The world has been shaken by seismic economic shifts in recent times, with the soaring cost of living affecting everything from food to fuel. Nostradamus seemed to have seen this coming with his grim prediction: ‘So high will the bushel of wheat rise / That man will be eating his fellow man’. Feeling he’d stayed away long enough to be safe from the Inquisition, Nostradamus returned to France to resume his practice of treating plague victims. In 1547, he settled in his hometown of Salon-de-Provence and married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde. Together they had six children—three boys and three girls.

After this has endured for a long time, there will be almost renewed another reign of Saturn, and golden age. Hearing the affliction of his people, God the Creator will command that Satan be cast into the depths of the bottomless pit, and bound there. Then a universal peace will commence between God and man, and Satan will remain bound for around a thousand years, and then all unbound.Nostradamus’ predictions for last year included the rise of AI, the conquering power of cryptocurrency and a surge in cannibalism as a response to inflation. How’d he do? While bitcoin has gone bust, inflation remains at an all-time high and not for nothing, “Dahmer — Monster,” Netflix’s controversial ode to the famous flesh-eater, became the second-most watched show in the network’s history. One of the horrible temporal Kings will be told by his adherents, as the ultimate in praise, that he has shed more of human blood of Innocent Ecclesiastics than anyone else could have spilled of wine. This King will commit incredible crimes against the Church. Human blood will flow in the public streets and temples, like water after an impetuous rain, coloring the nearby rivers red with blood. The ocean itself will be reddened by another naval battle, such that one king will say to another, Naval battles have caused the sea to blush. Fortunately, this prophecy has remained purely metaphorical, but it certainly points to the everyday financial hardships that have been felt recently, with headlines last year noting how many people on low incomes had to decide between ‘eating and heating’. Climate catastrophe in 2024? Nostradamus’s prediction of a fiery Mars has received newfound interest in light of our current fascination with the Red Planet.

The Frenchman may have been alluding to the growing gulf and animosity between social classes with his alarming words, ‘sooner and later you will see great changes made, dreadful horrors and vengeances’.It is to a most prudent and most wise Prince that I have dedicated my nocturnal and prophetic calculations, which are composed rather out of a natural instinct, accompanied by a poetic furor, than according to the strict rules of poetry. Most of them have been integrated with astronomical calculations corresponding to the years, months and weeks of the regions, countries and most of the towns and cities of all Europe, including Africa and part of Asia, where most of all these coming events are to transpire. They are composed in a natural manner.

In The Prophecies Nostradamus compiled his collection of major, long-term predictions. The first installment was published in 1555 and contained 353 quatrains. The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but now survives as only part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. This version contains one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called "Centuries".Thereupon the same thing will occur in the South, where for the space of three years the Church people will be persecuted even more fiercely through the Apostatic seduction of one who will hold all the absolute power in the Church militant. The hole people of God, the observer of his law, will be persecuted fiercely and such will be their affliction that the blood of the true Ecclesiastics will flow everywhere. The Gallic Ogmios will be accompanied by so great a number that the Empire of his great law will extend very far. For some time thereafter the blood of the Innocent will be shed profusely by the recently elevated guilty ones. Then, because of great floods, the memory of things contained in these instruments will suffer incalculable loss, even letters. This will happen to the "Aquiloners" [the Northern People] by the will of God. In the Epistle that some years ago I dedicated to my son, Cisar Nostradamus, I declared some points openly enough, without presage. But here, Sire, are included several great and marvelous events which those to come after will see. As for myself, I would never claim such a title, never, please God. I readily admit that all proceeds from God and render to Him thanks, honor and immortal praise. I have mixed therewith no divination coming from fate. All from God and nature, and for the most part integrated with celestial movements. It is much like seeing in a burning mirror, with clouded vision, the great events, sad, prodigious and calamitous events that in due time will fall upon the principal worshippers. First, upon the temples of God; secondly, upon those who, sustained by the earth, approach such a decadence. Also a thousand other calamitous events which will be known to happen in due time. But I shall only beseech you, Most Clement King, by this singular and prudent humanity of yours, to understand rather the desire of my heart, and the sovereign wish I have to obey Your Most Serene Majesty, ever since my eyes approached your solar splendor, than the grandeur of my labor can attain to or acquire. From Salon, this 27th of June, 1558.