I began to feel better. When the bandages were removed several weeks later, I could see. That personal experience with Edgar Cayce’s psychic power has remained my most vivid impression of “a reading.”
When this incident occurred in Selma, Alabama, in 1913, Edgar Cayce was already famous as a man who spoke like a doctor when he was in a self-imposed, hypnotic-like sleep. Several thousand people had already sought his help. The reading on the injury to my eyes was only one of a series of family readings which influenced him in trying to use his gift to help others when they asked. On another occasion, my mother, Gertrude Cayce, had what appeared to be appendicitis. Dr. Gay, the family physician, recommended an operation. A reading from the sleeping husband advised a combination of drugs in three capsules. The operation would not be required, it was stated. Dr. Gay followed the directions. It was not necessary to operate. On the other hand, when Edgar Cayce himself suffered with intestinal pains in the general area of the appendix, the doctor did not advise an operation. A reading described an appendix wrapped around the intestine and about to burst. An immediate operation was urged with the warning that my father might die. Dr. Gay operated and found the appendix in exactly the condition described.
For me the scope of the medical clairvoyant power grew more and more impressive through the years. For a woman in Washington, D.C., a reading described the cause of a serious physical condition as arising from poisoning from a hair removal product she had used. The treatments which were outlined restored her health. The correspondence requesting the reading made no reference to the depilatory cream. Nevertheless, it proved to be the source of the trouble. As early as 1910 an Edgar Cayce reading described for a man, hundreds of miles away, an ulcerous condition of his stomach. The treatments suggested were not unusual, but in the reading a final succinct sentence was added: “This will relieve the condition but know that this distress will return unless this entity changes his attitude toward his wife.” Psychosomatic studies, the mental and emotional influences on body conditions, were not so well known then as they are today. Edgar Cayce apparently knew not only how the man felt toward his wife but also what this was doing to his body.
The clairvoyance at times seemed to reach beyond the individual who requested help. In an Eastern city a woman complained that an inhalant prescribed for her in a reading had irritated her throat and nose rather than producing a soothing effect. A subsequent reading explained that the druggist who filled the prescription had substituted another ingredient for one recommended. When confronted with the question, the druggist admitted the change. He explained that since it was not a doctor’s prescription and was not to be taken internally, he substituted what he believed was a better ingredient for one he did not have in stock. When compounded according to the directions in the reading, the inhalant proved very helpful. Here is distant perception of a compound and/or the mind of the druggist.
A great many “emergency” readings were given which brought immediate help, such as the following cases. For a girl in a Midwestern city suffering from a serious intestinal infection, a reading suggested poultices of crushed grapes and castor oil packs as part of the treatment, which produced almost immediate results. A telephone call to Edgar Cayce asked for an emergency reading. A man was suffering severe gallstone pains. A reading given the same night included an outline of treatments which provided relief and made an operation unnecessary.
Distance from the subject of the reading did not appear to be a barrier. A man in London was given a detailed, checkable analysis of his physical condition. The suggestions were followed with excellent results. The same reading contained a brief reference to what the man was doing as the reading was being given thousands of miles away.
Here is a fair example of a complete reading, which shows accuracy in diagnosis. The suggested treatments brought good results without involving overdramatic circumstances.
On May 30, 1934, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the following information was given by Edgar Cayce, in an unconscious state, for a woman forty-eight years old, several hundred miles away in Raleigh, North Carolina. The woman’s sister and a friend were present at the reading. Neither of them talked with Edgar Cayce prior to the time the information was given:
Now, as we find, while there are many physical conditions in this body that are very good, there are those conditions that with the correction would make a much better body physically and mentally for the activities in the mental, spiritual, and material body. The disturbances, as we find, have to do with some minor conditions respecting functionings of organs, and little or no organic disorder. While many portions of the system are involved at one time or another, the conditions are such that they may be easily corrected in the present.
These are the conditions as we find them with this body.
First, in the blood supply: here we find the form of an anemia, or the lack of a proper balance in the numbers of the red blood cells and the white blood cells. This condition exists now. Later we may find an alteration in just the opposite direction. This arises from nervous conditions that disturb the circulation, and the assimilation of what is taken as food values for the body. The nerve disturbance arises, as we shall see, from two—yea, three—distinct causes, making a combination of disorders contributory—as will be seen—one to another. Hence there is not only the variation in the red and white blood supply, or the form of anemia, but the character of the disturbance in other portions of the body, as we shall see.
As to the characterization of the blood itself—that is, the hemoglobin, the urea, the activity in its coagulation and in the blood count—this varies, not so much as to cause what may be termed an unbalanced metabolism but the very character of the nervous condition makes low blood pressure and at times disturbances to the heart’s activity and its pulsation. Dizziness arises at times from distinct causes, during the periods of the menstrual activity, in elimination and during the periods when there is overexhaustion by excitement to the nerve forces of the body, or at other times we may find it arising purely from gases that form from nervous indigestion. These changes and alterations in the pressure cause changes in the character of the blood itself, though the body may not be said to have a blood disturbance—but the functioning of the organs themselves and their activity upon the system through the nerve supply makes the disturbance, though the character of the blood so far as carrying poisons or any character of bacilli in same is lacking; for it is very good in these directions.
In the nerve forces of the body we find much that is a cause, and much that is an effect. So, it is not altogether nerves; though the body is nervous naturally from those conditions that have existed and do exist in the body, but under stress or strain no one would call the body a nervous person; for she would be very quiet and very determined and very set in what she would do, and she would do it!
In the cerebrospinal system we find there has been a relaxation in the third and fourth dorsal area that has tended to make for a relaxing in the position of the stomach itself, or the organs or the nerve tendons and muscular forces through the hypogastric and pneumogastric plexus, as to allow the stomach itself to tilt to the lower side, or the pyloric end up and the hypogastric or the cardiac end lower than normal, you see. This makes for a tendency of easy fermentation in same, and is a natural strain on the nerve system. The muscular reactions cause the condition, but the effect is in the nerve system. And as those plexuses in the upper dorsal are in close connection or association with the sympathetic and sensory nerve reactions through the ganglia near the first, second, and third dorsal area, this makes for a slowing of the circulation to the head, you see, sympathetically. Hence organs of the sensory system sympathetically become involved, as at times there is the tendency for a quick drying of the throat—and the body feels as if it would spit cotton often! At other times we have a thumping or drumming in the ear. At others there are the tendencies for the conditions to produce irritations and burnings in the eyes, especially if there has been an eyestrain either by being in the wind, poor light or strong light; any of these will produce an irritation through the necessary energies used and the lack of supply of nerve energy from the depletion in the area as indicated.
From this sympathetic condition, both as to the nerve supplies to the organs of digestion and as to the activities in the eliminations of the body during the periods that should be natural or normal, the reactions also produce an irritation again which causes the secretions from the vagina in such measures or manners as to make