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PREFACE

The Lost Tarot of Nostradamus brings together two powerful and original threads of prediction that have never before been connected: the visionary and prophetic writings of the sixteenth-century seer Nostradamus and the ancient system of fortune-telling known as the tarot. In the pages that follow we will explore the astonishing story of a long-lost book containing a set of visual keys to Nostradamus’ prophecies, the parallels between these images and the landscape of the tarot, and the way we recreated this important lost card deck using the seer’s own words and images.

This has been a truly collaborative effort. John has been the primary author, while Wil, as illustrator, has created the cards and written the section Reinterpreting the Images (see page 17) to explain his approach and techniques. We are particularly pleased that Caitlín has provided new translations of the original quatrains (four-line verses which Nostradamus used almost exclusively to record his prophecies) from Nostradamus’ own writings as couplets for each card, and written the section Translating the Quatrains (see page 27), explaining the particular challenges of this work. Both these sections are written in the first person.

For both of us this work presented us with a challenge to which we rose with pleasure. We constantly felt we were working with a third person—the shade of the great seer himself. During long hours of meditation, discussion, and creativity, we often felt we were being watched over, our hands and thoughts guided to assemble this astonishing and powerful set of images into the form it was always meant to have. We hope we have succeeded, and that Nostradamus himself would be proud of the finished work, which continues what he began almost five centuries ago.

John Matthews & Wil Kinghan

Oxford, 2011