What is the importance of a quatrain?

A quatrain is a 4-line poetic verse. Nostradamus' quatrains had an ABAB rhyme scheme (in French), both in his yearly Almanacs (labled "Presages") and in The Prophecies. Because his yearly quatrains were seen as individual predictions, each summing up one month of time in the coming year, the same concept was instantly applied to the quatrains in The Prophecies. However, that concept is part of why the totality of Nostradamus' poems in The Prophecies is still unknown. A quatrain in The Prophecies is seen only as one prophecy, (which it is) but it is more a connected prophecy to other individual prophecies.

The quatrains of an Almanac (say the one published for the year 1558, which listed 12 presages) can be seen as a string of relative quatrains, with all relative to the year 1558. In this way, they join to tell a story of that year. The random presentation of The Prophecies makes it appear that each quatrain stands alone, as there is no connection visible (for the most part) between one quatrain and those before and after it. Still, people who have poured over The Prophecies over the years realize that key terms are repeated in several quatrains, which are spread over different parts of the whole. This is a sign that the whole is out of order, and must be sorted so the quatrains that tell of the same general events (or period of history) are together. When this is actually done, the quatrains string together to tell stories, with these stories being stories within an overall story of the fall of mankind to its own destructive ways.

For every one quatrain that becomes a poster child for the History Channel productions, there are 10 - 20 quatrains that no one would dare try and publicize, simply because they make no sense. The reason they appear this way is they lack a theme to attach to. Those poster childs are the themes, which are clear to see. The rest have to be attached to them to see how they relate to the theme. Since they have not been, the great majority of quatrains are quietly ignored, because to promote the unknown is to promote what naysayers point out is chance makes a fraction of quatrains capable of coming true, in some fashion.

The importance of a quatrain is found when every quatrain can be seen to make sense. As a true Prophecy of God (Jesus), there can be no mistakes, or predictions that were off the mark, or frivilous, or unnecessary, or just plain wrong. All is of perfection and true, as Prophecy, or it is all a lie and just made up. This is where being able to make sense of a quatrain is all-important.