Nostradamus 👁⚡👁

⚡ "The present time

together with the past,

shall be judged by a great jovialist."

― Nostradamus

⚡____________⚡

I continue my compilation of the Top 10 Prophets of All Time, in chronological order.

These are what came before....

Part #1- the Oracles of Delphi.

Part #2- the Sibyls of Rome.

Part #3- the Mayans.

Part #4- Hildegard of Bingen.

Part #5- Leonardo Da Vinci

Part #6

Nostradamus –

1503-1566

⚡

In the 1500s, the largest country in Europe was France.

French farmers had improved their methods. Times were still troubled, but food was much more plentiful. People lived longer and prospered.

Religion no longer held such sway over people’s daily lives. The first steps were being taken that would result in a separation of church and state. People could chose which religion they wanted to follow.

Still, one religious group was prone to murdering or torturing people of other orders. Protestants and Catholics fought bloody battles against each other.

Both groups persecuted Jews.

Throughout the Renaissance, people had an avid interest in the occult, which was then extremely popular. Religion divided people. Astrology— not as much. At one point in Paris, even in that enlightened age, there were 30,000 fortune tellers making a living. Queen Catherine de Medicis had at least four astrologers in her court.

Then there was a French doctor named Michel de Nostredame—also known as Nostradamus—who became world famous with his startling predictions.

He was born in 1503 and he grew up an outsider because his parents were secretly Jewish. They practiced their faith in hiding after publicly converting to Catholicism to avoid being banished.

Even in school, Michel fervently believed in the Copernican theory that the earth was round, which angered the priests who were teaching him. In medical school, he picked up the nickname “Little Astrologer.” What was called “celestial science” was perfectly acceptable in this era. It was even part of basic medical training.

Of all students, no one was more devoted to his studies than Nostradamus.

At that time, bubonic plague was sweeping across Europe and Asia, killing millions of people. Nostradamus was a specialist in that highly infectious disease.

The Black Death, as it was called, inflicted its victims with large black blisters and other horrific symptoms.

Doctors tried everything they could think of to treat the plague, including bleeding people. Guided by Islamic materials he had read, Nostradamus prescribed clean water, fresh air, and a rose pill he became famous for, which included cloves, aloe, green Cyprus sawdust, and a powder made from rose petals (that happened to be packed with vitamin C).

Valiantly, he helped cure entire towns. But when his own wife and two children were taken by the plague, friends and family turned on him. He found himself facing trial by religious authorities for a joke he’d made about demons many years before.

By cover of night, Nostradamus packed his mule and fled. He remained in hiding for ten years and when he returned to the scene, it was with a new talent: prognostication. He quickly gained respect for his gift of prophecy. He married a rich widow and had six more children.

His future seemed bright.

On the top floor of a house in Salon, Nostradamus created his personal library of books on the occult. His study was accessed by a stone spiral staircase and was off-limits to others. Often staying up all night long, his neighbors noticed the light of his candles at all hours. He needed only four to five hours sleep. The rest of his time, he spent on his work.

Using the Oracle of Delphi as a model (See Part #1 of this series ⚡😁👍), Nostradamus sat on a tripod above a brass bowl of steaming water and fragrant oils. His focus was aided by staring into the water, or at a fire. He then searched horoscopes from the past, charting the heavenly bodies so he would know where they were on specific dates. He prayed for divine help in determining names and dates, and then he would further develop his ideas through meditation, with then still more astrological research, also aided by obscure tricks he had learned during his travels.

When he eventually began writing down his visions, he shaped them into verse. His greatest masterpiece is called Centuries, a collection of a thousand predictions foretelling the entire future of humanity. Many of his prophecies are mysterious, much like the Oracle of Delphi’s verses. Other times, however, he was very specific.

Authorities would consider his writings to be pagan, which was punishable by death, so Nostradamus wrote in several different languages and he scrambled his words. He also made certain verses were vague to prevent hurting people’s feelings. To understand Centuries really requires a knowledge of esoteric French wordplay, as well as Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Italian.

Perhaps his most famous prediction was when he foretold the death of Henry II, the King of France. It was an unusual demise.

"The young lion shall overcome the old

"In warlike fields in single duel:

"In a cage of gold he will pierce his eyes,

"Two wounds one then die, a cruel death."

Four years later, Henry competed in a jousting tournament with the captain of the Scottish Guards. The young knight’s jousting spear broke, and one splinter pierced the king’s throat. Another piece plunged through the monarch's golden helmet, straight into his eye, skewering his brain. Henry died later that night in horrible plain.

It was that prediction’s astonishing accuracy that made Nostradamus famous (notorious) at the age of fifty-six.

Many concluded he was a witch under Satan’s sway. Some people theorized that he had plotted to kill the king. The same night as Henry’s death, an angry mob burned Nostradamus in effigy. His house was regularly stoned after that, often causing him to relocate elsewhere.

The majority of people, however, found Nostradamus fascinating. The reading public devoured his books. Some thought he was the voice of God Himself.

Eventually, Queen Catherine brought him to Paris to become her personal astrologer. He did horoscopes for all her children. King Charles IX gave him the title of Counselor and Physician in Ordinary. He became the toast of all European courts.

He was often tested. Once, the lord of a grand manor asked Nostradamus which of two pigs would be served for dinner that night. Nostradamus said, “We will eat the black pig, but a wolf will eat the white.”

The Lord then secretly ordered his cook to slay the white pig. When the cook went to do as ordered, he found the Lord’s pet wolf cub eating the white pig, so he hastily fetched the black one to prepare for the meal.

Later that evening, he was forced to admit that Nostradamus had been right.

Most scholars of Nostradamus believe roughly half of his prophecies came true. But they disagree about which predictions apply to which events. Nostradamus seemed to foretell the date of the great London fire (1666) and he got many details right about the French Revolution (1789-1799). He predicted the breakthroughs of Louis Pasteur (born 1822) and saw the rise of Adolph Hitler (born 1889), who he called “a captain of Greater Germany.”

In the 1940s, the wife of Joseph Goebbels was obsessed with the occult. She found Nostradamus’s references to Germany and showed them to Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels interpreted the prophecies to mean that the Third Reich would rule the world. He had leaflets of Nostradamus’s predictions printed up, slanted to foretell Germany’s victory, and had them dropped over Belgium and France.

Some of Nostradamus’s visions are quite murky. He predicted three Antichrists who will push humanity to the brink of total destruction. The first two Antichrists are generally agreed to have been French emperor Napoleon, and Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazis. As to who the third Antichrist is: that is a subject of heated debate. Some have suggested it is Saddam Hussein.

But maybe we have a newer candidate in America?

Nostradamus refers numerous times to “the three brothers”, who are viewed to be the Kennedys. He seemed to foretell the moon landing in 1969; the Gulf War; the scourge of AIDS; civil war in Yugoslavia; the Hale-Bopp comet; and the death of England’s Princess Diana. He wrote, “the nine set apart… their fate determined on departure,” which fits the Challenger shuttle disaster.

Many movies have been made about Nostradamus, including The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, which caused some panic when it debuted in May of 1988. Some West Coast Americans worried that “the Big One” was eminent, a titanic earthquake that would devastate California.

Countless commentaries have been written about him. Nostradamus’s books have been available in print for hundreds of years, a distinction shared only by the Bible and a few others.

In 1566, Nostradamus gave his last prediction, foretelling his own final moments.

“On his return from the Embassy, the King’s gift put in pace.

“He will do nothing more.

“He will be gone to God.

“Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood will find him completely dead near the bed and the bench.”

It happened just as he said. After returning from a trip to Paris, to the court of King Charles, he died alone. His family found his body lying across the bench he’d built to help himself get in and out of bed. He was sixty-three.

⚡____________⚡

This concludes Part Six of this Series. Part Seven tomorrow.

________________________Bolt⚡

⚡_________________⚡

Next time: A visionary author of the 19th Century.

⚡_________________⚡

The previous editions of this series....👇