T and the other letters

T is for Text.  On the readings page available from edgarcayce.org you’ll notice links to Background, Report, and Index, in addition to Text, even if just Text is why you’re there.  I’d suggest you spend some time at these other letters, B, R, and I.

B is for Background.  Background can be the significance of the reading itself, if it’s one in a series, like the 262s; often the reading is given historical perspective.  Take a look at 262.13, and follow the 4191 series for a fascinating, novel look at the kidnapping of Charles Linbergh, Jr. from the point of view of Edgar Cayce and his circle of concerned friends.

R is for Report.  Usually a report of the outcome of advice EC gave a client.  If a health reading, the result of the client following EC’s protocol – or, in the case of EC himself, what happened when he didn’t.  In spiritual readings, the report may detail, as correspondence allowed, the course of a client’s life, or that of a family member.  A.R.E. followed newspaper articles on the Lindbergh kidnapping case all the way to 1993.

I is for Index.  In addition to being a subject and name index, this is also an index to the biblical scriptures quoted in the reading, and where they can be found.

What makes BRI most helpful is that the paragraph is cited in the reading where it occurs.  This makes cross-reference so much easier.  What time A.R.E. didn’t spend translating and paraphrasing Edgar Cayce’s readings, the researchers more than made up for by this research tool.

Diversion

Translating Cayce into plain English is hard work, but I’ve found a diversion that offers the excitement of discovery: I use the numbers that stand for people to make lists that I cross reference. The process helps breathe life into the numbers in brackets; I begin to see how ordinary they are, and how little difference there is between their problems and ours.

The lists I cross reference are: Numbers cited; Attendee names; Other names cited; Reading number and subject; Subject and reading number; and Readings by year.

I have to look out, though.  Just compiling these lists is time consuming, and the practice is compelling.  It can become an end in itself and a convenient excuse for not doing the more relevant work of translating.

A language all its own

Metaphysics has a language all its own.  It has generated new words.  It has given new shadings to familiar words.  It is poetic.

In many passages in the Edgar Cayce readings, there are words that we’re sure have a meaning just beyond our grasp.  It’s at that point that I’m most likely to hack away verbiage and distill what I hope is Cayce’s intent. 

Whether or not we recognize it, that’s what we do when we read Cayce.  We have to.  We take the sentences apart, rearrange them and put them back in a way that makes grammatical sense.  It’s language; it’s the tool we have. 

I can’t imagine translating the readings verbatim into Spanish or German without first paraphrasing them, saying to ourselves, “in other words,” or “he means,” or “what he’s saying, is.”  For the most intuitive among us, the string of words has immediate meaning – but then tell someone else what you just read; you have to resort to subject, verb, and voice.

See? 

Getting it wrong

English is a difficult language to understand.  Sometimes I swear we do all we can to make understanding English even more difficult.  I’m thinking of contract legalese and Congressional obfuscation; of tax returns; of argot of all sorts.

I’ve dedicated a website to making at least one form of English, Caycian metaphysicalese, intelligible.

Do you want a translation?  I’ve dedicated my website to making the readings of the American medium, Edgar Cayce, easier to understand.  The website is edgarcayceaz.com, and with it I hope to make Cayce more accessible to New Age readers. 

Right now, the readings, all of them, are available on edgarcayce.org.  The Association for Research and Enlightenment, or A.R.E., asks a very small membership fee for access to the readings, but once you get there, the world of Edgar Cayce opens up to you.

And that’s the problem: Cayce’s world is overwhelming.  In a fairly brief period, from about 1925 to 1945, when he died, Cayce laid down twice a day, put himself into a trance, and answered questions from whoever wanted to ask.  During World War II, he did four or more a day.  The number of subjects he replied to is enormous.  His stenographer had her hands full just translating her shorthand, verbatim, into English.  What no one has done in the intervening decades is to translate what he said into modern English.  Edgar Cayce was an American.  He spoke English.  Why do we know his words mostly through others’ explanations? 

On my website you’ll find, in the weeks ahead, guidelines I use in my translation of a very limited number of his 14,067 readings.  I’m most interested in the series of readings from which the book, A Search for God, Books I and II, were derived.  Some of the readings need only a general grammatical clean-up, while others need extensive work – in my opinion.  What I hope to do on my website is to help you get started translating in your area of interest, so that eventually there will be a network of us who are willing to present Edgar Cayce’s message to the world in plain English.

The risk to the readings is that we could get the meanings wrong.  That’s the nature of metaphysics.  The real travesty, in my opinion, is that the readings might remain untouched, read only in passages that are quoted in context, in companion books and readers, and in study groups, when in fact they deserve to be as widely read and appreciated as the quatrains of Nostradamus.   

Our translations are going to be flawed, colored by our understanding of Cayce and the language of metaphysics, and flavored by our word choice.  Consider them the start of future discussions, the initial commentaries on an important and original body of work.

Which style would you rather read for an hour?

What if Edgar Cayce, America’s “Sleeping Prophet,” had spoken plain English while in trance?  While channeling his unconscious mind, Mr. Cayce offered counsel on a wide range of topics.  In fact, he answered any question put to him, and the session was recorded by a stenographer.


A problem for the casual reader is the way Mr. Cayce voiced the English language.  Here’s an example:


As each have gathered here - as each gathered here has been associated in their various experiences in the earth, as each has prepared themselves for a channel through these experiences - so may they, as a group, combine their efforts in a cooperative manner to give to the individual, the group, the classes, the masses, that as they receive, as they have gained in this experience.


This passage is from reading 262-1, in 1931.


And here’s how I translate it:


Each of you gathered here have been associated with one another in your various lifetimes on earth; each of you has prepared yourselves to be a messenger by way of these lifetimes. So may you, as a group, combine your efforts in a cooperative manner in order to give yourselves, this group, the classes, and humankind, what you gain by doing this work.


Which style would you rather read for an hour?