The influence of the planets on the disturbances of the terrestrial globe.

— We extract the following from a letter addressed to us from Santa-Fé de Bogotá (New Granada), by one of our correspondents, Dr. Ignácio Pereira, physician, surgeon, founding member of the Homeopathic Institute of the United States of Colombia:

“For three years now, owing to the change of the seasons in our regions, the summer season has become very long, and there have appeared in some plants diseases entirely unknown in our country; the potatoes were attacked by dry gangrene, and, by the microscopic observations I made on plants affected by this disease, I recognized that it is produced by a vegetable parasite [fungus] called perisporium solani. For three years our globe has been the victim of disasters of every kind: floods, epidemics, epizootics, famine, hurricanes, commotions of the sea, earthquakes have, one after another, devastated various regions. “Knowing that when a comet approaches the Earth the seasons become irregular, I thought that these heavenly bodies might likewise exert an action upon organic beings, occasion climatic disturbances, the causes of certain ailments, and perhaps influence the psychic state of the globe through the production of diverse phenomena.

“The Spirit of my brother, whom I questioned on the matter, limited himself to answering me that it is not a comet that acts, but the planet Jupiter, which, every forty years, is in its period nearest to the Earth, recommending that I not pursue this study by myself alone.

“Concerned by his reply, I studied the chronicle of forty years ago, and then I learned that the seasons were irregular, as they are today, in our regions; there came upon the wheat the disease known by the name of blight; there were also plagues among men and animals; earthquakes that caused great disasters.

“This question seems important to me, which is why, if you judge it fitting to submit it to the instructing Spirits of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, I would be very grateful to you if you would make their opinion known to me.”

ANSWER.

(Paris, September 18, 1868.)

In Nature there is not a single phenomenon, however unimportant it may be, that is not regulated by the exercise of the universal laws that govern creation. The same occurs with the great cataclysms, and if evils of every kind chastise the Earth at certain epochs, it is not only because they are necessary, by reason of their moral consequences, but also because the influence of the heavenly bodies one upon another and the compound reactions of all the natural agents must inevitably lead to such a result. Everything being subject to a series of laws, eternal as He who created them, since one could not go back to their origin, there is not a single phenomenon that is not subject to a law of periodicity, or of series, which provokes its return at certain epochs, under the same conditions, or following, in intensity, a law of geometric progression, increasing or decreasing, but continuous. No cataclysm can arise spontaneously, or, if its effects seem so, the causes that provoke it have been set in action since a more or less long time. They are, then, spontaneous only in appearance, for there is not a single one that has not been prepared for a long time, and that does not obey a constant law. I therefore share entirely the opinion expressed by the Spirit of Jenaro Pereira [brother of Dr. Ignácio Pereira], as to the periodicity of the irregularities of the seasons; but as to their cause, it is more complex than he supposes.

Each heavenly body, besides the simple laws that preside over the division of days and nights, of the seasons, etc., undergoes revolutions that require thousands of centuries for their perfect accomplishment, but which, like the briefer revolutions, pass through all the periods, from the birth to the apogee of the effect, after which there is a decline down to the last limit, in order then to begin again to traverse the same phases.

Man grasps only the phases of relatively short duration, whose periodicity he can ascertain; but there are some that comprehend long generations of beings and even successions of races, whose effects, consequently, have for him the appearances of novelty and of spontaneity, whereas if his gaze could take in a few thousand centuries back, he would see, between these very effects and their causes, a correlation that he does not even suspect. These periods, which confound the imagination of humans by their relative duration, are, however, but instants in eternal duration. Remember what Galileo said, in his uranographic studies, which you had the happy idea of inserting in your Genesis, concerning time, space, and the indefinite succession of worlds, and you will understand that the life of one or of several generations, in relation to the whole, is like a drop of water in the ocean. Do not be astonished, then, at not being able to perceive the harmony of the general laws that govern the Universe; whatever you do, you can see no more than a small corner of the picture, which is why so many things seem to you to be anomalies. Within one and the same planetary system, all the bodies that depend on it react one upon another; all the physical influences there are interdependent, and there is not a single one of the effects which you designate under the name of great disturbances that is not the consequence of the resultant of the influences of that entire system. Jupiter has its periodic revolutions, like all the other planets, and these revolutions do not fail to have an influence upon the modifications of the terrestrial physical conditions; but it would be an error to consider them as the sole or preponderant cause of those modifications. They intervene for a part, like those of all the planets of the system, just as the terrestrial movements themselves intervene to contribute to modifying the conditions of the neighboring worlds. I go further: I say that the systems react one upon another, by reason of the approach or the distancing that results from their movement of translation through the myriads of systems that compose our nebula. I go even further: I say that our nebula, which is like an archipelago in immensity, having also its movement of translation through myriads of nebulae, undergoes the influence of those it approaches. Thus, the nebulae react upon the nebulae; the systems react upon the systems, as the planets react upon the planets, as the elements of each planet react one upon another, and so gradually, down to the atom. Hence, in each world, the local or general revolutions, which seem disturbances only because the brevity of life does not allow seeing more than their partial effects. Organic matter could not escape these influences; the disturbances it undergoes can, then, alter the physical state of living beings and determine some of those diseases that attack, in a general manner, plants, animals, and men. Like all scourges, these diseases are for human intelligence a stimulant that impels it, by necessity, to the search for the means of combating them, and to the discovery of the laws of Nature.

But, in its turn, organic matter reacts upon the spirit; this latter, through its contact and its intimate connection with the material elements, also undergoes influences that modify its dispositions, without, however, removing its free will, that overexcite or retard its activity and, by that very fact, contribute to its development. The effervescence, which at times manifests itself in an entire population, among the men of one and the same race, is not a fortuitous thing, nor the result of a caprice; it has its cause in the laws of Nature. That effervescence, at first unconscious, which is no more than a vague desire, an indefinite aspiration toward something better, a need for change, is translated by a muffled agitation, then by acts that lead to the moral revolutions, which, believe it well, also have their periodicity, like the physical revolutions, because everything is linked together. If spiritual vision were not circumscribed by the material veil, you would see those fluidic currents which, like thousands of conducting threads, bind the things of the spiritual world and of the material world. When you are told that Humanity has reached a period of transformation, and that the Earth must rise in the hierarchy of worlds, see in these words nothing mystical, but, on the contrary, the accomplishment of one of the great inevitable laws of the Universe, against which all human ill will is shattered.

I will say, in particular, to Mr. Ignácio Pereira: We are far from advising you to renounce the studies that form part of your future intellectual baggage; but you understand, no doubt, that this knowledge must be, like all the rest, the fruit of your labors, and not that of our revelations. We can say to you: You are lost, but you yourselves can choose the true path, it being up to you to take the initiative of lifting the veils in which are still enveloped the natural manifestations that, up to now, have escaped your investigations, and of discovering the laws by the observation of facts. Observe, analyze, classify, compare, and from the correlation of the facts draw your deductions, but do not hasten to conclude in an absolute manner. I will end by saying to you: In all your researches take example from the natural laws, for they are all interdependent among themselves; and it is this interdependence of actions that produces the imposing harmony of their effects. Men, be interdependent, and you will advance harmoniously toward the knowledge of happiness and of truth.

F. Arago. n

— Permit me to add a few words, as a complement, to the communication that the eminent Spirit of Arago has just given you.

Yes, certainly Humanity is transforming, as it has already transformed in other epochs, and each transformation is marked by a crisis that is, for the human race, what the crises of growth are for individuals; crises often painful, sorrowful, that drag along with them the generations and the institutions, but always followed by a phase of material and moral progress.

Terrestrial Humanity, having reached one of these periods of growth, has been fully, for about a century, in the work of transformation. This is why it is agitated on every side, gripped by a kind of fever and as though moved by an invisible force, until it regains its equilibrium upon new foundations. Whoever sees it, then, will find it greatly changed in its customs, in its character, in its laws, in its beliefs, in a word, in its whole social order.

One thing that will seem strange to you, but that is nonetheless a rigorous truth, is that the world of Spirits, which surrounds you, undergoes the repercussion of all the commotions that agitate the world of the incarnate; I say more: it takes an active part in them. This has nothing surprising for whoever knows that the Spirits are one with Humanity; that they come forth from it and must return to it; it is, then, natural that they take an interest in the movements that take place among men. Be assured, then, that when a social revolution is realized on Earth, it agitates the invisible world equally; all the passions, good and bad, are overexcited there as among you; an indescribable effervescence reigns among the Spirits who still form part of your world and who await the moment to enter into it. The agitation of the incarnate and of the disincarnate joins together, at times and even most of the time, because everything in Nature undergoes the disturbances of the physical elements; it is then, for a time, a veritable general confusion, but one that passes like a hurricane, after which the sky becomes serene, and Humanity, reconstituted upon new foundations, imbued with new ideas, traverses a new stage of progress.

It is in the period that is opening that Spiritism will be seen to flourish, and that it will give its fruits. It is, then, for the future, more than for the present, that you labor; but it was necessary that these labors be elaborated beforehand, because they prepare the ways of regeneration through the unification and the rationality of beliefs. Happy are those who profit from them as of today; it will be for them so much gained and so many troubles spared.

Doctor Barry.

[1]

[v.

François Arago.]