CHESMAYNE
Mystic
01 Symbolic as a ‘dove’ - of the
nature of or pertaining to mysteries known only to the initiated - of obscure or mysterious character or
significance. One who claims to attain,
or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries
transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy ie, Emanuel Swedenborg, or Augustine,
author of ‘City of God’ etc.
02 The ‘City of
03 Greek: ‘mystikos’ mystic,
secret. In December 1273, while saying
Mass, Aquinas fell into a trance and never wrote or dictated again. After a life building a logical definition
of God he was overtaken by a mystical revelatory experience from which he did
not recover and died some months later without finishing his book ‘Summa
Theologica’ - he could not proceed any further by the route of reason and so
turned to intuition to grasp the significance of God.
04 Kabbalah
: a mystical tradition and system of training
of the mind. The Essenes who prepared Mary,
selected Joseph and taught Jesus were initiates of the mysteries.
Jesus said He came to fulfill the law (part of the law was the Cabala, the secret
doctrine of the Jewish people (their own particular version of the
mysteries). Joseph of Arimathea and
Nicodemus would have been familiar with the Cabala. The mysteries concern man’s problem of
freeing his soul from this world. They
were considered a preparation for His coming.
His message was a fuller revelation of
these mysteries. Botticelli’s ‘Mystic Nativity’ is
the only recorded painting by him which is signed and dated (completed in
1500). It is full of apocalyptic
overtones. The second coming of Christ is
a moment of reconciliation, the earth unified in heavenly harmony. The ancient Jewish mystics taught that God
was hiding in our world [hide-and-seek].
The way to find him is to connect with his image in this world - other
human beings.
05 Temperance (Tarot
XIV) - path of the mystic.
06 A higher state of
consciousness is said to give access to a higher inaccessible level of reality
and at such levels, sensitivity to the ultimately real or divine, as
well as deepened self-awareness, is claimed.
Such states long familiar to mystics have been the subject of
investigation by psychologists.
07 Jung was
more open to the reality of different states of consciousness which give access
to authentic experiences and knowledge which yield both a refined and enlarged
perspective of life.
08 Edgar Cayce: regarded as
Edgar
Cayce (1877-1945)
Edgar Cayce is known as one of
Cayce was known as “the sleeping prophet” because he
would close his eyes and appear to go into a trance when he did his readings
(Stern). At his death, he left thousands
of accounts of past life and medical readings.
A stenographer took notes during his sessions and some 30,000
transcripts of his readings are under the protection of the Association for
Research and Enlightenment. However, Cayce
usually worked with an assistant (hypnotist and mail-order osteopath Al Layne;
John
It is true, however, that many people considered
themselves cured by Cayce and that’s enough evidence for true believers. It works!
The fact that thousands don’t consider themselves cured or can’t
rationalize an erroneous diagnosis won’t deter the true believer. Gardner notes that Dr. J.B. Rhine, famous for
his ESP experiments at Duke University, was not impressed with Cayce.
Cayce’s defenders provide some classic ad hoc hypotheses to explain away
their hero’s failures. For example, Cayce and a famous dowser named
Henry Gross set out together to discover buried treasure along the seashore and
found nothing. Their defenders
suggested that their psychic powers were accurate because either there once was
a buried treasure where they looked but it had been dug up earlier, or there
would be a treasure buried there sometime in the future (one wonders why their
psychic powers didn’t discern this).
There are many myths and legends surrounding Cayce:
that an angel appeared to him when he was
13 and asked him what his greatest desire was (Cayce allegedly told the angel
that his greatest desire was to help people); that he could absorb the contents
of a book by putting it under his pillow while he slept; that he passed
spelling tests by using clairvoyance; that he was illiterate and uneducated. The
New York Times is greatly responsible for the illiteracy myth
(“Illiterate Man Becomes a Doctor When Hypnotized”, (Sunday magazine section,
October 9, 1910). Many of the myths were passed on unchecked by
Thomas Sugrue, who believed Cayce had cured him of a disabling illness. In his 1945 book ‘There is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce’, Sugrue includes the stories that it was
Cayce and not the medical doctors who treated them that were responsible for
the cures of Cayce’s son (“blindness”) and wife (“tuberculosis”).
One of the most common reasons given for believing in
the psychic abilities of people such as Cayce is the claim that there’s no way he could have known this
stuff by ordinary means. He must
have been told this by God or spirits or have been astrally projected back or
forth in space or time, etc. Yet,
Cayce’s “psychic knowledge” is easily explained by quite ordinary ways of
knowing things.
Even though Cayce didn’t have a formal education much
beyond grammar school, he was a voracious reader, worked in bookstores, and was
especially fond of occult and osteopathic literature. (Osteopathy, in his day, was primitive and
akin to chiropractic, naturopathy and folk medicine.) He was in contact with and assisted by
people with various medical backgrounds.
Even so, many of his readings would probably only make sense to an
osteopath of his day. Martin Gardner
cites Cayce’s reading of Cayce’s own wife as an example. The woman was suffering from
tuberculosis:
.... from the head, pains
along through the body from the second, fifth and sixth dorsals, and from the
first and second lumbar...tie-ups here, floating lesions, or lateral lesions,
in the muscular and nerve fibers which supply the lower end of the lung and the
diaphragm...in conjunction with the sympathetic nerve of the solar plexus,
coming in conjunction with the solar plexus at the end of the stomach....
The fact that Cayce mentions the lung is taken by his followers as
evidence of a correct diagnosis; it counts as a psychic “hit”. But what about the incorrect diagnoses:
dorsals, lumbar, floating lesions, solar plexus and stomach? Why aren’t those counted as diagnostic
misses? And why did Cayce recommend
osteopathic treatment for people with tuberculosis, epilepsy and cancer?
In addition to osteopathy, Cayce was knowledgeable of homeopathy and naturopathy. He was the first to recommend laetrile as a
cancer cure. (Laetrile contains cyanide and is known to be ineffective for cancer.) He also recommended “oil of smoke” for a leg
sore; “peach-tree poultice” for convulsions; “bedbug juice” for dropsy; and
“fumes of apple brandy from a charred keg” for tuberculosis.
See related entry on alternative
health practices.
further reading
Beyerstein, Dale. “Edgar Cayce”, in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal edited by Gordon Stein
(Buffalo, N.Y.:
Prometheus Books, 1996), pp.146-153. $104.95
Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
(New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957), chs. 16, 17. Cayce’s diagnosis of his
wife, quoted above, is on page 217. $6.36
Randi, James. Flim-Flam!
(Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982), ch. 9. $15.16
Shermer, Michael and Arthur Benjamin. “Deviations: A Skeptical
Investigation at Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment,” Skeptic Volume 1, Number 3 (Fall
1992)
Stern, Jess. Edgar Cayce: The
Sleeping Prophet (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1967). reissued by
Bantam, 1990 $5.20