Nostradamus And His French Astrological Legacy

by Brian Alcamo

Astrology has been seeing a huge revival in the past few years, in France as well as in the US. It seems like more people than ever know about not just their singes solaires (Sun Signs), but also their signes d’ascendant (Rising Signs/Ascendant Signs) and their signes lunaires (Moon Signs). It turns out that France is home to one of the West’s most famous astrologers, Nostradamus. Read on to learn more about this fascinating sky-reader!

In The Beginning

Depending on who you ask, Michel de Notredame, more commonly known as Nostradamus, was born on either December 14th or December 21st. One of nine siblings, he was born in the South of France in Saint-Rémy de Provence. As a child, Nostradamus rapidly progressed through school, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and math. His grandfather, born Jewish but converted to avoid the Catholic Inquisition, introduced him to astrology, piquing the young savant’s interest in the study of celestial happenings and their impact on human life.

Nostradamus began his study of medicine at the ripe age of fourteen when he enrolled at the University of Avignon. Malheureusement, he had to leave the university after a year because of a Bubonic Plague (“La Peste”) outbreak. Nostradamus worked as an apothecary afterwards, traveling throughout the Franco-Italian countryside. His treatment of the plague moved away from the common practice of mercury potions, bloodletting, and garlic-soaked robes, opting for his signature “rose pill,” which was rich in Vitamin C. Despite how deliciously aromatic a rose pill sounds, historians and scientists nowadays attribute Nostradamus’ high cure rate to his novel treatment routines which included rigorous personal hygiene, removing infected corpus from city streets, and good ol’ fresh air.

The man of the hour: Nostradamus

He was finally able to complete his medical degree in 1525 at the University of Montpelier, where his penchant for astrology got him into hot water with Catholic priests from time to time. Now a certified university graduate, Michel de Nostradame officially changed his name to Nostradamus in an attempt to Latinize himself, which was all the rage in the most fashionable of medieval academic circles.

In 1531 Nastradamus was invited to Agen in France's southwest where he met his wife and had two children. Financially supported by Jules-Cesar Scaliger by scholar Jules-Cesar Scaliger, Nostradamus enjoyed monetary security and celebrity status because of his successful treatments. This posh life came to a swift end when Nostradamus’ wife and children died of the plague, and the great healer quickly fell out of public favor. Scaliger, ever the careerist, brutally dropped Nostradamus for fear of looking like he was sponsoring a fool. Unfortunately, Nostradamus didn’t have a talent agent or manager at the time to help him spin this tragic loss into a tell-all book deal.

What’s Your Sign?

A More Celestial-Minded Chapter

When Nostadamus was summoned to be tried by the Catholic Inquisition after making a joke in 1538, he said “No thanks,” and began bounding eastward out of Province through Italy, Greece, and Turkey. This journey was not only the original Eat, Pray, Love (don’t fact check me), but it was also the backbone of Nostradamus' psychic awakening. One account said that the man even met a group of Franciscan monks, one of which he predicted would become Pope. Low and behold, Felice Peretti, a monk he’d met, was ordained as Pope Sixtus V in 1585. 

French Astrological Vocab For Your Next Reading

• “C’est quoi, ton signe ?” - “What’s your sign?”

• Planète maitresse - Ruling planet

• “Mercure est en rétrograde.” - “Mercury is in retrograde.”

• Thème astral - Birth chart

• Retour de Saturne - Saturn return

Nostradamus returned to France in 1547 after spending what he believed to be adequate time avoiding the Inquisition. He once again took up treating plague victims, and settled in Salon-de-Provence where he married and had six children with Anne Ponsarde, a rich widow. He once again quickly ascended the ranks of medical notoriety for innovations in the treatment of plagues in Aix and Lyon. During this time, Nostradamus published two books, one a translation of Galen, the Roman Physician, and the other called the Traité des Fardemens, an apothecary cookbook that included both cosmetic and culinary recipes. Perhaps trying to drive up industry demand, many of the culinary recipes were based on the use of sugar, whose supply was regulated by the apothecaries’ guild of that time.

Despite publishing two books on medicine, Nostradamus’ fascination with the occult continued to grow. Allegedly, he spent many nights meditating in front of a bowl of water and herbs (which was NOT soup!) in order to transcend the mundane world and enter the spiritual realm. He had many visions, which helped him write his prophecies. Nostradamus wrote his first astrological almanac in 1550, incorporating his visions and astrological knowledge into digestible information for farmers and merchants. The success of this first almanac pushed Nostradamus to write more. 

By 1554, Nostradamus had made his prophecies a key part of his almanacs. In an attempt to concentrate his creative energy into one work, Nostradamus began writing a ten-volume oeuvre called Centuries which would attempt to make one hundred predictions for the preceding two thousand years. In 1555, he published “Les Propheties,” a collection of his greatest hits that included major long term predictions. Nostradamus hid his mystic predictions behind quatrains (four-line versions that rhyme) and a linguistic potluck including French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Provençal— a Southern French dialect. Nostradamus evaded persecution from the Catholic Church, and his writings were never condemned by the church’s book-regulating body, the Congregation of the Index. He did so by leaving his predictions detached from magical practice.

While some questioned Nostradamus’ sanity, or posited his ties to Satan, many more were enraptured by his prophecies. He entered the inner circles of Europe's elite, eventually catching the attention of Catherine de Medici, Queen Consort of Henri II. She summoned the seer to her court in Paris to draw up horoscopes for her children and was eventually made the court’s Physician-in-Ordinary to his court. In 1556, Nostradamus’ owned up to Catharine de Medici that one of his prophecies from Centuries I was most likely referring to King Henri II. Three years later, the prophecy came true. Here’s the text:

Le lyon jeune le vieux surmontera,

En champ bellique par singulier duelle,

Dans cage d’or les yeux luy creuera,

Deux classes une, puis mourir, mort cruelle

"The young lion will overcome the older one,

On the field of combat in a single battle;

He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage,

Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death."

In 1599, King Henri II jousted with younger nobleman Gabriel comte de Montgomery, seigneur de Lorges. In one last swing, Montgomery’s lance splintered in two, one piece slipping through the King’s visor, hitting his eye, and the other finding its way into his temple. King Henri then waited 10 days for the wound to finally deal its final blow on his life. Do you think the prophecy predicted the his death? 

Nostradamus was critiqued by ordinary citizens and astrologers alike. Regarding his King Henri II prophecy, critics have said that a joust between friends shouldn’t necessarily be considered the “field of battle.” Additionally many professional astrologers of the era considered him incompetent and didn’t agree with his use of comparitive astrolgy to predict the future.  Some believe that many of Nostradamus’ predictions were based on biblical depictions of the apocalypse as well as the writings of classical and medieval historians. He then matched with their respective astrological readings in the past before being rearranged and appropriated for the future. 

Goodbye, Mr. ‘Damus

Nostradamus’ lifelong battles against gout and arthritis eventually took a turn for the worse when his gout developed into edema (dropsy) where large amounts of body fluid build up under the skin. Eventually, the untreated edema led to congestive heart failure, and Nostradamus died on July 1st, 1566.

Nostradamus’ writings are continually inspected by people today. Being so cryptic means that they are always up for interpretation, and some believe he correctly predicted events that occurred during the French Revolution. Nostradamus loved to predict apocalyptic phenomena, and most of his predictions dealt with war, murder, plagues, and other death-focused happenings. Some believe that he has predicted events ranging from the French Revolution to the development of the atomic bomb. Others believe that some prophecies are said to foretell future events that have not yet occurred. His writing’s vagueness has proven to be a fabulous vehicle to interpret and reinterpret what he has predicted. Think what you want about the validity of his predictions, but the man was a genius marketer whose written word left a legacy with viral staying power well beyond his body’s physical lifespan. Not sure what to think? Maybe it’s time to ask the stars. 

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Thumbnail Photo by Josh Rangel

The Guillotine: A Revolutionary Blade

by Brian Alcamo

This week, France celebrates le Quatorze Juillet. In the United States, we know this day as Bastille Day. While the actual storming of the Bastille happened two years after the start of the French Revolution, it is one of the movement’s defining moments as it kicked off an era of violence and upheaval that inevitably overturned the French monarchy. The violence and havoc typical of the French Revolution was defined and symbolized by one special device: la guillotine.

Let’s Explore This Hauntingly Iconic Instrument Of Revolution!

If you think capitation by guillotine sounds gruesome, you should know that things used to be much worse. In pre-guillotine 1700s France, people were executed by having their four limbs stretched (and eventually ripped) apart by four oxen that would each run out from the executé’s body. Members of the upper-class could upgrade their execution to a less painful hanging or beheading. Luckily, people eventually caught on to the idea that this style of execution was perhaps a bit much, and in 1789, French physician Doctor Joseph Ignace Guillotin pushed for the invention of a new machine that would behead criminals “painlessly” (yeah, right). Not only did the doctor wish to make persecution less painful, he also wished to make it equal amongst the social classes. The doctor wished for the end of the death penalty entirely, and believed that a standard beheading device done in private could bridge the gap between the rather theatrical and brutal public dismembering and the eventual end of capital punishment.

Despite Doctor Guillotin’s supposedly revolutionary dream of an equal-opportunity beheader, other European countries had already beaten him to the punch (or, chop). In Scotland, a predecessor of the guillotine, known as the Maiden, was in use. but France’s guillotine was the first to be used at the institutional level. Doctor Guillotin worked with German engineer (and harpsichord maker) Thomas Schmidt to build the first guillotine, opting for a diagonal blade as opposed to a round one. 

The invention of the guillotine came just in time for the French Revolution. After the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789 (the Revolution’s peak), a new civilian code crafted by the National Assembly was put into place, that equalized the death penalty among France’s social classes. While this isn’t the ideal way for a campaign of equality to start out, it did make the earthly gateway to the Great Equalizer a bit more egalitarian. The first guillotining took place at Place de Greve in Paris on April 25th, 1792 when Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, a highway robber, got the inaugural chop. This kicked off the Reign of Terror, or la Terreur, which was a period of time in which thousands of people were sentenced to death. Despite only lasting about two years, this era is usually what people imagine when they think of the French Revolution. Many notable aristocrats died during this time, with King Louis XVI suffering a blow by the merciless blade on January 21, 1793. 

Credit: Julia Suits

Some Revolutionary Vocab for Your French Flashcards:

• Un citoyen - a citizen

• La monarchie - The monarchy

• Un.e paysan.nne - a peasant

• Imposition - taxation

• La peine capitale - Capital punishment/the death penalty

After the Revolution

After the Revolution, the guillotine remained as France’s capital punishment method of choice. Other European countries such as Greece, Sweden, and Switzerland also continued to use the guillotine, although the device never made much of a splash in the Western Hemisphere. Parisian guillotine sites moved around a bit before ending up in Grand Roquette prison in 1851. In 1870, a man named Leon Berger brought much-needed changes to the machine’s design, adding a spring system, a locking device, and a new release mechanism for the blade. These redesigns set the standard for all new guillotines moving forward.

This was the period of time where a study known as Prunier’s Experiment took place. Researchers had been trying to figure out if the head maintained some level of consciousness after decapitation. Scientists obtained the consent of Monsieur Theotime Prunier in 1879, a death-row sentence, and poked and prodded his head after he was struck by the guillotine. All they could note was that the face maintained an expression of astonishment after the death, but it did not respond to any stimuli. 

By 1909, the guillotine was being used behind La Santé Prison. The final execution by guillotine was on September 10th, 1977 in Marseille when murderer Hamida Djandoubi was put to death. While he was the last execution in France, he was not the last to be condemned to execution, with those condemned afterwards being exhumed after the election of François Mitterand in 1981.

The guillotine’s roughly two centuries of notoriety may have come to a close, but its memory lives on as a symbol of what can happen when a thirst for wide-scale violence supersedes enlightened revolutionary thought.

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