A recent find in Rome, reported to be lost works of Nostradamus, has caused much speculation and conjecture amongst doomsday and 2012 believers. This ancient work, dated to his time, is said by experts on Nostradamus to be either a fantastic forgery, or the real thing.
In this work, we find a series of cryptic and colourful illustrations, each one giving us visual clues as to what the artist intended to convey. To the lay man, a casual glance shows no information whatsoever, and in fact a confusing scene reminiscent of early art on tarot cards. However, if we have an idea of what each facet in the scene is representative of, then we can knit together the pictures into a fabric of prophecy.
Interpretations of the drawings and what they mean are less than in agreement, but it is clear that universal themes interlace through each one. If we look at each, then we see time and again crescent moons, a spoked wheel, the sun, the pope, royalty, and the tree of life. Each of these symbols appear in multiple depictions in the lost book.
It is said that the spoked wheel is a clue to the time period in which the drawings refer. And that time period is now, when we move into the so-called Age of Aquarius. How do we get this from the spoked wheel? Well, if you were a prophet, and were trying to warn people in a particular time period that bad things were going to happen, what reference point would you choose for revealing this to them in a coded way?
Nostradamus was a physician, but he was also a keen astronomer and astrologer. It is possible that he chose a celestial alignment as the only clue to the time period of which he was seeing. This celestial alignment, researchers believe, is the one where the Divine Cross (or galactic alignment of the centre of the galaxy with the celestial equator) comes to intersect the mundane planetary alignment of the angles between equinox and solstice. It features in many of the drawings as an eight spoked wheel in the heavens: possibly a clever, coded dating of the time to which the drawing refers. In alluding to the time period this way, Nostradamus would know that only those most learned, and perhaps able to keep and disseminate cleverly the secret prophecy he was making, would have access to this vital aspect.
If we are to accept that Nostradamus was telling us in this book of a coming catastrophic event now, in our time period, then what exactly does he appear to be warning us of? In his other prophetic works, Nostradamus talks of the Anti-Christ, and of a coming judgement of fire on the earth. In this work too, we see a clear theme of religious persecution and intolerance, and the fires of war and of calamity. Whether this is a symbolic end of life on Earth, or a literal one, is yet to be seen.
What is deeply interesting, nonetheless, is how this particular foretelling of the future appears to intersect with the very time period that other soothsayers have identified for their doomsday prophecies, such as the Maya.