The Prophecies. Nostradamus
since all prophetic inspiration receives its prime motivating force from God the Creator, then from good fortune and nature. For this reason, the presage occurs in part, where it has been predicted, in proportion to the extent to which similar events have manifested themselves similarly or have failed to manifest themselves.
For the human understanding, being created intellectually, cannot see hidden things unless aided by the voice coming from the limbo via the thin flame; showing in what direction future events incline.
Furthermore, my son, I beg that you will never want to employ your understanding on such dreams and vanities as dry up the body and put the soul in perdition and cause trouble to the weak senses. I caution you especially against the vanity of the more execrable magic, condemned of yore by the Holy Scriptures and the Canons of the Church.
However, Judicial Astrology is excepted from this judgement. For it is by this, together with divine inspiration and revelation, and continual nightly watches and calculations, that we have reduced our prophecies to writing.
Although this occult Philosophy was not condemned, I did not desire that you should ever be faced with their unbridled promptings. I had at my disposal many volumes which had been hidden for a great many centuries. But dreading what use might be made of them, after reading them I consigned them to the flames. As the fire came to devour them, the flame licking the air shot forth an unusual brightness, clearer than natural fire.
It was like the light of lightning thunder, suddenly illuminating the house, as if in sudden conflagration. Thus, so that you might not be led astray in the future in a search for the perfect transformation of silver, or of gold, or of incorruptible metals under the earth, or hidden in the sea, I have reduced them to ashes.
But what I do want to make clear to you is the judgement obtained through the calculation of the heavens. By this one has knowledge of future events while rejecting completely all fantastic things one may imagine.
With divine and supernatural inspiration integrated with astrological computations, one can name places and periods of time accurately: an occult property obtained through divine virtue, power and ability.
By means of this, past, present and future become but one eternity - for all things are naked and open.
Thus, my son, notwithstanding your your young brain, you can easily understand that things which are to happen can be prophesied by the lights of the sky at night, which are natural, coupled with the spirit of prophecy. Not that I would assume the name or power of a prophet. It is as a mortal man, whose senses revealed inspiration places no further from Heaven than his feet are from the ground. I cannot fail, err, or be deceived, though I am the greatest sinner in this world, subject to all human affliction.
Many times in the week I am overtaken by an estasy; having rendered my nocturnal studies agreeable through long calculation, I have composed books of prophecies, of which each contains one hundred astronomical quatrains of prophecies. I have sought to polish them a bit obscurely. They are perpetual prophecies, for they extend from now to the year 3797.
It is possible, my son, that some will raise their eyebrows at seeing such a vast extent of time and treatment of everything under the moon that will happen throughout the earth; but if you attain the natural span of human life; you will come to see, under your own native skies, the fulfillment of future events that I have foreseen.
Although the eternal God alone knows the eternity of the light which proceeds from Himself, I say frankly to all to whom He has wished to reveal His immense magnitude - immeasurable and incomprehensible as it is - amidst long and malancholy inspiration, that it is a hidden thing, manifested divinely.
It is manifested chiefly by two means which are contained in the understanding of the inspired one who prophesies.
One comes by infusion: clearing the supernatural light for the person who predicts by Astrology; making it possible to predict through inspired revelation.
The other is a fixed participation of the Divine eternity. By means of it, the Prophet comes to judge what has been given him by his divine spirit through God the Creator and his natural intuition.
So that what is predicted, and is true, has an ethereal origin. This light and the thin flame are altogether efficacious, and are of heavenly origin no less than natural light.
And it is the latter which renders philosophers so sure of themselves that by means of the principles of the first cause they have penetrated to the innermost cores of the loftiest of doctrines. But an end to this, my son, for I must not stray too far from the future capacity of your senses.
I find that letters will suffer a very great and incomparable loss. I find also that before the universal conflagration the world will be deluged by many floods to such heights that there will remain scarely any land not covered by water, and this will last for so long that everything will perish except the earth itself and the cultures which inhabit it.
Furthermore, before and after these inundations, in many countries the rains will have been so slight, and there will have fallen from the sky such a great abundance of fire, and of burning stones, that nothing will remain unconsumed. And this will occur a short time before the final conflagration.
For the planet Mars will finish its cycle, at the end of its last period, it will start again. Some will assemble in Aquarius for several years; others in Cancer for an even longer time.
Now, by means of the supreme power of eternal God, we are led by the Moon; before she has completed her entire circuit, the Sun will come and then Saturn.
For according to the signs in the heavens, the reign of Saturn will return; so that, all told, the world is near an death-dealing revolution: from this moment, before 177 years, three months and 11 days have passed, by pestilence, long famine, wars, and most of all, by floods, the world will be so diminished, with so few remaining, that no one will be found willing to work the fields, which will remain wild for as long a period as they had been tilled.
This is according to the visible judgment of the stars, for although we are now in the seventh millenary, which finishes all, we are approaching the eighth, wherein is located the firmament of the eighth sphere.
This is in the latitudinary dimension, whence the great eternal God will come to complete the revolution and the heavenly bodies will return to their sources, and the upper motion will render the earth stable and fixed for us, not deviating from age to age, unless He wills it otherwise.
By ambiguous opinions beyond all natural reason, by Mahometan dreams and even sometimes through the flaming missives brought by the angels of fire of God the Creator, there come before exterior senses, even our eyes, predictions of future events or things significant to a future happening.
These ought to manifest themselves to one who presages anything. For the presage which is made by the exterior light comes infallibly to judge partly with it and by means of the exterior light. Truly, the part which seems to come by the eye of the understanding comes only by the lesion of the imaginative sense.
The reason is very evident. All is predicted through divine inspiration and by means of the angelic spirit with which the man prophesying is inspired; rendering him annointed with prophecies and illuminating him, moving him before his fantasy through diverse nocturnal apparitions.
With astrological calculations certifying the prophecy in the daytime; there is nothing more to the holiest future prediction than free courage.
You must see now, my son, that I find by my calculations, which are according to revealed inspiration, that the sword of death is now approaching us, in the shape of pestilence, war more horrible than has been known in three lifetimes, and famine.
This famine will fall upon the earth, and return there often, according to the words, "I will visit their iniquities with a rod of iron, and will strike them with blows."
For the mercy of the Lord, my son, shall not be extended at all for a long time, not until most of my prophecies will have been accomplished, and will by accomplishment have become resolved. Then, several times during the sinister storms, the Lord will say, "I will trample them, and break them, and not show