When I first learned of the existence of a letter of Preface, and a letter written later to King Henry
II, I was in the middle of feverishly writing a book about how 200 quatrains strung together tell a
horrid story of where the world was headed. While at a bookstore, I saw a big, thick, hard cover
book about Nostradamus Prophecies, which I bought. It was in that book that I was introduced
to these letters. However, while I read the translations of them, I could not make much sense
from them. Bits and pieces did support what I was trying to get across in my writing; but that
was not enough to make me stop writing and look deeper into what the letters were trying to
state.
Once I came to a point where I was ready to begin understanding what the letters said, I began
to ponder over them. By then, I realized I had to do my own translations of everything
Nostradamus wrote, related to Les Propheties, including the two letters. The first letter I worked
on understanding was the Letter of Preface. This letter appears to be written to Nostradamus'
son Caesar; so much so, the letter is often referred to as the Letter to Caesar Nostradamus. I
immediately realized that the translated letters I read, just like the translated quatrains, were not
truly what Nostradamus wrote; but, instead, they were paraphrased edits, which attempted to
make the actual words written have the appearance of understandability.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the free application of punctuation. The most common
alteration translators made was the addition of periods, which broke what Nostradamus wrote
into something more readily resembling a sentence. In the Letter of Preface (if my memory
serves me correctly), I believe I only found 6 - 8 periods that Nostradamus used. That was for
(as I had copied the words into a single-spaced, 10-size, Time New Roman font) four pages of
text. The original presentation, found in the 1555 book publication of Les Propheties, was 14
pages.
If you have ever produced a document on a MS Word program, with the grammar-spell check
feature turned on (a default function, I believe), you find long and wordy sentences get a green
underline. This is to queue the author to the recommendation that reworking that sentence
might have a better overall effect. Everything Nostradamus wrote (basically), in both letters,
gets Word obnoxiously continuing to alert me that a long sentence needs to be adjusted, even
after I check, ignore.
What these extremely long sentences mean is that one does have to break the words up into
meaningful sentences. This is how we make sense of words strung together as communicated
ideas. This means that those who have translated the words of Nostradamus, and added
periods, have had the right idea. The problem is they have obliterated everything else in their
process of making the senseless make sense.
By this, I mean that if Nostradamus wrote a string of words, up to a comma, then another string
of words, up to a colon, many times the translators would make the comma disappear and
change the colon into a semi-colon or even a comma. They would readily change what was
written with their own concept of what the words meant. If what they had done was paralleled on
one of the C.S.I. television shows, it would have been the equivalent of having investigators
clumsily trample over a crime scene, destroying evidence. What they gather can never be
introduced as evidence, because the evidence has been contaminated. In short, these
translators have corrupted what Nostradamus wrote.
The way you go in and add periods, so that sentences can be found in the words written by
Nostradamus, while leaving the integrity of everything else written (i.e.: marks, symbols and
capitalization) intact, is to make each mark and symbol act as the place for a period. When you
do this, you find that the marks and symbols have purpose as something like street signs, telling
you which way to go next. Punctuation does this within the sentence structure, as we have
learned to read with syntax; but Nostradamus clearly did not write in sentences. He just used
period marks as signs for when to stop and take a breath.
Once you realize this, it becomes a simple matter of reading Nostradamus Letter of Preface
slowly, trying to figure out how a sentence can be made out of the words between indicator
signs. This is when everything begins to make sense and come together as a whole, with a
wealth of information, all of which is designed as advertised, to preface the book that follows.
That makes exploring the element of definition become important. We should know that the
noun, preface, is defined (primary definition 1a) as, A preliminary statement or essay
introducing a book that explains its scope, intention, or background and is usually written by the
author. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/preface) This means that the Letter of Preface (which
is how the title page of the letter states: Preface of M. Michel Nostradamus to his Prophecies)
is, by definition, a preliminary statement introducing Les Propheties, for the purpose of
explaining its scope, intention and background. It was listed on both ends (introduction and
closing) as authored by Nostradamus, with a letter to his son used as the format for
presentation. Understanding the definition of the word, preface, allows us to see the clear
importance of understanding what it says, if we want to understand what The Prophecies
means.
Since I have brought up the topic of definition (which is a strong element in logical argument), let
us bring out the dictionary again and look up two more words. The first word is, "title". This is
simply, "An identifying name given to a book," or "a general or descriptive heading." In other
words, the title of a book is the author's way of identifying what the book is about, in the most
general of terms. This means that when we see a title, such as The Prophecies, we have to
understand clearly the definition of the key root word, "prophecy." That word is defined as, "An
inspired utterance of a prophet, viewed as a revelation of divine will," and "A prediction of the
future, made under divine inspiration," and finally, "Such an inspired message or prediction
transmitted orally or in writing."
While it can be acceptable to define the word, "prophecy," simply as "a prediction," as many
people have done in the past, this is yet another alteration of what was actually written.
Alterations have the tendency to lead one away from the author's intention for selecting a certain
word for use. That is what we must avoid, if we logically want to ascertain the true intention of
the book, The Prophecies. With such a word appearing in the title of the work, it becomes a
better decision to see the divinity of the word, "prophecy," as the definition clearly states. If we
are correctly seeing divinity being the general essence, then looking at the preface, to find this
"scope, intention, and background explained," will tell us if this is the correct way to define this
title. We cannot ass-u-me it to be a book of simple predictions.
Thoughts on Punctuation & Definition
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