“It is a time in the earth when people everywhere seek to know more of the mysteries of the mind, the soul.” – Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce was born a Pisces on March 18, 1877 at 3:03 p.m. near Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He grew up as a sensitive child who had encounters with “the little folk” (or fairies and brownies) and the spirit of his deceased grandfather as easily as others have meetings with friends and neighbors. Increasingly feeling the social stigma of being different and unusual, he made use of several different coping mechanisms as a child. As Cayce’s grandson, Charles Thomas Cayce, tells of Edgar’s early life, “he yearned to be considered an ordinary boy…and…feared for his sanity.” First, he withdrew from social contact with other children and adults as much as possible, and stopped talking about his experiences. Later, as a teenager, he tried to emulate a cowboy friend who was very worldly and manly, acting out aggressively and attempting to drink and be a bit rowdy. However, in the end, it seems he realized that he would be better served to accept his special abilities as gifts, and try as best he could to be himself and be true to his deeply held values.
Edgar Cayce‘s horoscope is shown below:
Many unusual and serious physical injuries and events plagued this child as he developed. At the age of three, he fell off a fence post and landed on a nail that pierced his cranium and brain cavity. He suffered from an infection for a long time afterward. Some would say that this might have been a physiological trigger to mystical abilities. He also nearly drowned at about this time, and was rescued by a former slave. When he was four, he was with his beloved grandfather, Tom Cayce, when he died in a horseback accident, but seemed not to be as saddened as others in the family as he was observed still conversing with his grandfather after his death. At about age five his mother gave birth to his baby brother, Thomas, who died shortly after birth. His mother went into a severe depression that surely affected Edgar who was close to his mother. Another serious and painful accident at about this time involved a branch piercing one of his testicles.
Later, he began having fights at school. His only friend was a girl named Little Anna, who died when Edgar was fourteen. He was struck by a baseball at the end of his spine and blacked out. When he awakened, he acted very strangely and aggressively, and seemed to know information he “couldn’t have known”about family and friends. He also gave instructions for an odd poultice that should be applied while he rested to cure his problem, which when applied by his grandmother did seem to do the trick.
His teenage years only caused his self-esteem to plummet even further. He tried to become more “manly” and decided to move out of his parents’ home and into his grandmother’s home. She helped him begin to accept himself and his differences. He was with his grandmother when she died, and she reportedly said to Edgar that she saw his grandfather coming for her before she died.
He fell madly in love with a girl named Bessie who laughed at him and told him he was not a suitable mate because he was “not right in the head” according to her father. Edgar went to talk with her father, a doctor, about these comments, and received quite an emotional blow from him as well; the father said he would never be a proper husband and “man” because of his accident with his testicle, as well as serious doubts about his sanity. At that point he dropped out of school and withdrew again.
Eventually he met Gertrude and her family helped him to feel accepted and comfortable. But he continued to have strange episodes and experiences. He could “read” playing cards without looking at them, and find lost objects by going to sleep thinking about them. He had an episode where his mother “commanded” him to go to sleep and he did immediately and seemed to be in a coma for a day. In another experience, he fell asleep on a sofa after an argument with another young man and the sofa caught on fire inexplicably…some would say it appeared to be some kind of spontaneous combustion.
In spite of all of these strange occurrences, Gertrude remained a stalwart supporter and true love. When he proposed marriage, she accepted. But the road to the wedding was fraught with additional twists and turns. He moved to Louisville at the encouragement of one of Gertrude’s family members to “expand his horizons”. He spent 16 months away from Gertrude and found a new job and new life there. Growing apart from her for a time, he had a self-professed “secret flame” for another woman named Margaret there. Ultimately, he came back around and realized the errors of his ways and renewed his commitment to Gertrude when he saw that she had become seriously ill and withdrawn over the loss of his love and attention. They married.
He had an experience later with appendicitis surgery in which he apparently had a reaction to a strong sedative given to him and was found wandering around behaving in a similar fashion to the time when he was hit on the spine by the baseball. He had a bout with laryngitis that lasted months, and was finally cured with the help of a hypnotist. He ultimately gave a reading for himself under hypnosis to provide the cure for his laryngitis.
He became a professional photographer and his studio burned down. His wife Gertrude became very ill with tuberculosis and he gave a reading to provide a cure for her. His some Hugh Lynn received burns on his eyes in an accident in the studio, and a reading gave a cure for him. There are too many disastrous episodes in this man’s life to relate them in a short paper. Suffice it to say that his wife and family were a strong support system for this truly gifted man in his life of ups and downs. He proceeded to give over 14,000 documented readings for health and other sorts of helpful and unique information for seekers all over the world until his final days. His faith and his tireless work also inspired the creation of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Atlantic University for transpersonal studies, The Cayce/Reilly School of Massage and more in Virginia Beach, Virginia and around the globe.
Edgar Cayce was first well-known as a psychic diagnostician for health issues. However, eventually seekers caught glimpses of the tremendous range of his access to information in the so-called akashic records and began asking about reincarnation, astrology, and ancient history in Atlantis and Lemuria, among other topics. A picture that came out of these readings that includes a holistic view of “developmental issues” including ones indicated by the person’s natal horoscope and reaching beyond the current lifetime, and into past lifetimes on earth as well as “interplanetary sojourns” between earthly lives. In a special reading 5755-1 given in 1938 for a gathering of people interested in Cayce’s work, Cayce was asked to give a discourse explaining what takes place in these interplanetary sojourns and past-life experiences as it relates to the current lifetime. Edgar Cayce’s own life was used as an example of how astrology and reincarnation fit into the overall pattern of life.
From the astrological perspective Cayce’s horoscope indicates a prominently placed Uranus, conjunct his Ascendant. And the reading described Cayce: “From an astrological aspect, then, the greater influence at the entrance of this entity that ye call Cayce was from Uranus. Here we find the extremes. The sojourn in Uranus was arrived at from what type of experience or activity of the entity? As Bainbridge, the entity in the material sojourn was a wastrel, one who considered only self; having to know the extremes in the own experience as well as others. Hence the entity was drawn to that environ. Or, how did the Master put it? “As the tree falls, so does it lie.” [Eccl. 11:3 by Solomon. Where did Jesus say it?] Then in the Uranian sojourn there are the influences from the astrological aspects of EXTREMES…” The reading incorporated the concept of astrology, interplanetary sojourns (in the consciousness of Uranus prior to his lifetime as Edgar Cayce) and his most recent past-life as John Bainbridge all into one conceptual nugget.
The reading goes on to do the same with other planets and other past-lifetimes brilliantly, including the past-life prior to Bainbridge as a French prince named Dale, a “love child” and royal heir to King Luis XV who was removed from the care of his mother and died at the age of five. “We find that the activity of the same entity in the earthly experience before that [Bainbridge], in a French sojourn, followed the entrance into Venus…A child of love! A child of love – the most hopeful of all experiences of any that may come into a material existence; and to some in the earth that most dreaded, that most feared!…In Venus the body-form is near to that in the three dimensional plane. For it is what may be said to be rather ALL-inclusive! For it is that ye would call love – which, to be sure, may be licentious, selfish; which also may be so large, so inclusive as to take on the less of self and more of the ideal, more of that which is GIVING.”
Even without taking into account these enhanced perspectives of astrology from the readings, a look at Cayce’s natal horoscope from the viewpoint of modern western astrology would yield some relevant insights about his potential to be unusual, unconventional and extreme (Uranus conjunct the Ascendant), and possibly involved in a prominent public career (Pluto in the 10th house) dealing with transformation, life, death and rebirth, the “underworld” (Pluto), the masses and writing (Moon conjunct Midheaven), and photography or some creative expression or a spiritual work or calling (Neptune near the Midheaven, Sun in Pisces). We could point to astrological indicators for his feelings of lack of self-worth and financial challenges as well as other “sign posts” as the readings called them.
Of course this brief overview doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the depth of information and insights from the Cayce readings into Cayce’s own well-documented life (and lives) as an example of our spiritual development and evolution as human beings. It’s important to keep in mind this principle of astrology from the Cayce readings themselves: “Let it be understood here, no action of any planet or any of the phases of the Sun, Moon, or any of the heavenly bodies surpass the rule of Man’s individual will power—the power given by the Creator of a man in the beginning when he became a living soul, with the power of choosing for himself.” And that message is among the key messages that this amazing, humble, benevolent, wise soul and mystic came to bring to our current generation.
In his memoirs, Edgar Cayce noted, “I am often asked, ‘Are you a spiritualist?’ Or ‘Are you a medium?’ I am also called a psychic by many, although I have only tried to be a man of God.”
If you would like to learn more about Edgar Cayce, his remarkable work and his perspective on astrology and reincarnation, here are some recommended sources: