what the mystic has always known, that time is an unknown country stretching boundlessly in all directions. Nostradamus, in whom awareness of this set him apart from his fellows, was the Marco Polo of time's uncharted land, in which he traveled the future as we travel a continent. From these transcendental voyagings, like Polo, he returned with incredible stories of strange sights. The prophet's rare okapis were a vision of events to come.

Both of these men, whose discoveries were beyond the comprehension of their age, have come late into their own. Archaeology and exploration have verified the narrative of Polo's travels. History, not only since the sixteenth century, but daily, is verifying the time-travels of that other and greater explorer, Nostradamus. He is of yesterday, today, and still a long tomorrow. By virtue of what he was, and of our own hopes, he deserves the distinguished position today which he had in the Renaissance, and serious study in the light of what science is teaching us of the power and forces of the mind.

It is an old and tenaciously held popular idea that interest in and concentration on extra-dimensional qualities of the mind tend inevitably to some form of imbalance which may run the gamut from credulity to insanity. Too often in the past superstition has added to this its dark aura of witchcraft and abnormal rites. Nostradamus was, throughout his life, a striking refutation of such beliefs. His intellectual achievements and emotional balance, his social adaptation and vigorous health show him as the pattern of the well-rounded man. Considering his unique gift, he may be said to have had, besides his genius for prophecy, a veritable genius for normality. Had he never written the Centuries, his title to fame would still be clear. The brilliant skill and self-sacrificing devotion which made him the greatest physician in France of his day would alone keep his memory green. Physician, linguist, scholar, diplomat, writer, teacher, religieux and prophet, his life touched all phases of Renaissance thought and activity from the hovels of France, where he fought the plague, to the court of the Valois, where he was honored beyond any seer in history.

The Book of Joel, which seems to have made a strong impression upon Nostradamus, contains within its grim forecast the lovely, well-known passage:

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Nostradamus was the greatest of all who since Biblical ages have given to these words the substance of fulfillment. And perhaps his life was prelusive to the "clear seeing" which may be the glory of the coming age….

Today's news is in the prophecies of the Centuries. Russia and England are now fighting on the same side, while war rages in the Orient, just as Nostradamus predicted. Before this book is off the presses, more striking predictions may have seen fulfillment. And perhaps there will be verses, omitted here because their meaning was not yet clear, which will have become clear through the rapid onrush of events. It is difficult to indicate chronological sequence in events of the future, and any interpreter's confusion on this point in unavoidable. Nostradamus may have juggled order to further mask identification and meaning. Also many of the quatrains had to be omitted for lack of space. Those most pertinent to our time, and to the development of the future, are given first consideration here.

The final chapter of the historic cycle of the Nostradamus predictions is naturally the most exciting to us who live in the midst of its predicted alarms and tragic drama and can foresee, in part, some of the fearsome days of the future. Nostradamus has given in the course of the Centuries many dates, both actual years and astronomically stated times. He has not given, directly, the date for the emergence of France from her yoke of bondage. But in the opinion of this author he has given it in the number of his verses, one of the cryptic methods which he enjoyed using for his half-concealments. The final edition of his work contained ten Centuries which by right should have totaled a thousand quatrains. There were but nine hundred and forty-four. If one takes these two facts as giving the elements of a historic date, and adds them, the date is 1944.

This is not to be taken, however, as the date for the crowning of a new king of France, but rather perhaps of his coming to the fore, or raising the royal standard, together with a new attitude in France. In other words, it is the turning point. Several verses indicate that the stabilization of Europe, and the fullness of a new king's power will not come until 1952–3.

The present Pretender to the French throne is Henri, Duc de Guise. He corresponds in the facts of his life to the description given by the prophet of the coming king. The last king of his line, he would be the first to bear the name Henry since the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, Henry of Navarre, and would complete the cycle of the house of Bourbon-Orleans, whose first ruler was born within the lifetime of Nostradamus….

The Rise of the Orient

The author, sometime ago, cited some of the predictions in the following verses to a well-known military commentator. He said that they were not news. That men in his particular work who were always scanning future horizons for long-range prophecies of their own had long accepted the rise of the Orient as a fait accompli of the future, and that for this reason the political forecasters gave triple attention to every item that came out of Asia and Africa. Nostradamus in his own day saw the might of the Orient and its menace to Christian Europe, and he knew that cycles return.

     VIII—59
Twice lifted to power, twice overthrown,
The Orient like the Occident will weaken.
His adversary after numerous struggles,
Routed by the sea, in a pinch will fall.

     IX—60
In the conflict with the Barbarian with the black Head-dress
Bloodshed will make Dalmatia tremble,
The might of Araby will rear its headland,
The frogs will shake with fear, Portugal will give help.

The frogs are the French; that is the ancient name from Merovingian times.

     VI—85
The great city of Constaninople will be destroyed by the French;
The forces of the Turban will be taken captive.
Help will come by sea from a great leader of Portugal.
This will happen on the twenty-fifth of May, the day of Saint Urban.

Probably the prophet looks back from this advanced time to what is Portugal today, as this is a small country and may be incorporated in a large one. A modern French commentator, realizing its size, says, naïvely enough, that Portugal will send for the U. S. fleet!

VIII—77

Anti-Christ will be three times annihilated,
Seven and twenty years blood will be shed in war.
Dead heretics, captives and exiles there shall be,
Blood, human corpses, crimson waters and hail upon the earth.

     I—18
Through the negligence and discord of France
An opening will be given to the followers of Mohammed.
The earth and sea of the north of Italy will be bloodsoaked,
The harbor of Marseilles will be filled with ships and sails.

     III—44
The ancient monarch driven out of power
Will go to fetch his help among those of the Orient.
For fear of the cross he will fold his standard.
In Greece he will go by land and sea.

     V—112
The sea will not be safe for the monarchy,
Those of self-indulgent life will hold all Africa,
No longer will the hypocrites be in occupation,
And a portion of Asia will change.

Life will be frankly hedonistic in Africa without the mask of moral hypocrisy.

     V—55
In the country of Arabia Felix
There shall be born a puissant leader of the Mohammedans.
He will trouble Spain and conquer Granada,
And from beyond the sea he shall invade the people of the Italian west coast.

     VI—80
From Fez the rule shall attain to the countries of Europe.
Their cities will be fired and their people pierced with a blade,
The chief leader of Asia will bring a great troop by land and sea.
He will pursue the royalists, the priests and the cross to their death.

     III—20
Through the lands watered by the great river Bethis
Far within Spain in the kingdom of Granada,
The cross will be driven back by a Mohammedan nation,
A man of Cordova will betray his country.

     I—73
France, through her neglect, will be assailed on five fronts,
Tunis and Algiers will be stirred up by the peoples of Asia,
León, Seville and Barcelona will fall
And they will not have the fleet of Venice to protect them.

In the coming invasions of Europe, through the rising of the Orient, the prophet makes sarcastic reference to the long years in his own day when the Venetian fleet, unaided, protected Europe against the East while the nations of Europe quarreled amongst themselves. That situation, he says, will come again, and this time there won't be the Venetian fleet.

     II—96
A burning torch shall appear in the heaven
Above the Rhone from source to mouth.
Famine, sword will afflict, succor will be tardily brought.
The Persian will turn to the invasion of Macedonia.

     IX—73
The Monarch of the blue Turban when he has entered into Foix
Will rule less than an evolution of Saturn (29 years).
The King of the white Turban and the high courage of Byzantium
Will be manifest near the time of holding when Sun, Mars and Mercury are conjoined in Aquarius.

This conjunction takes place February 18, 1981.

     Presage 35
France shall be greatly saddened by a death,
The mother and tutrice shall be bereft of the royal blood.
Government and Lords will be made orphans by the Crocodiles,
Strong cities, castles and towns will be taken by surprise,
May Almighty God guard them from these evils.

The Crocodiles are the people of Africa and tropical Asia who will overwhelm France, the mother and tutrice, after the final fall of the Bourbon dynasty.

     V—75
The Church of God will be persecuted,
The sacred temples will be despoiled,
The child shall strip the mother of everything,
The Arabs will join the Jews.

     V—25
The rule of the Church will succumb by sea
To the Prince of Arabia when Mars, Sun and Venus are conjoined in Leo,
Across Persia will come full near a million troops,
The true serpent will invade Byzantium and Egypt.

The date of this conjunction is August 21, 1987.

The End of the Age

Not only ever since the Christian era, but long before in the songs and lamentations of the Hebrew prophets, the end of the great precessional era of the Fishes, Pisces, has been foretold in a wealth of tragic and saddening detail. It is not the end of the world, as many people of old times thought, but the end of a grand period, and the birth of a new age with a different type of thought and civilization. Nostradamus prophesied that it would be marked by the downfall of old Europe, and be ushered in with earthquakes and eclipses such as the Bible describes in the scene of the Crucifixion.

Science recognizes that from time to time the earth changes the inclination of its axis. They know this from fossil remains (which, for example, show that Alaska had once a warm climate, and other localities show that similar changes have taken place). But science has no knowledge of what causes this change, nor in what cycle of years its return may be expected. Nor does Nostradamus specify the date for this occurrence, but by implication he links it with the phenomenon of the double eclipse which will take place in 1999.

The two eclipses will occur in the sign Leo, a partial one on July 28th, and a total one on August 11. The event is a very rare astronomical phenomenon. Camille Flammarion wrote of it in detail. All astronomers then living will prepare to observe it with every advanced resource of scientific equipment. Nostradamus, in both his letter to the King and in his verses, has given his picture of what he predicts will affect the entire world. Science is just beginning to have an understanding of terrestrial phenomena, such as floods and earthquakes, coming as the result of celestial phenomena, the doctrine held by astrologers for thousands of years. Science has arrived at some limited conclusions forced by the necessity for better long-range weather forecasting. But the study of earthquakes, floods and volcanoes, made in the light of the gravitational and magnetic strains and stresses of the Sun, Moon and planets, is still in its infancy and as yet almost nothing is known about it. The wise men of old knew these things, and Nostradamus knew them. He needed no telescope for the double eclipse, and he not only saw it, but he saw the train of events that came with it, something no giant telescope can show.

In his letter to the King the prophet has this to say of the last years of the twentieth century:

Then shall begin the great empire of Antichrist in the invasions of Xerxes and Attila ("one who will revive the King of the Angoumois," and the Oriental invasion) who will come with a countless throng, so that the advent of the Holy Spirit, from the 48th parallel, will make a great change and chase away the abomination of Antichrist that made war on the sovereign Vicar of Christ (the Pope) and against his Church for a time and to the end of time. This will be preceded by an eclipse of the Sun, of denser darkness than has ever been seen since the Creation and up to the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and from that time until the coming one. There will take place in the month of October a great translation made so that the earth will seem to lose the weight of its natural motion in an abyss of endless darkness. There will be premonitory signs in the spring, and there will be extreme changes, overthrows of kingdoms, and earthquakes….

In the last period all the Christian kingdoms, and those of the infidels, will be shaken for twenty-five years. The wars and battles will be more injurious. Towns, cities, castles, and other buildings will be burned, laid waste, and destroyed, with great blood-shed of vestals, violation of wives and widows, and children at the breast dashed and broken against the walls of the towns. Satan, the prince infernal, will commit so many evils that nearly the whole world will be afflicted and desolated.

After this has endured for a certain length of time, Saturn will almost renew his cycle (twenty-nine years), but God the Creator will bring an age of gold. He will heed the affliction of His people, and He will bind Satan and throw him into the abyss. Then shall begin between God and man a universal peace, and Satan will be bound for a thousand years. Then the cycle will return in grand power, Satan will be once more unbound against the Church.

     IV—67
The year that Saturn and Mars are conjunct and combust
The air will be very dry and there will be a long trajection (comet),
Through incendiarism a great locality will be consumed by fire,
There will be little rain, with wind, heat, wars and incursions.

This configuration occurs in April, 1998. It is in that year that Nostradamus predicts the great invasion of France. The path of the solar eclipse, which will be total, passes through northern France and Belgium.

     V—54
From the Euxine Sea and great Tartary
There will arise a King who will eventually behold Gaul.
He will traverse Turkey and Germany
And in Byzantium will leave his bloody track.

     II—29
The Oriental will go out from his home
To cross the Apennines and look on France.
He will traverse the clouds and the snows of heaven,
And everyone will be struck down with his club.

     X—72
In the year 1999 and seven months
From the sky will come a great and terrible King
Who will revive the great King of the Angoumois,
Before and after his coming war will rule at full blast.

The Angoumois were an early Gallic people conquered by the invading Goths. The situation will be similar.

     III—84
The Great City will be desolate,
Of her inhabitants not one shall remain to dwell there,

Wall, sex, building and virgin will be violated.
By battle, fire, corruption and cannon the people will die.

     II—28
The last but one to be called Pope
Will take Diana for his day and his repose,
He will wander afar on account of his distracted head,
Seeking to deliver a great people from economic oppression.

Diana is the Moon, so that Monday will be the Pope's day of rest. The Moon rules changes, travels and voyagings, and it is involved in mental frenzies and distracted mentalities. In the famous prophecy of Malachi, in his descriptions of the popes yet to come he names third before Petrus Romanus (the last one named) De Medietate Lunae. De Medietate Lunae means "relating to the half-Moon, which is the crescent of Diana." Malachi's further description of this pope is: "From the half-moon proceeds this pope sent to Rome by the Divine Doctor, Hail, our well-beloved Pius XII, most holy Mediator, future victim." The present incumbent of the holy See is Pius XII, and more than any previous pope he has "wandered afar." But otherwise the description does not fit, nor does he come in the order given by Malachi. According to the Monk of Padua there will be two popes after the Lunar, and three more before him. Nostradamus names him as the "penultimate" pope. In the times of the Avignon popes and the Great Schism Cardinal Pietro di Luna was one of the false popes. Eustache Deschamps, a famous satiric poet of that time, whose writings were not only familiar to Nostradamus but imitated and quoted by him, wrote a satire called, "Of the Schism in the Church Which is Much Troubled by the Moon" (Luna). Some of Nostradamus' lines are very close to lines in this satire.

     III—17
Mount Aventine will be seen flaming in the night.
The sky will be suddenly obscured in Flanders.
When the Monarch drives out his nephew,
The people of the Church will commit scandals.

     VIII—15
Toward the north great efforts will be made by mankind,
Almost all of Europe and the whole world will be tormented.
The two eclipses will put men to such pursuit
And will augment life and death among the Hungarians.

These two eclipses, one of the Sun and the other of the Moon, both occur in August of 1999, in the sign Leo, traditionally associated.

     VIII—16
In the place where the Almighty has built His ship (Rome)
The deluge will be so great and so sudden
That there will be no spot of earth for a firm foothold.
The wave will cover the Olympus of Fiesole (Apennines).

     I—69
The great round mountain of the seven hills (Rome),
After it has gone through peace, war, famine and inundation,
Will tumble far, sending the great country into the abyss,
Even its antiquities will be lost and its great foundation.

     I—56
You will see, early and late, great changes take place,
Extremes of horror and prosecutions
As if the Moon were guided by its spirit,
The heavens approach the time of their tilting.

     I—84
The Moon obscured in profound darkness,
Her brother (the Sun) will become the color of rust,
The great one hidden for a long time in darkness
Will turn the sword in the bloody wound.

     I—47
For forty years the rainbow shall not appear.
For forty years all the days shall behold
A barren earth and increasing scarcity,
And great deluges will be perceived.

     X—74
At the revolution of the grand number seven
There will appear the hazards of the hecatomb,
Not far from the great Millennial age
The dead shall go out from their tomb.

     X—73
Past and present times together
Will be judged by the great Jehovah,
The world in its late stage will be abandoned by Him
And sentence will be passed on the disloyal clergy.

     VII—41
Those whose bones of hands and feet were shut up
In a dwelling long uninhabited by noise
Will be disinherited while they are in the depths of their dream
And translated to a house that is salutary and calm.