Barnesfolio

by lynard

Listen:

Time for the annual pooh-pooh chorus at the mention of Nostradamus.

The last time we visited the world of Nostradamus was in August 2025 (Nostradamus, Fidelity and Infidelity). We did not focus on his enigmatic prophecies (centuries and quatrains). Instead, we focused on the Epistle to King Henry II of France, written in 1558. Aside from the general prophecies contained in the Epistle, there is his philosophy underlying Western civilization. I now think it is safe to say that if we are unfamiliar with the forces giving rise to the Magna Carta (in 1215), evolving into the Age of Enlightenment (mid-1600 through 1700), and the American and French Revolutions, it is impossible to appreciate Nostradamus. Though Nostradamus’ “predictions” purportedly detail events, his real focus is ideas.

The Epistle to King Henry II is not as opaque as the prophecies. When Nostradamus writes about the Great Dame, there is no doubt he is writing about France. But it is not so much France, the country, as it is the France envisioned by Rousseau and Voltaire wrestling with the ideas of liberty.

He represents ideas as two principal children born of the Great Dame, one male, one female:

• (1) the male: establishment of the Maupeou judicial reforms in France which allowed regional courts to block royal decrees which lasted eighteen years, setting the stage for the storming of the bastille on July 14, 1789 and revolution [1771 to 1789], resulting in the First French Republic in 1792 which in turn effectively ended after thirty-six years after the birth of liberty in 1771 with the coronation of Napoleon I in 1804 and the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807

• (2) the daughter of the daughter (granddaughter of the Great Dame): the American nation resulting from the American Revolution which France aided in 1776) .

As we covered in our last discussion of this subject (Nostradamus, Fidelity and Infidelity, August 2025), Nostradamus wrote in the Epistle:

“the daughter [of the Great Dame] shall be given for the preservation of the Christian Church . . . she [the daughter] will have two children, the one fidelity, the other infidelity by confirmation of the Catholic Church”

Nostradamus pretty much corroborates the “daughter” is America in Century 4, Quatrain 96 when he states:

The elder sister (America) of the island of Britain; will be born fifteen years (1776+15=1791) before her brother (First Republic of France); Because of his (?) Promise proving to be true; she will succeed to the kingdom of the Balance (the Soviet Union).

(I have discussed the ideological conflict during America the eighty-nine year existence of the Soviet Union, which Nostradamus correctly predicted, is discussed elsewhere).

The Future Ended Yesterday

In reading Nostradamus there is a real case to be made that he was not overwhelmingly impressed by the concept of liberty. Cutting societal ties and the human spirit from the Church, specifically the Catholic Church, would result in the rise of the “pagan sect of new infidels”. These “infidels” included the new Protestant “sects” and, eventually, the communists of Russia and China, the Nazis of Germany and the political and jihadist terrorists of our time.

Despite the seemingly subtle disapproval of liberty by Nostradamus, he held America in a special category.

America was founded to preserve the “Christian Church”. Not as a Christian nation but to preserve Christianity. Christianity as taught by Jesus of Nazareth, the rabbi. Like his philosophical outlook on “liberty”, Nostradamus also espouses a precise definition of Christianity in his prophecies which has only a peripheral relationship to the Catholic Church.

Despite its special category or perhaps because of it, America would face two challenges to its special existence. Both internal. This is the essence of fidelity–holding true to some internal guidance. The first challenge for America would be a challenge of fidelity; the second, infidelity. Both, if based on the Civil War which Nostradamus mentions once in the Quatrains, constitute an existential threat to the reason America came into existence.

The American Civil War was the challenge to fidelity

We now seem to be living through the challenge of infidelity.

A bit of deductive reasoning is required to unravel the definition of “fidelity” as used by Nostradamus. Here it is used as it attaches to America’s founding principles.

It is obvious some Americans have no idea how unique America is as a nation and its place in the history of the world.

America was not the first representative government. Throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, there have been representative forms of government rising and ebbing in the flow of history. All were based on clan, class, or tribe. America’s distinctive historical place in the flow of history is the elevation of the individual above inherited collective authority and arbitrary social and economic classifications. It is a fundamental principle. It can be adhered to with fidelity. Or not. A revolutionary idea, a peripheral and ultimately ignored tenet of revolutionary France.

This elevation of the individual is the reason Nostradamus gave America a special place linked inextricably to the ethics proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth. It is the individual, with unalienable Rights, responsible for their life. Not a king, not a clan, tribe or class. It is the individual. This edict, without sectarian religious overtones, is enshrined in the American Constitution.

Since its founding, America has slogged through the usual calamities of nation building and perpetrating the typical injustices: from confiscating Native American land, to enslaving individuals, to denying recognition of women as individuals (voting, sovereignty over their own bodies), to subordinating individuals to “races” and ethnic groups. The world has experienced these same cataclysms of life, of spirit. The difference between the world and America is that America has a pathway to move toward what is at the foundation of every spiritual concept of human existence. This seems to be the reason Nostradamus put America in a special place.

Moving beyond past transgressions and failures of spirit is not a straight line. One of the reasons for this is mentioned by Nostradamus in one of his quatrains (Century I, Quatrain 62:”Alas! What a great loss will letters suffer, . . .”). People forget their history (letters). They do not, sometimes can not live lives centered on their own enlightened self-interest: my long-term liberty and security depends upon respecting that of my neighbor.

History is us. It is our lives as we live day to day. You do not have to be clairvoyant or a psychic to fully understand the consequences and implications of some events.

When Nostradamus mentions the “fidelity” and “infidelity” periods in American history, connecting the dots is not too difficult. Of course basing conclusions on such contextually vague terms leaves a lot of room for error. But history is history. What happens today is merely a variation of what happened yesterday. The difference, what makes today totally different from yesterday is how we, being aware of them, feel about events of today.

Walking The Line

Anyone born anywhere in the world can come to America and become an American. Can’t go to Germany and become German. Can’t go to France and become French. Can’t go to Vietnam and become Vietnamese. Can’t go to Nigeria and become Nigerian. You become an American by fidelity to an idea. Sometimes the infinitesimal spirit-spark that made America an idea flares among other people and is a test of the spark burning in America.

In 1944, the Nazis withdrew their troops from Greece. At tiny-weeny spark flared in the mountains of Greece smoldering under an anti-human ideology.

Waiting in the wings was the Communist-oriented National Liberation Front (EAM) and Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS). In 1946, the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) formed to fight the Kingdom of Greece. It was supported by the Communist Bloc. Greece was in dire danger of losing their civil war. To Nostradamus, fascism and communism sprung from the same anti-civilization source.

The dominant world power for over two hundred years, Britain supported the Greek government throughout World War II. But after six years of war, Britain was in no position to aid Greece. In February 1947, the British government informed the Truman administration that it could no longer sustain its economic and military support for Greece.

What followed was the transfer of perceived world dominance from Britain to America. The perception was demonstrated by real actions that perhaps even a conquering war could not have generated: the Truman Doctrine was announced, the Marshall Plan in 1948 which aided not only American allies but its wartime enemies and the extraordinary airlift of food and supplies to West Berlin when the Soviet Union blocked land access. America stepped fully onto the world stage and the old world had to play catch-up.

Connect the dots. Another spark. Bigger. Glaring.

In 2014, after Russia seized and annexed Crimea, Ukraine sought aid from the United Nations, America, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Though Ukraine was not a member of NATO, NATO, along with America and the nations of Europe, provided material, financial and training support. Despite that aid, despite nearly eighty years of efforts to prevent another major European war, and despite the concerted efforts of Europe and America to maintain peace, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The war has continued for more than four years.

Yesterday the world perceived commitment and strength. Today the world perceives vacillation and obscure and ulterior motives. A minor thing in the flow of history until one day it is not.

Fidelity does not change with the times or the seasons or the vicissitudes of history. Infidelity, whether yesterday, today or tomorrow, needs neither time nor reason except of course forgetfulness.