In later life, Nostradamus's secretary and disciple, Jean-Aymes de Chavigny turned biographer to write La Vie et le Testament de Michel Nostradamus. In it, Chavigny made the fascinating assertion that the young Michel maintained that the earth was a sphere which moved yearly round the sun, as did the various planets. If this is true, it could be the first, scarcely notices, example of his prophetic talent. At the time, learned opinion was unanimous in believing that a flat earth was at the center of the universe.
The young Nostradamus, already well educated by his learned grandfather, quickly became dissatisfied with the ignorance and dogma of his professors. With medical science still virtually in the dark ages, Michel's observations about cleanliness and the potential hazards of bleeding patients fell on deaf ears.
Eventually he developed his own methods of healing, taking to the road to follow the course of the bubonic plague. Instead of bleeding, he prescribed fresh, unpolluted water and clean air, and he administered herbal cures. In Narbonne, Carcassonne, in Toulouse and Bordeaux, his healing skills saved thousands from certain death.
It may have been through his visions of the future that Nostradamus understood about the importance of sanitation and existence of germs. The work of Louis Pasteur, the great 19th-century medical pioneer of microbiology and vaccination is anticipated in Nostradamus's writing four centuries before his birth.
The picture we should paint of Nostradamus is not of a crazy psychic astrologer, suffering from delusions of grandeur with regard to his prophetic powers, but rather one of a highly educated man, scholar and medical contributions to his society as a result of his learning intelligence and insight.
Nostradamus
studied at Avignon and at Montpellier University, taking up medicine at
the latter institute as his main subject. Graduating in 1525, he left academia
to pursue a career as a wandering physician. The plague was rife at the
time and Nostradamus soon gained considerable renown for his unorthodox
methods of treating it.
The events which led to the awakening of hid prophetic powers centers around his being called by the Inquisition to defend himself on a charge of heresy. Nostradamus escaped under cover of darkness to warder around Europe on a journey of self-discovery, avoiding the Church Inquisitions and trying to piece together the fragments of his ruined life.
Nostradamus then married for a second time, this to to a rich widow by the name of Anne Ponsart Gemelle. Their house in Salon, which still stands to this day, has been renovated in his honor, in favor of writing. Having converted the top floor of his house in to a study, he committed himself to a much more all embracing work: a vast collection of general prophecies. Little did he know how infamous these would become.
Its often started that the reason Nostradamus made his writings obscure was to avoid persecution, either from the religious authorities who has cause him such problems in the past, or from particular powerful individuals whose fates were predicted in terms which were not exactly what they wished to hear. there are reasons which bear some credence. However , it is more than likely that the quatrains are obscure simply because this is the way that Nostradamus experienced them, or received them, in his trance-like state.
There is no doubt that Nostradamus would tinker with the prophecies, but they would have been received by him in no particular order, and would have been obscured quite simply because of the symbolic picture forms in which they came to him - rather like dreams, they are messages from a world which does not follow our rules which are bound by the time and space.
The great project, however, was
never to be fully completed. When first published in 1555, it consisted
of only the first three Centuries, plus part of the fourth. Even
the 1568 edition lacked over 50 of the seventh Century's intended
quatrains - though it did contain the prefatory letter to Nostradamus's
young son CÐsar and odd quatrain in Latin doggerel at the end of Century
VI. Alsoincleded was a bafflingly symbolic prose synopsis of his predictions
in the form of a rambling screed entitled Letter to Henri King of France
the Second. In addition, 141 Portents and 58 six-line verses were incorporated
into various subsequent editions, as well as eight additional quatrains
for Century VIII and 13 new ones apparently intended for two extra
Centuries that were never completed.
With fame and riches came the pain of gout, arthritics ad dropsy. Nostradamus died rich and famous. At the age of sixty-two, during the night of 1-2 July 1566, just as he had predicted to his local priest the evening before, and in exactly the manner that he had apparently already described. the final prophecy in Nostradamus's last Almanac foretell his own death:
Once back from embassy, once garnered in
The kingly gift, all's done: his spirit sped,
The dearest of his friends, his closest kin
Beside the bed and bench shall find him dead.
There would also have been magical equipment. this would have consisted of a brass tripod, a small lamp or candle, the flame of which provided the room's only light, a wand, probably of laurel, and a bowl containing water. the atmosphere would have been pervaded by smell of incense.
The Key of Salomon indicated elaborate preparations, but complete its promise was ' Then will spirits appear and approach, from every side.' Nostradamus may not have gone so far as invoke spirits. We don't know, however, that he placed his laurel want upon the tripod and wet his feet using the water in bolw. Then, using the same water, he moistened the hem of his robe. These were simple enough actions, but they reflected something deep, ancient and mysterious.
According to Nostradamus, as he
completed a ritual a voice sounded which filled him with such terror that
him arms trembled. Then, out of a god, who took his seat upon the tripod
stool.
