After I published my first book – a 740-page monster that only partially explained how I saw The Prophecies of Nostradamus (as a novice that was like a child acting grown-up) – friends were stopping me from going on and on and on about what Nostradamus really wrote. When I would pause to take a breath, they would ask, “Can’t you just tell me what Nostradamus said, without all the explaining?”
That question sank in, especially after I had discovered the letters Nostradamus wrote that were attached to his quatrains. The first was a Preface (also called the Letter to Cesar, the infant son of Nostradamus addressed in that document), which set an outline that the quatrains had to conform to. Then, after Nostradamus had published over six hundred quatrains, there was a hold placed on further publications. King Henry II of France demanded that Nostradamus come explain the verses already published, before he would approve any new ones being published. Instead of going to Paris to give that explanation, Nostradamus wrote the Epistle to Henry II.
Nostradamus penned that letter in 1558. Henry would be killed in a jousting accident in 1559. His wife, Queen Catherine de Medici, who believed in Nostradamus as an astrologer, thus a prophet, would give her approval to the final three hundred quatrains to be published, in 1566. Nostradamus would die that year, but he gave instructions to his assistant Jean de Chavigny to take the corrections to the publisher-printer in Lyon and have the complete book reprinted in 1568.
I decided that the best way to write what Nostradamus said in The Prophecies was to use his own words from the letters he wrote explaining the quatrains. To avoid all the explaining, I would write in the voice of Nostradamus, where I would use his words intermingled with my understanding of that those words meant, producing lines of text that would be mostly me, with a little Nostradamus. I did this by marking those Nostradamus words in bold type.
This would mean that a reader with a copy of both the Preface and the Epistle to Henry II could read along with the bold words, with my words in normal font being the explanations, as if Nostradamus was speaking through me. The problem with that is the Epistle to Henry II is itself an explanation that the quatrains are not in the proper order, whereby that letter needs to be divided up into pieces and reconstructed in an order that makes sense. Because so many were unwilling to take the time to read (or listen to me tell them) the explanations for everything, I could only allude to that rearrangement in my introduction to the Epistle to Henry II and leave it at that.
I found this book (my most popular, relative to sales figures) led to people invariably asking me, “How did you get this from that?” Oh well. I tried.
Here is a picture of the revised front cover to this book. It was originally published by a woman who used the art of Print On Demand (P.O.D.) publishing to steal the royalties of authors that no real publisher would pay to publish their work. The cover of that book was nicely done, but we forced to have her to cease and desist sales of that edition, whereby my wife and I became publishers, using the same printer (Lightning Source, at that time). We designed the cover of this second edition, which is published under our name Katrina Pearls.
There is a QRC next to the cover, which is the modern technology of our switch to Ingram Sparks(of which Lightning Source is affiliated). They offer publishers the ability to offer discounted rates via customers that scan these QR codes that send one to their website. There, the cover, blurb, price, and ability to purchase directly through them, in a secure setting, is available. I am not promoting sales. I am simply displaying the cover of this book published. If you want to purchase it, this would be the most affordable way to do so.
Nostradamus Blog 