Cayce, Edgar

(1877–1945)



The “Sleeping Prophet.” Born on a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Cayce (pronounced Casey) was primarily a healer. His first successes were with ailments of his own. His reputation spread. When a sufferer came to him for a consultation, he went into a self-induced trance. In that state, he made a diagnosis and prescribed treatment. His remedies, as a rule, were unorthodox but innocuous, sometimes based on rural folk medicine, sometimes akin to osteopathy or homeopathy. He used electrical therapy of a dubious kind and even marketed patent medicines, but a long record of cures shows that he was more than a quack. National publicity attracted so many patients that in 1927 he founded a hospital at Virginia Beach, Virginia, with a staff of assistants. This developed into a research body of wider scope.
His trance experiences extended beyond the medical realm. He had visions of far-off places and times. Many in his circle found them convincing, though their validity was called in question (to put it mildly) by eccentricities such as a dating of ancient Egypt thousands of years too early by normal reckoning. Some of his experiences seemed to

imply previous lives and reincarnation. As a plain Bible Christian, he had problems with these, but he was honest enough not to reject them dogmatically and tried to come to terms with them.
The archives at Virginia Beach preserve various predictions, also made in trances: hence Cayce’s nickname, the “Sleeping Prophet.” In April 1929, he foretold the stock market crash six months later. While this was unexpected, it was not such a total surprise as to suggest paranormal insight on his part. At least one investment counselor, Roger Babson, also saw it approaching. Cayce made some vague forecasts about future wars, the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, and the independence of India. He spoke of a major religious movement originating in Russia, certainly a remarkable notion to hit on during Stalin’s reign, but as yet unfulfilled. Predictions of huge natural disasters, such as California collapsing into the sea and northern Europe doing likewise, had a time limit and have been falsified.
Cayce had visions of Atlantis, which he believed was a real country submerged under the Atlantic thousands of years ago. His account of it may have been influenced by the occult “revelations” of Theosophists, from Madame Blavatsky onward. He described Atlantean society as advanced, with aircraft, electricity, and—perhaps—atomic power. It came to an end partly through misuse of applied science.
None of this is credible history, but Cayce’s Atlantis material has two features of interest. He said the lost land extended into the region of the West Indies, and he prophesied that a part of it would reappear in the Bahamas during the late 1960s. As to the first point, his geography is at odds with the legend as he might have heard it yet has a curious plausibility. Plato, the original Greek authority, located Atlantis in the ocean not far west of Europe. But the only real evidence for a large sunken territory would place it close to America and in the general region of the West Indies, as Cayce said. The clues are in books that he is most unlikely to have known.
The second point of interest is his prediction of a reappearance in the late 1960s. Investigators impressed by his assertions began, some years after his death, to search for traces of Atlantis where he indicated. In 1968—on schedule, so to speak—divers in the Bahamas found what looked like a ruined building on the seabed near the island of Andros and what looked like a stretch of paved road near Bimini. Geologists pronounced otherwise, explaining these as entirely natural formations. Yet the prophecy had, in a way, created its own fulfillment; and Atlantean fragments that were at least arguable, however wishfully, had appeared in the right area at the right time.
Cayce also maintained that the history of Atlantis was in a sealed chamber near the Sphinx in Egypt and would some day be found. But his most solid nonmedical achievement had nothing to do with reincarnation or prophecy. He invented a card game called Pit, a forerunner of Monopoly. Unfortunately, he lacked the acumen to establish rights in it. A games company to which he submitted it took it up with great success but gave him nothing himself except a few complimentary copies. His apparent failure to foresee what the company would do may or may not be thought to have a bearing on his prophetic claims.