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Edgar Cayce: Healer, Pyschic, Seer

by [Kaeirdwyn]


Edgar Cayce: Healer, Psychic, Seer

Researched and Written by [Kaeirdwyn]

     Who was Edgar Cayce? He was born on March 18, 1877 and died on January 3, 1945. He was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His last name is pronounced like Casey. He received an eighth grade education, which in those days included much more as far as mathematics, English and practical sciences. At that time, if a person was said to have an eighth grade education, it was the equivalent of graduating high school in our day. It was considered more than enough schooling for the working class. 
     He was born into a farming family, but at age 15, he left the farm to find different forms of employment, including working in a dry goods store and a book store. He was religious and belonged to a church called the Disciples of Christ. He read the bible once a year every year of his life from this period on. Because of this, he is said to have agonized over whether his psychic gifts were spiritually legitimate as well as the teachings they inspired. 
     When he was twenty-three years old he and his father formed a business partnership to sell Woodmen of the World Insurance. Not too long after this he was struck with severe laryngitis which resulted in complete loss of his voice within a months time. Unable to work because of this, he moved back in with his parents for almost a year. He then decided to take up photography, which would be less of a strain on his voice. He became an apprentice at the photography studio in Hopkinsville.  
     In 1901, a traveling hypnotist called Hart-The Laugh Man, who worked on stage as an entertainer, heard of Cayce's illness and offered to attempt to cure him. Cayce accepted the offer and the attempt took place in front of an audience. Amazingly enough, Cayce's voice worked while he was in the hypnotic trance, but upon awakening was gone again. He was hypnotized again and given a post hypnotic suggestion by Hart that his voice would continue working afterwards, but this was not successful.
     Hart could not continue helping Cayce because of his commitments in other cities, however a local hypnotist, Al Layne said he would help him recover his voice. While Layne had Cayce in a hypnotic trance, he asked him to describe the ailment and the cure. Cayce did this and said that his laryngitis could be cured by increasing the blood flow to his voice box. Layne suggested the blood flow be increased and Cayce's face became flushed red. After twenty minutes Cayce, still in the trance said the treatment was over. When he awoke, his voice was returned to normal. Just to see how far it worked, while under hypnosis, Layne suggested to Cayce to tell him about his own ailments and treatments for them. Cayce did this and Layne said that these descriptions were accurate and the treatments Cayce said Layne should do were effective. Layne then told Cayce he should offer his trance healing to the public. Cayce was reluctant, but finally agreed as long as it was free. 
He had great success treating the townspeople and his fame increased, as he was written about in the newspapers. This had people writing him asking for his help from other parts of the country. Strangely enough, Cayce was able to work just as effectively using a letter or later on, a phone call, even just having the person's name, location and their question. He would go into his meditative trance and have someone transcribe what he said while in the trance about the person in question. He could correctly diagnose the persons physical or mental ailment and the corrective procedure to help them recover, supposedly. His accuracy is not rated as one hundred percent, but he was effective in most cases nonetheless.
     He would lie down on a couch, close his eyes and fold his hands over his stomach. Then he would enter a meditative state and begin by listening to someone ask a question. These questions ranged from universal philosophical questions about reincarnation and God to how do I get rid of this cold, or this wart. His answers were later to be called readings or life readings. The information contained in them are considered insights so valuable that even to this day many people have found practical help for everything from "maintaining a well-balanced diet and improving human relationships to overcoming life-threatening illnesses and experiencing a closer walk with God". Although Cayce lived before the era of spiritual New Age, he has a great influence on its teachings around the world.
     Once his fame was increased he finally began asking for voluntary donations to help he and his family get by so he could give the readings full time. After a few visits from people who wanted to get rich quick or know what to bet at the ponies, which stocks to buy and that sort of thing, he realized he needed someone he trusted in the room asking the questions of him, rather than just he and the person he was treating. His wife and also his eldest son were to fill this role for him at different times in his life. Also he hired a secretary, Gladys Davis, to record the readings, which she did in shorthand.
     Because he did so many readings a day, his health suffered as it drained him not only mentally, but physically as well to do these readings. He attributed his small loss in accuracy to the stress and strain he was under. He also said he completely refunded any donation given by unsatisfied clients if the accuracy of the reading was wrong. 
     Cayce Moved to Texas in 1920 and lived there for three years, where he was surrounded by money hungry people on all sides, some who wished to pay him upwards of one hundred dollars a day for readings about the cotton market. He refused, though poor and needing of money to support his family. His ability for these types of readings was no better than a guessing game and it left him feeling distraught, depleted of all energy and dissatisfied with his work and what he was doing. Finally he came to an understanding and made a decision that he was to only use his gift to help the distressed and the sick.
     A printer by the name of Arthur Lammers convinced Cayce to give readings on philosophical subjects in 1923. While in his hypnotic trance, Cayce spoke definitively of past lives. Though reincarnation was popular at that time, it was not accepted in Christian beliefs, which bothered Cayce tremendously, so much so that he even gave questions to his wife for himself while entranced so he would know whether to continue on this avenue of discussion. It was not Lammers, who argued with Cayce that he should continue the readings on philosophical subjects, but the voice of himself, telling him that he should, while he lay in hypnotic slumber, that finally convinced Cayce he was not doing something inherently wrong. Two years later, in 1925, in a trance, he told his family they had to move to Virginia Beach, Virginia.  They moved that year.
     By 1925, he was a professional psychic with a small staff of employees and some volunteers as well. His readings increasingly involved occultic and difficult to understand ideas. In 1929 Morton Blumenthal, a wealthy sponsor and recipient of trance readings, helped Edgar Cayce establish the Cayce Hospital in Virginia Beach. Cayce had not given up on his vision that he should be helping the sick.
His fame and recognition rose and by 1943, after a prominent newspaper story, more and more people asked for his aid. He said he could not refuse anyone who desperately felt they needed his help, whether they could pay him or not. He increased his readings to eight per day to try and cut down on the multitudes of requests pouring in. His health took a nasty turn for the worse because of this. He was told by himself, through trance work, that he had to cut down to two readings per day or he would die. In 1945, on January second, Edgar Cayce suffered a stroke and died the next day on January third.
     Many people think that Edgar Cayce is either a fraud or a misguided fool. They are skeptical of all claims of psychic works and feel that some of his readings used words such as "perhaps" or "I feel that" so that he would not be held in the wrong as much. Some conventional Christians believe that Cayce was under the direction of demonic spirits. Still others believe that there were a collective of good spirits who were speaking though him.
     Cayce gave an estimated 22,000 life readings between 1901 and 1944. Only around 14,000 were written down by his secretary, Gladys Davis. The rest were from before he hired her. As far as Cayce was concerned, his trance statements should be followed only if they led to a better way of life for the person receiving the reading. "Does it make one a better husband, a better businessman, a better neighbor, a better artist, a better churchman? If so, cleave to it; if not, reject it."--Edgar Cayce. He also wanted and asked the people to whom he gave readings, if they would test his words, rather than accepting them on pure faith.
     He was known as an American folk healer, a psychic and as a medical clairvoyant and psychic diagnostician. He was also known as The Sleeping Prophet and the father of Holistic Medicine. His business card read psychic Diagnostician.
     Several different ideas he did readings about were the origin and destiny of humanity, reincarnation, astrology, universal laws, Jesus and Christ, the unknown life of Jesus, ideals, body, mind and spirit, meditation, ESP, Atlantis, Egypt, Akashic records, Earth changes, Cayce cures, and the "Cayce diet". There are Edgar Cayce Centers in twenty five other countries, as well as tens of thousands of Cayce students in the United States and Canada. The major organization promoting interest in Edgar Cayce is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia and is called the Association for Reasearch and Enlightenment(ARE). To Edgar Cayce, the most important parts of his gift to him were his healing abilities and his delving into theology. 
     Much of the information used in this article was gleaned from the Wikipedia on Edgar Cayce, though there is a special about him on the history channel as well. If any reader should desire more information, there are several books written about Edgar Cayce, as well as vast amounts of information on the internet. The 14,000 "life readings" he performed that were written down are available to be read online as well as in book form.




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