Forgotten Ages Research

The Nostradamus Keys to Decipherment—Tools and Methods

Report Topics:

• Innate Psychic Abilities
• Astronomy and Astrology
• Cartography and Uranology
• The Planetary Crystal Grid
• Earth Energies and Dowsing
• The Kabbala and Alchemy
• The Brass Bowl and Magic Mirror
• Hidden Numbers and Cryptic Words
• Elements of Interpretation

Full Report:

Innate Psychic Abilities

Besides the prophecies in his written works, Nostradamus was also recognized for his purely psychic talents and intuitive insights in his everyday life. For centuries, there have been a multitude of stories circulating around Europe concerning the seer’s abilities to forecast the future surrounding events and people he came in contact with.

One of the more notable of these stories occurred while the seer was traveling in Italy, near Ancona. As he passed by a group of monks, he suddenly fell to his knees. Surprised by this sudden show of respect, the monks stopped and asked the reason why. Nostradamus answered that he was honoring the presence of “his Holiness,” and pointed toward one of the group, a pig-tender named Brother Felice Peretti. Years later, the monks would repeat this story with a great deal of reverence, for their fellow Brother did indeed become “his Holiness,” Pope Sixtus V, in 1585—nearly twenty years after Nostradamus had died.

In another incident, while staying in the chateau of Seigneur de Florinville, a noted doctor from western France, the doctor decided to test the prophet’s psychic abilities. Will walking together on his estate, he showed Nostradamus two pigs, one black and the other white, and asked the prophet what would be their fates. Nostradamus predicted that he and the Seigneur would eat the black pig for dinner, but that the white pig would be eaten by a wolf.

No sooner had they returned to the chateau, when the Seigneur ordered his chef to kill and prepare the white pig, with the idea in mind that at supper time he would prove the prophet wrong.

But in the meantime, just as the chef was fixing the white pig as ordered, a pet wolf-cub that belonged to the household master secretly crept its way into the kitchen, snatched the roast off its spit and ran away with it, to devour it at its own leisure. The chef, realizing that supper was now in serious jeopardy, quickly killed the black pig and put it on the spit.

When the meal was finally served, the Seigneur announced that they were about to consume the white pig, and that the prophet’s prognostication concerning the pig‘s fate was wrong. But Nostradamus intuitively saw what had happened, and declared that it was really the black pig they were about to dine upon. The Seigneur called in his chef to verify which pig sat on their plates—and the chef admitted all that had transpired, just as the prophet had foreseen.

There are other such stories, too numerous to relate here, giving many more examples of the kinds of psychic advice Nostradamus was well known for. He himself claimed he inherited his second sight gifts from his grandfathers, and that he utilized such abilities as the foundation for his prophetic writings.

Astronomy and Astrology

A good portion of the verses in Nostradamus’ book of prophecy are peppered with both astronomical observations of the celestial spheres, as well as astrological configurations which give clues to the timings of the seer’s predictions. These indicate that Nostradamus was, first and foremost, a very keen stargazer, to the point of possessing a knowledge of the heavens far ahead of his era. As one example, in Century IV, Quatrain 33, he gave the name “Neptune,” and in the context of his mentioning other planets in the verse, it is clear he meant this to refer to the orb of the same appellation. The problem is, Neptune was not discovered and identified until 1846. The question becomes one, did Nostradamus psychically predict the planet’s existence, or was he privy to either advanced ancient wisdom or actual observational abilities?

At the turn of the last century, British historian-scientist George Rawlinson reported the discovery of Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets which described the crescent Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn—and this three thousand years before Galileo supposedly made their first acquaintance with his early telescope. Crystal lenses have been unearthed in Mesopotamia, from ancient Carthage, and were also known to the Greeks and Romans. Decades before the Dutch experimenters Janssen and Lippershey “invented” the first telescope and microscope, Giambattista della Porta, in 1589, described his own work with lenses, creating images both larger and smaller than life. Contrary to textbook history, both the knowledge and use of lenses, especially for gazing at the obscure details of the heavens, appears to have been known to a special few individuals throughout the ages.

It is curious that in Nostradamus’ last will, he bequeathed to his daughter Madeleine two walnut coffers, one of the listed contents of which were certain “jewels.” Had the prophet owned a series of lenses himself? We may never know directly for sure, as the coffers and their treasures have been lost to us. But other verses indicate he knew very well the secret properties of crystals, not only of what they do with light, but also how they amplify the effects of sound and other subtler energies.

Good astronomy in the Renaissance was the foundation for good astrology, or the calculation of planetary positions against the background of the Zodiacal signs, in order to determine their vibrational influences on events occurring on the Earth. What characteristics these influences have were locked away in the ancient myths and stories surrounding each constellation-hero and each planet-deity. Nostradamus was a most avid student of the legends of the heavens, for we find numerous allusions to them in his prophecies. As combinations of stars and planetary bodies converged or created certain angles with each other, their vibrational effects would be felt in specific ways, guiding yet never manipulating human and earthly events toward certain outcomes.

While most astrologers made their calculations for the coming year or two, Nostradamus looked for unique configurations over the course of centuries, even millennia, as one method of pinpointing important moments and their potential happenings.

The one major problem in working with astrology over long periods of time, however, is that it has not kept pace with astronomy. Since the ancient period when astrological calculations as Nostradamus knew them (and as they are still being done today), first came into existence, in Babylonia over three thousand years ago, the Earth’s position relative to the starry sky has not remained the same. An almost imperceptible ongoing change in our planet’s polar tilt causes what is known as the Precession of the Equinoxes. Because of it, the Sun appears to rise and set in a slightly different location, slowly shifting backwards among the Zodiacal signs. This gradual movement takes about a century over two millennia to pass through each sign.

Astrologers are at least aware of this phenomenon, for they have determined that we are presently leaving the “Age of Pisces” and are now entering the “Age of Aquarius,” as designated by the Precessional shift. Where the headache begins is in the realization that, since the time of ancient Babylonia, the Sun has moved a full sign, and technically, since 1990, is now just beginning to enter two signs off. Yet astrologers have been making their calculations as if nothing in the heavens has ever altered in all these thousands of years. For example, if an astrologer tells a client that, say, right at this moment, the “Sun is in Virgo,” that may be true astrologically, but not astronomically. Looking up into the heavens at what is actually taking place, the Sun has really been in the constellation of Leo, and right now, it is lagging behind farther in the starry quadrant of Cancer.

There are some modern astrologers who are very aware of this growing discrepancy, and have adjusted their calculations accordingly. For them, the old “Babylonian” horoscope chart indicates a person’s past life influences. A second chart, the “Astronomical,” drawn up to compensate for a one-sign change, offers present life challenges and situations. And a third chart, for the “Aquarius” era we are now entering, shifted by two signs, can give indications of near future opportunities and potentialities.

Because he was dealing with stellar and planetary calculations covering several centuries and millennia in his prophecies, Nostradamus likewise would have been very much aware of the Precessional shift, and the need to keep compensating for it as time progressed. Keeping this in mind, in certain cases it will be necessary for us to also look at a broader interpretation of some of the configurations the prophet gave.

Cartography and Uranology

Unlike today, when you can walk into a filling station or bookstore and purchase a road atlas, or mail order a topographical map from the U.S. Geological Survey, or get on the Internet and key-up directions to get to any possible location—or even program a Global Positioning System to keep track of where you are and where you are going—the science of cartography (map-making) in Nostradamus’ time was a most secretive enterprise. His lifetime saw the beginnings of the Age of Exploration, when Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, English, French, Turkish and Arabian navigators vied with one another to lay claim to new trade routes to the Orient, and new lands to settle in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The charting of these routes and claims was a vital key, and with ever-expanding colonies and empires at stake, some Renaissance maps were considered more precious than gold.

In his periodic sojourns at the major ports of Bordeaux, Marseilles and Venice, Nostradamus would have had access to the most up-to-date cartographical knowledge, and the latest discoveries made by seafarers returning from distant horizons around the globe. A knowledge of maps would have been vital to the prophet, for to be able to foresee the future of the world, one must have an accurate picture of what the world looks like. And by knowing the accurate portrayal of lands and oceans, the potential future movements of people, commerce, armies and the course of nations becomes clearer.

Likewise, a knowledge of the planet’s landmasses can also reveal where are the possible locations for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and major storms yet to come. All these, in turn, are tied into the secret centers of invisible earth energies—the sacred places of spiritual power that control the very forces of Nature itself.

We have become aware in recent years that the Renaissance cartographers not only received their information from the many exploratory voyages of the day, but they also had access to a secret reservoir of prehistoric geographical wisdom, in some cases rivaling our own today. Charles H. Hapgood, in his excellent study, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, revealed that many of the Renaissance portolans—including the Piri Re’is atlas of 1513, the Oronteus Finnaeus map of 1531, and the Zeno Brothers’ chart of 1370—were too perfectly made.

They contained elements of sophisticated projections, accurate measurements of longitude and latitude, and details of remote lands that were not actually discovered until a century or two later. Some of the maps portray conditions not as they are in our present world, but as they once existed at the end of the last Ice Age—which means the original source maps from which the Renaissance map-makers copied from dated back to between 8000 and 6000 B.C.E. or long before any of the known ancient civilizations came into being.

The sum total of wisdom that all the charts depict indicate that someone at that remote period in time had made a complete geographical survey of the planet. Such an advanced yet prehistoric civilization may have been the source of other lost lore from the past. Did some of the source maps show the locations of hidden time-capsules, buried storehouses of hidden knowledge that Nostradamus and other mystics may have had access to?

Related to cartography was the more obscure science of uranology, which attempted to inter-relate the ancient symbols of the land with the symbols of the stars, as given by astrology. The basic principle was, if one lays a map of the heavenly constellations on top of a map of the Earth in such a manner that the celestial and terrestrial poles align north and south, and the Pleiades or the “stars of Kema” overlay the ancient “land of Khem” or Egypt giving the east-west alignment, then some remarkable correlations appear.

Ursa Major, the constellation of the Great Bear, occupies the land of Russia, whose traditional symbol has been the Bear for many long ages. The tail of Draco touches China, and the other celestial dragon—Hydra—encircles the country of dragons. Taurus falls onto the Taurus Mountains. Pisces the Fish and Cetus the Whale swim the Atlantic. And Aquila the Eagle spreads its wings over what is now the United States—the nation of the Eagle.

One mystery of the Renaissance is why the ocean waters off the Caribbean isles were called the “Horse Latitudes” by early navigators, as no horses ever inhabited this region. The enigma is solved by uranology, when we discover that in the terrestrial-celestial correlations the constellations of Pegasus the Flying Horse and Equus the Colt precisely occupy this location.

These are only a few of hundreds of such correlations. Perhaps the most dedicated student of uranology was one of the French prophet’s contemporaries, John Dee, who was a mystic, astrologer, scholar and a powerful advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He had one of the largest collections of maps in England, and was consulted by the Queen before each voyage was undertaken by her explorers, drawing upon geographic and hydrographic charts for them. Dee traveled to the continent and to Paris on several occasions, where he possibly may have met with Nostradamus in person.

That Nostradamus—whether through Dee or through his own studies—was also knowledgeable in uranology will be made very much apparent when we begin studying his prophecies. The seer made good use of the interconnected heaven-Earth symbols of the ancient science, to designate future nations and territories.

The Planetary Crystal Grid

In the mid-1960’s, Russian researchers discovered that when they plotted the locations on a world map of all natural phenomena—the fracture zones of the global tectonic plates, earthquake and volcanic focal points, regions of high and low barometric pressure in the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean and wind current patterns, areas of magnetic disturbances (such as the Bermuda Triangle off the east coast of North America, and the Devil’s Sea off of Japan), places of gravitational anomalies, all known biogenetic pool origins, the migration routes of air, land and sea creatures, as well as data concerning the Earth’s natural resources—to their amazement they found the majority of these fell into an all-encompassing geometric pattern.

The pattern is a combination between two Platonic forms: a dodecahedron of twelve pentagon sides, and an icosahedron of twenty triangular sides, together forming a lattice grid which, together with two pole centers, links sixty-four node points into a planetary Crystal grid.

What is also significant, as the Russians realized further, is that most of the monuments of ancient humanity are also located along the Crystal lattices:

Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the sunken ruins off Bimini, the Shensi Pyramids of China, the stone heads of Easter Island, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Andes fortress of Machu Picchu in Peru, the remains of the Harappan city of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan, the Koonunda stone complex in Australia, the Yucatan temples and pyramids of the Maya, the enigmatic walls and towers of Great Zimbabwe in central Africa, the Polynesian ruins of Nan Madol, the Kivas of the Four Corners area of the American Southwest, to name only a few.

It is obvious the prehistoric and ancient cultures from the Megalith Builders on, knew about the planetary grid, and had erected their great stone structures to somehow be able to tap into all the natural forces associated with it.

On some of the Renaissance maps showing sophisticated knowledge mentioned previously, some of these depict curious centers and lines which are not navigational beacon points, but instead correspond to the lattice lines and nodes of the Crystal grid. Geometric models of the icosa-dodeca grid have also been found etched into stone balls excavated among Neolithic Scottish remains, molded in gold ornaments among the Khmer cultural artifacts of Cambodia, and—closer to the prophet’s home—cast in bronze spheres, unearthed in western France from among Celtic Druidic burials. These appear to have been used as teaching instruments for portraying the grid to Initiates.

In Nostradamus’ day, a leading proponent of the Crystal grid was Sir Thomas Gorges, a mathematician and geometer who served at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, along with his wife, a lady-in-waiting, Helena Marchioness of Northampton. In later years they built Longford Castle, which became the center for Sir Thomas’ studies. Together they were buried in a most unusual tomb that occupies the east end of the north choir in Salisbury Cathedral. The tomb’s pinnacle is graced with several stone-carved dodecahedrons and icosahedrons, standing among the two dod-pillars of Masonry, surrounded by cryptic Latin mottoes dedicated to the unseen energy systems and geometries of heaven and earth.

In addition, eight carved relief panels on the tomb’s canopy are of a decidedly Old Testament theme, suggesting a possible Jewish background for one or both of the couple.

Nostradamus, too, was well aware of the planetary Crystal grid, and some of his prophetic descriptions demonstrate he realized that as the grid changes and grows, so it affects the geologic, magnetic, atmospheric and biological patterning for the planet, as well as significant cultural, social and spiritual alterations among humanity.

Particularly now, in the time frame we today are presently living in, there is evidence that the grid is rapidly evolving into a newer, more complex crystalline form. Many of the Earth changes Nostradamus has prophesied are merely a reflection of the metamorphosis now going on in the Earth’s basic energy geometry.

By anticipating where and when old node points of power are disappearing, and new node points are being anchored in, one can discover the sequence and pattern of future planetary shifts yet to happen. This was one of the major themes of Nostradamus’ predictions of potential global cataclysms for the present and future.

Earth Energies and Dowsing

As the Earth’s Crystal grid forms the major “arteries” for the planetary energies, so interwoven within its geometry are other, smaller “veins” and “capillaries” whereby the natural forces reach into the local countryside, spreading the life essence to every sacred power point, major and minor. These localized power webs were given different names by different peoples: leys by the British, fairy paths by the Irish, holy lines by the Germans, dream paths by the Native Australians, lung mei or dragon currents by the Central Asians, te lapa or lines of light by the Polynesians, ceques by the Peruvian Incas, sacbés by the Yucatan Maya, and many others.

Perhaps the best understanding we have of these earth energies was preserved by the Chinese. In the ancient science of feng-shui, Chinese geomancers studied the chi or life energies flowing through the topography of the land to determine the proper placement of structures and people so to be at harmony with the Earth, all life, all minds and the Cosmos. This constituted an acupuncture principle for the planet.

The region where the confluence of rivers or streams of water occurred in particular was considered extremely important, and depending on how its energies were configured, such an area could create great benefit to health and spirit, or cause misfortune, disease, even madness or death.

Throughout Europe, hundreds of prehistoric standing stones or menhirs, stone structures such as dolmens, cairns and barrows, and stone circles known as henges, all dating back between four thousand and six thousand years ago, are found located along straight alignments of earth energy tracks, indicating that the science of geomantic placement was also once practiced in the West as well.

A fellow compatriot of Nostradamus, Xavier Guichard, discovered in 1936 no less than two hundred sites situated along two dozen lines in France alone, with the majority of sites related directly to very particular patterns of river and land configurations. We remember also that as late as the Middle Ages and even into the early Renaissance, the mysterious Templar-Masonic designers of the Gothic cathedrals continued to construct and align their masterpieces with the flow of earth and cosmic currents, choosing only the spots of highest positive energies, even at time building their monuments directly on top of the older Megalithic remains that once marked the place as “sacred.”

Other areas, where the force of earth and heaven met in unbalanced ways, were designated and avoided, often described as being “haunted,” or having “dark” or “stagnant” unhealthy energies.

One of the ancient methods used to locate and determine the hidden powers of a location was through the practice of dowsing. Most people today are familiar with dowsing under the name “water-witching,” the old practice of taking a forked branch of a particular tree, holding each fork in each hand, then walking over an area until the branch “bobs” or bends downward, indicating the presence of underground water. In actuality, dowsing can utilize any type of rod, pendulum or bobbing device, and can be an instrument for finding any hidden object or answer any question. In ancient Egypt and Greece, wall engravings and statuary portray deities, royalty, priests and priestesses holding elaborate scepters or staffs that were more than symbolic of their office—these were the devices with which, through dowsing, they determined the answers to questions of life, religion and justice. In similar manner, geomancers used such staffs to pinpoint the places of positive and negative powers within the Earth.

The concept behind dowsing is that, beyond the five senses, we also possess higher senses of the mind, heart and soul by which we can be in communication with all other aspects of reality around us, seen and unseen.

Normally, our conscious minds, having enough to handle with information coming through our five senses, blocks out the higher source information, except during times of extreme stress when our “sixth sense” or intuitive powers are allowed to enter in as a defense mechanism or act of self preservation. However, through dowsing, questions concerning the location of something, or resolving a situation or problem, can be clearly asked and mentally submitted to our higher aspects. Then, by placing a rod or pendulum in hand, the higher aspects of ourselves will respond by means of a movement through our autonomic nervous system, causing our hand to twitch ever so slightly, but which is amplified into a definite activation of the rod or pendulum. The twitching in our hand is so subtle, it often feels as if it is the rod or pendulum that is “moving by itself.” By programming oneself with a pre-determined set of different signaling movements with the dowsing device, a good dowser can ask a variety of questions and get truthful answers which can later be verified by other means.

Dowsing can be used not only “in the field,” or physically walking in an area and pinpointing something below ground, but it also works at a distance. Simply by using a map or drawing, one can dowse over a certain represented area and likewise locate its hidden aspects. Dowsing, too, works not only in space, but also in time. Once finding something, questions can then be asked regarding how long it has been there, and potentially how long it will continue to remain there, in the future. In other words, dowsing can be utilized as a predictive tool.

That Nostradamus himself practiced dowsing is made very apparent in one of his earliest poems he wrote, as Century I, Quatrain 2. A portion of it can be interpreted to read: “I extend my hand holding the rod of branches; The voice (answer) comes to me as my sleeves (arm) trembles.”

If the prophet had access to advanced maps, as we noted earlier, he could have used them to dowse for areas where future events were to occur. Places of positive energy, when their sacredness is maintained and honored by the Indigenous Peoples acting as stewards, remain stable and have a harmonizing effect on human consciousness.

It is the “dark” areas, however, where energies are imbalanced and where the human mind, emotions, soul and body are debilitated, that would have been of the most concern to Nostradamus. For it is out of such regions that famine, war, conquest, tyranny and religious fanaticism can erupt, and create havoc for all surrounding regions, even the entire world.

What is more, it is also in such locations that patterns of inter-relationship are set up—what Hindus call “karma.” These patterns contain important lessons to be learned among not only individuals but also among collectives of peoples and nations. These will keep surfacing again and again over the ages, if the lessons remain unlearned and unresolved. Dowsing can be employed to discover the karmic connections between groups of humanity around the globe which have not yet been faced and completed.

The Kabbala and Alchemy

Just as the Earth has its geometric pathways of energy and spirit, so in the most esoteric Jewish tradition, known as the Kabbala, it was believed that the human soul also has its pathways of growth and evolution.

Though most of Kabbalistic literature that has come down to us only dates back to the thirteenth century, the essence of its form and beliefs are far more ancient, considered to be a mystic branch of wisdom which grew parallel to more dogmatic religious Judeo-Hebrew practices, developed and passed down through Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and Solomon. This was the Schalscheleth Hakabbalah, the “Chain of Tradition.”

After the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the people, Alexandria in Egypt became a major Jewish settlement, developing alongside the Graeco-Roman center of wisdom, the Great Library. Here the Kabbala absorbed certain aspects of Babylonian astrology, Akkadian-Persian magic, Arabian divination, Greek oracular wisdom, Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, Egyptian Initiation rites, Essenic healing arts and Gnostic mysticism. With the invasion of Islam in the seventh century, the Alexandrine Jews migrated to Constantinople, then to Spain, and finally to southern France, carrying the ancient wisdom with them wherever they went.

At the heart of the Kabbala is the Tree of Life, a diagrammatic structure composed of ten Sephira or spheres of experience, interconnected by twenty-two routes by which the mystic traveled and fulfilled their spiritual progress. Volumes have been written, and lifetimes dedicated to understanding the Tree’s purpose, meaning and application to all aspects of living. Yet, in truth, what has come down to us today is only a small part of the original Kabbalistic wisdom, once reserved for the most advanced students.

We are aware, from various allusions made by the esoteric rabbinical scholars, that the Tree of Life is not two-dimensional, but three-dimensional, containing within it the connecting bridges to the Four Worlds, the various Levels of Creative Activity.

Going beyond, the Tree of Life and its 32 aspects is only a mirror reflection for the Tree of Knowledge, its complementary opposite, also composed of 32 aspects. The two Trees married together create a total of 64 aspects, a number that is found inherent in all systems of growth—from the 64 trigrams of the I Ching, the 64 node points of the Earth’s Crystal grid, the 64 combinants along the rungs of the double helix of the DNA molecule, the 32 right-hand plus 32 left-hand structures of crystals—to even the 64 squares of the game board in chess.

Nostradamus was not only conversant in all these hidden aspects of the Kabbala, but also anticipated that the Tree, along with all its reflections, is about to undergo a major permutation. Everything, on all levels, is beginning to shift from the powers of 64 to the powers of 486.

This shall be the next quantum leap of evolution, for the New Earth’s Crystal grid, the I Ching expanded into the Do Penta, the new triple helix DNA molecule, the superstring theory of sub-atomic particle creation, the new crystal mineral matrixes—and an innovative form of multi-dimensional chess. The Tree itself is being transformed into the Four-fold Universal Tree of Unconditional Love, to be composed of 496 elements—486 directional aspects through ten dimensions of being.

The central pillar of Sephira and paths in the Tree of Life was used to designate the spinal column and the location of seven focal points of powerful energies within the human body, paralleling what the Hindu yogis call the chakras, and the Egyptian Mysteries identified as the arits or gateways of the soul. The ancient Egyptians, in fact, had regarded the Nile river as symbolizing the spine, and situated their major temples along its course to correspond to the seven body centers.

As the Initiate traveled the sacred river’s length and received instructions in the various sanctuaries, it represented their own inner journey through their own body centers, learning to work with them and utilize their forces beneficially. If Nostradamus traveled to Egypt during his “lost years,” he may have undergone a similar odyssey of self-discovery.

In Century IV, Quatrain 25, the prophet clearly pointed to the “forehead,” the location of the Third Eye, the chakra center of psychic vision, as the means by which to see invisible spiritual worlds.

Another of the Kabbala’s teachings was the recognition that our physical reality is only one of several co-existing dimensions of being, and that other entities inhabit these dimensions with whom we may open communication and interact. The depiction in Jewish literature of spiritual forces and intelligences finds its complement in the deities of classical legends, and the earth spirits of Celtic mysticism. And of course Christian tradition too has its own hierarchy of angels and devils, of Heaven and Hell.

Throughout his verses, Nostradamus intimated at unseen presences working behind the scenes of history, adding their influences to the outcomes. As in the old Hermetic saying, “As above, so below,” the prophet understood that whatever happened in the affairs of men and women was only a shadow of events taking place in invisible realms all around us.

Nostradamus does not appear to have been a conjurer of spirits, such as his infamous English contemporaries, Dee and Kelly. He realized the inherent dangers in such practices, though as revealed in Century I, Quatrain 42, the prophet was familiar with Psellus’ De Daemonibus, which gave explicit directions for so-called “demon control.”

Rather, as Century I, verses 1 and 2 suggest, besides dowsing, the seer also practiced a mild form of spiritual mediumship, using the ancient Oracular method. This allowed higher spiritual entities, or at times simply his own higher aspects of Self, to speak through him, whether by voice impression or automatic writing.

Akin to the Kabbala, and sometimes viewed as the mystic Christians’ equivalent to it, was the ancient science of alchemy. Even as early as his first traveling period, from 1525 to 1529, Nostradamus spent time in the city of Narbonne, in that era an important center for alchemical teaching.

As part of the prophet’s early studies, and even as required reading for his formal education, he pored over the transmutation works of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Cornelius Henry Agrippa, and Paracelsus, with an important contribution from the Arabic world by Jabir ibn Hayyan.

Much of the modern misconception about alchemy is that its only goal was to turn lead into gold. Such an accomplishment, however, was considered but a minor physical sign that a greater inner spiritual transmutation had taken place within the alchemists themselves. Like the steps and pathways of the Kabbala, alchemy had its own routes of Initiation challenges and triumphs that promised eventual fulfillment on the highest levels.

In a more mundane sense, alchemy was an attempt to understand the vibrational essence of the elements, so as to be able to bring about the transformation of the old Earth into a New Earth, for the healing of the nations.

A correlated study to alchemy was homeopathy, the discovery and application of the curative vibrational essences within herbs and plants. Nostradamus was a master at Renaissance pharmaceutics, having gained a widespread reputation for his use of flower cures and running water in his combat of the plague. Running water, not stagnant well water, carried the life essence, which is why rivers and streams were considered an integral part of earth energy systems and geomantic calculations for determining the positive and negative nature of the landscape.

Here and there among the French seer’s quatrains we find allusions to both alchemical and herbal prescriptions, which form cryptic clues as to the essential nature of future events for the world.

One possible key may yet be found in a work of Nostradamus published in 1557, entitled Galen’s Paraphrase of Menodotus. So far, every attempt to translate it has ended up in gibberish. It is clear that this book may contain a code for a deeper understanding of the essences of nature, as yet undeciphered.

There has been some speculation that the prophet, being aware of the mind-altering effects of certain drugs and herbs, may have utilized these to stimulate his own visionary experiences. Available to him would have been such well-known hallucinogens as opium, cannibas, mandrake, henbane and stramonium. From his Moslem cousins would have come hashish in its many forms. If a Native American connection was ever made, as is suspected, then the properties of sacred mushrooms and other fungi might have been likewise made accessible to him and experimented with. The seer may also have had knowledge of a form of natural lysergic acid (LSD), derived from rotted wheat, once used (intentionally) in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and (unintentionally) causing periodic outbreaks of mass madness that once seized whole villages and entire regions in medieval Europe.

If any of these substances were imbibed by Nostradamus, this would have been within very strict and limited ceremonial conditions, as was prescribed by the ancient Mystery Schools, and by a number of Native Peoples the world over today. This was done for maximum vision-expanding, and not for dangerous and fatal drug escapism as is done too often in our own times.

The Brass Bowl and Magic Mirror

Another method of divination for which we have several sources describing the prophet’s use, was the ancient psychic stimulation of gazing into a bowl of water, or a shining mirror, in order to receive visionary images and impressions. Going back to dim prehistory, a pool of still, clear water had often been the inspiration for hydromancy, the ability to use the liquid reflecting surface as a “window” to other worlds beyond normal human ken.

The Greeks refined the practice, placing water in a brass bowl set upon a stand of tripod legs, whose special angles and lengths accentuated the earth energy currents passing through the bowl and its contents, in turn amplifying the psychic effect.

This appears to have been the earliest form of prophecy for the Delphic Oracle, before the officiating Pythia herself was transformed into a spiritual medium in a later period. Yet, despite the changeover to a new form of prognostication, the Delphic prophetess nevertheless held onto the old divinatory device as the symbol of her powers—instead of scrying into the tripod bowl, she eventually sat on it, like a throne.

With the improvement of glassmaking and silver tinting, mirrors gradually replaced water as a divining reflective tool. From their first appearance, mirrors were regarded as doorways to other dimensions, much like Lewis Carroll’s concept in Through the Looking Glass. It was the old Wiccan practice to put salt in front and lead behind every household mirror, to prevent unwanted entities from crossing the glassy threshold. Conversely, a burning candle place before a mirror was a sign of invitation.

Catherine de Medici’s chief court astrologer, Cosmos Ruggierio, was described in one of the Queen’s biographies as holding a séance at the royal chateau in Blois, where he invoked the presence of the angel Ariel to appear in a polished surface, in an incident called the “consultation of the magic mirror.” Nostradamus likewise, in his visit to the French court in 1556, reportedly used the same device, only not to conjure but rather in which to view the reflections of each of the Valois children, to prophesy their future fates.

The prophet’s quatrains reveal further that he himself owned a traditional Delphic brass bowl (selle d’arain) filled with water, but in addition may have also had a special “viewing” piece of polished metal, crystal or natural volcanic glass. John Dee, the English mystic, came into the possession and successfully utilized an Aztec obsidian “smoking mirror,” pirated as booty from a Spanish galleon returning from Mexico. Did Nostradamus, in his possible contacts with Native American slaves in Europe, likewise obtain a secret scrying device for his own psychic work?

In his “Epistle to Henri II,” the prophet makes it clear that his divinatory tools such as the bowl and mirror were used in conjunction with his astronomical- astrological calculations, as well as his psychic abilities inherited through his grandfathers: “I have dedicated my nocturnal and prophetic prognostications, composed thanks to a natural instinct, with the aid of poetic transports, according to the rules of poetry, and for the most part in accordance with the calculations of astronomy corresponding to the years, months and weeks, and to the regions, countries and most of the towns and cities of all Europe, including Africa and parts of Asia that shall know frontier changes, and among all nearby climes—the whole being composed as by a natural technique.

“The whole has been composed and calculated by selected and well-arranged hours and days, as correctly as possible. And I have made my prognostications concerning events in times to come with a free spirit; using the past and understanding the present, for thus shall one know the future by the course of time throughout all regions; and as I here specify I have put in nothing superfluous, so much so that it may be said: rigorous exactitude about the future is not entirely determined.

“Thanks to my natural instinct passed on to me by my ancestors, I could only believe I would be prophesying; I have therefore admitted and joined this natural gift to my lengthy calculation, while emptying my mind, heart and soul of all care, concern and worry in order to ensure calm and tranquility of spirit. All was achieved and presaged, and this in part thanks to the tripod.

“My reckoning is not good and valid for all nations because the whole has been calculated by the heavenly courses, along with intuitions in some certain hours and by the spirit of my distant ancestors. The injustice of our epoch requires that these most secret events be manifest only by enigmatic phrases having their own sense and meaning, without any ambiguity therein or doubtful calculation; but rather I profoundly obscured all by natural intuition.

“I have used divinatory methods derived from fate, but thanks to God and my natural intuition, the whole in accord with the movement of heavenly bodies, so that I saw as in a burning mirror, as if by an obscured vision, the great, sad and prodigious incidents and calamities which shall affect most inhabitants.”

As in any system of divination, psychic expansion or spirit contact, Nostradamus was well aware that the practitioner often walks a thin line between use and abuse. The prophet worked with a wide variety of tools and abilities as a means of checks and balances in order to continually cross-reference and confirm his results. This was so that no one system became more of a reflection of his own ego, rather than true prophecy.

He was also just as aware that even his own finished product, his verses and prose, could be subject to great abuse by more unscrupulous practitioners utilizing his words as magical incantations, or equally as evil, by armchair interpreters and commentators who would be misinterpreting his prophecies for their own selfish biases and prejudices. Not only individuals, but also nations would be guilty of such crimes, as when both the Germans and the Allies cranked out false interpretations of Nostradamus’ verses and distributed them for propaganda purposes during World War II.

Against these, Nostradamus directed one of his quatrains, VI, 100, in some editions designated as an “Incantation of the Law Against Inept Critics.” It is the only poem of his that appears entirely in medieval Latin. Here is the English translation:

Let those who read this verse consider it deeply,
Let the profane and ignorant rabble keep away, not attracted,
And stay away all idiot astrologers and barbarians,
Those who do otherwise, may you be subject to the sacred rite (receive anathema or a curse).

Hidden Numbers and Cryptic Words

It was the ancient belief that not only physical objects have vibrational essences, but even such abstractions as numbers and words also have their own secret powers.

The Greek Pythagoras, borrowing heavily from Egyptian sources, assigned the basic numbers 1 through 9 not only with mathematical quantities, but also esoteric qualities, dealing with the fundamental aspects of the universe and human fate. Thus, wherever and whenever any number was found inherent in nature or was used in everyday living, it was thought to give clues to deeper operations going on within creation.

One important application of this principle was that, since each thing in creation has a name, therefore there must be a way of finding the hidden number within that name. This was done by several methods, depending on the language one worked with.

In Hebrew, Greek and Latin, it was a relatively simple matter, because in these ancient scripts there were no separate glyphs for numbers. Instead, letter glyphs were given numerical values as well as alphabetical values. By looking at the letters of the name of a Greek deity, for example, one could take the numeric values of all the letters, add them together, and come up with the master number for that name, or its vibrational frequency. This was the basis for the ancient science of gematria.

As one kind of gematric application in classical sacred architecture, if a temple was to be built to a certain god or goddess, then the gematric number of the deity’s name—their spiritual vibration—was incorporated into the measurements of their temple, so that the structure’s “resonance” was attuned to that specific deity, and it rightfully became their “dwelling house.”

The early Christian mystics were especially keen on the study of gematria, finding hidden meanings to names given in various religious texts. Perhaps the best known example is found in John’s Book of Revelations, chapter 13, verses 16 through 18, where the apostle ascribed mystical meaning to the “number of the Beast.” He wrote: “Let him who has understanding decipher the code number of the Beast, for it is the code number of the name of a man, and his number is 666.”

In time, students of both Christian and Hebrew literature found hidden gematric meanings not only in single names and words, but in whole phrases and verses. By adding up all the numeric values of the words in a verse and obtaining its master number total, then discovering the same master number in another verse located elsewhere, it was thought this constituted a masked message within the Scriptures, whereby such vibrationally harmonic texts were meant to be secretly read together, to come up with an entirely different level of interpretation of the will of God.

As long as the earliest Biblical works were written in Hebrew or Greek, gematria worked its magic well. However, when the Church took over and everything was translated into Latin, difficulties arose, because the Romans had had their own number values, the basis for Roman numerals—M, D, C, L, X, V, and I. Finding these in names was possible, but very limiting. Still later, when the Old and New Testaments were translated into the European and Romantic languages, including English and French, gematria would not work at all, for here were scripts wherein letters and numbers were completely separated. Another system had to be devised.

What developed was the science of numerology, which assigned the alphabet letters the values of 1 to 9 in repeated sequences. Thus, A=1, B=2...H=8, I=9 J=1, K=2...Q=8, R=9, S=1, T=2...Y=7, Z=8. Adding up these values found in a name gave an overall number, which could be reduced by addition to a single number. For example, Joseph=28=1, Mary=21=3. Numerologists then resurrected the qualitative values of numbers as given by Pythagoras, in order to find the name owner’s “life vibration” and resonance with universal forces.

We know that Nostradamus was well versed in gematria as it was applied to Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He was also a fairly good numerologist for his native French language. Discovering the numbers hidden behind the name of a person, nation or subject, gave the prophet important clues as to their future destinies.

Turning now to the words Nostradamus used, we find that, with only a casual first glance at the prophet’s verses and prose, we are immediately confronted by a wall of carefully orchestrated confusion. Everywhere we look, cryptic words challenge us to decipher their meanings. In some cases, the enigma is solved by realizing the seer sprinkled his otherwise Latinized French with words and phrases from many other languages and dialects—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Provençal, English, Italian and Spanish. But in most other cases, it becomes clear that names and words have been deliberately scrambled in a variety of clever ways.

One important element was the use of words which, when looked at in both the Old French and the Latin, could be translated with two opposite meanings. These include reserrer-reseratus (“lock up, to unlock”), tributaire-tributare (“pay tribute, collect tribute”), se bonder (“to tie together, to separate”), and inhabitable-inhabitable (“inhabited, uninhabitable”). Bringing in other languages, we also find that pont can refer to a bridge (French), a sea (Latin) or the pontiff (Church idiom); nave can be a ship or a church; changer becomes either a change (transformation) or a money-changer; while pie may turn into a magpie bird, or pious person, or a pope named Pius.

Places, too, had their multiple interpretations. Thus Ganges is a town in France and a river in India; the Ebro exists in both Italy and Spain, yet may likewise be a shortened version of “Hebrew;” Gen may stand for Gennes or Genoa; Pau and Po are interchangeable, yet one is in France and the other in Italy; while Amerique could refer to America, or Amorica in Brittany.

Some of the other cryptics used by Nostradamus included:

*Apheresis—the omission of a letter or syllable from the beginning of a word
*Apocope—the omission of the last letter or syllable
*Ellipse—the omission of entire words which are understood to be present
*Epenthiesis—the insertion of a letter or syllable in the middle of a word
*Hyperbation—the transposition or inversion of the natural order of words
*Metathesis—the transposition of letters or syllables
*Prosthesis—the insertion of an extra letter at the beginning of a word
*Syncope—the omission of a letter or syllable form the middle of a word
*Synecdoche—a part standing for the whole

These are all tricks, derived from older Greek and Roman literature, in turn taken from the Hebrew practice of Temurah and Tsiruf—to help obscure words from being immediately understood, making them into puzzles.

In the medieval and Renaissance eras, such devices formed the basis for the favorite pastime of writing anagrams. The general rules which Nostradamus followed, as was later outlined in the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, was that it was permissible to change letters in a word around in any manner, though it was considered a clever point if, in doing so, a new word was created that had another hidden meaning. In addition, one or two letters were allowed to be dropped or added, and another one or two could be exchanged for others. Also, it was within anagrammatic bounds to alter one phonetic spelling for another that was similar—o for aux, for example.

Looking at the French seer’s prophecies, there are a number of remarkable instances where he used anagrams to name some of the more notable characters in his future, now our past today. In Century VIII, Quatrain 1, Nostradamus gave the letters PAU. NAY. LORON., which, using the strictest anagrammatic rules, translated into “Napoleon.”

In Century II, Quatrain 24, and in several other verses, the prophet described a tyrant to rise out of Germany called “Hister.” This was not only an easily solvable cryptic of Hitler, but it also had a clever additional double meaning, also prophetic. The Ister is the ancient name for the Danube river in Austria, near the source of which Hitler was born, while hysteria is also hinted at, his ability at controlling the masses through his speeches.

The reason for all these techniques at deliberately obscuring words, as the prophet explained in his “Preface” of the Centuries, was primarily for self-defense and self-preservation. He wrote:

“For kingdoms, sects and religions will make changes so complete, truly diametrically opposite, that if I came to reveal what will happen in the future, the great ones of the above kingdoms, sects, religions and faiths would find it so little in accord with what their fancy would like to hear, that they would condemn that which future ages will know and perceive to be true.”

Given the somewhat restrictive religious and political climate in which Nostradamus lived, and the fact that many of these authorities already took a dim view of his “occult” studies and activities, his attempt to hide his words for only the diligent decipherer was most understandable.

Elements of Interpretation

Attempting to interpret Nostradamus is like being a detective with a myriad of possible clues to work with, all of which can be assembled in any number of ways. To study Nostradamus is to become a Nostradamus. In time you find yourself, like him, delving into many languages and all their shades of interpretation, studying astrology and calculating dates for configurations, exploring hidden symbolisms of alchemy, world mythologies, the Kabbala and the Bible.

To understand Nostradamus fully is to realize that he worked with three different modes of expression, what we can call 1) his prophetic language, 2) his poetic language, and 3) his psychic language.

1) Prophetic language—The seer’s prophetic language is one of symbols, the work of “obscuring,” of peppering the path of interpretation with hidden meanings and numerous directions. As noted before, the reason for this was partly to protect the prophet himself from those in powerful places who might not like what the future had in store for them, and who had the unfortunate habit of blaming the prophet for their fate rather than themselves. There is, however, another reason for veiling his words, and that is so there may be more than one interpretation applied. Nostradamus has very often been accused over the past several centuries of having written his verses in an ambiguous fashion, so that they could find an interpretation in whatever age you happen to live. Those who have made this accusation have missed the whole point, that this is in fact the very purpose of true prophecy itself—to be able to be interpreted in more than one way, if necessary in more than one time period.

Prophecy is not simply a matter of scrying the future and getting a “hit.” Its purpose is to awaken in the reader the need to change the course of the future, catch a glimpse of several potentialities that can be fulfilled, and to offer more than one direction of action to take.
In prophetic language, the use of symbols both expands and also limits the possible meanings of the subject matter focused on. One of the keys in looking at symbols is to see how they are used in the context of other symbols in the same verse, what is their interplay, and finding the general imagery their sum adds up to. It is also wise to see how the same symbol is used in other verses. Many times this repetition of the same symbol or wording helps to link several verses together so as to further expand the future picture. Yet this is not always the case in every situation. It is important to observe what is the underlying theme or motif, and interpret the symbols accordingly. Likewise, as is so true of any symbol, never be satisfied with only one layer of interpretation, for symbols are but doorways which can, when the reader is ready, open up whole new dimensions of meaning.

Particularly within the context of the flow of time and destiny (and unfolding karmic patterns), even prophecies that have already had an obvious and apparent very specific fulfillment, could yet hold hidden keys to more future events still to come.

2) Poetic language—The greater majority of Nostradamus’ writings he wrote in verse form, consisting of quatrains or four-lined poems, in roughly iambic pentameter rhythm of ten-syllable length, and a rhyme sequence of ABAB. The rhyming itself fits the criterion as outlined in Art Poetique Francoys, written by Thomas Sebillet in 1543, utilizing the equivoque and ryme riche forms, whereby the last two or more syllables of two lines are identical in sound, but either different in meaning or in word juncture and spelling. The seer often included vers commun, the addition of unaccented syllables after the fourth and tenth syllables, in order to “stretch” a line further.

It is the poetic language which, while it concentrates the subject matter to its essence, also severely limits what can be said to the cramped framework of meter and line length. In many cases what could have needed to be said in several sentences to make clear sense, has been instead reduced to a mere handful of words. The economizing makes each word utilized pregnant with meaning. Where it has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, here in poetic language a word is worth a thousand pictures.

As important as the words themselves is also the inter-relation of words, what exists in the space between them, and what is created from their sum total. Often, the verse lines are in an almanac style—they are not even sentences, just a series of descriptive words strung together. They are like building blocks that need to be arranged and re-arranged to see what constructed image speaks the clearest at this moment in time. Verbs and nouns are often thrown together haphazardly, and pairings between the two can take many forms. Singular verbs appear with compound subject; transitive verbs are used as intransitives, and vice versa; the infinitive is unvaried for person or number; past participles have no auxiliaries, and may be read in their active or passive sense; plus reflective pronouns, articles, prepositions and conjunctions are often omitted.

Subjects, objects and verbs are inverted, while whole phrases are shifted from subjective to objective, from active to passive, from connection to disjunction, all of which totally shatters the idiom and opens each segment to multiple situations. In some cases, too, the wording is deliberately designed so that, in typical Delphic oracular fashion, two opposite meanings can be interpreted out of the same line. And even where one finds an actual sentence that appears to be well-constructed and lucid, look at it again very carefully. All the right words may be there, but the obvious surface meaning is not always the correct one, the given words needing to be torn apart and re-assembled into a larger theme.

One element that has often been overlooked is Nostradamus’ frequent use of place-names, particularly of locations in his native southern France which are scattered here and there among his verses. Most commentators assume that the place-names are what they are and that the prophet used them to make attempts at predicting local events. But going deeper we discover that many of these names are either anagrams for other more distant locations, or the names can themselves be translated and expanded into a fuller descriptive phrase. Again, using the place-names was merely a method of economizing and condensing thoughts into single words that would fit within the framework of the poetry of the verses.

3) Psychic language—Finally, we need to take into consideration Nostradamus’ psychic language. As will become apparent in reading through his forecasts, he was a very visual person. Looking forward from his sixteenth century perspective, the seer witnessed events and sights which both fascinated and mystified him. Especially in his visions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and beyond, Nostradamus was confronted with so many sights of technology far in advance of his own day, that he had an understandably difficult time trying to describe what he was observing. In some of his writings it is plain to see he was groping for the right words to convey what he himself was experiencing and beholding. We might ask ourselves, how well would we do in trying to relate to and describe to our contemporaries a vision of the events and technological advances of, say, the year A.D. 7000?

So when reading Nostradamus’ verses, we need to look through his psychic eyes, to be aware on the one hand the richness and detail of his visionary words, yet on the other hand recognize and interpret him according to the limitations of his world and his time.

It is only as all three of these aspects—prophetic, poetic and psychic—are recognized and compensated for, that a student of Nostradamus can delve into the deeper levels of interpretation. This is the hidden legacy which the seer left us with over four hundred years ago: the challenge to find in his words the revelations that speak most directly to our times here and now, and to clearly see the choices of action we have before us. For as Nostradamus well understood, merely knowing about the future means nothing. But to know about the future so that it can be changed—that is the answer to everything.

As for interpreting Nostradamus’ prose prophecies, as contained in his “Preface” and “Epistle,” much of the same rules apply, except that the restriction of poetic rhyme and meter is missing. However, even a general reading of these prose works reveals as much an element of deliberately organized confusion as does the quatrains. Many valiant attempts have been made by several commentators both past and present to try to interpret the lengthy prose prophecies—particularly that contained in the “Epistle”—as one single exposition, given in sequential time paralleling actual historical chronology.

However, these interpretive attempts have fallen far short of the mark, and demonstrate that, like the body of quatrains, one must read the prose in segments only. In fact, the internal organization of the prose prophecies suggests they had been first written as poems, then rewritten in non-poetic form, and strung together. Even in the subject material, once the cryptic elements are deciphered, one can see where the same prophesied event is described more than once, yet in separate locations within the prose text. This being the case, in the course of our own study of his unfulfilled forecasts, we will examine Nostradamus’ prose works on a portion by portion basis.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]