Silver (48 page)

"In persecutione extrema S.R.E. sedebit.

Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oves in multis tribulationibus:

quibus transactis civitas septicollis diruetur,

et Iudex tremendus iudicabit populum suum.

Finis."

"During the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, the seat will be occupied by

Peter the Roman, who will feed his sheep in many tribulations:

and when these things are finished, the seven-hilled city will be destroyed,

and the formidable Judge will judge his people.

The End."

Like the term messiah, it is possible to interpret the Tribulation not as the End of Days, but rather, in a Judaic manner, going all the way back to the fall of Masada beginning in the 70s AD and continuing for centuries, covering the same time span, as "the times of the Gentiles" during which "Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles" (Luke 21:24). By choosing this interpretation instead of the notion of Armageddon, trumpets, seals and the end of the world, we encompass not only the death of a million Jews at the hands of Roman legions, but also the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

The seven-hilled city, founded by Romulus and us of legend, is of course, Rome.

So, according to the Prophecy of the Popes, Rome will fall with the death of Peter Romanus, the next and final Pope. According to the Jewish definition of the real Messiah, we will see monotheism, which would explain no more Popes in Saint Malachy’s prophecy. According to Nostradamus, we’re destined for a 27-year war precipitated by the pale rider in the sky, quite possibly Lulin the green comet, as well as, of course, the assassination of Peter Romanus in the city where two rivers water (traditionally this would have been the Tigris and Euphrates, but for the demands of my story I was drawn to Germany, again for its links to another of Nostradamus’ Antichrist prophecies).

Even if you didn’t choose Lulin as your pale rider, you could just as easily go back to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster which left a trail of ‘fire and sparks’ much like a comet in 2003, the same year as the Iraq invasion. That’s the joy of prophecy, the more you want it, the easier it is to find what you are looking for—or at least to force your own interpretations onto it and make world events conform to what you need. It’s a writer’s dream, really. That interpretation could potentially make Nostradamus’ 27-year war the War on Terror, for instance. But, again, that’s not the only interpretation out there.

Another of Nostradamus’ comets was the McNaught Comet of 2007, which reached perihelion (it’s brightest phase) during the same period of days that one Senator Barack Hussein Obama announced his candidacy as President of the United States. Given the Obama-Bush transition theory and the fact that a little literary symmetry (taking the first letter of Barack, the second and third letters of Hussein and the fourth and fifth letters of Obama) provides us with an anagram of, yes, you guessed it, Mabus, it all becomes wonderful grist to the writer’s mill. Even tonight, as of writing, the news channels are filled with film of a spiral phenomenon in the sky above Norway on the eve of President Obama’s visit to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize. The spiral has been explained away as the halo of missile fuel, the result of a failed Bulava missile test in the White Sea.

If you ask me, it’s no surprise that the Disciples of Judas chose now to reveal themselves.

You can almost hear the sound of trumpets, can’t you?

Steven Savile

Stockholm

December 10th 2009