After another visit to Italy, Nostradamus began to move away from medicine and toward the "occult". Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first time in print. Latinising his name to Nostradamus. He was so encouraged by the almanac's success that he decided to write one or more annually. Taken together, they are known to have contained at least 6,338 prophecies, [24] [25] as well as at least eleven annual calendars, all of them starting on 1 January and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March. It was mainly in response to the almanacs that the nobility and other prominent people from far away soon started asking for horoscopes and "psychic" advice from him, though he generally expected his clients to supply the birth charts on which these would be based, rather than calculating them himself as a professional astrologer would have done. When obliged to attempt this himself on the basis of the published tables of the day, he frequently made errors and failed to adjust the figures for his clients' place or time of birth. [26] [27] [c] [28] In 1550, Nostradamus wrote his first almanac of astrological information and predictions of the coming year. Almanacs were very popular at the time, as they provided useful information for farmers and merchants and contained entertaining bits of local folklore and predictions for the coming year. 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’. Further material was gleaned from the De honesta disciplina of 1504 by Petrus Crinitus, [46] which included extracts from Michael Psellos's De daemonibus, and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum ( Concerning the mysteries of Egypt), a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th-century Neo-Platonist. Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon, and extracts from both are paraphrased (in the second case almost literally) in his first two verses, the first of which is appended to this article. While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all of the occult works in his library, no one can say exactly what books were destroyed in this fire.

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’. Anyhow, I count the years from the creation of the world to the birth of Noah as 1,506, and from the birth of Noah to the completion of the Ark, at the time of the universal deluge, as 600 (let the years be solar, or lunar, or a mixture of the ten) I hold that the Sacred Scriptures use solar years. And at the end of these 600 years, Noah entered the Ark to be saved from the deluge. This deluge was universal, and lasted one year and two months. And 295 years elapsed from the end of the flood to the birth of Abraham, and 100 from then till the birth of Isaac. And 60 years later Jacob was born. 130 years elapsed between the time he entered Egypt and the time he came out. Between the entry of Jacob into Egypt and the exodus, 430 years passed. From the exodus to the building of the Temple by Solomon in the fourth year of his reign, 480 years. According to the calculations of the Sacred Writings, it was 490 years from the building of the Temple to the time of Jesus Christ. Thus, this calculation of mine, collected from the holy writ, comes to about 4,173 years and 8 months, more or less. Because there is such a diversity of sects, I will not go beyond Jesus Christ. Then will commence a persecution of the Churches the like of which was never seen. Meanwhile, such a plague will arise that more than two thirds of the world will be removed. One will be unable to ascertain the true owners of fields and houses, and weeds growing in the streets of cities will rise higher than the knees. For the clergy there will be but utter desolation. The warlords will usurp what is returned from the City of the Sun, from Malta and the Isles of Hyhres. The great chain of the port which wakes its name from the marine ox will be opened. The sepulcher, for long an object of such great veneration, will remain in the open, exposed to the sight of the heavens, the Sun and the Moon. The holy place will be converted into a stable for a herd large and small, and used for profane purposes. Oh, what a calamitous affliction will pregnant women bear at this time.

As the year comes to a close, it’s time to talk doomsday forecasts, my babies, and no one grips us with grim quite like Nostradamus. In 1531 Nostradamus was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, to come to Agen. [19] There he married a woman of uncertain name (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), with whom he had two children. [20] In 1534 his wife and children died, presumably from the plague. After their deaths, he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy. [21]

TO THE MOST INVINCIBLE MOST POWERFUL AND MOST CHRISTIAN HENRY, KING OF FRANCE THE SECOND: MICHEL NOSTRADAMUS, HIS VERY HUMBLE AND VERY OBEDIENT SERVANT AND SUBJECT, WISHES VICTORY AND HAPPINESS

Nostradamus's reliance on historical precedent is reflected in the fact that he explicitly rejected the label "prophet" (i.e. a person having prophetic powers of his own) on several occasions: [47]