Vincent Bridges

Okay, so I’m watching Scary Movie 3 on Comedy Central last night when an odd commercial comes on featuring all kinds of signs saying: “The end is coming,” and “the end of the world.” This catches my interest and I un-mute just in time to hear my own voice saying something about the “exact date of the Apocalypse.” Then the logo for Lost Book of Nostradamus, my new History Channel special, comes on; it is a promo spot, done especially for the comedy channel.

This morning, while channel surfing over breakfast, I found a whole three-minute piece on Fox & Friends, featuring one of my segments from the show as a teaser and an interview with my friend Victor Baines, who is also on the show. Who would have ever thought that I would make Fox News announcing the end of the world? Reality is stranger than any fiction. Trust me, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

What started as a way to get the History Channel interested in making a follow up to my first Nostradamus special, Nostradamus: Five Hundred Years Later, has blossomed into a gargantuan enterprise, backed by the largest promotional blitz ever done by the History Channel. They even had an hour long Behind the Scenes on the TV Guide channel and a countdown clock on the History Channel itself. This show seems planned to take Nostradamus and the End of the World into the mainstream.

For the first hour, the show’s reenactments and forensic drama are mixed with a few nods to Nostradamus’ prophetic abilities, and lots of teasers that whatever the Lost Book turns out to be, it is going to be very important. The second hour moves deeper into the prophecies, and eventually concludes that the book wasn’t likely to have been created by Nostradamus, although it could have belonged to him. It could even have been one of his sources, one that helped him pinpoint our present time period as one to watch.

And here the show turns into the Vincent & Friends Apocalyptic Comedy Troupe, as Victor Baines and my former co-author Jay Weidner back me up as I interpret the crucial seven images in the series from the Lost Book as pointing to the events happening in the sky right now, culminating just five years from now in 2012. The connections between the imagery in the Lost Book and these celestial events are made even more apparent by the symbolism of a 13th century church front just a few feet away, around the corner, from Nostradamus’s door. I point all this out in the show, and the producers did a fine job of animating it, and it is quite convincing.

So, how did the core of our book, The Mysteries of the Great Cross at Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time (2003, Destiny Books) end up on television, with a huge media blitz behind it, in a special on Nostradamus?

That is actually a long and complicated story going back more than eight years to our first research trip for Mysteries. We stayed in the 18th century chateau built on the estate of Nostradamus’ brother Bertrand, and some sort of connection was made. The Balkan war insights came less than a month after we returned, and I got my start as an authority on Nostradamus. After the 2003 television show, where I actually did some of my talking head shots on the ground in France, my connection to the Maestro became even closer. But I had no idea what was coming next.

I had seen some of the images in the Lost Book in an earlier book by O. C. Ramotti, The Nostradamus Code. The images in that book were definitely intriguing, and the main reason to buy the book, but Ramotti’s interpretations left much to be desired. I find it far beyond belief that Nostradamus, when decoded, was actually writing in modern Italian. But still, those images were very strange!

Last spring, as the Lost Book was being examined forensically in Rome, I got to see for the first time the complete series of images and I knew very quickly that the core series not only depicted the center of our galaxy, but also was talking about the galactic alignment itself. Here was manuscript evidence, dating from at least the 16th century, that someone had known of the center of galaxy and even its spiral shape, long before modern astronomy discovered it in 1917.

That alone made the Lost Book of Nostradamus a truly unique discovery. Here was solid evidence that a main point of our argument in Mysteries, that an unknown group of initiates or believers had retained sophisticated knowledge concerning the “end of the world” galactic alignment at least since the Middle Ages, was in fact correct. A heretical and possibly chilaist group of initiates kept the knowledge, in the form of images that were eventually perhaps only semi-understandable. These images were treasures, copied and recopied, until finally they disappeared into the Vatican Library.

And now, I get to announce their true meaning and value on nation television!

I told you, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

Next Balkan War:

I/74

After tarrying they will move forward by rowing for Epirus.

The great relief effort will be toward Antioch:

The black curly-haired one will strain hard for the Empire,

Brazen Barb(arossa) will be roasted on a spit.

This is one of those quatrains just on the edge of becoming intelligible as events happen. It has had other close possibilitites through the years, the Barbary pirates, the Battle of Lepanto, even Hitler is suggested. But the attack toward Syria from the Balkans, the black curly haired leader under the double eagle of the Hapsburg, struggling for the Empire, sounds alot like Milosovic and his plans. Roasted on a spit suggests hoisted by a rocket, perhaps.

(more…)

V/90

In the Cyclades, in Perinthus and Larissa,

In Sparta, all of Peloponnesus:

A great famine — plague through false dust (fallout?).

Nine months it will last and through the whole peninsula.

Some sort of nuclear disaster is clearly foreseen, one that causes Europe to be evacuated or lifeless for nine months. Given this quatrain’s close association with V/91, which dates with precision the start of the current Kosovo Conflict, this event is a probable outcome likely to occur soon after, perhaps even within a matter of months.

VI/98

Ruin for the Volcae (of Languedoc) with fear so very terrible,

Their great city (Toulouse) stained, pestilential deed:

To plunder Sun, Moon and violate their temples:

And the two rivers to redden with gushing blood.

This quatrain is considered part of a treasure hunt theme woven around the idea of lost ancient gold of a people here called the Volcae. The Volcae are a legendary tribe of Celtic Freebooters said to have hidden their treasure near Toulouse. This quatrain could also relate to the disaster predicted for southern France as part of the Balkan terror campaign. (It may also be a retro-active prophecy flashing back to the mysterious destruction of Glanum in the late 3rd century.)

VII/6

Naples, Palermo and all of Sicily,

Will be uninhabited through barbarian hands,

Corsica, Salerno, the island of Sardinia,

Hunger, plague, war, the end of extended evils.

This quatrain, like II/96, is part of the so-called apocalyptic sequence. It points to the widespread destruction caused by nuclear terrorism in the Balkans. It suggests that is the end of the extended evils, or this is as bad as it possibly gets. On this we must agree with the prophet.

PF/83 & 106

And at present, we are conducted by the Moon — by means of the total power of the eternal god — when she will have completed her entire cycle, the Sun, then Saturn will come. According to the celestial signs the reign of Saturn will return a second time so that as it is all calculated, the world then approaches its final death-dealing revolution.

According to the visible judgement of the stars, although we are in the seventh number of the millenary — which finishes all — we are approaching the eighth cycle which is in the firmament of the latitudinary dimension of the eighth sphere, whence the great eternal God will come to complete the revolution and the heavenly bodies will return to their motions and the superior movement will render the earth stable and secure for us. . . so that men coming after will see them, knowing the events to have occurred infallibly; such as those others we have noted, speaking more clearly - for although they were written under a cloud the meanings will be understood. When the time comes for the removal of ignorance, the situation will be cleared up still more.

(more…)

As I sit this Saturday morning watching to the news and pondering my week’s work on the prophecies of Nostradamus, I am left with the eerie sensation that 445 years ago the Seer of Provence watched the headlines unfold just as I am now watching his prophecies unfold. Never mind what the 16th century philosopher thought of the marvel of Television (”Good Heavens, what changes!” he exclaims in one quatrain), he would have understood the name and perhaps even the ubiquity of its images. The prophetic news from the past, Nostradamus’ quatrains, are deciphered by the images on the magic mirror of our television screens. As I watch this, I am struck with a strange sensation, not deja vu exactly, but more like a deja tu, a shared experience of a temporal moment outside of its space/time frame. Nostradamus in the past comments on his future is such a way as to explain my present.

(more…)

quotes by Fredric Mistral

texts and photos by Vincent Bridges (c) 2003

“As far back as I can remember, I have in front of me a barrage of mountains whose hillocks and slopes, cliffs and narrow valleys were blue from dawn ’til dusk; a blue that varied in intensity according to the time of day. This is the chain of the Alpilles, surrounded by olive groves like some mountain of ancient Greece and a lofty keeper of legends and glory…”

“Caius Marius, the savior from Rome still popular throughout the region awaited the barbarians at the foot of this rampart, behind the walls of his camp; his trophies have been gilding under the sun of Les Antiques, near St. Remy, for two thousand years…”

“On the steep rocky cliffs of the the mountain… the princes of Les Baux built their stronghold. The gracious chatelaines held their courts of love in the fragrant vales of Les Baux… at the time of the troubadours.”

“Oh delightful fragrances! Oh light! Oh gentle nature’s peace; what longings of paradise you place in my child’s soul…”

Think of a triangle, with a town and its castle at each of the points. There’s a river on two of the three sides, but the third side drifts so openly toward the marshes of the south and the sea that the delta might as well be an island. Across the center of the triangle, almost due east to west, runs a jagged chain of sharp cliffs and steep valleys known as the Little Alps. In actuality, they look more like an Impressionist version of the mountainsides of ancient Greece, shrunken to a more human scale, and placed like a stage set in the middle of a rocky plain.

A few million years ago, the pressure from the growing Alps and the Pyrenees buckled a portion of the ancient seabed and thrust it straight up into the air. As the sea retreated, the bed on either side of the buckled rock silted up and became a stony and desert-like plain, the little Crau to the north, and the Crau to the south. The chain of limestone peaks that separates them runs roughly 20 miles, from Eyguieres, the eastern edge and the highest peak at just under 1,500 feet, to St. Gabriel in the west. At the widest point, the Alpilles are barely three miles across. Small in scale, but rich, as Frederick Mistral put it, in “legends and glory.”

The legends began six thousand years ago when the Neolithic hunters formed small communities in the safety of the mountain-top caves and springs at Les Baux and Eygaliere. Around three thousand years ago, a proto-Celtic civilization developed, one which welcomed the Greek traders who arrived half a millennium later in the 6th century BCE. Three hundred or so years later when Rome arrived in the first flush of its empire building, the Ligurians were cultured philosophers who had dwelt in peace so long they had virtually forgotten the art of war. Rome saved them from the more nomadic Celts sweeping down from the north, but at the price of their independence. The Salian confederation of Ligurian tribes was defeated by the Romans within a generation and soon thereafter the entire region was annexed as Rome’s first province, the Provincia Narbonenis. A century later, Augustus and Julius having made safe the roads back to Rome - and in doing so made Celtic Gaul Roman - the first province, Provence, became the centerpiece of the transalpine empire.

The ancient city of Glanum Livii, at the foot of its sacred mountain

Nestled in a narrow valley to the north of the Ligurians’ sacred mountain stood the ancient capital of Liguria, the Celto-Greek city of Glanon, Romanized as Glanum Livii. Founded half a millennium before the turn of the common era, Glanum’s authority depended on its closeness with the Druidic priesthood at Les Baux and in the Valley of the Ancients at Cordes. In the Roman era, it was eclipsed by Arelate (Arles), which had wisely backed Julius Caesar in his dispute with Pompey in 49 BCE. Even as Arelate grew, Glanum adhered to its old ways, absorbing first the Romans, and then in the middle of the first century CE, an influx of Jews from Palestine and other parts of the new Roman Empire. Some of these Jews were followers of a rabble-rousing magician, Jesus the Nazorean, who had just claimed the ancient throne of David in Jerusalem, and been executed for treason by the Romans for the attempted restoration of the ancient lineage. The fleeing followers included, perhaps, members of Jesus’ immediate family. As they spread throughout the region preaching their Gospel, the cultured and thoroughly Helenized Druid philosophers were also converted to the new faith. From this unique blend of spiritual influences would grow an alternative version of what, a century or two later, would be called Christianity.

The original lion guardian of the spring at Ste. Maries-de-le-Mer, circa 1st century CE

This blending of spiritual influences began when the Egyptians of the 18th and 19th Dynasties arrived, more than a millennium before Glanum was founded at the foot of its holy mountain. The Egyptians built trading forts off what was then mouth of the Rhone, near the present day Ste. Maries-de-le-Mer, and traveled up the Rhone as far as Lyons. In the Greek era, trade flowed freely from Alexandria by way of Massilia. With the trade came an influx of ideas and philosophies from the east. In the late third century BCE, Buddhist missionaries arrived, dispatched by King Asoka in India to preach the Eight-fold path to all the ends of the earth. For the next three centuries, small enclaves of Buddhist hermits could be found living in the ancient grottoes and caves of the region. Helenized statues of the Buddha have been unearthed in the caves near Lamanon, and in at least one grotto said to have been used by St. Marie Magdalene, north of Nimes. This unique overlapping of influences created the very cosmopolitan and syncretic context from which the new faith emerged, appearing suddenly and full blown with the fervor of a Jewish messianic cult, the compassionate techniques of the early Buddhists, and an emphasis on the Goddess-mother and child, that is pure paganism, recognizable all the way back to the first Neolithic hunters.

Street corner Madonna and Child, St. Remy-de-Provence

St. Remy-de-Provence, where statues of the Virgin and Child still bless every important street corner, grew from the ruins of Glanum’s destruction. Depopulated first by Diocletian’s persecution at the end of the third century CE, there was little left to sack by the time the Visigoths arrived in the early fifth century. At the turn of the sixth century, the area was revitalized and given a new name by one of those odd quirks of fate that seem to drive the history of the Dark Ages. The Visigoths made Arelate their new capital, and Alaric II proclaimed himself king of the new empire of the Goths. They were opposed only by the newly Christianized Merovingian Franks under Clovis. Declaring that it was against God’s will that the fairest portion of Gaul should be ruled by heretics and heathens, Clovis invaded the south and defeated Alaric II at the battle of Vouille. In the bargain, he became the master of southern France all the way to the Pyrenees.

The Municipal Arch at Glanum, Les Antiques

During the campaign, Clovis traveled the ancient Roman road from Arelate to Avenio (Avignon) and camped with his army in the fields north of the ruins of Glanum, around what would come to be called Les Antiques. While camped at Glanum, Clovis experienced a miraculous visitation from his mentor, St. Remy, who prophesied for Clovis the future of his dynasty -”The Kingdom of France is predestined by God for the defense of the… only true Church of Christ. This kingdom shall one day be great among the kingdoms of the earth…” - as well as his personal future - “At the end of his most glorious reign, he shall go to Jerusalem, and shall lay down his Crown and Scepter on the Mount of Olives…” Clovis was so impressed by this experience that he gave the entire area to the church of Rheims, and so the new hamlet that grew on the site was called St. Remy’s town. Clovis went on to become the greatest of the Merovingian Kings, and St. Remy-de-Provence remained ever after woven into the sacred tradition of French kingship.

Hilltop farmhouse or “mas” in Eygaliere

The fortified hilltop villages, such as Eygaliere, fared better in the next few centuries than did the new towns such as St. Remy. Hit hard by the plagues of the sixth century and the Arab invasion of the eighth, a small measure of stability returned to the region with the rise of the Carolingians. The area around St. Remy became virtually independent as a kind of Dark Age city state, and survived in this form until the rise of the Lords of les Baux in the middle of the tenth century CE. Around 950, a local nobleman named Hughes claimed by right of descent, the ancient lineage once again, the old Roman watchtower and Druidic observatory at the entrance to the Valley of the Ancients at Cordes, directly in the center of the Alpilles. Perched like a vast boat - hence the name les Baux, the beam or keel of a ship that would in local usage come to mean any sharp uprising of rock - floating to the south of the sacred mountains, the terrace has an unobstructed view of the entire southern horizon, making it possibly the most significant Neolithic and megalithic astronomical location in all of Europe. Militarily, the site commanded both the Roman road to the north, through the passes it looms above, and the east/west road across the Crau, which ran directly below the rocky fortress. Possession of this site made Hughes and his descendants the masters of the medieval empire of the sun.

Les Baux, as seen from across the Valley of the Ancients

The Lords of les Baux adopted the idea of a semi-divine lineage, proclaimed by Clovis after his vision at St. Remy, and combined it with the ancient local traditions of Druidic astronomers to produce what to their contemporaries was the odd idea that they were descended from the third wise man, Balthazar. But from within the local mythic context, this was the only description possible for a tradition that clearly preceded Christianity, even as it recognized and embraced it. Of course the Druids of the Valley of the Ancients had foreseen the new age in the sky, so why shouldn’t they have sent a wiseman, a magi, in search of the meaning of the Star? The Lords of les Baux took the mythic Star, shown with 16 rays, as their family crest.

St. Trophime, Arles

Right inside portal of St. Trophime, with Magi frieze at the top

At the height of their power and influence, the Lords of les Baux ruled roughly one hundred villages and hilltop keeps on both sides of the Alpilles and by the late twelfth century had taken on a role in international power politics. Their support encouraged Frederick I Barbarossa in his end-run around the Roman church, resulting in his 1179 coronation as King of Arles. The facade of St. Trophime in Arles, designed and sculpted for the occasion, has a frieze depicting the entire story of the Magi as a direct nod to the influence of the Lords of les Baux. It was also the time of the Troubadours, who sang at the courts of love held in Les Baux, Romanin and Roquemartine, and the Cathar heresy, which the Lords of les Baux embraced, as well as the first appearance in written form of the Kabbalah, the transcendent light mysticism of the Jews, whom the Lords of les Baux held as being under their direct protection. The troubadour cited as the source for the original Grail legend by both Chretein de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach, one Guyot de Provence, was a vassal of the Lords of les Baux, and it is therefore not unusual to find images and motifs from the Grail Romances springing to mind as one contemplates the fortress of Les Baux.

Les Baux as Grail Castle

Within a generation, all would be on the verge of ruin, as first the Pope and then the French King launched crusades against the heretics of the south. After invasion and inquisition came the first waves of the Black Death, and the Lordship of les Baux passed to the Counts of Provence. In the fifteenth century, this was Good King Rene D’Anjou, who gave Les Baux to his second wife, the beloved Queen Jeanne. It is fitting that in its final days of independence, Les Baux was ruled by a Queen. After her death, King Louis XI of France destroyed the fortifications, but Les Baux continued to be an important fiefdom. In the sixteenth century, it passed to the Marechal of France, Anne de Montmorency. With the good Marechal, we arrive in the time of the region’s most famous historical figure, Michel de nostra domina, nicknamed Nostradamus by his contemporary, Francois Rabelais. The sixteenth century was a crucial point in the history of France and Europe, and Nostradamus was part of all the conspiracies and diverse intellectual currents of the era. Within his lifetime, his influence would begin to shape the events of European power politics, and after his death his shadow would continue to haunt the future, touching even our own more rational age.

The Rue Hoche, the old Jewish quarter of St. Remy-de-Provence

Michel, eldest son of Jaume de nostra domina, a local grain merchant and notary, was born in mid December 1503 in his grandmother house on the Rue Hoche, the main street of the ancient Jewish section of St. Remy-de-Provence. He spent his first fifteen years in St. Remy, playing in the shadow of Les Antiques and absorbing the region’s legends and history from his two grandfathers. At that period, Glanum was a legendary memory, but one that was accessible to the adventurous. The crypt of the small chapel of St. Jean, a few hundred yards from Les Antiques, opened on to the ancient buried temple of the Goddess of the spring, the nympheum, of Glanum. And from there, miles of underground water chambers and sewers were available, running from Glanum and the monastery of St. Paul de Mausole out to the ancient quarries and beyond. His youth in St. Remy, with its mixture of myths and ancient history, had a profound effect on the future Seer of Provence. In six quatrains of his famous Prophecies, he returned to the scenes of his youth, implying that a great secret, the local myth of the “Silver Goat,” would be discovered there one day.

The Dome of the Rock and the Palace of the Popes at Avignon from across the Rhone

At fifteen, young Michel departed for the university school at Avignon, the scene of the French Captivity of the Church in the fourteenth century and still the center of the region’s intellectual life in the sixteenth century. In September 1521, his studies interrupted by an outbreak of the plague, Michel left Avignon and began his first period of wandering. By 1529, he was in Montpelier where he applied for admission to the medical school. One of his fellow students, the already famous humanist Francois Rabelais, Latinized Michel’s surname as Nostradamus. It is not clear whether Nostradamus ever received his doctorate, but by the early 1530s he had settled in Agen, in southwestern France, in order to study with the Italian humanist Julius Ceasar Scaliger. Nostradamus married a local girl, and quickly had two children. But disaster soon struck, and both his new wife and their two children died of the plague. By 1534, Nostradamus was on the move again.

For a decade, Nostradamus wandered the south of France, from Provence to the Basque coast and Bordeaux and back again. By 1544, we find a contemporary mention of him studying the plague and its treatment with Louis Serres in Marseilles, and then, a year or so later, he was summoned to Aix and Salon to organize the fight against the plague. He was so successful that the next year he was called to Lyon for the same reason. These exploits made him well-known, and along with the division of father’s estate, he found himself wealthy enough to married the most eligible young widow in Salon-de-Provence, Anne Ponsard. But before he could settle down to wedded bliss, Nostradamus found it necessary to make a trip to Italy.

Of all of Nostradamus’ mysterious periods of wanderlust, this last journey to Italy is perhaps the most odd. He married Anne, bought and began to refurbish a house in Salon, and then left for a two-year excursion. It is hard not to consider that he was in some way summoned to Italy, or at least compelled by reasons more powerful than just gathering recipes for his book on cosmetics. His old friend Rabelais was in Italy, and may have been the source of the invitation. Nostradamus alludes in his later works to collecting a number of volumes on occult philosophy during his trip that would later serve as the source of his magickal practices. Soon after the election of Pope Julius III in 1550, Nostradamus returned to Salon-de-Provence and began the work that would make him famous for the next half a millennium.

Salon-de-Provence, Nostradamus’ home for the last decades of his life

Nostradamus was famous almost from the moment of his return, becoming a sixteenth century superstar within the decade when his prediction of Henri II’s death came true. Before his death in 1566, he was the confident of the Queen of France, and officially proclaimed the royal Councilor and Physician in Ordinary to the Crown. He charted the future of French Kings, Henri II and his sons, discovered the founder of the next dynasty, the ten-year old Henri de Bearn, recognized a future Pope, and composed a history of mankind’s possible and alternate futures in the Green Language of the Hermetic adept. And he accomplished all this without having his work placed on the newly developed Index of prohibited books, or even running afoul of the Inquisition. That alone shows that Nostradamus had many friends in powerful places.

Whatever we make of his prophecies, there can be no doubt that they have continued to fascinate us. Each era has seen the reflection of its own time and problems in Nostradamus’ enigmatic verses, but he was right enough, often enough, with his predictions that our fascination is warranted. From a historical perspective, we can see Nostradamus as part of a reformation movement, not just within the church or the state, but an attempt to chart out the reformation of the human spirit through the vehicle of time. Nostradamus saw himself in the larger tradition of the Old Testament prophets and others such as the Sybils of ancient Rome and the more recent Joachim of Flores. But, and here’s the important twist, he also saw himself as a man of the renaissance, a man of science, pragmatic and empirical. His prophetic abilities were to him a kind of future science, known to the ancients, dimly reconstructed by the scholars of his era, but surely to be perfected sometime in the long reach of human history. In that sense, we can see his Prophecies as an attempt to communicate not just across time, but across levels of awareness as well.

St. Michel-de-Apocalypse, Salon-de-Provence

The mystery of Nostradamus is ultimately the mystery of the region itself, the ancient empire of the Sun. From the Druid Seers of Les Baux, the philosophers and early Christians of Glanum, to the Merovingians origins of St. Remy, the Magi of Les Baux, the Cathars, the Kabbalah, the Templars and the legends of the Grail, Nostradamus’ vision rested on a solid basis of local myth and tradition. For example, just out Nostradamus’ back door in Salon-de-Provence, where he would have to have seen it everyday, is the Eglise St. Michel-de-Apocaylpse. On its arched tympanum we find not just St. Michel holding the sealed book of esoteric knowledge, but also posing as Ophiucus, the serpent holding esoteric 13th sign of the zodiac marking the center of the galaxy. Below his central figure is a lamb and shofar horn, the horn of judgment, beneath a Templar cross. Around these central figures are “Green” language images of the Tree of Life along with the Merovingian fleur-de-lis. Nostradamus had but to take a walk in the evening to contemplate, on one church front, the deepest core of his philosophy.

Vincent Bridges

September 28, 2003

Apocalyptic Sequence of Events:

I/16

Saturn joined with (Scorpio) transiting toward Sagitarrius

At its highest, saluting the increase, exaltation

Pest, famine, death through military hands,

The century and the Cycle aproaches its renewal.

I/30

Because of the tormented seas, the strange ship,

Will arrive at an unknown port:

Notwithstanding the signals from the branch of palm,

After death, pillage: good advice (or birds) arriving late.

I/55

Under the opposite Babylonian climate,

There will be great shedding of blood:

Heaven will appear unjust both on land and sea and in the air,

Sects, famine, kingdoms, plagues, confusion.

I/69

The great mountain seven stadia around (4,247 feet),

After peace, war, famine flooding:

(The impact) will spread far, drowning great countries

Even antiquities and their mighty foundations.

I/70

Rain, famine and war in Persia will not cease,

A trust too great will betray the monarch:

For the end was planned in France,

A secret sign for one to be more sparing.

II/19 (Jewish State)

Newcomers build a place without defense,

Occupying a place (which) until then (was) inhabitable:

Meadows, houses, fields, towns, to take at pleasure,

Famine, plague, war, extensive arable land.

II/46

After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches.

The great motor of the centuries is renewed

It will rain blood, milk, famine, iron and pestilence,

In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a trail of sparks

II/62

Mabus will soon die, then will come,

A horrible undoing of people and animals,

At once one will see vengence,

One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.

II/96

A burning torch will be seen in the night sky

Near the end and the source of the Rhone:

Famine, weapons: the help provided is late,

When Persia turns to invade Macedonia.

III/19

In Lucca it will come to rain blood and milk,

Shortly before the change of governor:

Great plague and war, famine and drought will be seen,

Far from where their Prince rector will die.

* VI/6 (Comet and Eclipse prediction)

There will appear towards the seven stars of Ursa major and Polaris,

Not far from Cancer, the bearded star:

Susa, Siena, Boetica, Eretria,

Great Rome will die, the night having vanished.

VI/10

In a short time the colors of temples

Black and white, the two will be intermingled.

The red and the yellow ones will carry off their possesions.

Blood, earth, plague, hunger, fire, maddened with thirst

VII/6

Naples, Palermo and all of Sicily

Will be uninhabited through barbarian hands,

Cosica, Salerno, the island of Sardinia,

Hunger, plague, war, the end of the extended evils.

VIII/17

Those at ease will suddenly be cast down

The world put into trouble by three brothers,

The enemies will sieze the marine city,

Famine, fire, Blood, plague, all evils doubled.

According to Fulcanelli, this astronomically significant moment signalled the season of the double catastrophe, perhaps even the Apocalypse of St. John’s Revelation. Our research revealed that the alignments of galactic, solar and planetary markers formed the Cube of Space seen by St. John as the New Jerusalem, taking shape in the sky before it descends to earth, ushering in the Chilaist millennium. Since the Cube of Space can be seen in the sky every solstice and equinox for the next ten to two hundreds years, then perhaps we are indeed undergoing an “apocalypse.”

The word ‚ÄúApocalypse” originally had nothing to do with the end of the world or of the age or of a terrible destructive transition. Literally it meant: “pulling away the veil.” It is the Greek noun apokalupsis, which comes from the verb apokalupto, which meant: “to disclose or uncover” (Liddell & Scott. Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford. 1972. pg. 86), and comes from adding the preposition “apo” to the Greek verb kalupto, ‚Äúto cover,‚Äù (Liddel & Scott. pg. 346) and is closely associated with the noun kalputa, a veil. Thus it really meant: “uncovering by pulling away the veil.”

An Apocalypse isn’t the cataclysmic end of everything; rather it is a sudden change in perception. Before, we can’t see the reality of things; a veil of illusion and misunderstanding hides them. Then the veil is pulled away and we see how things really are, the true state of affairs. Think of Toto pulling back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz‚Ķ

On that day the truth will be revealed, the invisible will become visible, our blinders will be taken off, and the curtain will rise. The idea of calling the Vision of St. John an Apocalypse, the title given in the first verse, shows that it is NOT just about the end of the age. It is about the present situation, this moment in time; it’s a revealing, an unveiling, of a reality to which most of us are blind…

But on the fall equinox of 2002, the veil began to lift. As the awareness of the significance of the moment flew around the planet in the days before the equinox, several unexpected things began to happen.

We never planned or promoted the equinox as any kind of event or happening. Its significance was inherent in the material, but we never felt any particular drive to make it a focal point for anything. We knew it was an important moment, but that information didn’t translate into the need for action until we read Rush Allen’s article on the Dire Gnosis 2012 website. And even then, the action was that of writing the article, not organizing an event. By September 17th, when the first version of the article went up on the Internet, we still had no idea that it would be anything more than a private event.

As the work unfolded, we felt strongly that someone needed to be at Giza, at specific locations determined by Fulcanelli’s hints and the geometry we had uncovered. Unfortunately, that someone wasn’t likely to be us. The notice was too short, and Giza too busy, to get the required permits to be where we wanted to be.

Enter the next layer of synchronicity. A friend, Nicki Scully, happened to have a tour to Egypt scheduled for the equinox, and because of various synchronistic events, she already had the permits needed. When the broader significance was explained to her, she immediately grokked that the hieros gamos was the key moment. She volunteered to be the key group on Giza for “zero hour,” dawn on September 23rd. Since Nicki is an accomplished shaman and ritualist, we felt comfortable with her and her group taking the lead and setting the spiritual tone for the event.

This was already in place by the time we put the article on the Internet. But other than this, nothing else was planned in the way of any kind of event. That was late Tuesday night.

By Thursday morning, the deluge had begun. For the next three days, readership of the article increased almost exponentially, topping out on Sunday at an average of 2,000 hits an hour. By the next Thursday, over 250,000 people had read the article. Over 166,000 of them had downloaded the star charts. We had struck a nerve…

On Thursday evening, 13 different groups had checked in and announced that they were going to be doing something for the equinox and wanted to coordinate their efforts with us. The groups, from Cairo west, included Hendaye in southwestern France, North Carolina, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, New Orleans, Santa Barbara, Zaca Lake, Maui, New Zealand, Australia and Nepal. Other individuals and small groups also wanted to participate.

We sent everyone a set of times and a few suggestions on what to do, and that was pretty much that on our part. From then on, whatever was happening was shaped by whatever was emerging from the collective unconscious. We had pinpointed the moment, and outlined the cosmo-mythic structure, but the event itself we left open to everyone’s inspiration.

What emerged was an outpouring of experiences and rituals centered on awakening and connecting with the Goddess. It seemed as if the re-membering of Osiris as Lord of the Duat, that recognition of the cosmic moment, unleashed a flood of Goddess energy. Isis, The Great Goddess, seemed bent on returning in all her myriad forms. Around the planet, the women took charge, from Nicki Scully on Giza to the main ritual in Tennessee designed by Dahna and The Dance of Isis at Zaca Lake by Shanti and Sharron Rose where the names of all the goddesses were chanted during the key 17 minutes.

None of this was coordinated by anything other than synchronicity. It all just happened because enough folks just happened to be tuned into the same vibe at the same moment. Right… We might as well say that it happened because it was meant to happen; it was ordained and driven by cosmic forces beyond our comprehension, perhaps even caused by the deepest mechanism of life itself. Each statement requires a certain kind of belief.

So, we might be absolutely correct to label the experience of the fall equinox 2002 an “apocalypse.” The Great Goddess, in her role of Dark Mother, the original source of all life and light at the center of the galaxy, lifted her veil briefly and allowed those who were open to the experience a glimpse of the newly emerging archetype of the Goddess of the End of Time. All you had to know was where and when to look.

After the equinox, the emails began to roll in. One of the first was from Nicki Scully in Egypt:

I just want to report that the magick is alive and well, and went perfectly. Thoth instructed us in order for maximum efficiency and potency, and we (thirteen of us) adapted Moira’s ceremony as closely as we could with her guidance. Mike and Suzie and I spent the 17 minutes facing the pyramid and meditating, and Thoth bent time for us to raise the djed in a most powerful ceremony at Sakkara.

Another person on the trip had this to say:

As far as specifics, the ceremony we did at the Sphinx really started things off. I met with several neters I had not previously worked with there, including Isis and Thoth. Later on, at the ceremony we did at the Isis Temple, I made a huge connection with Isis.

And then there was this one:

I am stunned and awed to discover that the timing of our Giza performance in 1978 had such a cosmic depth of meaning (Raising of the Djed, on your website). At that time, Fulcanelli was just a name in a book (”The Morning of the Magicians”, by Pauwels and Bergier); I didn’t obtain a copy of “Myst?©re des Cathedrales” until much later.
(snip)
In another key, I’m wondering if during the morning of 9/23/02, you experienced any subjective confirmations of the magnitude of the event- any visions or sounds that seemed to intensify your awareness?
Finally, given the importance of the summer solstice 2003, are you planning any adventures around that event?
Thanks again for your brilliant codification of alchemical and astronomical knowledge- I look forward to reading more of your work…
Warmly,
Phil Lesh
Grateful Dead

Others wrote in to offer contributory bits of information. The team of Vincent Brown and Simon Miles, from Adelaide in South Australia, had several interesting pieces of the puzzle. Vincent Brown’s Pyramid of Man site is a well-documented argument for the Great Pyramid as the Osiris/Djed model, which supports the idea of the Throne of Osiris and the Place of the Djed. Simon Miles, through his work on the Rennes-le-Chateau enigma, demonstrates the importance of the Southern Cross at the moment of its highest, most northern position in the sky. Fascinating work on both fronts…

Rush Allen, the astrologer whose work sparked our re-evaluation of the timing and cosmic significance of the fall equinox, was also inspired by the article:

I have been working on the importance of the September 2002 equinox. The work clearly supports your theory on a spiritual basis. Scientifically the alignment is not sufficiently precise, but the concept is not of a scientific “end times,” nor is it simply a turning of the calendar. The moment is the most significant moment evaluated by cultures over the last 6,000 years. We have an obligation to expose the world to the important message of the Ancient End Times. If we cannot recover the ancient awareness, then we will have not lived up to their expectations and goals.

Here is a web page you should take the time to read. You may not have enough background to fully appreciate what I am saying, but all you have to know is that you triggered the whole analysis. And that may be all you were called to do.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Rush
http://www.siloam.net/NewYorkWTC/tribute/Lakemead/index.html

Perhaps the most fascinating of all the experiences that spontaneously emerged from the Djed moment was that of Steve Prellwitz, a writer and astral voyager living in Rhode Island. A year before, Steve travelled to Washington City, The District of Columbia, and connected with the spiritual current that would flower during the equinox Djed Raising. His experience with the awakening Goddess Columbia in what he calls the Ghost Capital raises some interesting implications concerning the role of America at this crucial moment in time. (For more of Steve’s adventures, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IlluminAlch/)

From this, and much more, it is hard not to notice that the archetype of the Goddess was indeed awake and stirring in the collective unconscious. In trying to understand this, we wrote a follow-up article, After Judgment Day, which explores the implications of Nostradamus’ multiple realities scenario and the mythic structure of the Isis/Osiris/Horus motif playing out in the sky. This combination gives us a framework with which to understand the unfolding events of the next 10 years, and the true significance of the Mayan end date of 2012 as a moment of even greater apocalypsis.

On the fall equinox, September 22/23 2002, something wonderful happened… We had a glimpse of a possible future, an apocalypsis of a reality where the threat of catastrophe has been transformed into a eucatastrophe, a cataclysmically good thing, in which the awakened Goddess offers ‚ÄúLight and Liberty to All.‚Äù