[In the following excerpt, Forman examines several prophecies of Nostradamus, positing possible ancient influences, remarking upon his intentional obscurity, highlighting alleged prophecies that came to pass, and concluding that Nostradamus is the once and future "greatest prophet of modern times."]

Nostradamus declares that he burned some ancient Egyptian books after having learned their contents by heart. These books, originating in Egypt and in the ancient Persia of the Mages, had come to him by inheritance, from one or the other of his grandfathers. Now, what, ask his latest biographers, Moura and Louvet, did the Hebrews carry away from Egypt in the Exodus? Gold and silver, assuredly, but something besides far more precious.

"They could not have failed to possess themselves of all possible documents from the initiation chambers of the Egyptian temples, all the geometric, cosmographie and algebraic formulae subsequently used in the Torah and in the construction of the Temple of Solomon. Then, one day, the Romans destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem. The Jews were dispersed. Before the Temple was demolished, however, the documents had disappeared. When the Holy of Holies was entered, it was empty."

Those documents have never been found. According to the biographers they were doubtless transmitted from father to son in that Tribe of Issachar, which had always lived close to the Temple and to the Kings of Jerusalem. Also, the builders of the Temple were said to have migrated to Provence. In his preface to a portion of the Centuries addressed to his son (from the second marriage), Caesar, Nostradamus declares that he did not desire to keep those "volumes which had been hidden during long centuries," and that after learning their contents he had burned them. "That flame," he wrote, "was more brilliant than ordinary flame, as though a preternatural lightning flash had abruptly illumined the house and threw it into a sudden conflagration."

Be that as it may, virtually all his biographers and commentators are at one in attributing supernormal knowledge and wisdom to Nostradamus. A hundred years before Newton he took account of the law of gravitation in his calculations, as also of Kepler's law of the ecliptic, though Kepler was not born until some years after Nostradamus' death. And though he constantly affirmed that he had done nothing marvelous, that he "had received at birth certain astral aspects which predisposed him to this work," that "all came from God," Nostradamus was nevertheless regarded as the greatest prophet of his time, and nightly he sat before the magical brass bowl filled to the brim with water, possibly in a sort of self-hypnosis, listening to his familiar spirit; and nightly he recorded his visions in those Centuries of verses that are still an object of study and speculation.

Aprés la terrienne mienne extinction,Plus fera mon écrit qu'a vivant—

wrote the prophet:

After my earthly passing,
My writ will do more than during life.

The first edition of the Centuries was published in March, 1555, by Macé Bonhomme, printer at Lyons. Its success was tremendous. All the court, all the world of fashion at home and abroad could hardly converse of anything else. The polite world regarded him as a prodigy. Poets sent him verses of eulogy and not alone his countrymen, but even many foreigners made long journeys to visit and consult the seer. Salon-en-Craux in Provence became a celebrated town and, though Nostradamus had never invented a mousetrap, the great coaches of the rich and noble wore a path to his door. Nor did all indiscriminately receive his advice or prognostications. To some his answers were strange and perplexingly ambiguous.

In the letter dedicatory to the second edition of the Centuries addressed to King Henry II, "the most humane, most serene," the seer explains that it would be dangerous to be too explicit in his quatrains, "that the danger of the times, O Most Serene Majesty, requires that such hidden events be not manifested save by enigmatic speech; … did I so desire, I could fix the time for every quatrain,… but that it might to some be disagreeable." Like Shakespeare, who cursed those who would move his bones, Nostradamus ends his sixth Century in Latin thus:

Let those who read these lines with ripe reflection ponder;
That the vulgar, ignorant and profane hold off their hands:
Let all astrologers, imbeciles, barbarians, stand aloof.
Cursed be he of Heaven who acts in other wise.

"Let those who read these lines with ripe reflection ponder" is all very well. But read his Centuries as we may, and ponder as we will, the words, as one writer puts it, dance in the mind and one hardly knows whether one is hearing things in a dream or in one of those strange made-up languages with more sound than meaning. So great was his desire to conceal his meaning that even the current and common words were twisted about into anagrams, so that Paris became Rapis, France turned into Nersaf and Henric into Chiren.

His quatrains have been described by his most famous and devoted commentator, Le Pelletier, as "a sort of game of Tarot cards in verse, a cabalistic kaleidoscope. His manner brought him closer to the pagan oracles of Egypt, Greece and Italy than to the sober inspiration of the canonical prophets."

Canonical he certainly was not, yet he was profoundly religious. The Church, however, in those days was not to be trifled with, and Nostradamus always maintained a close tie with the Church. Perhaps that profound knowledge of the ideas upon which the Church was based and the human narrowness and zealotry of its officiants was a factor in making him at once bold and timid, obscure and yet, at times, startlingly clear. Some of those lucid prophecies, bearing on Charles I of England and Oliver Cromwell, on Louis XVI and the French Revolution, and on Napoleon, [may be readily] seen. Mostly, however, they are obscure. Every now and then one meets some that are almost lucid, but not quite. For instance, the following is taken to bear upon the American Revolution and the naval help of John Paul Jones:

The West shall be free of the British Isles,
The discovered shall pass low, then high,
Scottish pirates shall on the sea rebel,
On a rainy and hot night.

Similarly among those said to bear upon Napoleon this stanza is not so clear as some others:

Of the name that a French King never was,
There was never a lightning so much feared,
Italy shall tremble; Spain and the English;
He shall be much taken by women strangers.

Some there are, however, which remain obscure until one suddenly discerns their meaning:

When Innocent shall hold the place of Peter,
The Sicilian Nizaram shall see himself
In great honors, but after that shall fall
Into the dirt of Civil War.

"Nothing can be more plain or true," observes a commentator, Garencières, "than this prophecy and those that deny it may also deny light to the sun, but to make it more evident, we will examine it verse for verse. 'When Innocent shall hold the place of Peter,' that is, when one named Innocent shall be Pope, as he was (Innocent X, elected 1644, died 1655).

" 'The Sicilian Nizaram shall see himself in great honors,' that is Mazarin; for Nizaram is the anagram for Mazarin; he was born in Sicily and was then in his greatest splendor.

" 'But shall fall into the dirt of civil war,' as everyone knows he did"—referring to the Civil War of the Fronde, when there were barricades in Paris and the court had to withdraw to Saint-Germain. "And yet," adds Garencières, "when I read this forty years ago, I took it to be ridiculous."

This prophecy was made three quarters of a century before the event.

As to the future beyond our time, there are numerous prophecies contained in the Centuries of Nostradamus, could one but decipher them all. Now and then, however, some appear with marked clarity. Quatrain 72 of "Century X" begins with singular explicitness:

L'an mil neuf cent nonante neuf sept mois,Du ciel viendra un grand roi d'effrayeur.

That is, reckoning the astrological year as beginning in March, in October 1999, a terrible king or leader will assault and invade Paris "du ciel," from the sky. He will come with a host speaking a strange, that is, not a Latin, tongue. They will have not only frightful weapons, but also reindeer! It has been suggested that since the menace of Asiatic invasion of Europe is always present, perhaps the northern Siberian tribes, many of whom still use reindeer, are slowly forming into a new and future menace to Europe. At one point the prophet positively declares that the invader will come from Sclavonia, that is, from Asia. Some now living among us may have opportunity of confirming this prophecy.

Again and again conflagrations and flames are prophesied for Paris. In "Century VI," stanza 98:

Instant grande flamme éparse sautera.

A driving great flame will leap and scatter everywhere.

In "Century IV," quatrain 82:

Puis la grande flamme éteindre ne saura.

Then they will be unable to extinguish the great flame.

The fire will come from above (du ciel), which may refer to new methods of civilized warfare, still in the womb of time, or to celestial flames reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah.

La grande cité sera bien desolée,
Des habitants un seul ç 'y demourra.

The great city will be utterly waste,
Not one of its dwellers will be left.

So Nostradamus foresees in the 84th quatrain of his Third Century, but that date is still remote. Paris still has fifteen centuries of existence. Its final catastrophe is not due until 3420!

No less than thirty-five prophecies concerning the destruction of Paris have been catalogued and all of these are unanimous in giving conflagration in the course of a war as the cause. No one, observes Piobb, a studious commentator on Nostradamus, gives so many precise details as the French prophet, in both time and space. For with his gift of clairvoyance he combined careful and meticulous calculation. Most prophets being seers, that is clairvoyants, inevitably evince the human tendency to exaggerate, to be sensational. It is the calculators, checking their visions with figures, who remain calm. Nostradamus was one of the ablest of the calculators.

The final catastrophe for Europe which will affect the rest of the world, is predicted for the year 7000. In that year is to come the next great deluge since the Biblical one. The Desert of Gobi will once again become a sea and the entire geography of the world will be radically changed.

It is not possible to dwell or even to touch upon all of the predictions of Nostradamus that are entirely or partly comprehensible. For instance,

En germante naistront diverses sectes
S'approchant fort de l'heureux paganisme…

In Germany will spring up different sects,
Approaching nearly a careless paganism…

may refer to a variety of things including some recent efforts at a revival of pagan Germanic deities. Similarly,

Une nouvelle secte de Philosophes
Mesprisant mort, or, honneurs et richesses:
Des monts Germains ne seront limitrophes,
A les ensuyvre appuy et presses.

A new sect of Philosophers,
Despising death, gold, honor and riches,
They will not be confined to the Mountains of Germany,
They will have support of followers and press.

This has been construed as referring to Theosophy and Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical movement, but it may have reference to events still in the future.

For the Catholic Church the prophet has some gloomy news to bring:

Romain pouvoir sera du tout à bas;
Son grand voisin imiter les vestiges;
Occultes haines civiles et débats,
Retarderont aux bouffons leurs folies.

Roman power will be completely brought low;
Italy will imitate the Revolution of France,
Secret hatreds and civil disagreements
Will somewhat delay the folly of the fools.

And elsewhere ("Century X," quatrain 65) the prophet sighs:

Oh, great Rome, thy ruin approaches,
Not of thy walls, but of thy blood and substance,
The printed word will work terrible havoc,
The pointed steel driven home to the hilt.

It may be that Voltaire and the French Encyclopedists, who did so much to shake the Catholic Church, at least in France, would feel that this groaning prophecy on the part of Nostradamus, pronounced more than two centuries before their time, bears directly upon their activities.

He predicts that the blood of clerics will flow like water ("Century VIII," quatrain 98) and that the Holy See will be banished from Rome altogether:

Par la puissance des trois Rois temporels,
En autre lieu sera mis le sainct Siège,
Où la substance de l'esprit corporel
Sera remis et receu pour vray siege.
"Cent. VIII," quatrain 99.

By the power of three realms
The Holy See will be moved elsewhere;
Where the substance of the spirit will be changed
And received for the true seat.

Though the last two verses are obscure, the first two leave no doubt as to the prophet's meaning.

In his letter dedicatory to Henry II, Nostradamus wrote that not only would the Church be persecuted and afflicted, but that the blood of Churchmen would flow "in the streets and temples as flows water after a furious rain. The Holy of Holies will be destroyed by Paganism and the Old as well as the New Testament will be banished and burned."

Eventually a certain great Celtic or French leader, contemporary of the Pastor Angelicus, or the Angelic Pope, will restore the Church to Rome.

Le grand Celtique entrera dedans Rome
Menant amas d'exilez et bannis:
Le grand pasteur mettra à mort tout homme
Qui pour le coq estoyent aux Alpes unis.
"Cent. VI," quatrain 28.

The great Celtic chief will enter Rome
Leading an army of the exiled and banished
The great shepherd will put to death every man,
Who for the sake of the rock (Republic) united in the Alps.

The great shepherd putting men to death does not sound like the Pastor Angelicus, but no one has ever attempted to disguise the obscurity of Nostradamus.

Though a prophet, Nostradamus was not without honor in his little town of Salon. Yet, it was the sixteenth century. A man who dealt with unknown powers, inevitably dealt with dark powers. Peasants, burghers and housewives feared him, notwithstanding that he brought trade and custom to the town. The wrinkled visage, the deep-set eyes, the forked beard, all these inspired dread in the simple folk of rural Provence.

Henry II died as predicted, Francis II was seized with a syncope and ambassadors from the Italian states were whispering about quatrain 39 of "Century X."

Francis died; another royal child died; the Spanish ambassador wrote to his King that, so far from being patronized by royalty, the man Nostradamus ought to be punished—as though he had actually caused the deaths! In effect, the reputation of Nostradamus was now at its height, and it was at about this time that the boy King Charles IX paid his visit to the seer and left him as a parting gift the title of Physician and Counselor in Ordinary to His Majesty….

On the evening of July 1, 1556, his friend and pupil, Chavigny, bidding the sick man good night, pronounced the usual formula, "à demain, maître"—until tomorrow, master. But Nostradamus, shaking his head sadly, murmured, "Tomorrow at sunrise I shall no longer be here."

In a quatrain bearing upon his own death he had written:

De retour d'ambassade, don du Roy, mis au lieu, Plusç 'en fera, seraallé a Dieu, Proches parents, amis, frères du sang

Trouve tout mort, pres du lit et du banc.

Upon returning from a mission, gift of the King, back to place,
Nothing more will occur, I shall have gone to God;
Near ones, friends, brothers of my blood
Will find me dead, near to the bed and the bench.

He was so found, upon his bench, in the early morning.

For long, his fellow townsmen, who mourned him with tears, believed that he was not dead, but had simply withdrawn from life, to carry on his studies. The curious dared not go too near the portion of the wall in the church which contains his tomb. "Quietem posteri ne invidete" was the inscription he caused to be cut—"Invade not the peace of the dead." His wife, however, added the following epitaph:

Here repose the bones of the very illustrious Michel Nostradamus, alone, in the judgment of all mortals, worthy of recording with a pen almost divine, in accord with stellar influences, the coming events of the entire world.

He lived sixty-two years, six months and seventeen days. He died at Salon, in the year 1566. Let posterity not disturb his rest.

Anne Ponsart Gemelle, his wife of Salon, wishes her husband true felicity.

Nostradamus has at various times been called, and will not improbably one day again be called, the greatest prophet of modern times.