Читать книгу True Tales from the Edgar Cayce Archives - Sidney D. Kirkpatrick - Страница 11

Edgar Cayce’s first reported spirit encounter was with his dead grandfather Tom Cayce, who was killed in 1881 after being thrown from a horse on the family’s Beverly, Kentucky, tobacco farm. The matter didn’t worry Edgar’s mother Carrie, who believed her four-year-old son simply had a vivid imagination. Edgar’s father, Leslie, a failed farmer and heavy drinker, was gone from the house for weeks on end and may not have noticed his son’s increasingly strange behavior. The family member most concerned was Edgar’s twenty-four-year-old aunt, Lulu Boyd Cayce, who recommended that Little Eddy ought to be taken to a doctor. It was either that or to a priest. “He’s got the Devil in him,” Lulu told Edgar’s parents. “No good can come of this.”

Lulu and her extended family members knew how close Little Eddy had been with this grandfather. The child had often napped in Tom’s arms and was never happier than when he was wrapped in Tom’s long overcoat. Tom had taught him to fish, ride on horseback, and tend to the garden. He even helped Edgar build playhouses out of the tall brush that grew along the banks of the Little River, a meandering stream that cut through the Cayce property.

The Lulu Boyd and Clinton Cayce family of Beverly, Kentucky, c. 1882. L. to R.: Maud (with doll); Lulu Boyd; Florence (center); Clinton Cayce; Granville

Edgar had been riding behind Tom on his favorite mare when the tragic accident had occurred. As eyewitnesses told the story, Tom was heading back from the tobacco fields when they stopped at a pond to water the horse. Tom had let Edgar down from the saddle to play in the shallows, his favorite pastime. Moments later the horse was startled by what may have been a water moccasin. The horse reared up, pitching Tom into the water. From shore, Edgar watched as the horse brought its hoofs down on Tom’s chest. A physician who lived nearby was called for help, but Tom was dead before Lulu Boyd’s husband, Clinton, pulled Tom out of the water.

As Lulu soon noticed, Little Eddy seemed undisturbed by the tragedy. Not long after the funeral, she found him standing alone in the tobacco barn. When asked what he was doing, Edgar matter-of-factly declared he was talking with Grandpa. According to Eddy, often times Grandpa was out in the fields too, whispering to farmhands to remind them of chores or how to fix farm machinery. But Grandpa, he said, could sometimes be hard to see. He appeared in “beams of light.” If Edgar looked really hard, he could see right through him.

Edgar’s grandfather Thomas Jefferson Cayce, c. 1875.

The pond where he was thrown from a horse and died in 1881.

Grandpa’s favorite place to sit, Edgar confided, was under the rafters in the barn. Edgar wanted to show Lulu the spot, but she sternly declined. This was strange behavior indeed. But what really frightened her were the stories Edgar said his grandfather had been telling him about the Cayce family’s pre-Civil War past in Virginia. These stories were not the kind easily produced by the vivid imagination of a youngster, but authentic accounts of the Cayce family before coming to Kentucky. Only Tom’s generation would know these things.

Lulu counseled Edgar not to tell anyone about his visions and encouraged Leslie and Carrie to seek help for the child. Further, Edgar continued to exhibit other strange and unnerving behaviors which unsettled the family. Among them was an incident which occurred in 1882, after Edgar’s mother gave birth to a second child, whom the family named Thomas in honor of his deceased grandfather. There is no record if Carrie carried the newborn to term, nor are there any details known about the circumstances of his delivery, only that Thomas was born on November 19, lived for ten days, and was buried in the Cayce family plot. Edgar’s father Leslie, for reasons not now known, disappeared for several weeks, leaving Carrie and Edgar alone in the cabin to care for themselves.

Grave of infant Thomas Cayce.

Carrie took to bed for three and four days at a time, most likely suffering from post-partum depression and grief over the death of her child. Her anguish left an indelible impression on Edgar, and he often referred to this period in his family’s life as a particularly troubling one. Neither then, nor later, would Thomas’ name be spoken or appear in family correspondence. But for Edgar would ultimately come a life-affirming insight out of this experience.

Edgar and his mother were alone in the cabin when she unexpectedly burst into tears and collapsed onto the dirt floor. This was remarkable for Edgar because it was the first time he had seen his mother cry. When he tried to comfort her, she pulled him down to his knees, and she, rising up on her knees, cupped her hands over his and began to pray. This, too, was something new for Edgar as he hadn’t seen anyone pray before. Lulu and her husband Clinton were dedicated Christians and members of Liberty Church, Beverly’s only house of worship, but this was not the case with the Leslie Cayce family.

As Carrie prayed—earnestly asking the Lord for His blessings and His help in her time of need—Edgar experienced what researchers today call clairaudience or the ability to hear and perceive sounds that are beyond the normal human audio range. Though no one was playing an instrument and he and his mother were alone in the room, Edgar heard music. “Her prayers were like musical notes,” he later described the experience.

Edgar spent many years pondering the relationship between prayer and music, but it was not until he was an adult that he articulated what he believed in a public lecture. He compared a single person praying to a musical note, rising toward heaven. Two people praying together could create a chord or harmonic, and a roomful of people praying together could create a divine symphony. He would further refer to Jesus as the Master Musician.

Exactly what Lulu thought of his experience is anyone’s guess. A pinched and humorless woman, as described by some, she and her husband, a third generation farmer and Beverly’s postmaster, were also deeply empathetic. When Carrie and Leslie were unable to care for Edgar, Lulu and Clinton took Edgar in and briefly saw to his education, something which proved quite challenging.

Edgar at the Beverly School, (back row, 3rd from left, in front of a window).

As more than one of his teachers would note, the most frightening thing about Edgar was his ability to press his head against a book, close his eyes, and somehow know the book’s entire contents, right down to where on a page a particular word or paragraph could be found. The same was true with unopened letters. He had only to handle an envelope to know what was inside—a talent that soon earned him a nickname, the Freak. These were especially strange abilities for a young boy who had difficulty learning to read or paying attention in class.

Like other accounts of his strange abilities, skeptics would dismiss such stories as fabrications intended to burnish what later became legend. The historical record, however, provides startling evidence otherwise. As a young teen, encouraged by his father who wished to show off his son’s talents, Edgar performed in front of audiences of forty or more people, including the mayor of nearby Hopkinsville and a U.S. Congressman. Edgar recited, verbatim, a 110-page congressional speech.

Reading the Bible soon became the only subject that interested Eddy. This was triggered by a conversation that Edgar had had with a black woodcutter who lived on his grandfather’s old farm. People in Beverly called him “Crazy Bill” because he was, as Edgar himself later said, “not quite right in the head.” They happened to meet on his way home from school one day when Bill was clearing a tree that had fallen across the road. “I’m feeling as strong as Samson,” Bill declared, swinging his ax. As Edgar didn’t know who Samson was, Bill recounted the Old Testament stories of how the heroic Samson, invested by God with superhuman strength, pulled a temple down with his bare hands and subdued a lion.

Edgar now wanted to know all about the Bible. His mother and father didn’t own one, but Lulu did. She was especially pleased to let him handle her Bible and then to accompany him to Liberty Church where she said people studied it. That prayer was part of the equation excited him all the more.

Lulu’s Bible, handed down through her family, was quite large and heavily illustrated. She showed him woodcuts of the divinely inspired Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple and holding open the gaping jaws of a ferocious lion with his bare hands. Also among the illustrations was one of Archangel Michael with wings spread. Edgar soon asked for a Bible of his own, which was presented to him by Elijah Hopper of Hopper Brothers Bookstore in Hopkinsville where Edgar would one day work.

Edgar immediately tried to read the Bible. At first he couldn’t pronounce the names and had to have Lulu and then his mother follow along with him. Reading sessions would always end with a prayer. By early the following year Edgar could read many passages without help. He was especially drawn to the Old Testament stories of what today are considered supernatural or psychic phenomena. From age ten onwards, a Bible was seldom out of his reach, and he would read it cover to cover once each year of his life. He carried it with him so often that his mother sewed what he called a “hind pocket” on his overalls in which to protect it on his way back and forth to school or on long walks into the woods.

Edgar soon joined Liberty Church, part of the immensely popular Kentucky-based Disciples of Christ, which rejected all “man-made” creeds and accepted the Bible alone as its full and final authority. Aunt Lulu and Uncle Clinton, and other Cayces, would witness his baptism by immersion into the Little River at age twelve.

Lulu, no doubt, was relieved that he should take to church the way he did. He sat through the two-hour services, attended meetings of the church elders, and became the church’s sexton—a position that had never before or since been held by a child. He could also quote long passages and interpret scripture. Like his experience at school, however, his entry into the church presented unexpected challenges. The miracles of the prophets, he declared, were still possible. He knew because God had spoken to him through an angel.

The angelic encounter took place in his bedroom, after Edgar had spent a long day reading his Bible and asking how he could be of service to the Lord. He had eaten dinner with the family and had gone to bed at sundown as usual. His three younger sisters were fast asleep in the bed beside him when he suddenly awoke and saw what he described as a powerful light coming through the doorway.

I felt as if I were being lifted up. A glorious light, as of the rising morning sun, seemed to fill the whole room, and a figure appeared at the foot of my bed. I was sure it was my mother and called [out], but she didn’t answer. For the moment I was frightened, climbed out of bed, and went to my mother’s room. No, she hadn’t called. Almost immediately, after I returned to my couch, the figure came again. Then it seemed all gloriously bright—an angel, or what, I knew not, but gently, patiently, it said: ‘Thy prayers are heard. You will have your wish. Remain faithful. Be true to yourself. Help the sick, the afflicted.’

Edgar couldn’t go back to sleep. He instead walked outside and sat beneath his favorite willow tree, where he often went to read his Bible. He knelt, thanking God for answering his prayers and providing direction in his life. What he would do and how he was to prepare himself were questions he hadn’t thought to ask.

Three years would elapse before he summoned the courage to tell anyone about the angel’s visit. To have done so would surely have further upset Lulu and the rest of the family, and even if he had felt up to facing an interrogation at home and the one that would inevitably have followed at church, he didn’t feel he had the skills to convey the intensity of his vision or to avoid public mockery. “I had no way of knowing which was more real,” he later confessed, “the vision of the lady or the pillow I rested my head upon.”

Many more years would pass before he was able to understand his vision in the broader context of his childhood experiences. Edgar concluded that he had been born with special abilities and that as a youth he frequently experienced a reality that existed beyond his five senses. That the angel who appeared in his bedroom was strikingly similar to an illustration in his aunt’s Bible didn’t invalidate the experience, nor did seeing his dead grandfather dressed in the same long coat he wore out into the fields. Such visualizations were the only means by which a psychically gifted adolescent could interpret what he would, as an adult, experience when he entered a hypnotic trance.

Did his Aunt Lulu become convinced that her nephew’s visions were a gift from God and not the work of the Devil? Unfortunately, about this—the earliest documented long-term relationship Edgar had with someone besides his mother and father—few intimate details are now known. All that can be said with certainty is that Lulu and the vast majority of the Cayces in Beverly were loath to discuss or even say what later became of Eddy when he moved from Beverly. Even decades later some extended family members believed that Edgar and his trance readings had sullied the family name. Parishioners at Liberty Church, well into the 1950s, were reluctant to acknowledge that he had once been the sextant.

Lulu’s role in the Cayce story, however, would be substantively different from that of her other Beverly relatives or the Cayce family’s neighbors. In January 1893, when Edgar’s father, Leslie, had lost his share of the family inheritance and moved his wife and their three daughters to Hopkinsville, sixteen-year-old Edgar remained behind in Beverly. That he chose to live with Lulu and Clinton and work their farm for the next nine months is indicative of the love and trust that existed between them. Lulu’s side of the family was also the first to accept what they referred to as his “calling.” Lulu’s sister was the first of the extended Cayce family members to receive a dedicated trance reading, followed by Lulu’s husband, Clinton, and eventually Lulu herself at age sixty-five.

Bedridden, she had contracted a life-threatening congestive condition and couldn’t stop coughing. Her nephew, then living in Virginia Beach, went into trance, immediately diagnosed her condition, and recommended a unique blend of medicinal herbs, hot packs, and spinal adjustments. Days later she was back on her feet, and in two months she was cured. Though she personally didn’t write to thank Edgar or reference to friends and neighbors that she had had a reading, Clinton did so on her behalf. Further, after Lulu and Clinton retired and moved to Hopkinsville, they would always invite Edgar to stay with them on his yearly visits back to Kentucky. As she and Clinton finally acknowledged by welcoming him home, God works in mysterious ways.