Michel de Nostredame, one of the world’s most famous authors of prophecies, was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France in December 1503.

His family was originally Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism during the previous century. Nothing is known about his childhood, but at the age of 15, he entered the University of Avignon to study for his baccalaureate (Bachelors). After little more than a year he was forced by the plague to leave again. In 1529, after some years as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine, and created a “rose pill” that was widely believed to protect against the plague.

He is most famous for his book “Les Prophecies”, which consists of rhymed quatrains (4-line poems) grouped into sets of 100, called Centuries. Nostradamus is credited with predicting the French Revolution, the atom bomb, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Recently, French scholar Bamprelle de la Rochefoucault uncovered in an old trunk which had been sold for 2 Francs in 1876 to an antiques dealer of Bordeaux, a document written in Latin which he has attributed to Nostradamus. Curiously, there are two full pages, which deal at length with India, particularly with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the forthcoming general elections of 2014.

Written on March 17, 2014