Edgar Cayce: the 'prophet' who 'slept' his way to the top

Cayce thought that cataclysms were not confined to Atlantean times. Many New Agers are waiting for the devastating earthquake he predicted for California at some unspecified date that will cause it to slide into the sea. However, it is less well known that Cayce made the same open-ended prediction for Japan, and, more astonishingly, New York City.

Always wanting to be helpful, he offered a stream of information to Charles Lindbergh in 1932 with the hope that it would help in recovering his kidnapped baby. As Randi (1987) reports, most of it was wrong, and all of it was useless. Randi recounts and analyzes the excuses offered by Cayce and Cayce (1971) for Edgar Cayce's misinformation. Cayce's economic and geopolitical predictions, where precise enough to be verified or falsified, fared no better. As Stern (1967) reports, in 1931 Cayce predicted, "In the spring of '33 will be the real definite improvements" in the Great Depression; and in 1943 he predicted that China would be "mostly Christian" by 1968.

References

Armstrong, D. and E. Metzger. 1991. The Great American Medicine Show. New York: Prentice Hall.

Cayce, E. V. and H. L. Cayce. 1971. The Outer Limits of Edgar Cayce's Power. New York: Harper and Row.

Flexner, A. 1910. Bulletin #4. (The Flexner Report.) New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Gardner, M. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Pp. 216-219. New York: Dover.

Randi, J. 1987 Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions. Pp. 185-195. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus.

Stern, J. 1967. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet. New York: Doubleday.

Sugrue, T. 1945. There Is A River: The Story of Edgar Caye, New York: Henry Holt.

Dale Beyerstein teaches critical thinking and philosophy of science and is chair of the Philosophy Department at Langara College, Vancouver, Canada. He is the editor of Sai Baba's Miracles: An Overview (Podanur, India, B Premanand); has published in the Skeptical Inquirer; and has written articles about ethics and medical ethics in other publications.

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