Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet

Edgar Cayce was known, in his day, as "The Sleeping Prophet." In fact, that was the title of the first book I read about Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet by Jess Stearn.

As a teenager, I was fascinated by the subject of sleep or not sleeping. I used to stay up all night. The house was quiet and no one would disturb me. I would read or study. This fascination with sleep would take me to books on sleep studies, rapid eye movement, psychology, and sociology. I also read other books about Edgar Cayce.

Edgar Cayce and the Readings

Edgar would lie down, enter a trance state, and give "readings." Typically, someone would come to his home and request a reading. They would ask a question or state a concern to be addressed during the reading. These concerns and questions most often revolved around a health matter, or a relationship, or a deceased friend or relative.

Some have written that Edgar Cayce was channelling the voice of John the Baptist. There is nothing that I know of that stands in the way of this theory. But there is also nothing that I know of that corroborates it either.

Much has been made of Edgar Cayce's health readings. Some readings contained general ideas such as recommending a more alkaline diet which generally means steamed vegetables and broiled or poached fish in place of meat - good advice in any case. Grape juice was recommended in several readings and it is this type of recommendation that keep people studying his readings. Perhaps they hope to find the next alternative health cure. Edgar also recommended some not so common health remedies. More about this in the next installment.

(This is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Association for Research and Enlightenment in 2005. This is the fourth post in the series.)

ARE HLC ACIM Series

This is a series of posts about my visit to A.R.E.

1. ACIM, HLC, and A.R.E.
2. HLC and the A.R.E. Library
3. The A.R.E Library
4. Edgar Cayce, Sleeping Prophet
5. Edgar Cayce, the remedies
6. Edgar Cayce and Jesus
7. Jesus notes on Edgar Cayce
8. The Media Room at the A.R.E. Library
9. The A.R.E. Bookstore
10. Meditation at A.R.E.
11. ACIM Study Group at A.R.E.
12. Hurricane Katrina from V.B.
13. Ken Wapnick at A.R.E.
14. Planning the trip to the Gulf Coast

There are additional installments in this series and this list will be updated as they are posted.
Thanks for reading! Comments welcome.