Debunking the Myth of Nostradamus I read the works of many of the ancient Greek philosophers in my youth.

Those me n were intellectually brilliant, even by today's standards, and I always assumed that they knew that their myths about Zeus and all the other gods were merely f airy tales. Now, I'm not so sure about that. When facing the unknown, the human mind seems to want to accept fiction as reality. Thus, the ancient Greeks may ha ve believed their myths were reflecting events that really occurred. Mythology did not come to an end in ancient times. As we shall see shortly, it r esurfaced in full blossom during the Renaissance in regards to Michel Nostradamu s, history's most famous seer. Today, you can find that mythology all over the I nternet, everywhere purporting to be the true history of Nostradamus and his pro phecies. I recently googled Nostradamus Predictions 2012 and got nearly one mill ion results. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Nostradamus was just as much of a moneymaking scam as he is today. Scam artists, then, as now, typically resort to any type of unethical means to m ake money. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, they did all the followin g: wrote a fictional biography of Nostradamus, altered or created town and unive rsity records to support the fictional biography, republished Nostradamus' alman acs adding freshly written predictions, wrote unprophetic books and falsely attr ibuted them to Nostradamus, wrote letters and a last will and testament and fals ely attributed them to Nostradamus, and published his prophecies backdating thos e publications to dates within or close to Nostradamus' time. Beyond the facts t o be found on Nostradamus' original tombstone in Salon and a sprinkling of other information, almost nothing about Nostradamus can be taken for certain. What we think we know about Nostradamus and his prophecies is overwhelmingly mythology. All of the encyclopedias will tell you that Nostradamus began to publish his pro phecies in 1555, often citing the Bonhomme edition that displays this date, but apparently no one ever bothered taking a close look at that edition. In 1594, a charlatan by the name of Chavigny (perhaps also the originator of the fictional biography) altered some of the prophecies to suit his needs. The Bonhomme editio n copies those alterations. How could it have been printed in 1555? Meanwhile, B enoist Rigaud, alleged printer of the complete 1568 edition, did indeed print a couple of editions of the prophecies, both dated 1596. The period following Nostradamus' death was a time of considerable religious str ife in France. Recall the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Superstition was wides pread, and if those prophecies were available, both sides would surely have used them for propaganda purposes. But there seems to be no record of any such thing . Many experts have investigated the early history of the prophecies and they ha ve nothing to report. From a reliable source you cannot find a citation of a sin gle verse of any one of the 942 prophecies or even a comment about one of the pr ophecies. There were references to Nostradamus and his almanacs but not to the p rophecies. During Nostradamus' lifetime and for twenty years thereafter, the fam ous prophecies were unknown in France. A breakthrough on the publication mystery began with close scrutiny of some of t he earliest genuine publications, namely, the editions of Roger, Rossett, and Me nier, all of which were printed in Paris toward the end of the 1580s. These edit ions contain massive textual alterations, the suppression and replacement of ent ire stanzas, all in sequences that turn out to tie in integrally with a book cal led the Sefer Yetzirah. The Sefer Yetzirah, for its part, was the earliest known text of a medieval religion called the Kabbalah. The Kabbalists prospered in the country of Provence, Nostradamus' homeland, duri ng the age of the troubadours. There was also a large community of Kabbalists in

Spain. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, things went badly for the Kabba lists. The Kabbalists of Spain were expelled from that country in 1492, just sho rt of enough time to migrate to the New World. In Provence, now part of France, the Kabbalists were likewise given the option of converting to Catholicism or le aving the country. Unlike their counterparts in Spain, the Kabbalists of Provenc e had a special reason for remaining in that country. They openly converted to C atholicism but then took the Kabbalah underground. Catholics by day, by night th ey continued their ancient traditions. Everything I say about the Kabbalah here is of course pure supposition granted t hat there is no historical record that an underground religion existed in France during the sixteenth century. But this was the environment in which Michel de N ostredame grew up. It seems Michel was recognized as the most intelligent of the group and hence he was the one appointed to dedicate his life to the study of t he ancient texts of the Kabbalah. One of Nostradamus' brothers was a grain dealer (the traditional business of the Nostredame family) who made regular trips to Egypt. Others in the community may have also been merchants, likewise pitching in to help support Nostradamus. The re is evidence that on one of his trips to Egypt, Nostradamus' brother brought b ack with him an enthusiastic youth by the name of Isaac Luria, who aspired to st udy the Kabbalah under Nostradamus. Luria came from a wealthy family and may hav e provided additional financial support for Nostradamus. This brings us to the greatest of all the Nostradamus myths, which is the myth t hat Nostradamus wrote a book of astrological predictions. Not quite. Nostradamus ' book is a religious text, only published under the disguise of astrology for s elf-protection. I'll clarify that: the famous book of prophecies simultaneously incorporates and masks the translation of an ancient text that, like the Quran f or Muslims, was the central text of a religion. That ancient text, entailing the foundations of the religion, was sometimes referred to as the Book of Light and sometimes as the Revelations of Elijah. There are indications that the word Kabb alah, the receiving, now the name of the entire religion, was in earlier times the foremost name of the book that Nostradamus' book conceals. *** For more information, including the textual variants of the Paris editions with tie-ins to the Sefer Yetzirah, please visit the Morten St. George's Nostradamus et la Kabbale website (http://www.mortenstgeorge.net).