window: The kingdom of the Isles will be restored, London will tremble by [the] cover exposed. Nostradamus continues his prophecy for the Glorious Revolution, which took place at the end of 1688, between two great northern wars fought by Sweden and Russia in 1655-60 and 1700-21. During the Glorious Revolution both the Tories and Whigs of Parliament allied against the extremely Catholic James II, who wanted to turn the clock back a hundred years by abolishing Anglicanism. A cross-section of Whig and Tory aristocrats discreetly invited the Dutch William of Orange to sail for England with a Dutch army to restore their religion and liberty. Although it was not written in their petition William took the hint and landed with his army to overthrow James II. Line 2 may blend events from two wars. In the second Northern war Peter the Great fought Charles XII of Sweden to seize Baltic territory and gain a window to the West. He eventually won the war after 21 years of fighting and built the port of St Petersburg. The blur of unborn events moves from Peter’s fledgling Russian navy defeating the Swedes to William of Orange’s navy landing on the English shore a decade earlier. Line 3 and 4 return to England and the Glorious Revolution. London represents the members of Parliament who spent some sleepless nights waiting for William’s invasion force to arrive before their secret petition for help was discovered. Also the rebels were concerned that James II could curry support against Parliament for having requested the help of a foreign invasion army. Although James tried to rally English patriotism, he could not trust his army of Protestant tank and file led by substandard Catholic officers and he fled into exile. William became King of England with his wife, the daughter of James II, as his co-ruler Queen Mary. 2 Q69 The French King through the Celtic right, Beholding the discord of the great Monarchy: Upon the three partners [or sides] will make his scepter
flourish, Against the Cape[t] of the great Hierarchy. Cheetham thinks this continues the Glorious Revolution theme. Le Pellerier pins it on Napoleon and the protests of the Bourbon heirarchy about Louis XVIII. I think it better suits the struggle of an earlier Capet, Louis XIII. Cardinal Richelieu, his chief of state, saw an opportunity to capitalize on the devastation and discord within the great Monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire. He entered France into the Thirty Years War transforming the conflict from a religious matter into a Habsburg – Bourbon struggle for European domination. France, Sweden and Holland are the three allies (partners) pitted against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. French military successes would award Louis XIII with Alsace and most of Lorraine (his sceptor to flourish). Capet is the ancient name of the ancestors of the House of Bourbon, France’s longest hierarchy of rulers. 2 Q70 The dart from the sky will make its extension, Deaths in speaking: great execution: The stone in the tree the proud people surrendered, Clamor, human monster, purge expiation. Dolores Cannon’s Stone in the Tree riddle of the mushroom (tree-like) cloud of an atomic blast is plausible, although arbre can also translate into masi or shaft. Given Cannon’s slant Lamont had no idea that atomic attacks on Japan would end war, yet he believed this quatrain foretold the defeat of Japan. The stone – or pierre of Peter – in the mast could give us another Peter of Rome prophecy. In this case the final pope of doomsday is broadcasting from the Vatican’s television tower when a missile knocks it out killing the transmission (deaths in speaking). A dart from the sky is one of the invinsible plague arrows of the 16th century lore, perhaps used here as a double pun for a nuclear missile and the plague of fallout it leaves behind. The atomic blast may be the nuclear weapons or serpent we see described in other quatrains that is deposited by terrorists on the Tiber river. The final line is another litany of the apocalyptic sequence of war and chaos followed by a new era. 2 Q71 The exiles will come into Sicily, To deliver [them] from hungering [after] the strange nation. At daybreak the Celts will fail them Life resides by reason: the King joins. This is as general as they come. It could be about Henry II’s hunger for Italian possessions and his numerous Italian intrigues and military escapades. But without more specific clues it would just as easily be about our times. In this case the exiles are Italian Mafia leaders deported to Sicily from the strange nation or foreign land, the United States. They try to strike up an alliance with the French Mafia, but the French connection breaks down. As the prophet warns, Life resides by reason, so I will defer to the skeptics and stop my speculation. 2 Q72 Celtic army vexed in Italy, On all sides conflict and great loss: Romans fled, O France repulsed! Near the Ticino, Rubicon uncertain battle. This refers to the ill-fated French expedition during the closing stages of the Hapsburg – Valois War (1547-59). Henry II had sent an expedition to invade southern Italy in 1555 and that same year established a stronghold north of Naples. Promised support from Pope Paul IV never materialized (Romans fled). A French garrison at Siena capitulated to the Duke of Florence, precipitating a withdrawal of the the French expedition from Italy by 1557. There is no record of a battle, certain or uncertain, near the Ticino or Rubicon rivers at this time. 2 Q73 To Lake Fucino from the shore of Lake Garda, Taken from Geneva to the port of Orguion: Born with three arms the predicted warlike image, Through three crowns for the great Endymion. The Endymion myth is used to describe Henry II and his fawning love for Diane de Poitiers. Endymion was a young man cast by the goddess into a prepetual sleep, that she might caress him at her pleasure. Nostradamus predicts the three crowns of the pope’s triple tiara will land on the king’s brow. In other words, Henry II will achieve domination in the papal states and in the Republic of Venice (represented by Lake Garda) and the two Sicilies (represented by Lake Fucino). These promises remained forever unkept due to Henry’s jousting accident in 1559. Orguion remains an unsolved place name. It could be Orgon, a mere 20 miles from Salon, Provence. For the rest the symbolism in obscure. It could be a cryptic clue to some important coat of arms. 2 Q74 From Sens, from Autun they will come as far as the Rhone, To pass further toward the Pyrenees mountains: The people to sally forth from the Marsh of Ancona, By land and sea it will be followed by great tracks. Centuries after this was written the great tracks of trains will be laid on a line extending from Paris, south-east to Sens and Autun and all the way down the Rhone river. Many a Frenchman and a number of tourists like myself, can sally forth on the TGV high-speed train following this path from Paris to Nostradamus’ Salon-en-Provence. Other lines carry one towards several destinations along the Pyrenees. Even the marsh of Ancona, where Nostradamus muddied himself genuflecting to a future pope, will enjoy its own great track for high-speed trains gliding along the Adriatic Sea. The final line implies that trains in our future will float on superconductive tracks set over the oceans. 2 Q75 The voice of the unusual bird to heard, In the pipe of the breaking floor: Bushels of wheat will rise so high, That man will devour his fellow man. Line 1 may refer to the strange birds of the Epistle who visit the world as spiritual messengers just prior to the tribulations that will end humanity’s childhood. Line 2 is some kind of device Nostradamus has difficulty describing. If one could see through the walls of a grain elevator one would observe grain being sucked down through in a pipe in the floor, making it appear as if the device were a breathing thing. At the other end of the pipe stands a mountain of gold grain as one might witness in any number of grain storage compounds across North America, Europe or Russia. It will not be long – in fact just a few year away – when those mountains of wheat kernels will be worth their weight in gold. In a world of increasing population and declining grain stocks, the day is not far off when the human race may be able to live only from one annual harvest to the next. In 1996 the global grain reserves had fallen to their lowest in history. If the global production of food were disrupted, we would have only enough food in reserve to feed the world for 49 days. Since the bumper crop of 1990 there has been zero growth in grain production, whereas the global population will have increased by 552.2 million. In 1994 Lester E. Brown of the Worldwatch Institute predicted that by 2030 China alone will need to import virtually all the grain available for export in the world. In Nostradamus, famine is often followed by war. His astrology points to the 2020s and 2030s as the most likely time for a third world war to be fought over food. Brown and other globe watchers have stated tht we have a window of less than 20 years to make revolutionary changes in the way we breed and use up dwindling resources of the world. 2 Q76 Lightning in Burgundy will signify a portentous act, That could never be done through genius [or trickery]; By their senate the sacristan is made lame, Will make the affair known to the enemies. At first I was tempted to agree with Cheetham’s interpretation that the sacristan … made lame was Napoleon’s version of Henry Kissinger, his grand chamberlain and diplomat, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. Talleyrand was made lame as a child by a falling chest of drawers. He joined the priesthood and became Bishop of Antin in 1788, then renounced the priesthood during the French Revolution. But with all this said, line 3 clearly implies some priest being physically crippled or politically hamstrung by the actions of the Burgundian parliament when the victim is a full-grown man. This therefore cannot be Talleyrand. 2 Q77 Through Arcs, pitch and repulsed by gunfire (and) conflagration, Cries, laments heard at midnight: Within they are placed on the smashed ramports, The traitors fled through rabbit runs. Through his many travels Nostradamus would have known the town of Les Arcs well, since it sits in a picturesque valley along the main trade route from Salon through Aix-en-Provene to the seaport of Cannes. This quite little town of the 16th century where Doctor Nostradamus refreshed himself errands of mercy, would be the center of a vicious battle in the 20th century. In the early morning hours of 15 August 1944, traveleres of a different kind parachuted out of the sky and started picking their way through the steep hill tracks into the town of Les Arcs. Their reception turned out to be far more lethal than our Renaissance doctor would have experienced. In the sleepy square where he once watered his mule at the town well, four centuries later, 50 lost paratroopers of the 1st battalion of the 517 Parachute Infantry, along with their Battalion commander, Major “Wild Bill” Poyle, stepped into a town garrisoned by 400 Germans! By dawn the little band was attacked from three sides by swarms of Germans laying down a hail of machine gun and rifle fire. By mid-morning Wild Bill’s men had managed to crawl out of the closing German trap, carrying their wounded through trails and sheep runs in the underbrush until they dug in to make a successful stand at a nearby farm house. The following two days would see hundreds of American paratroopers seize Les Arcs in a full scale attacks launched by a barrage of 700 white phosphorus mortar rounds hurled into German positions. On three occasions hundreds of German infantrymen tried to rally around the ramparts and platforms of the town’s railway station, only to be scattered and set on fire by a renewed phosphorus barrage. Nostradamus ever sensitive to future man’s new infernal weapons, is trying to describe in 16th century terms the image of thousands of pitch like phosphorus particles flying thorugh the air upon detonation, raining down on the unprotected crouching men on the railway tracks and even flying through the open doors and windows of defensive positions in buildings. When released in the air a glob of phosphorous undergoes a chemical reaction with oxygen, making it burst into flame capable of burning a hole through clothing and skin. Pouring water on it only feeds the flames. The fire can only be smothered by dirt and by the time a soldier is lucky enough to find the dirt to grind into the burning cauldron on his wound, he is beyond help. 2 Q78 The great Neptune of the deep of the sea, Of the Punic race and French blood mixed: The Isles in blood, because of the tardy rowing, More in fury will it do to him than the ill-concealed secret. Jaubert applies this to Muslim naval intrigues in the second half of 1558, when the Turkish fleet promised Henry II it would aid the French in north-west Italy, but attacked Minorca instead. On 10 July they took Ciudadela, slaughtering or enslaying the entire population, Jaubert states that the tardy rowing was paid for with a bribe. No doubt the Habsburgs waged this weapon of wealth expecting the delay to completely demoralize the French. 2 Q79 The man with the curly black beard through ingenuity, Will subdue the cruel and proud people: The great CHIREN will take from afar, All those captured by the banner of the Turkish crescent. Nostradamus’ warning in 1 Q35 to King Henry II not to participate in ritualized combat was echoed in every detail by a vision granted to Catherine de’ Medici’s own astrologer, Luc Gauricus. The prediction, like Jean Dixon’s famous President Kennedy prophecy, became well known years before the event. Less well known are this quatrain and 12 others describing an alternative destiny in store for Henry II of France if he had heeded the warnings of both prophets. The predictions that might cover this unfulfilled life are linked by two engimatic names, Chyren and Selin. Most interpreters agree that Chyren is an anagram for Henryc, the old French spelling for “Henry”. Selin stands for seline, from the Greek word for “moon”, which was the device of Henry’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Her family’s heraldic crescent was added to the horizontal bar of the capital letter H of Henry’s heraldic device. Christendom’s defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the naval battle of Lepanto is exhaustively detailed by Nostradamus in at least nine quatrains. For this first alternative future entry, he could have been proposing that the skillful and curly-black-bearded commander of the Christian fleet, Don Juan of Austria, would have stood alongside Henry at Lepanto, had the latter lived past his 41st year to be present there is 1571. As it turned out, Don Juan of Austria earned the glory of commanding the Christian armada to victory and achieved the honor of freeing 15,000 Christian galley slaves from captured Muslim ships. 2 Q80 After the conflict by the eloquence of the wounded one, For a short time brings a soft repose is contrived: Not a single one of the great ones is allowed release, They are delivered to the enemies at the proper time. This one could be applied to just about anyone. 2 Q81 Through fire from the sky the city is almost burned by the sun, The urn menaces Deucalion once again, Sardinta vexed by the Punic vessel, After that Libra will abandon her Sun. Two future interpretations are possible. New York, the Vatican or some other city is burned from the sky by the atmosphere explosion of a nuclear missile or by the detonation of a terrorist atom bomb concealed in a hijacked airliner. In the mid – 1990s Algerian terrorists hijacked a jet airliner and had they not been overwhelmed by security forces while refuelling at Marseilles, they would have continued on to Paris and detonated the jet’s 15 tons of air fuel in a huge fireball a few hundred feet over the center of the city. The urn of the Aquarian water beaver, symbol of the New Age, menaces the Greek version of the Noah/Genesis myth. In other words, the first century of the Aquarian Age will see the oceans rise again through global warning. The stresses to ocean cities flooded agricultural lands from a 1 to 3 foot rise in the Earth’s oceans by 2050 could cause the kind of social breakdown that induces a new wave of global terrorism. The urn itself could be a terrorist bomb. The libyan fuste could have a modern application as one of several diesel-powered attack submarines in today’s Libyan fleet. A number of quatrains contain references that could indicate submarines from Libya or some other North African country carrying a terrorist group across the Mediterraean to lauch an attack on the southern European coast. The Western democracies are often represented by the astrological symbol of Libra’s balancing scales. They respond to a nuclear attack by unleashing their own sun or atomic bomb. The second future scenario returns us to the theme of a meteorite strike in the Aegean off the coast of Evvoia. The city burned by a fire from the sky is nearby Athens. Line 2 waxes poetic for the huge Genesis like flooding resulting from an ocean strike. Scientist Bevan French, of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division inadvertenly sides with the esoteric prophet Nostradamus in his expectation that such an impact from an asteroid 500 to 1,000 feet in diameter would immediately conjure a great sudden flood or what French describes as “tidal wave hundreds of feet high, probably wiping out most cities on the nearest coast.” Around the time of the meteorite strike, unfortunate Sardinia is vexed by the Libyan submarine represented in the first interpretation. But the final line can either continue the theme of the West’s overreaction to terrorism or stand as a cryptic dating for the meteorite impact: when the sun finishes its transit of Libra or any 22 October in the next 1,800 years. 2 Q82 Through hunger the prey will make the wolf prisoner, The assailant then in extreme distress, The [Marshal] Ney, having the youngest men before him, The great one does not escape in the middle of the crowd. If we take nay to be a cryptogram for the fiery red and hot headed French Marshal, Michel Ney, the quatrain becomes clear. At Waterloo the indisposed Napoleon had relinquished most of his command of the battle to Ney, who valiantly but wisely pitched his command in the saddle at the front of his troops, where he had little sense of the bigger picture. All day he had cast wave upon wave of French heavy cavalry against the Duke of Wellington’s British squares on the ridge of Mont St Jean. Ney, was like a hungry wold exhausting itself, hurling his troops again and again at well-armored prey. When Napoleon took back the initiative and sent his Imperial Guard in one last failed assault, the exhasted French broke and ran. Eyewitness recreated the pathetic picture of Marshal Ney, unhorsed for the seventh time, staggering about and waving a broken sowrd at the fleeing young men, cursing at them to reform. Napoleon himself would be swept off the battlefield by the stampede. 2 Q83 The vast trade of great Lyons changed, The larger part turns into a pristine ruin. Prey to the soldiers through a harvest of plunder: Through the Jura mountains and Switzerland [a] misty rain. During the French Revolution large sections of the old quarters of Lyons, the great commercial capital of southern France, were razed to the bare ground as a reprisal for a counter revolution. The Epistle to Henry II will reveal that Nostradamus was aware of the new Revolutionary calendar, so he uses bruine to signify the month named Brumaire – the month of mists – which is form mid-October to mid-November. The sack of Lyons took place in October 1793. Apparently the dating in the last line is spot on. 2 Q84 Between Campania, Siena, Florence, Tuscany, Six months nine days without a drop of rain: The foreign tongue in the Dalmatian land, It will overrun: devastating the whole world. Will future droughts stemming from the climatic stresses of the greehouse effect trigger the next Balkan war in the 21st century? The drought spreads from central Italy over to the Dalmatian land of the Bosnian-Croatian Federation, where the foreign tongue of United Nations peacekeepers and nation builders is heard. The drought from the greenhouse effect has the potential to turn apocalyptic and fan out across the whole world. 2 Q85 The old full beard under the severe statute, Made at Lyons, over the Celtic Eagle: The little great one presiss too long, Noise of arms in the sky: the Gulf of Genoa red. Poetically speaking, the old…beard is Marshal Petain, president of the Vichy government, a prisoner of the severe statute of the Nazi Armistice of 1940 and the new constitution that made Perain little more than one of Hilter’s flunkies. Nostradamus’ calling the French Eagle Celtic might imply Petain’s political agenda to return France to its pre-Republican morality. He believed republicanism had brought France to disaster. The paternal old hero of the previous world war tried to lead his people towards earlier value of absolutism. Line 4 describes the Allied bombings of Genoa and southern France in 1944-45. 2 Q86 Wreck for the fleet near the Adriatic waters, The earth trembles, lifted into the air, placed on the land: Egypt quakes, Islam augmented, The Herald surrenders himself [and] is commissioned to cry out. At first glance this looks like another prophecy slotted for Nostradamus’ near future: A Turkish fleet would be destroyed near the Adriatic at Lepanto in 1571. But no significant earthquake rocked Cairo for many centuries – until just recently, when in 1992 a tremblor measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale shook the city for 40 seconds, killing 500 and injuring 6,500. The early 1990s also saw a dramatic rise in Islamic fundamentalism (Islam augmented) in Egypt, with a foreboding increase in assassinations and terrorist bombings by militants striving to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak’s secular government. The meaning of the final line may ring fourth in our near future. It could imply that the Herald is either Mubarak (or his successor), forced to accede to fundamentalist pressure or he is Sheik Abdel Rahman, who is purported by United States officials to be the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing a few months after the quake, in early 1993. Before the bombing the blind cleric was the loudest voice calling for the assassination of Mubarak. Now that he has been arrested, this herald of extremism faces deportation to Egypt. 2 Q87 Later will come from the remotest regions, The Germain Prince, upon the golden throne: The servitude and waters met, The lady in servitude, her time no longer adored. Theophilus de Garencieres, in his archaic English, applies this to Gustavus Adolphus: “This prophecy is concerning Gustavus Adolphus, King of Swedeland, who is called German Prince, because his Ancestors came out of Germany, he came out of a remote Countrey, that is Swedeland, he came upon a glided throne, that is Ship gilded, he shall make slavery and waters meet, because as soon as he was Landed he began to conquer and to subdue that Lady that was no more worshipped since as she was before.” I agree with Cheetham and think it is better applied to the accession in 1714 of George of Hanover to the English throne as George I. George was a German prince and a German, which means “cousin” in this case, of Queen Anne. The lady in servitude is Nostradamus’ poetic characterization of the goddess Britannia, symbol of the British Empire. Upon Queen Anne’s death, Parliament would have its Protestant ruler, George, the Elector of Hanover, bring an end to the era of Stuart rule. 2 Q88 The completion of the great and disastrous action, The name of the seventh will be that of the fifth. Of the third a greater, foreign warmonger, Sheep [Reims/Aries], Paris and Aix will not be kept in Aries. This is clearly for the eighth War of Religion, also known as the War of the Three Henries (Henry III, Henry de Guise and Henry de Navarre). The name of the seventh is Valois – the seven children of Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici. The fifth child would be the last Valois king, the notorious Henry III (of the third). The foreign warmonger is the future Henry IV (Henry de Navarre). At that time this Huguenot prince and province were not part of France. Henry IV, the best general of the three warring Henrys, began a long and protracted siege of Paris during the sun’s transit of Aries (March–April 1590). 2 Q89 One day the two great leaders will become friends, Their great power will be seen to increase: The new land [America] will be at the height of its power, To the bloody one the number [is] reported. As we shake ourselves awake from 50 years of Cold War eschatology, it is clear that Nostradamus and other seers share a collective vision that the Cold War scenario of MAD (Mutual – assured – destruction) had little prophetic weight. A fresh loo at prophecies beyond doomsday standoff between Cold War superpowers returns prophecy to a third world war issuing from a conflict of biblical proportions in the Middle East. Moreover, the quatrains strongly suggest that such a war comes only after Russia abandons communism and has established a friendly relationship with the United States. The word used by Nostradamus for friends in the original text of line 1 is demis. This can stand for d’amis or friends or for demis being halved, split. The instigator of such a split-up could be the fearsome North African or Middle Eastern figure the prophet calls Mabus (2 Q62) and/or the Thrid Antichrist. Anytime between 1997 through 1999 or later between 2024 through 2038, this despot may use submarines based either in Libya or the Persian Gulf to trigger a terrorist event that undermines the precarious Russo-American friendship. At the present time, when the United States stands as sole military superpower on Earth, there exists a very clear and present danger that the next Russian president after Boris Yeltsin could be an ultra-nationalist like Vladimir Zhirinovsky. A neo-Facist dictator or a regurgitated neo-communist strongman could renew alliances with former Soviet allies like Saddam Hussein and Muhammar Qadaffi. Line 4’s bloddy one could be the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. Perhaps Nostradamus saw his trademark blood-splattered birthmark on his forehead and brow. The number reported is the agreed amount of an eventual 75-percent reduction of Soviet and American nuclear weapons after Gorbachev and US president George Bush signed START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). 2 Q90 Through life and death the rule of Hungary changed. The law will be more harsh than servitude: Their great city calls out with howls and laments, Castor and Pollux enemies in the arena. On 1 November 1956, as the people of Hungary struggle with another dreary winter of communist domination, their Premier Nagy sets off a brief flash-fire in the Cold War by declaring Hungary free of the Warsaw Pact Alliance with the Soviets. Three days later celebrations in the streets of Budapest are replaced by mobs hurling Molotov cocktails at invading Soviet tanks. Castor and Pollux, the twins of Greek mythology, do double duty meaning for pro and anti communist Hungarian brothers killing each other in the rubble of the “twin” city of Buda and Pest. As fighting raged in the streets of Budapest, the Suez Canal crisis was gathering pace, leaving the United States, Britian and France divided on what to do. Desperate calls from the Hungarian freedom fighters for Western assistance went unheeded. President Eisenhower would not wage nuclear war with Russia over Hungary. Once the rebellion was crushed, Imre Nagy and thousands of supporters of the uprising were shot and Hungary would endure long decades of repressive Soviet-backed governments. Nostradamus may have left a clue of hope for the Hungarians. Consider the indexing of this quatrain: number 90 could be intended for the time Hungary achieved democracy. Just two months prior to 1990 the Hungarian Communist Party was dissolved and the Hungarian parliament passed legislation legalizing freedom of assembly and association. The year 1990 saw Hungary break away from communism to become a fledging democracy. It was also the year that marked the beginning of the withdrawal of Soviet military forces from Hungary, a process completed by 19 June 1991. 2 Q91 At sunrise one will see a great fire, Noise and light extending toward the North: Within the earth death and cries are heard, Death awaiting them through weapons, fire and famine. The photograph of George Bush and Boris Yeltsin joyously waving the signed papers of the two nuclear disarmament START treaties at the end of 1992 carries disturbing echoes of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s brandishing his signed agreement with Hitler in 1938, a pact which he claimed mean “peace in our time.” According to Nostradamus and the warnings of many other proven forecasters of future disasters, we could not be living in more dangerous times than these. The fulfillment of Armageddon is assisted by the ignorance or collective denial of some basic facts about both START I & II. Before START II’s 75 percent reduction can officially begin, the first treaty needs to be reratified by the new nuclear states that have arisen from the former Soviet Union. Even if the START treaties are ratified and proceed on schedule with a two-thirds reduction of weapons by the year 2003, 7000 warheads will still be left in the US and Russian “peace” arsenals. These START treaties do not even begin to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Third World. Since China, North Korea, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Libya and Israel will no doubt, continue to pursue or enhance their nuclear capabilities into the next century, we can add another several thousand nuclear weapons to that new millennial arsenal. 2 Q92 First color of gold from the sky seen on earth, Struck by the high born, marvelous deed done: Great human slaughter, the great nephew seized, Spectacular death, evades the arrogant one. Le Pelletier fished just about every “nephew” quatrain out of the Centuries and put it in a tackle bag labeled “Napoleon III.” Five years later, after Napoleon III was gone and his censors were out of a job, H Torné-Chavigny confidently mongers his nephew slant for all to see on a gutting board called the Battle of Sedan. The fire color of gold seen from the sky are German cannon shells mowing down thousands of the 100,000 French soldiers surrounded by the Prussians, in Napoleon III’s version of a future French military disaster at Dien Bien Phu. The closest we can come to something striking in the proximity of a noble would be a bullet dusting the boot of the young Prince Imperial – showing great coolness under fire – while visiting the lines at Saarbrucken on 2 August 1870. Line 3 and 4 take us back to Sedan and can only be for the pathetic Napoleon III. On the last day of fighting when all hope of a breakout was dashed, he was seen in a number of places on the French battle lines sitting on his horse with both hands holding the saddle horn, in abject agony form a urinary infection, waiting for the Prussian artillery barrage to end his misery. Even though several officers were cut down at his sid, no spectacular death would save his honor. He was captured with the rest of his army. 2 Q93 Very near the Tiber the goddess of death threatens, Shortly before the great flood: The head of the church will be taken prisoner and put in the
sewer, [Sant’ Angelo] and the [Vatican] in flames. Nostradamus’ prophecies for the apocalyptic end of the papacy closely resemble the vision of St Malachy of Ireland for the final six popes before the Apocalypse. In 1138 this Irish priest, while on pilgrimage to Rome, uttered 111 Latin phrases during an ecstatic trance. Each one stands as a prediction for one in the complete succession of 111 popes – from his contemporary pope, Celestinus II, unto Doomsday. After John Paul II, only two popes will follow, according to Malachy’s list. Malachy’s original manuscript was not discovered in the Vatican Archives until 1590 – 24 years after the death of Nostradamus – yet both men’s prophecies give parallel clues to the harrowing life and times of the final pope. Forseeing the final Catholic Apocalypse St Malachy said: In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, Peter the Roman will occupy the See, who will guide his flock through numerous tribulations. These tribulations past, the town of seven hills will be destroyed and the terrible judge shall judge the people. One possible cause of the tidal waves destroying Rome is revealed in a foreboding set of quatrains predicting a meteorite strike in the Aegean Sea, which sets the great tub of the Mediterranean Sea sloshing back and forth over its coastlines in thousand-foot tsunamis. 2 Q94 Great Pau great evil will be received by the Gauls, Vain terror to the maritime Lion: Infinite people will pass by the sea, A quarter of a million will not escape. Great Pau is an abbreviation of the anagram for Napoleon Bonaparte: Pau Nay Loron. Before the French people (Gauls) would loose millions of men in his wars of conquest, Napoleon was first brought to their attention for his bravery at the siege of Toulon in 1794 against the British (the maritime Lion). Nostradamus sometimes calls the French infinite people. Gallic pride aside, he adequately describes the French fleet crowded with Napoleon’s soldiers setting sail for the Egyptian expedition of 1798-99. Then our prophet makes a jump forward in time of the disastrous Russian Campaign of 1812, in which a quarter million Frenchmen would end their days buried under the snow. 2 Q95 The lands populated by humans will become inhabitable, Great disagreement and discord in order to obtain lands: Kingdoms given to men incapable of prudence, Then for the great brothers death and dissension. The ancient blood fued between the descendants of Abraham (the Arabs and Jews) may bring wars over territory to a head any time after the year 1995 through 2020s. In other quatrains the great brothers seem to be the former superpowers who fought the Cold War (Russia and the United States). They begin fighting the final battle of Armageddon as allies but soon fall into dissension. Nostradamus does not give a good prophetic report card to today’s latter-day world leaders. The great brothers could also be the slain Kennedy brothers John and Robert. It can be argued that if John Kennedy had not been assassinated and if Robert Kennedy had succeeded as president, the Cold War of the great brothers of the north might have ended a generation earlier. Perhaps this would have taken the world down an alternative future track, avoiding the potential of a third world war from the breakup of the Soviet Union. The great brothers can also include a more contemporary interpretation for Henry, Duc de Guise and Charles, Cardinal de Guise who were murdered by Henry III at Blois in 1588. Their death did cause great dissension between the Catholic royalists and Catholic Leaguers, causing a three-way civil war. 2 Q96 A burning torch will be seen in the night sky, Near the end and the source of the Rhone: Famine, weapons: the help provided [is] late, When Persia turns to invade Macedonia. A future Iranian Ayatollah seeks retribution against Saddam Hussein through a nuclear attack. There are several references in Les Propheties to a falling comet. These comet descriptions, however, could also be the way a 16th century man would describe a falling Scud or intercontinental missile – in this case one aimed at a target near the mouth of Rhone river in Southern France. Macedonia could be a synecdoche for the Ottoman Turks and also be a cryptic description of the coming conflict between the Turks and Greeks caused by the potential eastward spread of the Balkan ethnic wars. Iran and Turkey are currently in political and religious competition to draw the Central Asian Muslim states into their respective spheres of influence. In a worst case interpretation of this quatrain, sometime in the closing years of either this century or the roaring and globally warmed 20s of the next, we will see Turkey bogged down in the Balkan conflicts with Greece over Macedonia. Iran will unleash a surprise attack on Turkey, while nuclear terrorists attack southern Europe. 2 Q97 Roman Pontiff, beware of approaching, Out of the city which the two rivers water, In that place you will come to spit your blood, You and your friends when the rose will blossom. This prophesies the death of the Pope Pius VI, who was a prisoner of the French Directory. The city where two rivers meet is Valence, which is watered by the Rhone and the Isère. He was under house arrest in the town’s citadel with an outrage of 32 priests. Pius VI died from an attack of acute gastroenteritis on 29 August 1799. witnesses report that he was vomiting blood. The final phrase describes this event poetically. 2 Q98 The one whose face is sprikled with blood, Of the victim nearly sacrificed, Jupiter the Thunderer is Leo, omen through persage, To be put in death then for the promise of romance. This may have connection with the bloody one of 2 Q89. I take it to mean the bloody birthmark marking the head and brow of Mikhail Grobachev, the last Soviet president and the man responsible for the breakup of the Soviet Union. The victim nearly sacrificed is the communist experiment. The climax of Gorbachev’s political career took place exactly within the transit of Jupiter through Leo, from 19 August 1990 through 11 September 1991. in August 1990 Gorbachev is given virtual free sign to decontrol the Soviet economy. He moves slowly, but prices soar out of control. By October Germany reunifies as a consequence of Gorbachev’s withdrawing military support to the East German leadership earlier in the year. Gorbachev gives official Soviet approval to the reunification. By the end of 1990 he has sided with the United States and the UN about sanctions against Iraq. He will allow the Gulf War to be waged against Saddam Hussein a former ally without Soviet intervention. In December 1990 Eduard Shevardnadze resigns as Soviet foreign minister, warning the congress of the People’s Deputies against “reactionaries”; Gorbachev ignores the warning. Between 12 and 19 August, just as Jupiter moves through the final degrees and therefore the most intense leg of its transit through Leo an attempted coup by communist hardliners fails, thanks largely to the heroic efforts of Boris Yeltsin standing with a handful of loyal tank units and thousand of civilians at the Russian Parliament. The coup leaders flee. President Gorbachev returns to Moscow from his brief imprisonment his credibility in tatters. Yelstin becomes the new rising political star. By 24 August Yeltsin suspends the Communist Party, bringing 74 years of communist rule in Russia to and end. On 5 September Gorbachev acquiesces, convincing the all-Soviet congress to give up its power. This wipes out any tenuous hold it still had over the constituent Soviet Republics. On the following day Gorbachev recognizes the independence of the three Baltic republics. Through his efforst he has all but dismantled the Soviet Union by mid-September. In November 1990 Gorbachev warned that the Soviet Union might soon break up in “bloodshed and civil conflict.” His statement to the world press was almost word for word what the Indian mystic Osho had predicted two years earlier, when Gorbachev was still the darling of the media and considered by many to be the man of the decade. 2 Q99 Roman soil as that the augur interprets, Will be clearly vexed by the Gallic people: But the French nation will fear the hour, North wind, the army having pushed too far. This is about French excesses and their retribution. The wide-scale persecution and plundering of Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns between 1794-98 led the prophet to forecast divine retribution for a time in the future when Napoleon and his soldiers, lusting after plunder, advanced too far and tarried too long in Moscow. The first two lines describes his tough and tattered soldiers ransacking and plundering art and treasures of the papal states in 1796. Napoleon forced Pope Pius VI to sign the Treaty of Tolentino, by which the pontiff surrendered his claims to Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna and agreed to pay an indemnity of 30 million france to add to the estimated 7 million francs worth of plunder already captured during the fighting. Two years later the French seized the papal states and proclaimed a Roman republic. Pius VI was arrested by the French Directory and imprisoned in Valence, where he died in 1799. In that same year Napoleon returned from Egypt to become dictator of France, crossing the St Bernard Pass to defeat the Austrians at Marengo in 1800. This gave him dictatorial rule over most of the Italian peninsula for the next 14 years. But Nostradamus forsees retribution of biblical for his First Antichrist. The final two lines jump ahead 12 years, using his north wind metaphor as a link from Marengo to Napoleon’s catastrophic Russian campaign in which many a veteran of the summer plunder of the 1790s were to clutch their frozen hands in a death grip of the loot stolen during their winter retreat from Moscow. 2 Q100 Within the isles such horrible tumult, Truly one will only hear a certain warlike faction: So great wil be the assault of the plunderers, That their opponents will come to be drawn together in a great
league. The proximity to Les Propheties publication date makes the siege of Malta – a decade after 1555 – the primary candidate here. Seven hundred knights of Saint John led by their doughty, a bit arthritic, 71 year old Grand Master, Jean de la Valette resist 40,000 Turks for five months until the siege is lifted by a Spanish force in September. The fianl line’s league could also stand for the multinational Christian armada that would defeat the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. A less likely interpretation would have the isles be Britian in the 1980s and 1990s. The warlike function could be the IRA and its plague to terror bombings in London. Imagine viewing these events from the 16th century, witnessing the glass shattering explosions in the financial center of east London: one might think it was war. |
