The Secrets Of Nostradamus

David Ovason

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780062194015
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

His name has become a synonym for clairvoyance: Nostradamus, astrologer to the king of France, the most famous seer in Western history. But the real meaning of his prophecies has gone undetected, hidden in a secret alchemical code. Known as the Green Language, it was understood by only a handful of medieval occult scholars, and has been lost for centuries—until now.

David Ovason spent 40 years working on the Green Language, enabling him to finally crack the secret code of Nostradamus. In this book, he reveals with line-by-line analysis the hidden writings of the great astrologer, showing that his dates and details are more exact than any previous scholars have realized. As a master of the arcane astrological traditions practiced by Nostradamus, Ovason provides the most accurate and insightful account ever written of this mysterious figure's writings, predictions, and life.

PART ONE

The Life, Times
and Techniques of
Nostradamus

Chapter 1

NOSTRADAMUS AND HIS TIMES

In the same way, also, many have become learned men, who, having attained a suitable sidereal body, have sedulously exercised themselves in their native influence. Hence it happens that they at last draw down upon themselves the influence of their native constellation, just as rays from the sun. So an admirable science, doctrine, and wisdom are discovered … taken from the stars alone. Heaven being thus constituted, and producing for itself a sidereal body, there arise many great minds, many writers, doctors, interpreters of Scriptures, and philosophers, according as each is formed from its constellation. Their writings and doctrines are not to be considered sacred, although they have a certain singular authority, given by the constellation and influence, by the spirits of Nature, not of God. Operations of this kind sometimes proceed from the mind of man in a stupendous manner, when men, changing their heart and soul, would make themselves like to the saints, being made such by a drunken star: whereas wine changes man, so also these are changed. It is, therefore, worth while to understand this sort of astronomy.

(Paracelsus, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, 1894, edited by A. E. Waite, Vol. II, “Hermetic Medicine and Hermetic Philosophy,” p. 302)

In the year 1555, Michel Nostradamus published the first part of his Prophéties, an arcane collection of predictions which was, in later times, to become the most famous French book of the sixteenth century. Who was this remarkable savant, and what was the background to his life in the middle of that century, in France?

According to his son, César (whose writings have proved to be somewhat unreliable), Nostradamus was born in southern France at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a small market town in the modern Département of Bouches-du-Rhône, about 15 miles northeast of Arles, on the old-style date,* December 14, 1503. We shall study the horoscope for this birth in Appendix One. It is a remarkably powerful chart, with the three superior planets (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) conjuncted over the two fixed stars, Castor and Pollux (fig. 3).

If it is true, as we suspect, that Nostradamus was born a few minutes after midday, then the horoscope is hypercharged, since the conflict engendered by the opposition between the Sun and the three superiors (that is, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) would demand a special discipline to control creative energies. From the figure, and from the remarkable aspect which it displays, and which Nostradamus later turned into a sort of talisman for his personal seal, we may be sure that he was born with a more than unusual sense of mission. In it was all the promise contained in Paracelsus’ description of the true seer, set out in the header quotation above. To fulfill this promise, Nostradamus would have needed the instruction of an initiate teacher to help find expression for these powerful energies, for they would have proved destructive in any person who did not receive special instruction. His life and work is evidence that he did succeed in harnessing this power (for Nostradamus as an initiate, see Appendix Three), and it is clear that he remained, in the words of Paracelsus, a man touched by a drunken star, a stella dilutior, a man just a little inebriated by the influx of spirit. Who the initiate teacher of this star-struck man was remains a mystery. Indeed, considering his fame, even during his own lifetime, and even taking into account the vast amount of erudition spent by scholars searching for details of his life, the achievements of Nostradamus remain essentially an enigma.

The popular story of Nostradamus one finds in the multitude of sub-cultural books is little more than a benign fabrication—at best entertaining fables, at worst tissues of lies. A thorough and reliable account of his life would involve a tiresome destruction of fables and legends—even of the serious histories offered by such scholars as Charles Ward or le Pelletier: this is not our purpose here. Our aim is merely to present a summary of the little which is known about Nostradamus with any degree of certainty. Fortunately modern French research criticism has effected a revolution in the study of Nostradamus.

The indefatigable researches of Edgar Leroy¹ have resulted in a series of genealogical tables which have amended much that was previously supposed to have been known about the background of Nostradamus, derived mainly from Jehan de Nostredame (the savant’s brother),² César de Nostradame (his son)³ and Jean-Aimé de Chavigny (his friend and disciple).⁴ Unfortunately, Leroy’s reliable conclusion is that one knows nothing for sure about the early years of Nostradamus. Nonetheless, out of the obscurity emerge a few facts. Nostradamus’ father was Jacques de Nostredame (sometimes called Jaume), who had been born in Avignon, and who, while he earned his living as a merchant, later practiced as a notary. His mother was Reynière de Saint-Rémy (sometimes called Renée). One may still inspect the crumbling exterior of the house on Rue Hoche where, it is said, Nostradamus was born. Nearby, in the ancient street now called Rue de Nostradamus, one may see, above the fountain of two fishes and leonine water-spouts, a fine bust of the savant (fig. 4).

However, it is not in Saint-Rémy that one is likely to find the true spirit of Nostradamus—in its concern for words, etymologies and arcanities—but in an area about a mile to the south of the town. The French commentator Jean-Paul Clébert, whose interpretation of certain quatrains is among the most perspicacious of modern times, noted the influence of a landscape very near to Saint-Rémy on the mind of the young Nostradamus.⁵ He reminded us of what all visitors to Saint-Rémy cannot help but observe—that the strange word Mansol, which is found in six of the quatrains, is a reference to a spot less than a mile to the south of Saint-Rémy.⁶ This was the old priory, the Manseolo of the thirteenth century, the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole of modern times, where the cloisters painted by Van Gogh still remain, alongside the mental hospital which now bears the artist’s name.*

The church and cloisters of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole are the Pol Mansol which opens quatrain X.29. Even the so-called “pyramid,” which stands in the lavender fields in front of the caved walls below this same church, is mentioned by Nostradamus, as are the goat-caves excavated into these cliffs and marketed in modern times for tourists as “ancient Roman slave enclosures.”⁷ As we shall see, the possible predictive implication of the six Mansol quatrains can be worked out with more certainty, once their connection with Saint-Rémy, and with the adjacent Greek and Roman antiquities, has been recognized (see page 144). However, entirely typical of Nostradamus’ style, this “local” reading may prove to be nothing more than an occult blind to the deeper meaning of the quatrain.

Although the child was baptized a Christian, it is very likely that his not-too-distant ancestors were converted Jews, from Italy. Dr. Edgar Leroy is specific in tracing their background to Jewish merchants who came to Carpentras and Avignon in the second half of the fifteenth century. It was the stigma attached to being Jewish in a country where the Jews had been expelled which led Nostradamus’ disciple, Chavigny, to deny his Jewish origins. Nostradamus’ son, César, also glossed over them. Research has confirmed beyond any doubt that his roots were Jewish.

So far as can be determined from the records examined with such care by Dr. Edgar Leroy and E. Lhez, the conversion from Jewry was made by Pierre de Nostredame before 1455. Leroy records that in the registry of a document dated May 12, 1455, witnessed by the notary Jacques Giraud of Avignon, there is a marginal note:

Pro Petro de Nostra Domina Olim cum judeus esset vocato Vidono Gassonet obligatio

Obligation for Pierre de Nostredame who was called Guy Gassonet, from the time he was Jewish

It is possible, from a later witnessed document, that the changed name was wrongly recorded, but with good reason: Pierre had married the daughter of one Jesse Gassonet of Monteux. Her father, who also had converted to Christanity, had taken the name of Richaud. However, his daughter refused to convert. Pierre, already a Christian, was therefore obliged to repudiate the marriage, at Orange. In brief, it seems from Leroy’s documentation that the Pierre, or Guy Gassonet, ancestry could be traced back with certainty through three generations; through Arnaud de Velorgues, one Vital (who married Astrugie Massip), and to Astruge of Carcassonne. This would take us well back into the fourteenth century, out of surviving documentation and into richer legends. Unfortunately, the few facts about Nostradamus’ simple background were well disguised by his son César in his account of the family lineage: he proclaimed that his father was descended from a line of learned doctors, well versed in languages. One need only visit an upper room in the town hall of Salon, the town in which father and son lived, to understand the urgency with which César felt he should improve his family line. On the walls of this splendid room hang two sixteenth-century portraits, facing each other across time and space. Both are reputed to have been painted by César himself. If so, he was an amateur of considerable talent. One is the picture of his father, made famous by a thousand reproductions.

The other painting (if it is by César) is a self-portrait, revealing him as a fashionable and successful man of social distinction, a musical instrument (perhaps it is a lute) at his feet. In this picture, he is far more debonair than the engraved portrait of the worried man, nearing 60, which appears as frontispiece to his own history book.⁸ In modern times, we might be tempted to call César “upwardly mobile”: it was imperative that he should not show his roots to have been too deeply embedded in peasant clay: he was keen to give the impression that, if he was not exactly from noble stock, then he was at least from a line of respectable scholars.

The date of César’s birth is uncertain, but, from the dedicatory Preface to the Prophéties, we know that it must have been around about 1554. He died around about 1630. Thanks to his considerable inheritance from his father, he seems to have been able to lead the life of a dilettante writer and artist, with an interest in local government. In microscopic characters on the portrait of his father in the Bibliothèque de la Mésjanes, in Aix-en-Provence, César has written two couplets in Latin.

Caesaris est satis patris haec Michaelis imago
Edit hie hunc genitor, prodit hic ille patrem
Sic pater est natus nati, pater est quoque patris
Natus et hinc rebus numina rident.*

This we translate as:

This image of Michel, the father, is by César, the son.
The former engendered the latter: he has produced his father.
If the father is born of the son, then the son is also the father of the father.
The gods smile at this birth and at this curious design.

In literature at least, César seems to have been a plagiarist, to judge from his l’Histoire et Chronique de Provence. The final impression one has is of a gentleman of leisure, a social climber who was rather ashamed of his background, who sadly failed to develop his considerable talent as an artist.

All members of the Nostradamus family seem to have received excellent educations, at a time when those who were privileged to be educated had the opportunity to drink in knowledge still imbued with esoteric lore. It is usually claimed that the youthful Nostradamus learned astrology and the rudiments of herbalism and medicine from his grandfather. It has also been suggested that it was these early interests which persuaded Nostradamus to study medicine at Montpellier University. In his own book on cosmetics, Nostradamus tells us that he spent from 1521 to 1529 working on astrology, in connection with its medical associations—in fact, “to learn the source and origin of the planets”—in his search for healing principles. It is significant that such information is derived from a text which quite openly deals with disguise, or as he puts it, from a book designed to help women “deceive the eyes of onlookers.” Afterward, he is supposed to have worked in medicine at Narbonne, Carcassonne, Toulouse and Bordeaux, and, within a short time, to have established a deserved reputation in Provence as having the power to heal those sick of the plague, during the frequent outbreaks which the insanitary conditions of the time encouraged. He seems to have returned to Montpellier before 1533, for it was in this year that he completed his Doctor’s degree.

Most of these “facts” have been called into question by modern research, especially by Leroy, who questions whether Nostradamus did stay in such cities as Carcassonne and Bordeaux, during the periods so often given in history books. Research has also shown that it is unlikely that Nostradamus was ordered to appear before the inquisitors at Toulouse, around about 1534, as the majority of biographers have claimed.

Documentation for these years is sparse. However, the records for his entry into the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier University are still preserved, for October 23, 1529. He was in Agen by 1533, but why he went there, and what he did once there, is uncertain, though most historians have followed Jean-Aimé de Chavigny in reading into his visit his friendship with Scaliger,* who by then was living in Agen.

The imaginative biographies of later years insist that he built his reputation as a doctor curing people of the plague. We do not know what the truth of this is. The later commentators mention a mysterious powder which he used to protect himself in these dangerous plague venues. He is supposed to have left the secret formula in his treatise on cosmetics.⁹ Raoul Busquet describes a powder “made by Nostradamus” which arrested the plague at Aix in 1546.¹⁰ Of course, similar stories are told of other occultist-doctors of the period, including Paracelsus and Agrippa. The former occultist, Paracelsus, is often portrayed with this mysterious powder, the Azoth or Zoth, secreted in the pommel of his sword (fig. 5). In one of his arcane verses, Nostradamus actually used the word Asotus, which may relate to this secret, but which was taken by later chemists, unfamiliar with the arcane tradition, as a name for nitrogen. The powder was a specific against the plague, for in the hermetic literature it is the alchemical “ri...