He is still all-seeing and all-knowing!
New notebooks of the famed sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus have been discovered, and scholars are only beginning to uncover their secrets.
The leather-bound volume, found in an antique desk in Marseilles by a vacationing American couple, was initially thought to be a handwritten cookbook, but closer inspection revealed this to be incorrect. “I read through it quickly at first, and it looked like recipes,” said Gina Campos. “I asked the lady who rented us the place if we could have it, and she just waved dismissively.”
But when Campos and her wife Heather Gerrit-Campos returned home to Portland, Maine, Campos looked more closely. “The second time through, it was obvious that I was wrong,” Campos said. “There weren’t ingredients or anything.”
Gerrit-Campos, a professor of medieval literature, sprang into action. “I was kind of zoning out with regard to the notebook at first,” she said. “On the plane, I watched a Rebel Wilson movie. But Gina asked me to take a look at it, partly because I can read and write sixteenth-century French. I knew immediately what we were dealing with.”
AS SHARP AS EVER
Nostradamus’s known work consists of a thousand quatrains, or four-line verses, that are said to have predicted the future, though others contend that they are written so vaguely that they lend themselves to favorable interpretation. These new ones found by Campos and Gerrit-Campos are much more specific.
“I had Heather translate as many as she could,” said Campos. “Let me give you an example.”
Campos opened the notebook. “Here,” she said. “‘Too late both streams will flow / The bird will not want to fly too high in the day / John Bolton will be fired as the National Security Adviser / And decry the meddling of Sondland and Mulvaney.’ That’s amazing.”
She turned to another page. “Or this one. ‘The great door will slam shut / An army turned to dirt and dust / The Ravens will defeat the Patriots / Thirty-seven points to twenty in October 2019.’ That one got the month wrong, but otherwise it’s right on.”
Elsewhere, Nostradamus predicts California wildfires (“Hornets and dogs / Dogs and hornets / Housing value loss may exceed / Two trillion of what will be called ‘dollars’”), the 2020 Democratic field (“An overturned barrel leaks silver liquid / A baby lifts a single finger / Beto will not last./ And Mayor Pete will surge”), and even the weather (“A morning cloud in the shape of a face / Another in the shape of an apple / It will be sunny all afternoon but chilly / Bring a sweater”).
A PERSONAL CONNECTION
Campos and Gerrit-Campos have taken the journal to several universities, all of whom have expressed an interest in acquiring it. Thus far, they have been unwilling to part with it.
“We feel a personal connection to it,” said Campos. “Partly because of this one. Hold on.” She opened the book and read another quatrain. “They will come to anoint the last King / In the palace where he was not born / And then Gina and Holly will go on vacation and find me in a desk. / And Gina will read this quatrain and say ‘Wow.’’”
“Wow,” Campos said.
