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Iardin du monde au pres de cite neufe		The Garden of the world close to the new city

Dans le chemin des montaignes cauees		On the path between the mountains.

Sera saisi & plonge dans lala cuue,		will be taken and thrown down into the tank

Beuuant par force eaux soulfre eneuenimees		forced to drink sulpherous poisoned water

		Centuries 10 Q: 49

This is another fairly graphic description of water being poisoned but Nostradamus is not clear about what exactly is taken and thrown into the tank - which may be a word to describe a reservoir. New Jersey in America's North East is known as the Garden State and, of course, it is just across the Hudson from New York City. The roads between mountains could refer to the streets of Jersey City or Manhattan, which are lined by sky-scrapers. Not insignificantly New Jersey is also called the Corridor State, since it is the route through which people can get in and out of the Island of Manhattan.

There are literally hundreds of quatrains we could examine tonight - I have just given you a sample of a few that I believe illustrate Nostradamus' gift for divining the future and the importance such predictions hold for us. However, I want to conclude by bringing astrology, astrologers and prophecy into the present day.

A little earlier I made the point that astrology is not enough on its own to divine the future. To illustrate my point I want to go back to September 11th, 2001. Surely an event of such magnitude should have been spotted by astrologers. Well, it was and it wasn't. And I'm going to have to get personal here. During the early months of 2001 I was writing a weekly article on current events and astrology for my website. In April, just prior to Saturn's entry into Gemini, I discussed the prospects this presented for the globe. Here is some of what I said:

I have just a hunch that during Saturn's transit of airy Gemini, the air itself will be the bringer of problems and lessons. (Saturn, of course, being the Great Teacher of the planets.) Perhaps we shall have a more than usual amount of air-borne viruses to cope with; maybe lung-related diseases will be on the increase. Perhaps too, some kind of chemical disaster will cause untold problems for a large mass of people. And, if I were a president or a prime-minister I would want to be very sure that chemical weapons were in safe hands.

Lessons are learned the hard way with Saturn and in light of what happened with the tech stocks last year investors will be far more circumspect in their financial dealings. And while putting your money into government bonds might be the safest thing of all in this climate, a Saturn-Pluto opposition could augur a world shortage in oil so maybe the one commodity to go up in this time of decline is indeed oil.

But Saturn's entry into Gemini almost paled into significance compared to the opposition it was heading towards with Pluto - August 5th 2001, to be exact. It had not escaped me that this difficult opposition was to fall precisely on the US chart's Ascendant/Descendant axis. Writing on July 16th I suggested:

"Pluto's transformational influence is aimed at America's persona. In other words, America is currently reinventing itself, experiencing the death of the old and the birth of a new. Part of this process is taking place through the new administration of George W. Bush" Saturn's conjunction to the descendant (the cusp of the seventh house of partners and open enemies) suggests that it is other nations and other leaders who are proving and will continue to prove to be America's biggest challenge. America's partners will at the very least become critical of US policies and actions and at worst there could be hostilities where once there was unity. As for America's enemies, these leaders, nations and groups will come out against America in full force now. And if ever there was an astrological setting for war, it is this one.

Indeed, go back to the beginning of any major war and you'll find Saturn-Pluto in a difficult angle to each other.

However, I was not expecting to see any big global development in late July and early August. My eyes were set on the period between August 26th and September 7th, for this was when the Saturn-Pluto opposition would be brought to life by the faster moving planets. I prepared the ground in my weekly column on 9th September and looking back on the week, I was able to cite the humungous tumble of the stock markets as a response to this dark and difficult aspect. Indeed, so concerned was I about this period of September that I had asked my husband to put off his flight to England on the 4th and come at the earliest on the 11th. So, he duly booked his flight to London for the morning of September 11: it was American Airlines flight 142, leaving Kennedy Airport in New York at 8.30 am.

My margin of safety was not quite wide enough. We all know the dreadful events that unfolded at 9 45 am on that beautiful blue September morning. My husband was one of the lucky ones, his plane never took off and the only suffering he experienced was spending the next five days marooned on Long Island.

While 9-11 could be said to be an event that I had prepared for but not predicted the death of the Princess of Wales was an event that I had predicted but was not prepared for.

At the time of Diana's death she and I had not been in contact for five years, yet I was aware that during 1997 her chart was in trouble. Now, I do not intend to delve into the astrological why's and wherefore's here: suffice to say a surfeit of eclipses and contacts to an already violent theme in her chart set off all my alarm bells. The periods of 1997 that I was most concerned about were February and late August/early September. I mentioned in an article earlier in the year that I feared she would come under attack, meaning intense criticism in the media rather more than anything else. However, on 31st August as I winged my way across the Atlantic back to the UK I was totally unaware that in Paris events were unfolding that made a night-mare come true.

I have mentioned once or twice during the course of this talk that astrology alone is not enough to make life-sized predictions: at the very least you need a robust sixth sense but at best you need some pukka psychic ability. Mine happens to be dreaming. And, the more I look at the Nostradamus quatrains with their anagrams, acronyms, bizarre images and apparent non sequiters the more convinced I am that dreaming comes close to the visions he saw in his bowl of water. And while Nostradamus was a product of the practices of his time, drawing pentagrams on the floor, mouthing incantations and opening himself up to visions of God, I am a child of my time, opening up my psyche to archetypal symbols and the language of the unconscious. The images Nostradamus glimpsed were fleeting and sometimes incomprehensible to him. He heard voices that told him of things he could not understand. Yet he wrote down all that he saw and heard and left events to unfold in the fullness of time. Likewise, when I dutifully record my dreams, with their paradoxical images, voice-overs, famous figures, friends and family - my-Alice-through-the looking-glass kind of world - I may not be able to unravel their meaning at the time but often they are eerily correct about future events.

I cannot claim to have had dreams of the Twin Towers collapsing but I certainly dreamed of Diana's death. And some seven years before-hand.

In the summer and autumn of 1989, I had what Jung might have termed two 'big dreams'. In the first, I was in the front row of an audience watching a play. The curtain went up and on the stage, sitting at a large desk, was her majesty, the Queen. She was delivering a sombre speech, but no matter how hard I tried I could not hear what she was saying. I knew only that it concerned the future of the monarchy. My eyes were then drawn to Charles and Diana who were just behind her. They were posing for photographs and they were seated - Charles behind Diana - on a child's rocking horse. Diana was laughing and Charles was urging her to be more responsible and to look serious for the cameras. There was a flash and a large explosion. All that was left on the stage was an empty car seat on a raised dais.

In the second dream, which I will recount in the present tense since that is how I recorded it in my diary. I am sitting in a sand dune having a pic-nic. Diana comes towards me, dressed in white with a black cloak around her. She sits down beside me. I feel awkward and unprared for her sudden and unannounced arrival. She is telling me about someone called Peter who has been fired because of her. Apparently he is going to France and will be undergoing plastic surgery to conceal his identity. She goes on to talk to me about William, and while she does this, she holds up a large figure three. She then begins to cry, and I comfort her, urging her not to give up on the marriage. She recovers her composure and I take up the topic of Peter, referring to him as a past relationship "it's not over: it's very much on." she says.

The scene changes to my then home. Diana comes into the sitting room with a large gift-wrapped present, which she hands to me. When I open it, I find a strange looking object about three feet in size - the only thing this object vaguely resembles is the ornate hand of a large clock. I am embarrassed at the enormity of the gift and refuse it saying that prince Charles might be cross if she gave it away. I escort her out to her car, and when I return, William is seated in the same chair. He is much older and sporting a beard. He says to me, "They don't tell me everything, you know. For a few minutes we lost complete radio contact with them" - As he was saying this to me, I saw an event from an aerial point of view. Two police motor cycles and a white car streaming ahead leaving a black car on its own. Two vans approach from either side and prevent the black car from moving forwards. The dream ends in chaos and I hear my own voice saying: "Isn't anyone going to do anything"
Extract from WITH LOVE FROM DIANA (Simon and Schuster, 1995)

I sent these dreams to Diana, believing them to have some bearing on her future and the future of the monarchy. She told me that when she read them they struck a deep chord within her. But did they change anything? As Diana left the Ritz Hotel on that fateful night with her Muslim lover, as the black Mercedes sped madly through the Paris streets, pursued by motor-bikes, did she suddenly remember this dream? And if she did, what could she have done to change events? How far back would she have had to go to stop the chain of events that led to her being in Paris on that night? How was I able to see these events so far ahead in time? Where does the information come from? Is history already written? If space curves, do we just keep going round until we meet up with ourselves again? Are we doomed to go round on the wheel of life for eternity?

These are weighty questions indeed and we would need at least another ten hours to do them justice. I do have some thoughts, by the way, I am not just 'copping out' but they will be a subject for another night, another chapter.

The Science Of Seers

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