Thomas Jefferson Cayce was born in Beverly, KY just seven miles outside Hopkinsville on May 16, 1829. He was a successful farmer growing dark tobacco used in chewing tobacco and cigars. Tom liked to drink and had a reputation as a “water witch” or dowser and was often called on by his neighbors to locate water on their property. Tom was a very religious man and allegedly possessed various psychic abilities including psychokinetic powers. It was said that he could make a broom dance and move a table only using his mind.
The Hopkinsville area was noted for the presence of psychics. “Blind Mary,” a blind black medium was a respected clairvoyant who was often consulted by local businessmen before they made any important decisions. A favorite story repeated in the area concerned a black slave who was raped and murdered on a farm outside of Hopkinsville. Local people claim that her face appeared in a tree that had grown out of her grave.
Thomas Jefferson Cayce married his cousin Sarah Thomas in 1851. Marrying close relatives was not that unusual in the Kentucky at the time. Their son Leslie Burr Cayce was born on July 3, 1853. Leslie married Carrie Elizabeth Major on June 10, 1874. Leslie was an incompetent farmer and a drunk who spent most of his time chasing women and various get-rich-quick schemes. In spite of his short comings as a husband and provider, he and Carrie produced four children and remained together until his death in 1937. Their second child (the first died shortly after birth), Edgar Cayce was born on March 18, 1877 in Beverly, KY.
Edgar proved to be an unusual child right from the start. He spent his first three months screaming and crying constantly until a slave named Patsy Cayce realized that his problem was due to a condition she called “milk breast.” She remedied it by piercing his nipples with a needle releasing a milky white substance thus ending his discomfort and incessant crying. After learning to crawl Edgar became hyperactive moving around faster than anyone could keep an eye on him. During a blinding rain storm he crawled out on the porch and fell off into a large puddle where he remained until Carrie realizes he was missing and rescued him.
At age three Edgar tried to climb over a fence and fell headfirst onto a board with a protruding nail that penetrated his head into his brain cavity. The family pulled the nail out and treated his wound with turpentine. He did not seem to suffer any lasting effects. Not much later he fell into a pond while trying to catch fish with his hands. He would have drowned without the efforts of a former slave who pulled him out and resuscitated him. His mishaps continued and at age eight he was running with a sharp stick in his hands. He tripped and fell ramming the stick through one testicle. He recovered after one year of bed confinement and recuperation. As a young adult he was sleeping on a couch when a cinder from the fireplace set the bedding materials on fire severely burning him. Over the years fire would play a prominent role in his life. He lost two offices and two homes to fire. (It is amazing that he did not acquire the nickname of "Lucky.")
His family, relatives, and neighbors all realized that Edgar was far from a normal child. Many people thought that he was insane. His maternal Grandmother suffered bouts of insanity and had to be locked up in an upstairs bedroom. Edgar would never play with other children preferring the company of eight imaginary friends. He gave them all names and would regularly regale his parents with long and complicated stories about their activities.
At the age of four, Edgar witnessed the death of his beloved Grandfather Tom who died in a horse-riding accident. This was obviously a very traumatic event in his life and one from which he never fully recovered. He started school in Beverly in 1884 and was described by his teacher as dull and backward. It seemed that he was incapable of learning anything until 1890 when an angel appeared to him and revealed that he could memorize his school books simply by sleeping on them. Not surprisingly he suddenly became the top student in his school. In spite of his academic success he quit high school at the age of 16 and went to work on his Grandmother’s farm until she died in August 1893.
In January of 1894 his family moved to Hopkinsville where Edgar found a job working in a bookstore where he met Gertrude Evans. They became engaged on March 14, 1897 but did not marry until June 17, 1903. In 1901 he met Stanley Hart, a well-known hypnotist. Hart was putting on a show and saw Edgar in the audience and invited him up on stage thinking that he was an excellent subject, but he was in fact unable to hypnotize him. Eventually Edgar realized that he could simply lay down on his back and put himself in a trance. While in a trance, a “reader” would ask him questions on any subject. The reader or a transcriber would then record Edgar’s answers. After coming out of the trance, Edgar did not have any memory of what he had said.
In 1900 Edgar became a traveling salesman. He sold life insurance, books, and stationery, and during this time suffered the first of many episodes of nearly losing his voice. During these times his voice was reduced to a faint whisper. Edgar sought medical assistance from an osteopath with the unfortunate name of Dr. Quackenboss who was unable to determine the cause or treatment for his condition. He then went to see Al Layne, an alleged osteopath seeking relief from his affliction. The lost of his voice posed a serious threat to his career as a salesman. On March 31, 1901 with Layne as a reader, Edgar performed his first psychic reading and diagnosed his own condition and proscribed a treatment of “increase the circulation to the affected parts.” Layne carried out his instructions by performing various manipulations and restored his voice. Edgar then took a job at a Bowling Green bookstore.
In August 1902 Layne called him back to Hopkinsville to perform a reading for six-year-old Aime Dietrich who was thought to be mentally retarded as result of suffering diphtheria as an infant. Layne guided Edgar into a trance where he diagnosed the problem as a damaged spine the result of an injury she incurred prior to having diphtheria. He proscribed osteopathic adjustments to her spine which Layne carried out. Within three weeks Aime became a normal bright little girl. From this point on Edgar would perform many readings for Layne’s patients.
In another case Tommy House, the three-month-old son of Dr. Thomas House was suffering from severe convulsions resulting from his premature birth. According to his doctors, Tommy was near death due to malnutrition and lack of sleep. Cayce was summoned to the home and without examining the child lay down and went into a trance so deep that physicians present thought that he was in a coma. They jammed a knife under one of his fingernails in an attempt to bring him out of the trance but he did not even flinch. He then began to speak in a deep voice and reported all of Tommy’s vital signs such as temperature and blood pressure. He diagnosed Tommy’s condition as epilepsy and prescribed a dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree. The doctors present agreed with the diagnosis but said that the treatment was tantamount to murder. In the end Mrs. House made the decision to carry out Edgar’s instructions. After the treatment was administered, Tommy fell into a peaceful sleep and when he awoke he was breathing normally and never suffered convolutions again.
Edgar would go on to perform many medical readings calling for unusual treatments. Once he prescribed “oil of smoke,” oil that was filtered through the smoke of burning wood. When his wife Gertrude was struck down with tuberculosis, he called for her to breathe the “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg” and she was cured. Another time he cured a case of skin cancer with injections made from the skin of a rabbit. In another case he called for a tea prepared from cherry bark taken from the north side of the tree to treat a friend who had lost his voice. The solution was prepared and administered and his friend regained his voice. In January 1914 his son Hugh Lynn severely burns his eyes while playing in the studio with flash powder. Edgar performed a reading and his eye sight was restored. By 1910 he was so famous that The New York Times' publishes a long article on his psychic powers.
In 1904 Edgar opened a photographic studio with Frank Potter in Bowling Green , KY. By all accounts he was an excellent photographer and won numbers of prizes for his work but was a poor businessman. He also had penchant for travel always looking for better opportunities. Over the years Edgar moved many times. He moved to Anniston, AL and then to Selma where he established photography studios where he usually let a partner operate them while he continued to conduct “readings.”
He eventually gave readings on the “life histories” of his subjects. When he conducting a life reading on himself, he discovered that he was living in his eighth reincarnation. Previous he had been a British soldier and once was Xenon (a defender of Troy). He also lived in France during the time of Richelieu, and was the high priest Ra Ta in Egypt. He also claimed to have been Lucius of Cyrene, the actual author of the Gospel of Luke (not the physician Luke). His reading for his oldest son revealed that Hugh Lynn had been Jesus’ apostle Andrew in an earlier incarnation.
In 1923 Edgar hired Gladys Davis, an eighteen-year-old attractive girl as a stenographer to record his readings. They became very close and she remained with him until he died. When he did a life reading on Gladys, it was revealed that she had been the second daughter of Louis XIV in one incarnation and at age seventeen was seduced by the Duke of York who became King James II of England. As a result she became pregnant and gave birth to Edgar Cayce in his fifth incarnation. Later readings put Edgar in communication with the “source” who advised that Edgar and Gladys were meant to be together in their present incarnation but would have to wait until their next incarnation to be reunited. Although they agreed to abstain from any carnal relations, their relationship was a subject of much gossip and speculation. At age fifty-five Gladys was treated for uterine cancer and her attending doctor indicated that she was a virgin.
Edgar even used readings to search for oil and in the 1920's he was a partner in a number of oil ventures in Texas. A group of investors would form a corporation and include Edgar as a part owner and would then use his readings to determine where to drill. Edgar would travel around selling the stock in the company until they had sufficient funds to purchase the required equipment for drilling. They never found oil and always went bankrupt.
He was also involved in several treasure hunting ventures. One was in Bimini where a reading revealed the location of a vault containing more than 120,000 gold and silver coins. Again Edgar was part of a group of investors who spent $10,000 trying to locate the vault. He even went in person to the site in January 1929 to assist in the search. In the end they failed to find any treasure. A later reading provided the location of Blackbeard’s buried treasure at a site near Virginia Beach, VA called “White Hill.” Considerable expense was devoted to finding the treasure without any success.
In 1924 David Kahn introduced Edgar to Morton and Edwin Blumenthal. The brothers were wealthy New York City stockbrokers. In September Edgar did a reading for Morton’s various medical issues. Morton was very pleased with the results and the brothers began to provide him financial support. The Cayce family moved to Virginia Beach in September 1925 and with financial support from the Blumenthal brothers started the Association of National Investigators (ANI). The plan was to build a hospital where patients could stay and receive medical readings and then receive treatments administered by resident doctors in accordance with Edgar's instructions. At the same he picked stocks for Morton and Edwin which reportedly generated very handsome profits making them millionaires.
In 1927 Morton and Edwin provided the money to purchased five parcels of land in Virginia Beach for the hospital and construction began in June of 1928 and was completed and opened on February 11, 1929. At first things went well but by September 1930 the hospital was in serious financial trouble having accumulated debts close to $80,000. At the same time Blumenthal brothers were losing money in the falling stock market and could no longer afford to support Cayce or the hospital. It closed on February 28, 1931 and the property was taken over by creditors. The ANI was reorganized as the Association of Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Although Edgar Cayce died in January 1945, the ARE is still in operation even today.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. In the case of Cayce, claims of his psychic abilities including predictions and healing results are mostly anecdotal. Supporting evidence is scant and his psychic powers were never scrutinized by any competent independent observer. Supporters ignore all his failures including his unsuccessful oil drilling ventures, failed treasure-hunting episodes, and the bankruptcy of the Blumenthal brothers. They had purchased stocks based on Edgar’s stock market readings. The price of these stocks advanced during the boom years of the 1920's as did most stocks during this period. His readings never indicated the crash was coming and his clients never sold out and they eventually lost all their money.
Cayce maintained that the “five human races” were created separately and simultaneously but on different parts of the earth, a claim destroyed by Charles Darwin and molecular biology. He performed countless “life history” readings for numerous people and in every case they were famous well-known historical figures in their previous lives. Surely at least someone would have lived an ordinary existence in a former life such as a cook, stone mason, or bar maid.
In the case of his medical readings and prescribed treatments, they could be easily tested today. For example, epilepsy could be treated with a “dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree.” What rational person would volunteer for such a treatment for epilepsy? And what medical professional would treat tuberculosis with “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg?” These procedures must be dismissed as dangerous quackery inflicted on desperate superstitious and ignorant people. Keep in mind that the standard model of medicine at the time was the homeopathic model. Many of Cayce’s trance-induced diagnoses were common homeopathic treatments and enjoy some success even in modern times.
Edgar Cayce life as a psychic was very predictable given his background. He was raised in a small Kentucky town where most of his family and neighbors were uneducated and superstitious and where encounters with the “spirit” world were common place. Intermarriage with close relatives and mental illness ran in his family. His father was an alcoholic. As a child he suffered a number of serious accidents including falling on a nail that penetrated into his brain.
The Edgar Cayce story says more about the people who believe it than it does about him. Con artists and mystics always have the ability to select vulnerable people who want to believe and are susceptible to various illusions and delusions. Not surprisingly Edgar practiced astrology, a completely proven hoax. But, even today millions believe in astrology and use it to make all their important decisions. Ronald and Nancy Reagan are notable examples.
Michael Shermer’s wonderful book, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time goes a long way in explaining the phenomenon of people’s belief in tales like the ones attributed to Edgar Cayce, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard. In the future the field of neuroscience will provide even better explanations for these irrational beliefs.
Sources:
1. Edgar Cayce, An American Prophet (2000) by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick
2. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997) by Michael Shermer
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