Edgar Cayce is known by many names – “the 20th-century’s most famous psychic,” “the most notable mystic since Nostradamus,” “the father of holistic medicine.” But most of all, Edgar Cayce is simply known as The Sleeping Prophet, one of the most influential and controversial figures of modern times.
So who was Edgar Cayce, and why is he so important?
The Early Life of Edgar Cayce
Born March 18, 1877, in tiny Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Edgar Cayce was an unusually pious youth, preferring to attend church or read the bible in the forest around his home, rather than play with friends. One day at the age of 9, while sitting in his favorite spot in the forest, Cayce suddenly came face to face with an angelic winged woman with a musical voice. “Your prayers have been heard,” she said to young Edgar, “tell me what you would like most of all, so that I may give it to you.”
“Most of all,” he replied, ever the good Christian, “I would like to be helpful to others and especially to children when they are sick.”
Shortly after this astounding experience, Cayce was playing a schoolyard game when he was struck in the back by a ball and suffered a spinal injury which left him in shock. As he slept that night, his parents watching over him, he abruptly began to recite ingredients for a poultice which he claimed would heal him. His parents, with nothing to lose, made the poultice and applied it. When Cayce awoke, he was miraculously healed, and yet, he remembered nothing he’d said during the night.
The mystery of these occurrences remained unexplained until Cayce was 21. While working as an insurance salesman, he got laryngitis and became unable to speak. Doctors could not cure him, and Cayce could not work. Desperate, Cayce began working with a hypnotist, who immediately noticed something extremely bizarre. When Cayce was hypnotized, he was able to speak normally, yet when he awoke, he could not.
Curious, the hypnotist asked Cayce to describe his own condition while he was hypnotized. “Yes, we can see the body,” Cayce began. “In the normal state, this body is unable to speak, because of a partial paralysis of the inferior muscles of the vocal cords… It may be removed by increasing the circulation to the affected parts by suggestion while in the unconscious condition.”
Following this advice, the hypnotist suggested to the hypnotized Cayce to increase the blood flow to his vocal cords. As he did, Cayce’s upper chest and throat began to turn bright red, until he informed the hypnotist that he was cured. When Cayce awoke, he could speak normally again.
At that point, the hypnotist had an idea – again he hypnotized Cayce, only this time, he asked him to diagnose the hypnotist’s own health conditions, which Cayce immediately did, listing ailments and remedies in meticulous detail.
This was the breakthrough, the first great reveal of Edgar Cayce’s extraordinary talent. It turned out that while in a sleeping, trance-like state, Cayce could diagnose and suggest treatment for illnesses and injuries with “astonishing accuracy,” both for himself and for others.
Soon, people from all over the country were asking him for diagnoses. By 1910, The New York Times was reporting on Cayce, proclaiming, “illiterate man becomes doctor when hypnotized.”
But there was more …
Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet
While in this trance-like state, Cayce was able to answer questions both broad and specific, tangible and metaphysical – from how can I help my arthritis to what are the secrets of the universe? He was able to answer questions about things which had happened, and things yet to take place. In other words, Cayce was not only able to make medical diagnoses while he was asleep, he was able to predict the future.
For this reason, Edgar Cayce became known as “The Sleeping Prophet.”
Over his 40-year career, Cayce gave readings to many thousands of people, including such luminaries as Marylin Monroe, Harry Houdini, George Gershwin, Thomas Edison, and President Woodrow Wilson. And make no mistake, Cayce’s prophesies, much like his medical diagnoses, were often ‘astonishingly accurate.’
Edgar Cayce Predictions That Happened
Again and again, The Sleeping Prophet was correct about issues of great significance.
In early-1929, Cayce warned that “a great disturbance in financial circles” was imminent, accurately predicting the stock market crash which only a few months later would lead to the Great Depression. In 1935, he foresaw an alliance between Germany, Japan, and Austria, which would result in the whole world being “set on fire,” accurately predicting World War II.
He correctly predicted that two US presidents would die while in office – Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945 and John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 – and foresaw the foundation of the state of Israel, which happened in 1948. He spoke numerous times about the Dead Sea Scrolls before they had even been discovered, and forecast the use of blood diagnostics decades before that became a medical reality.
He even predicted his own death. That’s right, the death of Edgar Cayce was predicted by Edgar Cayce. On January 1, 1945, Cayce predicted he would be dead within four days; he died two days later of a stroke.
What Did Edgar Cayce Say About Atlantis?
In the 1930s, Edgar Cayce gave one of the most stunning predictions of his career – he claimed he knew where the lost continent of Atlantis was. According to Cayce, it was located near the small and then unknown Caribbean island of Bimini, and would be discovered in 1968 or 1969 “under the slime of ages of seawater.”
Incredibly, in 1968, a team of archaeologists discovered a half-mile stretch of limestone blocks submerged in the ocean just off the coast of Bimini, like a paved road, too perfect to have been created naturally. The discovery came to be known as the ‘Bimini Road.’
For decades, questions about the Bimini Road remained unanswered, until, in 2009, archaeologists mapped a grid of the ocean floor surrounding Bimini using satellite imagery. Stunningly, they found,
“foundation ruins, rubble sections of building walls, and ruins of large public edifices. Some of what remains standing clearly show evidence of intelligent structure – post and lintel construction, parallel wall sections, and right angles – things that could not be explained as having been natural in origin.”
Many have speculated that the Bimini Road is, in fact, the road to Atlantis, that the ancient ruins found in 2009 were the borders of this ancient lost continent, that Edgar Cayce was right.
Edgar Cayce and The Hall of Records
Edgar Cayce’s words on Atlantis went further. The Atlanteans, he said, were a highly technological society, before they were instantaneously destroyed by a cataclysm. Having become aware of this impending cataclysm, the people of Atlantis sought to hide their advanced ancient knowledge somewhere secret, to be found by human beings at some future date.
According to his readings, Cayce knew where this mythical “Hall of Records” was, and even the future date it would be found – it would be discovered in the 1990s, underneath the front paw of the Great Sphinx of Giza.
Between 1991 and 1993, a series of studies were conducted which took seismic and geological surveys of the ground underneath the Sphinx. The results of these studies revealed a series of unexplained and previously undiscovered tunnels and chambers. By 1996, Egyptian authorities were proclaiming tunnels existed under the Sphinx which held “many secrets of the building of the pyramids.”
But then, suddenly, all studies were shut down; Egyptian authorities began denying the existence of anything under the Sphinx, completely reversing their position. No further exploration has been allowed since.
Why? Historian Gerry Cannon has an answer: “They’re frightened that if they find stuff under there, it’s going to blow all their books and all their history out of the window.”
Could this ‘stuff’ be the mythical Hall of Records, as Cayce predicted?
What Did Edgar Cayce Say About God?
Edgar Cayce was known as an extremely pious man, a devout Christian who read the bible once a year. There are many who wonder how such a religious man could claim to have such seemingly supernatural powers.
Cayce himself agonized over exactly this question, how to reconcile his power with his faith. He came to believe that his abilities were a gift from God which needed to be shared with the world. Accordingly, he did not accept payment for his readings, even from the rich and powerful, even after he became famous and could have cashed in. Instead, he lived his life destitute, like a sort of monk.
He remained a devout Christian until his dying breath … literally – his last words were, “How much the world needs God today.”
Edgar Cayce Predictions That Were Wrong
As with anyone who purports to have the psychic powers, there are many people with a skeptical perspective of Edgar Cayce. What is most interesting about skeptics of Edgar Cayce though, is how often their skepticism has been proven incorrect, how many times their ‘predictions’ that Edgar Cayce was wrong … turned out to be wrong.
When Cayce was alive, medical experts scoffed at many of his diagnoses, for example, that UVB light could be used to treat cancer. Of course, today, we know UVB light can be used to treat lymphoma. When Cayce warned of a cataclysmic pole shift set to begin in 2001, it sounded to skeptics like an apocalyptic prediction for the tin foil hat crowd, until the earth’s magnetic pole started “dramatically” shifting at a “faster than anticipated” rate in 2001.
Today, the most prominent ‘failed’ prediction of Edgar Cayce, the one most often brought up by skeptics, is his claim that China would become “the cradle of Christianity.” Interestingly though, by some counts, China today has one of the top five largest Christian populations in the world.
But it actually might be more straightforward. Simply, Edgar Cayce never charged for his work. If he was running a scam, why was he not getting paid for its success? And if he was insane, then why did he get so many things right?
The Legacy of Edgar Cayce
Nearly 80 years after his death, Edgar Cayce continues to inspire and stimulate. Hundreds of books have been written about him, his ideas influencing countless scientific fields and schools of thought. Further, the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, which Cayce founded in 1931, still operates today, running centers all over the United States promoting body-mind-spirit wellness.
Because of this, Edgar Cayce has become known as one of the fathers of the modern New Age movement. It was Cayce who helped introduce terms like spiritual growth, aura, soul mates, and holistic health into popular lexicon in the US, and since his death, millions have adopted his holistic philosophies for body-mind-spirit as a way of life.
The Edgar Cayce Dream Dictionary
Edgar Cayce believed that nothing of importance happens in our lives that isn’t first foreshadowed by a dream. Dreams don’t predict the future, as such, but they provide insights from the subconscious to assist us with what’s going on in our lives.
Like the myths and fairy tales of cultures across the world and throughout history, dreams contain similar and overlapping symbols, themes with common meaning – a lion as power and vitality, birds as love or spirituality, water as the emotions of the unconscious mind, a grandparent as our ‘higher self.’
Throughout his career, Cayce interpreted many of these universal symbols in his readings. These interpretations have been compiled into the Edgar Cayce dream dictionary.
In short, Cayce not only left us with his predictions, with a New Age ‘way of life,’ but with a way to understand the insights of our subconscious, to better operate within what’s going on in our lives. Skeptic or not, what cannot be denied is his continuing legacy.