What form did his prophecies take?
A. They comprised: (a) a series of internationally best-selling annual ‘Presages’, ‘Almanachs’ and ‘Prognostications’ comprising at least 6338 predictions (mainly in prose) for the weather and crop-prospects for the coming months, along with likely wars, disasters etc. and (b) a collection of ‘Perpetual (i.e. cyclic) Prophecies’ designed to foretell the entire future history of the world up to the year 3797. These latter (currently the best-known of his prophecies because they are not tied to particular dates during his lifetime) took the form of (i) a collection of a thousand prophecies in rhymed four-line verses, arranged in ten books (or ‘Centuries’) of a hundred, of which 58 (in Book VII) disappeared before publication — all of them written in deliberately obscure language and most of them undated. (ii) a posthumous collection of 141 dated summary-‘Prsages’ in verse selected from the 159 in his Almanacs, many of them written in telegrammese. (iii) a further posthumous collection o
