Nostradamus C1 Q07: Cornelius Agrippa's table of divine ciphers for the number 12
Copyright: Allan Webber, December 2015, 2022

This verse is one of those that contributed greatly to my understanding of the main source Nostradamus used for the ciphers in his poetry.

There are many features that link the text and anagrams of this verse to the prominent works of the 16th century writer Heinrich Cornelus Agrippa, especially those dealing with the use of ciphers and code techniques. Part of the link lies in the anagram for Cornelius in the third line and the distinctive choice by both authors to choose the lettering xiiii to represent fourteen. It is this choice by Nostradamus that allows some quite specific points in Agrippa's work to be identified (See my paper on Cornelius Agrippa for more).

But there are other features that tie this verse into Nostradamus own technique.

A vital cipher carried in its anagrams is one of the five anagrams for evilness (inſes Le v_ent cont) contained in the lettering of the Prophecies 942 four line verses and it is alongside an anagram of content. But at the same time in the next line there is an anagram for divine (ii d' vne ) alongside xii which gives the number twelve.

Next to that word pair there is another yielding scene selection (ne ſec_te Les coni). And in the  first line there is an anagram of immediate relevance to Nostradamus' four line poetry; the word formed is tetradic (icte Tard) which is used to refer to a group of four and that lettering is adjacent to another for faction.  In the third line he talks of a party of conspirators (ie. a faction ) who intercept letters on the way and this is what Nostradamus' code achieves; his anagrams are letters gathered on the way and they are meant to be read by his target audience. This is his way of secretly telling them what he's done.

 The evilness to which the verses in this series allude is a form of decadence and in this verse it can well refer to the human conspiracy that pits our kind against the eternal agencies that created what we consume and diminish. The fact that this verse includes anagrams for vessel, tetrad and content implies Nostradamus sees his writing as an advpcate for the divine figure he refers to in C1 Q02. It is this possibility that led me to pair C1 Q07 with C2 Q03 since that verse presents a similar picture.