CAYCE, EDGAR. Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) was an American spiritual healer and teacher. Celebrated for trance readings, diagnosing illnesses, and for prescribing unorthodox but reputedly effective treatments, Cayce (pronounced "Casey") was a seminal figure for the mid- to late twentieth-century revival of interest in psychic phenomena and the New Age movement. In addition to Cayce's healing work, the New Age movement was inspired particularly by trance teachings offered by the "sleeping prophet," as Cayce was called. These included "life readings," interpreting the lives of individuals in light of previous incarnations, and discourses involving future history and "earth changes." Cayce was relatively little known until the appearance late in his life of a best-selling biography by Thomas Sugrue, There Is a River (1942); Cayce's life and work thereafter became the subject of many publications.

Cayce was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in modest circumstances, the son of a farmer and sometime...