Born March 18th, 1887, on a farm near hopkinsville Kentucky, Edgar Cayce became, according to many of his followers, the only real Christian prophet the United States has ever produced. As a child Cayce experienced visitations from what he called the "little people." (His parent dismissed these as imaginary playmates, which they may well have been.) As a teenager, he claimed, he was twice visited by an "angel" who asked him what he wanted to do with his life. His answer was that he wanted to help others, especially children. The angel told him that he must be true to these aspirations. Cayce was a very serious and religious young man, and these visits would guide him in the future.
Cayce grew up in the Christian church. An elderly black man who had once saved him from drowning gave him his first Bible. As a young man Cayce taught and adult Bible study group, became a deacon of his church, and always carried a Bible with him. He continued to teach and carry his Bible throughout his life. He was never good in school and suffered his father's wrath for not being able to learn from his books. One night, after being left at the table to continue studying until he had mastered the assigned lesson, he fell asleep on his book. According to family lore, when he awoke, he knew every word in the book. His parent, of course, were amazed and tested him by having him fall asleep on other books. Soon word got out about his strange talent, and his schoolmates came to think of him as a freak. This was more than the sensitive young man could handle, especially when he was spurred on by an attractive young lady because if what was being said about him. He left school at the age of sixteen and went to work to help support his family.
The famous evangelical preacher Dwight L. Moody visited Hopkinsville in 1898, and he and Cayce met by accident in a field not far from Cayce's home. Cayce went to hear him preach and was apparently very impressed. During Moody's visit, the two continued to meet in the same field. Cayce poured his heart out to the preacher as he had to no one before. He told Moody of the little people and of the visits by the angel. He was shocked when Moody told him that others had come to him with similar stories. The preacher recounted place in the Bible where God had spoken through humans. He also told Cayce of a powerful, mystical experience of his own. The two men never saw each other again after that visit, but Moody appeared to Cayce in dreams through Cayce's life.
During that same year a traveling mentalist, or hypnotist, came to Hopkinsville and guided Cayce into a trance. What followed was the beginning of a very turbulent time in Cayce's life. When in trance, an entity from another dimension spoke through him. Cayce himself had no idea what was being said in these sessions and seemed to be amazed when he read the transcripts or was told what had transpired. Cayce would lie down on the floor or a couch and be guided into a trance by a partner who would then ask the "Source," as the entity was known, questions about the health of some other individual. The Source would recommend a treatment for that person. Without any medical training, Cayce had no idea how this was all transpiring. Only his faith in God and his belief that this work was somehow what God wanted him to be doing kept him at it.
Cayce would spend many years going from job to job and town to town, often being taken advantage of by partners who had only their own selfish interest at heart. He did not have a direction or focus for his talent. He was often confused and troubled. At one point, he had laryngitis for months. Finally he agreed to do a reading on himself. The Source guided him through to a cure, and when he awoke he could speak again. The laryngitis recurred from time to time - according to Cayce, whenever he strayed from the path of using his talent only to help others.
It was during this troubled period that he married his longtime fiancé, Gertrude. He was working as a photographer and had become moderately successful - enough so to feel that he could support a wife and family. Gertrude was uncomfortable with some of the attention her husband was getting. She wanted to live the quiet, Christian life she and he had often discussed, and she did not trust all of his partners. The stranger who spoke through him frightened her. The trances took Cayce's focus away from him family. He was often gone for long periods, giving readings for people all over the South and Midwest.
Eventually Cayce met two men who helped give him the direction he needed. One, Arthur Lammers, suggested that he build a hospital where people who received his readings could get the recommended treatments. The other, David Khan, helped him raise money for the project. After years of travel and fund raising, the hospital was built in the then sleepy town of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Here Cayce set up the headquarters for the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which is still in existence today.
Edgar Cayce's readings
Cayce's reading soon began to take new directions. The Source began to talk about people's past lives and even of life on other planets, saying that human souls spent sojourns on these planets and in other dimensions between lives on Earth. As a Christian, Cayce found these ideas difficult to accept. Nevertheless, he found himself giving readings on astrology and its influence on human behavior.
Sleeping Prophet
Cayce became known as both the father of holistic medicine, and the "sleeping prophet"." He wrote many books and continued to give readings on health and related subjects up until his death in 1945. Many of his "patients" thought that his medial diagnoses and cures were right on target, and many believed they would not have lived but for advice from the Source.
Cayce, of course, had more than a few detractors who judged him to be, if no an outright fraud, at least benignly deluded. His predictions of what might be regarded as end of the world events did little to quiet his critics. Most of his end time prophecies dealt with a reconfiguring of the continents. In trance, he reported that Atlantis would reappear somewhere near the Bahamas, most of the West coast of the United States would fall away, land would appear off the East Coast, much of Japan would sink into the sea, and South America would be shaken from Colombia to Tierra del Fuego. Upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctica would set off volcanoes in the tropics and perhaps even cause the magnetic poles to shift. An inundation would stretch from Salt Lake City to Nebraska. All this was to be accompanied by a great deal of sunspot activity. At first he predicted that these things would all take place in 1936. He later amended that date to 1998 but did no live to see if his prophecies were fulfilled.
In spite of all this, Cayce's advice on how to prepare for the end seems to provide words to live by - with or without impending doom. When asked how best to prepare for the coming turmoil, his answer was : "Do they duty today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. These changes in the Earth will come to pass, for the time and the times and half times are at an end [see Daniel 7:25 and 12:7], and there begin these periods for readjustment. For how hath He given? The righteous shall inherit the Earth."
