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Bulgaria-born Prophetess Baba Vanga, who died in 1996 aged 85, was known as “Nostradamus from the Balkans” thanks to a purported 85 per cent success rate and has long been revered in Russia and Europe as a kind of supernatural saint.
Of the hundreds of predictions Vanga made over her 50-year career as a celebrated clairvoyant, a large number alluded to natural and climate change-related disasters. She warned of melting polar ice caps and rising sea temperatures back in the 1950s, decades before anyone had heard of global warming.
Her followers believe her vivid description of a “huge wave” that would descend on a “big coast, covering people and towns and (causing) everything to disappear under the water” was a reference to the 2004 tsunami and earthquake which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across the Pacific Rim.
But it’s Vanga’s preoccupation with a “great Muslim war” that has sent believers, conspiracy theorists and Islamophobics into a doomsday frenzy in recent months as the world struggles to contain the escalating threat from Islamic State and its affiliates.
The chilling prophecies warn of a 2016 invasion of Europe by Muslim extremists, a conflict she predicted would begin with the Arab Spring in 2010, play out in Syria where “Muslims would use chemical warfare against Europeans”, and culminate in the establishment of a caliphate by 2043 with Rome at its epicentre.
According to Vanga, Europe as we know it will “cease to exist” by the end of next year following the systematic elimination of entire populations, leaving the continent “almost empty”, a “wasteland almost entirely devoid of any form of life”.
If that sounds dramatic, consider the developments of the past year, which has seen ISIS edge perilously close to Europe with the taking of Sirte, a key Libyan city overlooking the Mediterranean and the birthplace of the late dictator Gaddafi.
Sirte is now an Islamic State colony operating under Sharia Law. The new regime reportedly cemented its authority by staging a series of public executions, during which an unknown number of people were crucified and beheaded.
And ISIS continues to gain ground in Syria, despite a massive bombing campaign by allied forces in the wake of the Paris attacks. To devotees and others consumed by fear of an impending apocalypse, it’s as if Vanga’s deadly prophecies are unfolding before their very eyes.
