Nostradamus And The Large Hadron Collider
A detail from a watercolor in the Vaticinia Nostradami codex, 1629 AD, at the Central National Library, Rome. The current buzz on the internet is a prophecy by Nostradamus that seems to indicate a colossal disaster for Geneva caused by the LHC. It’s so striking, I thought it worth a closer look. While searching for the original French quatrain, number 44 in Century 9, I came across this image from what’s being called ‘The Lost Book of Nostradamus’ from the recent book with this title by Ottavio Cesare Ramotti.
An archer shoots two fish in opposite directions across a gap, within a section of pipe. If you’re imagining the LHC proton beams shooting through a detector through a beryllium pipe, and you’re from the Renaissance, knowning nothing of physics and little of machinery, how better to illustrate this event? Fish too, in opposite streams, quite remarkable when you recall the quatrain and the ‘Raypoz’.
It’s not certain that Nostradamus wrote and illustrated this codex of 80 watercolors, something like William Blake’s much later books of illuminations. It was attributed to Nostradamus by the title added in about 1689, while Nostradamus lived from 1503-1566. It’s possible the codex was produced by Nostradamus’ son César, who is known to have been a painter of miniatures and was preparing a booklet as a gift for King Louis XIII of France.
The current codex was presented by a Brother Beroaldus to Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII who was in office from 1623-1644. The mystery deepens as the codex some how found its way into the Central National Library in Rome, only to be rediscovered by Italian journalists in 1982. After some study, parts of it were found to be derived from an earlier work, the ‘Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus’ from the 13-14th century. The ‘Marston MS 225′ at Yale, is also similar, probably from Bavaria or Bohemia. These earlier works were considered books of prophecies, though whose is in doubt.
Read more here.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:28 am
[...] LHC - Large Hadron Collider wrote an interesting post today on Nostradamus And The Large Hadron ColliderHere’s a quick excerptA detail from a watercolor in the Vaticinia Nostradami codex, 1629 AD, at the Central National Library, Rome….The mystery deepens as the codex some how found its way into the Central National Library in Rome, only to be rediscovered by Italian journalists in 1982…. [...]