1. The Letters of Nostradamus: Realizing a Prophecy of Jesus Christ
I wrote this book in response to people saying, “Can’t you just sum up what Nostradamus wrote, without all the specific details?” The answer was to write about the contents of two letters Nostradamus wrote, which accompanied the final edition of Les Propheties: The Preface and the Letter to King Henry II of France. Those two epistles explain the systems at work in the language of the poems [quatrains], the source being from God, through Christ, and both general and specific explanations of the characters who will be in play in a future that will terrorize the world.
This book was my third attempt to publish the meaning of Nostradamus’ most famous work, but it was a first for me in two ways. First, I had written a 700+ page book that was largely based on the translations of others, although I had reordered the quatrains' English translations to fit the order that the French presented. That book included a translation and interpretation of the Preface, but not the letter to Henry II of France. The first for me was a much better translation of both letters, due to my having found an Old French to Old English dictionary [Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 edition) as a tool. I, therefore, translated each word of both letters, without relying on the translations of others.
The second breakthrough was a dawning that came to me while I was in the process of translating the letter to Henry II. While my translations of the Preface had offered new insights into its meaning, the order of that letter remained intact, as a difficult to grasp letter (as to how the letter related to a thousand 4-line poems), but with a clear beginning, middle, and end. As I translated each word of the letter to Henry, it dawned on me that the letter was clearly not in the original order it had to have been written in, as sections of the letter were clearly continuations of other sections, with the two separated by pages of letter text. That dawning that occurred to me meant the letter had to be divided into parts (following a logical system, based on punctuation and marks); and, it then needed to be reorganized into a lucid letter that explained the meaning of the quatrains. To send a letter to the king that needed to be rearranged to make sense, that in itself acts as an explanation of the quatrains. They are not random; but the order of story is cut away.
From my first ability to see the meaning of the individual quatrains, where each of them was free to be rearranged into a new order, where stories unfolded within a grand epic poem, the reordering of the letter to Henry II was explaining (without doing so directly), “If you want to know the meaning of the quatrains, then you have to see the need to rearrange them, just as this letter will make no sense without the same action done to it.” Thus, for the first time I realized the vital importance of reorganizing the letter to King Henry II, so that it transformed from the ravings of a madman into a logical explanation of the meaning of the poems [when also reordered].
The end result from my own translations was a much clearer idea of what the letters meant, which confirmed the meaning I had seen in my attempts to reorder the quatrains into a storyline. Still, the element of teaching how to understand Nostradamus, through presenting the Old French text, and then the English translation, followed by tedious explanations of how what appears to state this actually states that is what led people to constantly interrupt and ask, “Isn’t there a simpler way?” My answer was to write in the voice of Nostradamus, as if he could fill in the blanks that were created between each word of his text. That voice, being entrapped by a 16th century world knowledge that explained a distant future shown, left it to the reader to see from the same eyes, while being able to realize comparisons to our modern age [such as “fire in the sky” can easily be seen today as jet planes or missiles].
This book is written in four parts, with friends telling me I should have reduced the first and fourth parts (the introduction and conclusion), as the two middle parts are where the value lies. I offer that advice to anyone interested, as I have not been transformed from common laborer to master novel author. I see [I am shown by a higher mind than my own] meaning from the words of Nostradamus and I have to write that meaning down [I am compelled to serve God], so others can find their way to see what I see. If only reading parts two and three helps maintain one’s desire to read further, then skip the boring parts.
I will add one aside to this edition that I offer. The final edit of the first edition did not catch all grammatical errors. Those errors were corrected in the second edition (cover above). The original edition had different cover art and a different P.O.D. publisher. This book was first published by a print-on-demand thief, who kept all the royalties from its book sales [I was not the only one they stole from]. That experience led me to become a print-on-demand publisher, one that only publishes my books, so no thieves (other than the usual suspects – retailers) would again be involved with my publications. However, I have copies of the first edition still available from that learning experience, which is all I offer here, now; keeping in mind that part of the cost was from thief middleman markup, which I paid to obtain copies.