There is a clear implication that Nostradamus used Nordic runes to encode astronomic dates and that Wagner’s music reveals the way in which he used them. There is a high order of linked references relating to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde opera , the Icelandic poetry prop & stave methods and to movement of the stars. The linking of Nostredame and Centuries is another correct linking.

I could not help wondering if Thomas’ data-base only contained references of this type but he showed me quite a few of the words in the list and it was apparent there were other topics relating to coding techniques, mathematics and music terms. These other topics constitute over 50% of the lexicon and yet do not appear in the analysis of Tristan-duet. There appears good potential for chaos to occur out of the frequency analysis and yet such chaos is not readily apparent.

Thomas claimed it was impossible for him to control the input of words so that the cross references worked. I therefore inquired "How, if it’s so difficult, did Nostradamus do it?"

He replied "If Nostradamus did write this code there is no great difficulty for him, he was coding it not decoding. It is only if a decoder is analysing something that doesn’t really exist that a difficulty is encountered. All Nostradamus had to do was to write a set of coding instructions and a set of the secret prophecies he wanted to hide. He could then select a line or lines from the coding instructions and arrange them so that they contained both the hidden code and the readable text. The readable text would look somewhat strange just as Nostradamus’ quatrains appear. The coding instructions are lost in the process but can be recovered because the same lines are used over and over again throughout the text. The letters of related words will appear close together and frequency analysis reveals them.

"The final outcome should be that patterns are seen that have highly relevant association and which relate to instructions about coding methods."

I had to concede that the analysis using opera related words seemed to fit the first verse that we had just analysed but I persevered with my topic of the American President. Thomas seemed to have little interest in it claiming that analyses based on this theme had only led to the chaos expected if there were no theme.

I asked him if he felt that his work had proved that there were these hidden themes in Nostradamus. He replied "It is not possible to absolutely prove that these themes result from coding by Nostradamus but the results are certainly strange enough to maintain my interest. This type of code is only proven when it is fully cracked and I don’t think I have done that yet."

I then asked him why he had chosen this method of analysis.

Thomas replied "I chose this method because of the nature of the code I expected to find. I knew Nostradamus had to hide his decoding instructions in his writings. Unlike normal coding he could not hand the material containing the key to his readers. The decoder has to find the key. This means there is a triple message in the text. The first is the one all people read. The second is the hidden message and the third is the instructions about reading the code.

"It is reasonably difficult to incorporate three levels of message into the text. One way would be to use a morse-code mechanism but this method relies on an accurate text. Nostradamus would have known the distortions that took place in sixteenth century printing. This is unlikely to be the method for the instructions but might apply to the hidden message provided each idea is exactly repeated twice more as a check for validity.

"To encode the instructions a statistical method based on repetition had to be used. The method of analysis that I use is not necessarily related to the way it is coded but it is a powerful way of analysing for a repeated message. The method used may not have been anagrams and the messages we think are in this verse may be unreal but the frequency analysis could well lead to a correct association even when the method is wrong. That is why I rely more on the frequency analysis than the messages in the lines."

I could tell that he felt he had shown me enough but I induced him to let me work on the second verse to see if there was any continuity of ideas.

As we worked through the second verse I saw how difficult it was to resolve a high number of lines. In this verse the second and fourth line are particularly hard. Thomas claimed it was the lines like these that defined the shape of the code if it existed. "It doesn’t matter what language or encoding technique was originally used, these lines are the ones that will result in its solution. They contain so few different letters that there is little choice left to the decoder as he analyses each line of verse. They shape him so strongly that there are only a limited number of solutions."

He showed me the second verse and suggested I begin work on the second line for it was the most difficult.

Centuries I, Quatrain 2

(Note: Thomas consistently replaces & with ‘et’)

I worked on this line by myself and I found I was compelled to choose the same word frames Thomas had chosen. I didn’t pick all of the ones he had chosen but he had worked on it for months before he formed his chosen list. Within ‘De londe il moulle et le limbe et le pied’ I found ‘olden, model, module, middle’ but the end of the line I found hard to resolve. Thomas supplied ‘illumed, implied, odd-line’ and a composite word ‘poet-emblem’ which helped resolve the difficult part.

The first line was different. Lots of easy anagrams came to mind. ‘La verge en main mise au milieu de BRANCHES’ begins with ‘revealing name is main’ and there is also ‘illumed, guide’, words that appear in the next line and the previous verse.

Thomas pointed out a very complex anagram that occurs in both lines 1 and 3. It only occurs 5 more times in the whole text but twice in quatrain 2. Its appearance seems totally in keeping with the beginning of the first line. The anagram is ‘mechanism’. ‘Michel’ also appears in the first line. When the letters of these words are all removed the letters ‘br’ are left and they can be resolved from ‘liue d-br’ into ‘rebuild’

We worked through the other two lines with the last line again proving difficult but eventually I felt I could reconstruct the lines as;