Occult Causes of Epidemic Diseases

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 36 pages

A thirty-six page compilation from the writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, opened by a detailed abstract and train of thoughts that maps the whole argument with page references before the text begins. The subtitle sets out the three registers it works in: moral, psychic, and physical.

The argument begins with the claim that epidemics in moral and physical affairs are more rife than ever, the seeds of vice and crime springing up with appalling rapidity. It then sets out the analogy on which the rest depends: that the reciprocal relations between planetary bodies and man are as perfect as those between the red blood cells floating in a common fluid, each body affected by the combined influences of all and in its turn affecting each and all — with the Pythagorean music of the spheres taken as more than a fancy, since certain planetary aspects may disturb the æther of our planet while others bring rest and harmony. Plato is cited on animal man as a son of necessity, and on a physically pure body strengthening the soul; the rapid growth of human intellect is described as having paralysed spiritual perception. The Sun is then treated as the mind and heart of the cosmos, its bright spots as blood cells, with coronal changes held to have no effect on the earth's climate while sunspots do, and the established connection between sunspots and plant epidemics extended to the fortunes of man. A section on vibration follows: atoms are called vibrations, and sound collectively; sound is held to produce colour rather than the reverse, so that a new colour can be made by correlating the vibrations of a sound — and nerves thrilling in synch with a low form of life may take an infection by magnetic affinity. Cholera is treated as preventable where neglect of hygiene and drainage is the cause, but the 1884 outbreak is noted as following some law of atmospheric currents. The number symbolism of nine and eight is discussed, and the closing part traces influenza, known before as the grippe, through its peregrinations from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

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