Cayce Edgar - True tales from the Edgar Cayce archives : lives touched and lessons learned from the sleeping prophet

True Tales from
the Edgar Cayce Archives

Sidney Kirkpatrick and
Nancy Kirkpatrick

Copyright 2015

by Sidney and Nancy Kirkpatrick

All rights reserved.

1st Printing, May 2015

Printed in the U.S.A.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A.R.E. Press
215 67th Street
Virginia Beach, VA 23451-2061

ISBN 13: 978-0-87604-826-9

Edgar Cayce Readings 1971, 1993-2007
by the Edgar Cayce Foundation.

All Rights Reserved.

Source Notes

Unless otherwise indicated in the text, this book is based entirely on interviews conducted by Sidney and Nancy Kirkpatrick, primary source material collected by them, and Edgar Cayces personal papers and correspondence, which can be found in the archives of the Edgar Cayce Foundation (ECF) and the library of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach, Va. Extracts from the Cayce readings come directly from typed transcriptions housed in the A.R.E. library or found on the Official Edgar Cayce Readings DVD-ROM. Additional access to the entire readings database is available to A.R.E. members at EdgarCayce.org/members .

Most photos are courtesy of the Edgar Cayce Foundation Archives or www.commons.wikimedia.org

Cover design by Christine Fulcher

To Gillian Young

Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you,
I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision,
and will speak unto him in a dream.

Numbers 12:6

The authors wish to acknowledge the substantial contribution to this book by A.R.E. archive assistant Karen Davis, who carries on the commitment and dedication to the Cayce archives begun by Gladys Davis.

We also want to express our appreciation for the talent, hard work and patience of our editor Stephanie Pope, and both Cassie McQuagge and Cathy Merchand of A.R.E. Press.

And many thanks are due to Kevin Todeschi, Jennie Taylor Martin. Susan Lendvay, Alison Ray, Alison Hendrick Parker, Claire Gardner, Pat Belisle and all the staff, board members and volunteers at the A.R.E., the Edgar Cayce Foundation and the A.R.E. Press for their commitment to carrying on the Cayce work, and for the help and support they have, without fail, always granted us.

Edgar Cayce (March 18, 1877-January 3, 1945).

Like many journalists, I once arrogantly believed that psychic phenomena was a subject unworthy of serious study and that anyone who put his faith in a trance medium was either fooling himself or the unwitting victim of fraud. Then along came Nancy Webster, who would become my writing partner and wife. Edgar Cayce is going to be the subject of your next book, Nancy prophetically declared. Not wishing to be rude or condescending, I politely declined further discussion. But Nancy, a dedicated student of Cayces work since she had been in high school, was unrelenting. Books and articles about the so-called sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach appeared in my mail box with such regularity that to finally put the matter to rest, I read one.

To say that the Cayce story challenged my imagination is an understatement. A backwoods Kentucky farm boy with an eighth grade education, he allegedly had the ability to enter into a deep hypnotic trance from which he could diagnose illness, witness events in the distant past, preview the future, and converse with angels. No subject was off limits, regardless of how simple or complex the questionwhether it was help finding a lost pocket watch, how to perform a surgical procedure, or what to expect in the hereafter. Cayce would lie down on a couch, fold his hands over this stomach, seemingly drift off to sleep, and miraculously answer any question put to him. Rarely, if ever, was he proven wrong.

In the course of his forty-one year career, Cayce reportedly saved hundreds of people from intractable diseases and crippling injuries. A hospital dedicated to his healing arts was built in Virginia Beach where patients received his trance readings, and specialty technology, years ahead of its time, was used to treat them. He guided the business interests of Detroit auto-parts manufacturers and helped New York stockbrokers along with Texas oilmen become millionaires. He identified the location of buried treasure, solved a murder, and dictated trance-induced Hollywood screenplays. Yet Cayce and his family led lives of constant struggle and hardship, moving from home to home often under threat of being persecuted for fortunetelling or practicing medicine without a license. He didnt profit from giving trance counsel nor did he promote himself. For much of his life he earned his livelihood as a portrait photographer and was a much-admired husband, father, and church deacon.

Cayces story was altogether too incredible to be true. This was why, I suspected, fifty years had elapsed since a comprehensive biography of Cayce had been written. No serious writer or journalist would devote time to making a rigorous examination of the facts because they wouldnt stand up to scrutiny. Dig deeper and Cayces story was sure to unravel. Or so I supposed.

Always a step ahead of me, Nancy would send me transcripts of Cayces trance readings. Accompanying them were physicians reports and convincing first-person testimony of how his recommended health treatmentsfrequently dismissed in his lifetime as the fanciful products of his imaginationhad later become fully accepted by the mainstream medical community. Trance discourses he gave on such subjects as foods for health and healing, hydrotherapy, massage, and the intimate connection between psychological and physical health would earn Cayce distinction as the undisputed father of todays holistic health movement. Information he gave on world history, physics, electrical engineering, and earth sciences also proved uncannily accurate. And though he died decades before widespread popular interest in paranormal phenomenon, Cayces trance readings on subjects such as remote viewing, life after death, reincarnation, the secret of the Sphinx, and the lost continent of Atlantis would set the standard by which nearly all metaphysical information has subsequently been judged. He was to the world of psychics and mediums what Babe Ruth was to the world of baseball.

Most compelling, Cayce didnt speak in vague, ambiguous terms that were open for interpretation but used precise medical and scientific terminology well beyond his education and training. Further, he didnt perform these superhuman feats a few hundred times in the course of his career. He gave well over sixteen thousand trance readings, each one different, and some lasting thirty minutes to an hour. On many occasions professors from Ivy League universities, notable church leaders, bank presidents, historians, physicians, inventors, and scientists attended his trance session. Master magician Harry Houdini, having dedicated himself to exposing the fraudulent practices of hundreds of occult mediums and spiritualists, failed to debunk or explain the Cayce phenomenon, as did Hugo Mnsterberg of the Harvard Medical School.