John Hogue (6:45)

T minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And then shuttle has cleared the tower.

Dan Snow (7:03)

John, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

John Hogue (7:05)

Glad to be here.

Dan Snow (7:06)

Tell me about the very specific context in which Nostradamus is born and in which he grows up. This idea of, well, forced conversion and what it was like to be Jewish in this period.

John Hogue (7:18)

He was born in 1503 in Provence, in St. Remy, and it was ruled until 1480 by King Rene the Good. He was called the Good because he was a very enlightened king. Saracens and Jews. And as Provence has always been a great doorway to the Mediterranean world, he was grown up in a beautiful space of that. But then Rene's son, the Duke of Calabria, was poisoned and that line was ended. And then it went over to Charles VII of France. First, Charles said, no more Jews. You either convert or go. But his son, Louis XII made it very clear that you will suffer severe penalties. So they love Provence, and so they decided to go underground with their Judaism and become Christians.

Dan Snow (8:06)

Wow, fascinating. And this would have been. Well, the entire community would have had to make that decision. That's extraordinary. He presented as a Christian, and he was able then to study and have a career, I guess, which should have been denied to him as a Jew.

John Hogue (8:19)

Well, it's interesting how so many Christianized Jews ended up being doctors. And his love for astrology. Also, he had the gift that his family had. His grandfathers were his teachers at first, and then he went to Avignon to do high school, I guess you would say. And then he also had a passion. He was a protobotanist. That is why later in his life, he ended up running into Scaliger in Ajong and becoming kind of a disciple of Scalajer, who was considered by history a protobotanist. So he said, I want to search the world and wander through Paris as an apothecary.

Dan Snow (8:57)

So he was apothecary. So he distributed drugs. He was a medical man and he's obsessed with plants. I guess those two are very closely connected, and the properties of plants, but also the planets as well. And is this typical of a sort of Renaissance scientific life?

John Hogue (9:14)

He was truly a Renaissance man in the high French Renaissance period. He also made cosmetics. He also wrote his book, the Treatise on Pharmacies, Pharmacists, where he chronicled his journeys all over France, Lorraine, southern Germany, Spain and Italy, northern parts of Italy, especially in Florence, where he got a lot of his equipment, I think, for his magical studies. So it was his day job to be a doctor.

Dan Snow (9:44)

So that's interesting. You say they were all astrologers and then stargazers. I guess that's what. Because early astronomy, the interest was how the movements of these planets and stars affect us down on Earth.

John Hogue (9:54)

Yes, it was permitted for a doctor to use astrology, and that's his way into making it his living and also use it. He was a remarkable judicial astrologer, is what they used to call it in those days. That would be what we would call political or mundane astrology. Reading the world, nations, the lifetimes of nations, people. And that's how he structured his prophecies, through a lot of astrology.

Dan Snow (10:19)

I just want to ask a bit more about his work as a medicine man. Because the plague was still sending successive waves across Europe, as it had been doing since the 14th century, he was able to treat the plague. Was he using slightly more effective techniques than had been tried in previous centuries.

John Hogue (10:37)

The great outbreak that happened in his day was in 1546, 1547 of the bubonic plague. And it was very severe after great floods had sent lots of animals and people down the run. And then the. The pestilence came from that, he thought. And so he was asked by the city fathers of the capital to go there and help them. He got there, all the doctors had fled or died. He set up with a couple of apothecaries in the Hotel de Ville, and for the next 270 days he fought the plague single handed. The main thing was that he was very big on hygiene. Clean water, good food, no bad smells. He was very much about, you got to stay away, be six feet away from people.

Dan Snow (11:23)

So you got that bit right.

John Hogue (11:25)

Yeah, he did. Everybody had an idea that hygiene was important, that when there seems to be Rats, whenever there's plague, so let's kill the rats. And they didn't know about the fleas. But he had a lozenge that he gave people, a rose lozenge with roses and pine and things. And it was. It was more a placebo to help people. But, you know, he sequestered people, nobody gathering in groups, you know, just like what we do now, knowing about germs.

Dan Snow (11:53)

So he does some interesting progressive things with this Exxon Provence outbreak of plague. Is he by this stage getting quite famous across France, across Western Europe, just for his medical work? Is he. Is he celebrated?

John Hogue (12:05)

Yes. You know, if Nostradamus had never written a word of prophecy, he would have gone down as one of the famous plague battlers of history. Because he didn't just stay at Aix en Provence, he then went to Salon Provence and did similar work there and fell in love with the town. But then he was summoned up to Lyon to fight whooping cough. And so, yes, he was getting well known.

Dan Snow (12:30)

So alongside his medical work, presumably seen as part of his medical work, is the occult. What did the world of the occult mean to the European elite, the French elite in this period?

John Hogue (12:40)

The term occult means hidden, hidden secrets. So it's been a thread throughout all periods of history. And the Renaissance was an interesting crossroads where classical knowledge was being regenerated in interest, the classics. That's what the Renaissance means. And so all things of the classical Roman or the Hellenistic world or even the Middle east was also included. They all come up. And of course, one of the things that happened that was open in the times of Rome and the times of Greece, ancient Greece were seers. The Oracle of Delphi was a mainstream thing, so it was not a hidden thing. So it has in history a long legacy of resistance to the reactive Christian conversions of things that wants to suppress it. When you suppress something, it only makes it stronger, but it makes it secret. And that fundamentally is what the occult sciences are. They were also pursued, as was alchemy during the Renaissance. But alchemy played it interestingly. They kept people at bay by saying, we're trying to make base metal into gold, and playing on the greed of more unconscious people, royals down to the lower people the peasants were all interested in. Oh, well, continue that and keep in touch with us so that we can also have the Midas touch without the curse. But what it really was was a mystical group that were taking the base metal of your ego, of your subconscious, of your lower ideas, and to turn it into the gold of enlightenment. So the alchemy was about the soul, not about making gold, becoming the potential that every soul has.

Dan Snow (14:45)

So Nostradamus is dabbling in the occult, but sort of keeping it on the down low. But he publishes these prophecies. What led to the publication of that book?

John Hogue (14:54)

Nostradamus's journey as the most famous prophet all around the world started with this quatrain that actually foresaw in 1554, the jousting accident and the details of what happened to the king, which was the cause for the wars of religion, which were why he was writing these prophecies to prevent it.

Dan Snow (15:20)

You listen to Dan Snow's history at talking about Nostradamus. More coming up. Hi folks. This episode is sponsored by Acorns. There are so many obstacles when it comes to investing your money. What should you be investing? Where, how long? And then of course, what are the risks involved? Well, friends, that's where acorns comes in. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you invest with the spare money you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just your spare change. I remember starting out with investment. It felt so futile. There was such a small amount of money involved. But then over the years, you see that investment grow and grow. You're putting away something to provide safety, security, confidence for you and your loved ones. It's a wonderful thing. So head to acorns.com historyhit or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier 1 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosure acorns.com historyhit.

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Dan Snow (17:23)

Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar, across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast, brought to you by Ubisoft and History Hit, is a must. Listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast, and this book of prophecies ends up on the desk of the Queen of France.

John Hogue (18:19)

The Queen of France was at Medici, Catherine de Medici. She was deeply involved in occult study, so she advised the royal censors, no book could be published in France unless the king's censor approved it and stamped it. So she made sure that if any a book on the occult came through, that she was the first person to read it. So it's quite possible that the first person to read Le Propheti, the Prophecies of Nostradamus, was her. And what she saw not too long into it was quatrain 35 of century one. And she thought that this was about her husband, King Henry ii. It starts by saying, the young lion will overcome the old one on the field of combat in single battle. He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage. Two wounds made, one then to die a cruel death. The young lion is the Count de Montgomery, Gabriel Delorges. He's doing a joust in the final jousting. These jousts were done, big tournament in the Rue de Tournelles. And it was a big jousting thing with the members of the Spanish court. And because of the big peace treaty that ended the Italian French wars and wives were going to be given by proxy as well. And it was a big thing for them. So he was going to joust in a three day joust at the end of June 1559, when sundown was coming, he said, no, I want one more joust. They broke some jousting sticks and he wanted to go at Delorges one more time. And so he did. And then Deloria had a problem. He didn't lower his jousting stick just right. It hit, hit the karas of the king and a big splinter slid up and passed through the gilded cage of his helmet, piercing him right here. The eye survived but the retina nerve was destroyed, this big splinter and it was like this huge stick of wood Everybody was screaming. The queen fainted. He somehow managed to get himself up and get to his bed in the Chateau Tornel and laid there. They had. Gabriel Pare was his physician, one of the great physicians of the 16th century. And they tried to save him, but the wounds were two. What happened is the wound one was the one that hit his eye. Wound two was the counter shock that fractured his skull from the back end, and he got infection. And so 10 days later, he died in agony. What then happened that night is a great mob gathered outside of Paris to the Roman Inquisition offices. And they were carrying effigies, and they were very demanding of the people as they walked out on the stairs in the firelight to see effigies of Nostradamus. And they're saying, we want you to burn this man. But unfortunately for him, he was already back 300 miles or so, back in Provence.

Dan Snow (21:37)

So he becomes super famous at that point because he seems to have prophesied this death.

John Hogue (21:41)

What alerted Catherine Medici even more was that the Medici family back in Florence had a astrologer that they very much respected called Luke Geerichus. And he had also written her a message months before of his concern, looking at the stars of Henry II, that he might find himself in 1559 in an accident with jousting, and he should quit jousting or not joust in the year 1559. So hundreds of miles south in South France, Nostradamus is writing about it. Way off in distant Florence, another great prophet of the era is writing about it. The two never knew each other, so she said to her husband, Henry ii, I want to see this Nostradamus, this doctor from southern France, and have him have an audience with you. And he said, okay, send this Nostradamus fellow. Now, it usually took three months for anybody to ride a horse or a bumpy carriage to get to Paris. She made sure that he had the Royal Liberty stallions to harness his coach. So it only took one month. When he got there, he went to the Ile de France. He went and prayed for his life in Mass in the Notre Dame named after him. And he then went to his hotel. But he was telling his publishers, when he stopped over in Lyon, that he was afraid he was going to lose his head. You know, he was very afraid of what would happen. And on the morning, he was going to have his audience at the palace of Saint Germain on May, outside of Paris. At that time, he hears a knock on the door. And he opens the door of his hotel room, and there is the constable of France, Anne de Montmorecy, who was in a lot of his prophecies, his future and his fate during the wars of revolution between Catholics and Protestants. Big strappling man, he was pushing 70. He looked like 30 or 40. And he was the man, the commander of all forces of France, who escorted him to the palace. Now he walked by all the people and they were making the usual things that people sneer at, even to this day, about people who work in this kind of field. And he just was very polite. He was always a very polite man. And he went in to the audience. He came out with his head on his shoulders and with several hundred crowns, crown gold coins, which unfortunately wouldn't pay for the only half of the journey. So he had to do astrology while he was there in Paris to make out the money to go home. But what happened after that? He was invited to the Chateau Blois in the beautiful Loire countryside, which was a summer resort for Catherine de Medici. And there he drew charts, astrology charts, for all of her children. He liked Margo the best, but she ended up being Lauren, Margot in the infamous St. Mark Paul New Day Massacre, which he also predicted.

Dan Snow (25:01)

Now that we're talking about the prophecies, tell me about some of the other ones he made that you feel have well come to pass.

John Hogue (25:08)

Yes. One of the most interesting ones is a prose prophecy which he wrote and finished, signed off in March of 1558. He saw the French Revolution coming. He's called it the advent of the commoners, the vogue, you know, the commoners, the peasants, because he's a royalist. True. And through. So he's telling Henry II that there will become a great persecution when this happens, the Christian church. So he was already foreseeing how the churches would be closed down and taken by the French Revolution. And he says they will feel in that time that it's a new era, and so they'll create a calendar. And it would be in the year 1792. Now, he's a little wrong about the churches being ransacked. That happened a little earlier. But the First Republic created a revolutionary calendar in 1792. So that's one. There are hundreds like this now. Many, I got to say, to qualify, so many of them are open to interpretation, because either they're wrong or they're about things that could have happened but will never happen, because he talked about alternative futures. So a lot of them may never happen. So some of the others that are just wowers are, you know, his prophecies about the three antichrists, he Saw three. No one else in prophecy sees three. But he saw three. One he called Napoleon Roy, which is from Paul Ne Laurent, which is an anagram, and Napoleon Roy is Napoleon Roy, King Napoleon. So he wrote, Paul Ne Laurent, King Napoleon will be more a fire than of the blood to swim and praise the great one, to flee to the confluence. Now, that's the pious Pope Pius VI, who was arrested by the French Revolution. And of course, he had a lot to do with it because he basically conquered Italy for the French Revolution. Because the next line, he says, the piouses. The Piouses, the magpies. These are the two popes. Entry will be refused. The depraved durance will keep them imprisoned. It was near durance that the first Pius pope, Pius vi died. And the other, of course, was denied his freedom. He was sent to the Fontainebleau chateau by Emperor Napoleon, and he stayed there for many years as his guest.

Dan Snow (27:46)

People like to think he predicted the atomic bombs.

John Hogue (27:49)

Yes, he said there would be a terrible scourge that would hit two harbors, a scourge unlike any that had been seen before. And it had a invisible plague from within. And he was horrified. He was absolutely horrified by this. And of course, it's also some of his future prophecies. See that we're not out of danger of that. The great flying fleets that use the dreadful globes, that's a nuclear trigger, fission trigger over the fusion and make the sun and the earth and the fires will march up from the south. Well, that's usually where nuclear weapons land. The first that would be from south, going north on both American and Russian territory. But it also implies these new Russian weapons, the Sarmat 2 and others, the avant garde that can fly at Mach 29 and go around the South Pole so they can evade all the US radars pointed north.

Dan Snow (28:50)

Could you just give me the sort of one that seems to predict 9 11?

John Hogue (28:53)

Well, one that defined my life because I started seeing it coming in his prophecies back in 1983, and I wrote a book about it, nostradamus premonitions of 91 1. The two prophecies are at 45 degrees latitude, the sky will burn fire to approach the great new city. Instantly, a huge scattered flame will leap up. When they want verification from the Norman, what happened is there were no longitudes in Nostradamus time. He was into maps. It's a great new city at somewhere around latitude 45. So you gotta give or take several, like 3 or 4 degrees, because there's no longitudes. And that was the Problem with latitudes in those days, that's coming centuries later. So I looked to see if there's any new city that literally was. Did not exist at all in his time. And the only one I found was New York. It wasn't New Amsterdam for a long time. So I thought, well, maybe this is about New York. Now. The other thing is 45 degrees latitude. It's double entendre. He loves layered and layered meanings. If you look at both jet impacts on the north and south tower, they're at angles of 45 degrees. So he approached the great new city, great explosion in the air. I mean, I literally saw it live as it happened. I was asleep, sleep. And I was being woken up by my Australian literary agent at the time, who was in London calling me. I said, what happened? He said, it's happened, mate. The terror attacks happening on the two towers. And so I dropped the phone and went out, turn on the TV just to see the second plane hit the South Tower alive.

Dan Snow (30:42)

Well, let's come on to the. What he might have. I'm sure listeners are curious to know what he thinks about the future, our future, not just his future. So nuclear war, great good news. What about extraterrestrial colonization and leaving this planet?

John Hogue (30:55)

He talked about sometime around in the year 3797, his last dated prophecy. He said that there'd be a great conflagration where mountains would be destroyed, the oceans would be destroyed because the sun is devouring the Earth. It's becoming a red giant, basically, is what he's saying. And he has it go up to the orbit of Earth. The races, the races of man will move towards Aquarius for a period of time. Others will move to Cancer. And so he's saying that we are going to live on new Earths that are orbiting the stars of Cancer. So it's quite a remarkable prophecy.

Dan Snow (31:42)

So the prophecies make him famous. How did he spend the last few years of his life?

John Hogue (31:46)

He was healthy, hale and hearty right up to the end, except for the last few years. And then he kind of very rapidly declined. He had dropsy, which is pulmonary edema. And he knew, okay, he's swelling up. His life was swelling up. He knew that his time had come and his leg with gout was so severely swollen that he, they had to build him a bench so that he could prop up his swollen leg on it when he was in the bed. And by the way, he hadn't slept for months. He never slept much, but he hadn't slept for months. And he was propped up in his bed, which they moved the bed and the bench up into his beloved secret study. He wanted to leave there. And in early July, just as he was saying his goodbyes to Chauvigny, he was a single secretary. Chauvigny was the last person to see him when he bid farewell to the rest of the family. Chauvigny said, basically, when he said, will I see you tomorrow morning, master? And he said, you will not see me alive. So they all creeped up there at dawn, and they found him had rolled off the bed, and his body was between the bed and the bench. Which brings me to the final prophecy of Nostradamus, which said on his return from the embassy, this would be in Aix on Provence, the king's gift put in place. So some business he was doing for Charles ix. He will do no more. He will be gone to God. Close relatives, friends, brothers by blood found him completely dead near the bed and the bench. No, maybe when he felt it coming, he rolled, you know, to fulfill his prophecy. But the other prophecy, he said, and this has actually been rediscovered, this prophecy, it is authentic, he said, about the world he was leaving. He said, a sad state will be all states and sects. So he's talking about the wars of religion between brothers and sisters, enmity, discord, civil war. He's talking about treasures and free more apparent the tests. It's kind of a cryptic line. It's a hard one to figure out what he's trying to say. The summer aid, this line to expire. I mean, after his son Cesar and his uncles died, the bloodline ended in the the early part of the following century and might only have survived with his female bloodline into the 20th century.

Dan Snow (34:28)

As he died, was he more remembered for his prophecies as an author or for his medical work? What was his reputation? It was his legacy when he died.

John Hogue (34:37)

Well, he's definitely said one of his prophecies that even his fiercest skeptics can't deny. He said, I shall become far more famous after my death than I ever was while alive. And certainly it eclipses anything else that we know about him is his prophecies. Because in a way, the device that he used keeps people engaged. That kind of cryptic way, people want to decode it, people want to study it. So all the generations up to the present, up to me, are fascinated by this man and his prophecies. So he, by that device of literary device that he used, he kept people engaged. People that hate him, people that love him, which are passionate on both sides.

Dan Snow (35:25)

I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

John Hogue (35:27)

Thanks for having me.

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