The Life of Nostradamus - Continued
After this Nostradamus entered a deep depression and spent the next six years wandering around France and Italy. From references in later biographies about his life we know he traveled in the Lorraine and went to Venice and Sicily. Otherwise very little is known about his life at this time. It was during this period of the “dark night of the soul” that Nostradamus and others first noticed his prophetic gifts and his name first started to become legendary.
While wandering through Italy, Nostradamus encountered a group of Franciscan monks. Standing aside to let them pass Nostradamus suddenly gasped and threw himself on his knees, bowing his head and clutching at the garment of one of the monks. The monk, named Felice Peretti, was a former swine herder of very lowly birth. When asked why he had done such a silly act, Nostradamus replied, “I must yield myself and bow before his Holiness.” Nineteen years after the death of Nostradamus, Peretti became Pope Sixtus V.
In another famous account intended to verify Nostradamus psychic talents, a skeptic, the Seigneur de Florinville, challenged the visionary. While staying at his chateau in the province of Lorraine, Florinvilles asked the budding young prophet to guess what his guests were having for dinner. Nostradamus was shown two suckling pigs, one black and the other white. Florinville then asked Nostradamus to predict which pig would become their supper that night. Nostradamus assured him that they would be dining on the meat of the black pig. Florinville then told the cook to prepare the white pig.
That evening at dinner, Nostradamus was again asked which pig they were eating, and again he replied the black one. Florinville triumphantly asked the cook to reveal to Nostradamus which pig it was that they were eating. The cook said that while preparing the white pig a tamed wolf cub had wandered into the kitchen and devoured it. The cook then slaughtered the remaining black pig and prepared it for the dinner instead. So it appeared than “even when Nostradamus was wrong, he was right.”
By 1554 Nostradamus had settled in Marseilles. In November that year, the Provence experienced one of the worst floods of its history. The plague returned yet once again with a vengeance and Nostradamus spent his energy practicing medicine and healing the ill.
In 1547, Nostradamus finally settled in the small town of Salon. There he remarried a rich widow (Anne Ponsart Gemelle) and began to seriously live his life as metaphysician. He converted the top half of the house into a study and spent a lot of time working with an ancient book about Egyptian magic called De Mysteriis Egyptorium. Iambachulus – an ancient tender of the Temple of Athena, wrote this book of rituals. This book is filled with the black arts, which teaches techniques for housing spirits in the soul.
He spent the remainder of his days here and the renovated version of his place can still be seen on the Place de la Poissonnerie in Salon, France
He began his metaphysical publishing career by producing an annual Almanac of predictions in 1550. In 1555, Nostradamus published the first of ten books, all entitled Centuries. These volumes contained predictions from his present until the end of the world. Each volume contained 100 predictions written in four line verses known as quatrains.
It is important to note he word Century has nothing to do with one hundred years. Each book called a Century because there were a hundred verses or quatrains in each book. Latin. In order to avoid being prosecuted as a magician, Nostradamus writes that he deliberately confused the time sequence of the Prophecies so that their secrets would not be obvious to those not so skilled in Egyptian witchcraft, numerology and astrology.
The first volume of the prophecies that Nostradamus published only contained the first three Centuries and part of the Fourth. However this tome rapidly became a best seller and made him the celebrity of choice at French court. On July 14th,1556 his credibility as a poet and prophet was firmly established by an invitation by the Queen, Catherine de Medici to her in person.
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