NOSTRADAMUS’ ASTRONOMY SOURCES.
© Allan Webber August 2009

My work on the date code in Nostradamus’ Prophecies often renews my experiences with the peculiarities in his text. The following line of verse is an example of its enigmatic nature.

Nostradamus' verse C8 Q46 L2 states Fuis les deux prochains tarasc destrois. Now Fuis is an anagram of Sufi and the whole line contains a sequence of anagrams which reads  right el Sufi produces star chain star DASC stories (Fuis le-s deux pro-chain-s tar-aſc d- eſtrois). The most peculiar aspect of all but one of these anagrams is their aptness.

El Sufi was one of the great astronomers of the past. His Book of the Fixed Stars listed over 1000 stars in order of their appearance as they rose over the horizon. His work is therefore about the chain of stars. It is also this particular work that provides the star names on which my research is based.

I also find it interesting that the above verse contains anagrams of star names such as Sharatain (hain-s tar-a) and Al Gedi (d'aigle). And this enables El Sufi produces star chains as stories stored Sharatain sacred star to be drawn as a possibility for its message .

The fourth line of this same verse also which contais the second of these named stars has a sequential message set in its anagramswhich says code quot[e]d Algedi feared stories refer terrorises France (De coq et d'aigle de France freres trois).

Emerging as they do in such an enigmatic language format it is not surprising for some level of curiosity to be aroused.  

Al (El) Sufi was a significant astronomer and one of his major inputs was into the design and use of the Astrolabe. It is known Nostradamus used and valued such an instrument which was used to plot and predict the positions of the stars in the heavenly sphere at any point of the year. In Nostradamus' day any stars engraved on the Astrolabe would have been most probably given the Arab names specified by Al Sufi.

There is one line of verse in Nostradamus' Prophecies, C3 Q57 L.4 , that contains a perfect anagram of Astrolabe (ole Bastar). This line contains a linear sequence of adjacent anagrams that are again highly intriguing for they say Arian doub ts sub ordinate notes Rastaban as pole star on astrolabe boundaries (Aries doub te ſon pole Baſtarnan).

There are additional distinctive words such as Star Base , sub ordinate and tables. The precise nature of the anagrams has to be rated as unusual but there is much more since there is obvious interrelatedness to themselves, astronomy and to the practical aspects of an Astrolabe. Astronomers aligned their instruments using the Polestar and its boundaries (the two bears) in order to make measurements of star positions.

Rastaban which is Arabic for the Head of the Snake or Dragon (Draco) also forms one of the boundaries for the Polestar (set at almost 90 degrees from Dub he, one of the pointers in the Great Bear used to find the Polestar ). This sequence arising from anagrams certainly makes sense, much more so than the astronomic enigma which appears at the surface - Aries doub ts his Bastarnian pole .

There are two other verses that are worth mentioning here. C3 Q60 L.3 states Sang versera par absolution…Blood flows bringing absolution. Once again it takes little effort to see this line contains anagrams stating ARAB ENGRAVERS SOLUTIONS (angverser arab solutions).

It also contains an anagram based on the word ASTROLABUs (arabsolut). C3 Q73 also contains a related anagram since within its text Soldat Barbare le grand Roy frappera …The King is struck by a barbarous soldier there lies D'ASTROLAB APPEAR(appera Soldatbar) and intriguingly there is also LARGE BEAR (bare legra) which contains the pointers for the Polestar.

Of added significance is that the words Grand Roy are an anagram of DRAGONRY which relates to Rastaban's location in Draco. The details interrelate quite lucidly to that of the other references already outlined. Although this last example is not as precisely laid out as the others it is still quite unusual.

My problem is that although I could easily rationalise why Nostradamus might have built these messages into his verse I cannot deny the incredible feature that they are in English and not French.

Yet most of these anagrams are infrequently found in Nostradamus verse and there is no reasonable basis why they should appear together and trace out linear messages. In this there is the enigma - the complexity of their message makes it seem improbable that they are chance occurrences but the fact they are in English raises serious doub ts.

Ptolemy and the Almagister

There is also evidence that Nostradamus drew on the work of Ptolemy, the source on which Al Sufi’s work was based. Ptolemy’ Almagister not only showed how star and planet positions could be calculated it set out all the Constellations and their stars as they were known almost 2000 years ago.

In Nostradamus' Prophecies, C1 Q47 L.4 there occurs the only incidence of the anagram for Almagister's (Les magistr), the name of the book on astronomy written by Ptolemy. This line reads forms a sequence of anagrams saying Nostredam star images result (i)n Valoix lines (Les magistrats damneront leurs loix vaines) but there are also sequential anagrams for Nostradame gematrias lent rules and Star images named.

The message is consistent and states that Almagister’s star images lie in Nostredame’s Valoix lines under the rules of gematria. To those unfamiliar with history and the impact of Nostradamus on the people of his time the word Valoix will have little meaning. However Valoix is a reference to the French King’s Valois family and it is Nostradamus’ uncanny ability to write verses that the populace saw as applying to the royal family that generated the reputation for which Nostradamus is still renowned.

Even the word Gematria is highly relevant for this is a technique of coding that Nostradamus inherited from his Jewish forefathers. This is then quite a remarkable message if it emerges from coincidence since it tells us exactly where to look in the Prophecies for code based on the Almagister. There are only a few references to these words in the whole of the text so their chance occurrence is not high. It is also extraordinary that chance could result in secondary messages of such significance. These occurrences seem to require considerable effort and experimentation to provide such complete structures.

Once again it would seem reasonable to state that Nostradamus had reasons to build in code containing exactly this type of information and it is not surprising to find it but the hurdle is the message is in English. If then these structures occur by chance our understanding of chance has much to learn from explaining how such enigmatic statements appear when the analysis is in English but not when French, Latin, Italian or German are applied.

A line in the sub sequent verse indicates that the previous anagram for Nostradamus is no accident. C1 Q48 L.4 says Then my prophecy accomplished and expressed with the anagrams hidden content offering the strikingly relevant Title my prophet name it lie across Ptolemy (lit et - mi -ne ma- prophet ie L-ors acc - omplit e ) and this is what I showed in the fourth line of the previous verse since Nostradamus’ name (as Nostradame) uses the letter A at the end of the name for the title of Ptolemy’s work the Almagister. From the interchangeable Y/I lettering the name of Ptolemy emerged and there is support for this in the lettering since the anagrams also say Y/I role complicates time prophet name.

It is the continuous nature of this material that raises the question of when does the improbable offer greater plausability than any other interpretation?  

The Secrets held in NOSTRADAMUS’ VALOIX LINES  

In this paper I have so far shown that various lines of verse hold quite intricate messages about the prophet’s sources. One of the most interesting aspects of these messages was that one of them clearly shows Ptolemy’s Almagister was used by Nostradamus in his verses on the fate of the royal family, the Valois. It appears this was done to illustrate his rules of Gematria, that is the numbering secrets for his code.  The anagram alerting me to this connection was actually Valoix, a variant spelling of Valois .

The astronomic references in those same verses were strong with the Polestar in the Little Bear, the pointers in the Great Bear and Rastaban in Draco all clearly named. There was also strong reference to the use of the Astrolabe, an astronomic calculating device known to be cherished by Nostradamus. An astrolabe has a mechanism built into several rotating plates that allow the positions of stars to be plotted against time.

These implications provide critical tests since they are precise and the probability of their being a chance aberration is easily tested, we need to look at the Valoix lines and the content of Ptolemy’s Almagister and see if there is a credible link between the two. Surely, since my anagrams are in English the expectation must be that whatever evidence I now present must be imaginative. However this is not the case and there is very strong evidence that the implications are absolutely right.

 The Almagest of Ptolemy sets out the Constellations in tables. The first of these is that for the Northern Hemisphere and Ptolemy doesn’t begin with the Zodiac signs The first four constellations in his table are:

1. Ursa Minoris- the Little Bear which contains the Polestar in its tail.
2. Ursa Majoris- the Big Bear which contains the Pointers in the cage of the plough’s seven stars.
3. Draconis - the Dragon which contains Rastaban; the head of the snake.
4. Cepheus- the king who chained his daughter Andromeda to the rocks to appease the sea monster. The hero Perseus rescued her on his way home to deliver Medusa’s head to Polydectes.

 The first of the verses seen as referring to the Valois family is at C1 Q10. Historically it is credited as telling the story of the family of King Henry II of France . Now if Nostradamus did intend the anagrams relating to astronomy to lead to this verse then the use of the variant Valoix for Valois is significant since it identifies one King, the tenth (X=10) of the Valois line, as the sub ject of the verse. The tenth of the Valois Kings was Henry II. This verse is found to have significant links to the data already found.

 C01Q10: The northern polestar Ursa Minor as the guiding clock for 21stC Disaster.

A serpent is put into the vault of iron,
where seven children of the king are held.
The ancestors and forebears will come forth from the dead
lamenting to see thus dead the fruit of their line

Serpens tranſmis dans la caige de fer
Ou les enfans ſeptains du Roy ſont pris
Les vieux et peres ſortiront bas de l'enfer
Ains mourir voir de fruic mort et crys

This quatrein is one of the most famous of Nostradamus’ work for it was seen by many in the 16^th Century as accurately plotting the fate of the Valoix royal line. Serpens or serpent was an easily understood symbol for Queen Catherine de Medici was known by the populace as Madame Serpent. There is of course a good chance this arose as a play on words, a courtly attribute in which the French delighted and the Medici then was Medusa, the gorgon whose head writhed with snakes. As head of the royal Valois line the imagery of the Medusa appears very apt.

However there are far greater word plays in this verse of Nostradamus. Rastaban is the head of the snake or Serpent called Draco and the cage of iron can be an astrolabe. Kochab a star in Ursa Minor together with Phercad in Draco previously held the Polestar position but precession led to Polaris taking over their role in 500CE. And now the key to the position of this faint Polestar is held inside the Septentrion in Ursa Major (seven children) which is also known as the plough.

I have previously mentioned the connections of Rastaban and the Pointers to the Polestar but Cepheus also has a significant role. The figure of the king is upside down and its foot is directly above the current Polestar and so again it acts as a pointer. 

This verse also carries statements applicable to the astronomers that established the relationships and names of the stars.  And these people, Ptolemy, Al Sufi and the ancient astronomers, if they were to rise from the dead, would indeed see the fruit of their intellects dead as each Polestar is usurped by precession. Each of the allusions I have identified is an element from the clues that directed me to this verse and it was from them I made this particular connection. This awareness only occurred on the 29^th August 2009 but there were some facts I had known for 15 years.

So the visible text of this verse can be seen to hold allusions to the stars that Ptolemy used at the start of his table of star names. This is what was implied in verses C1 Q47 L.4 and the other verses presented earlier.  It is more difficult to see a direct reference to Polaris but that exists in the anagrams as I will show in my next section. At this point the link between the work of the astronomers ties into the astronomic references underlying the lines about the Valois king, Henry II, but this connection holds most consistently when the anagrams are in English.

The anagram that uniquely identifies Polaris in C1 Q10

 CI Q10

A serpent is put into the vault of iron,
where seven children of the king are held.
The ancestors and forebears will come forth from the dead
lamenting to see thus dead the fruit of their line

Serpens tranſmis dans la caige de fer
Ou les enfans ſeptains du Roy ſont pris
Les vieux et peres ſortiront bas de l'enfer
Ains mourir voir de fruic mort et cry s

 There is only one anagram for URSA-MINORIS in the whole of Nostradamus’ Prophecies and it is present in the fourth line of this verse as SAINSMOURIR. Although I had known this for a long time I had not realized its significance until August 2009 when I began to look at the verse in the context of what was indicated by the verses on astronomy sources. Ursa Minoris is the star sign that heads uPtolemy’s tables and it is the anagram found at the start of line four in this verse.

It is surely quite remarkable that lines which contain such precise information hidden in English anagrams should lead by chance to the only verse that could fulfil its data. It is exactly what must be true if Nostradamus used an astronomic coding device in his work since without an exact location providing precise data in a definitive text there is no easy means of a stranger breaking the code. It is hardly an expectation that chance would deliver such powerfully relevant reference points. And yet all these requirements for success are so far met in this particular verse.  

There is another instance worthy of mention at this time. I pointed out that the seven children are a hint alluding to the Septentrion in Ursae Major. Now among these seven stars there are two that have served as pointers to the Polestar for the last two millennia; Dub he and Merak. At the end of line two, which mentions the seven children, we have u Roy sont pris.

 Rearranging the spacing and using the alternate spelling of pris (prise) we can easily see uroy sontprise equals your s pointers,  thereby once again creating a correct astronomic naming of the critical stars. If we weren’t to use an added e but simply replaced the s at the end with an e then we would have a more elegant solution. This would imply that, under the rules for gematria, the numerical value of e must be the same as s.

By such a means I have moved from merely finding valid references to having faith that the anagrams do reveal accurate knowledge. The verses that led here said that the gematria rules would be set out using Ptolemy’s Almagister.  Consequently an equivalence of numerical value between two letters has been identified.

 At this point it is clearly worthwhile hypothesising this is the cornerstone of Nostradamus’ code. Understanding this verse is essential yet the code is not as apparent as in the verses leading me to it since the anagrams don’t form simple, correlated patterns. The deepest secrets are held in another aspect of code which needs to be uncovered before the full relevance is made known. This code-form relates to the rules for transforming the plain text into its intended message. The anagrams found in the verses close to C1 Q10 seem to confirm this interpretation.