Nostradamus

The teaching

Taught from his own words, the Prophéties with their preface to his son César, his almanacs and his Treatise.

The night watch

The first two verses of the Prophéties tell how they were made. He sits alone at night in his secret study, resting on a seat of brass, and a slender flame rising out of the solitude makes him speak what is not vain to believe. With the wand in his hand, set in the midst of the branches, he wets the hem of his robe and his foot with water; a fear and a voice tremble through his sleeves; a divine splendour; the divine sits near.

The scene follows the account of the prophetess of Branchidae in Iamblichus's On the Mysteries, who prophesied holding a rod and wetting her feet or the hem of her robe in water, and the brass seat recalls the tripod of Delphi. He set his verses inside the oldest picture of prophecy he knew: the seer who makes himself still and waits for the god.

Inspiration and calculation

In the preface to his son he explains his gift. It is a natural instinct given by God, joined to long calculation by the stars: inspiration shows what is to come, and the astrology of the heavens sets it in its time. God alone knows the times fully, and the prophet sees only what the divine light shows him. He wrote in dark and cloudy sentences on purpose, he says, so as not to offend the present age or those in power, and books of hidden arts that had come into his hands he burned after reading them, so that they would do no harm. His verses, he says, run to the year 3797.

The almanacs

His almanacs forecast each year from its sky: the Sun's entry into the signs, the eclipses and the new and full Moons, read for the weather, the harvests, sickness and the affairs of princes. Each month had its short verse, a presage, and the year its own, in the same dark style as the Prophéties.

The apothecary's book

His treatise of cosmetics and preserves shows the craft of the apothecary. Its first part teaches face powders, scented waters and oils, soaps and perfumes. It also gives the pastille of red roses gathered before dawn, with cypress, iris, cloves and sweet woods, which he says he used against the plague in Provence, to be held in the mouth; it belongs to the medicine of his age, and nothing in it protects against any disease.

The second part teaches the keeping of fruits in sugar and honey, quinces, cherries, citrus peels and the rest, among them a quince jelly he praises as fit to be set before a king. Its recipes are exact about fruit, sugar and fire, and they are the plainest of all his teaching.

How the verses are made

The verses are built to be dark. They are almost never dated; they name places, rivers, beasts and kings in riddles, anagrams and Latin turns; and they pass from one age to another without warning, so that every age can find itself in them and every age has read them after the event. No quatrain has been shown to foretell an event before it happened.