The Lost Tarot of Nostradamus Ebook. John Matthews
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such example, where the color on the dove and fountain could hardly be discerned. However, for most of the images it was possible to follow the original color scheme. At no point did we alter or change any of Nostradamus’ drawings, apart from isolating a figure from a group where it wasn’t appropriate to have other figures intruding on the scene, and the addition of some ground for figures to stand on in some of the cards.
For those that are curious about such things, I worked using Adobe Photoshop CS2, Fractal Painter X, and ArtRage 2, running on an Apple iMac G5 using a Wacom pen tablet for sketching.
Redrawing all the line work was an arduous task, but I am happy with the result and the completed work brings us as close as we can get to the vision of Nostradamus’ unfinished tarot.
Shaping the Tarot
Right from the start we recognized that there were very clear images in The Lost Book which represented the Major Arcana of the tarot. With the Minors, however, although we could see many reference points, both in the larger images we had selected to represent the Majors, and in the scattered images that were left, were they enough to illustrate the Minor cards? In the end we found there were, and that the way they so often fitted the traditional structure of the tarot strengthened our belief that we were on the right track. There were, however, almost no clues as to whether the suits would follow the normal sequence, or how the court cards would be represented—or even what names they might have had—assuming they did not follow the normal attributions of Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles. After many months of work and meditation, we came up with three suits that we felt reflected the internal imagery of the original writings of Nostradamus, and a fourth which we “borrowed” from another great Renaissance thinker, Johannes Kepler. This gave us four suits, as follows:
Suit of Stars = SWORDS
Suit of Suns = WANDS
Suit of Moons = CUPS
Suit of Spheres = PENTACLES
This represents the cosmos as it was understood by Nostradamus and his contemporaries, with the final suit, Spheres, coming from Kepler’s work. There are a huge number of cosmic references in the Centuries, and we tried to reflect this in our choice of imagery. Again, the sometimes fragmentary pictures seemed to reflect his exactly and left us feeling we had faithfully reflected Nostradamus’ vision.
When it came to the peopling of the court cards, we were convinced that Nostradamus himself would have chosen figures, both from his own time and earlier, who could represent the underlying patterns in his writings. We therefore decided that the four courts should be represented by figures from history who were alive in Nostradamus’ lifetime, or soon after, about whom he might have known enough to recognize the inner archetypal qualities. We also looked for people who best equated to the traditional meanings of the tarot and who, where possible, represented the most important aspects of esoteric life during the periods of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Thus, we have astrologers, astronomers, physicians, philosophers, spiritual and temporal leaders, and, of course, the apprentices and neophytes who represent the development of the four areas of society.
In this way, each of the four suits represents a particular aspect of the world and the court cards are aligned with this. The suit of Stars is represented by religious figures, the suit of Suns by monarchs, the suit of Moons by occultists and philosophers, and the suit of Spheres by alchemists and scientists. Finally, to bring to the shape of the deck another element which would have been immediately recognized as important by people at the time, we added five significant metals, all of them connected to the science of alchemy—very much in vogue, though seen as suspect, in Nostradamus’ lifetime. Gold stands for the Major Arcana, mercury for the Stars, copper for the Suns, silver for the Moons, and lead for the Spheres. Each of these is represented by the colors of the arches which frame the images in The Lost Tarot.
The Tarot and the Prophecies
As we have stated above, the prophecies, especially those written in such deliberately obscure language, are open to many kinds of interpretation. We are certainly not suggesting that we have any more knowledge or understanding of the meaning of the Centuries than the many experts who have spent years laboring over their interpretation. However, we do think that the application of tarot meanings to many of the quatrains reveals some interesting parallels, and in some instances even suggests new meanings. We also thought that, since we were recreating a tarot originally sketched by Nostradamus, we could add a further aspect to the use of the deck by applying couplets to each of the cards. These are drawn directly from Nostradamus’ own writings in the Centuries, and are newly translated by Caitlín Matthews, whose note on the problems—and rewards—of translation appears overleaf (see pages 27–8).
We asked Caitlín to concentrate on the literal meanings wherever possible, though always keeping an eye out for the wordplay and puns with which Nostradamus liberally seeded his work. The idea was to select two lines from the existing quatrains, either the first and second, the second and third, or the third and fourth, creating fresh combinations from the deeply esoteric meanings of the verses. What happens when this is done is extremely interesting. It not only changes the possible interpretations of the quatrains but also shifts the focus of the existing paired lines. Thus new interpretations bubbled up before we had even begun to compare the selected lines with the meanings of the cards. As we did this we discovered something astonishing: again and again, the interpretations of the new couplets fitted the imagery and meanings of the cards exactly. For example, for the Lovers, in the original Quatrain 83 from Century VII, we found:
D’opression grand(e) calamite
L’Epithalame converty pleurs et larmes.
From great oppression and calamity
The wedding contract transforms tears and sighs.
While, for the IX of Suns, a card always associated with struggle and imminent threat, we found, in Quatrain XII:59:
L’accord et pache sera du tout rompue;
Les amitiez polues par discorde.
Accords and pacts will be broken;
Friendships will be undermined by discord.
Such precise mirroring between the quatrains and the card meanings added even further to our belief that Nostradamus was not only creating his own tarot but that he was familiar with the traditional cards and their meanings.
The inclusion of the new couplets allows the tarot user an unprecedented opportunity to create original quatrains by adding two of the couplets together. The effect of this is itself quite revelatory. Again and again we found that by breaking down the quatrains in this way, and then allowing the randomizing effect of the tarot cards to bring two couplets together, made more sense than before! This may be no more than an accident, or possibly it points to the extraordinary quality of Nostradamus’ work—or it may be that we are following in the footsteps of many before us and simply seeing things that are not there. We leave it to the users of The Lost Tarot to make up their own minds.
Last, but by no means least, we decided to match some of the more clearly defined interpretations of the quatrains to the cards of the Major Arcana. Once again, we were astonished how relatively easy it was to do this. Taking the most traditional and basic interpretations of specific cards, and matching these to the most widely accepted prophetic readings of Nostradamus’ words, we found that many of these worked extremely well. For example, we matched card XV, the Devil, with Quatrain II:24:
Bestes farouches de faim fluves tranner:
Plus part du camp encontre Hister sera.
Hungry wild beasts will cross the rivers.
The most part of the field will be against Hister.
This is generally accepted to be a direct reference to the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Given the associations of the card with deceit, lies, and trickery and the expectation that the reader, or someone close to them, will do anything to get their way and rise to the top of the heap, this seemed particularly apposite.
Even more exact, from the original