To WHOM does the wealth belong? Class war in the sleeping Cayce'spolitics

David Bell

David Bell has doctorates in philosophy (from the University of South Africa) and comparative religion (from the California Institute of Integral Studies). His dissertation for the latter, Edgar Cayce's Bookshelf: The Source Question In the "Sleeping Prophet's" Spiritual Teachings , is forthcoming from SUNY Press. He does not usually refer to himself in the third person.

Cayce's political thought has suffered neglect in comparison to the more "spiritual"subjects with which he is commonly associated. A few writers have come to the Caycework with an interest in politics, usually of a center-left variety. (Harmon Browas a sometime labor activist; Lytle Robinson had high hopes for the potantial ofco-ops to transform American society.) In general, however, when Cayce writers invokepolitics, it is either to bolster Cayce by crediting him with some favored politicalview, or else to champion some political notion by connecting it with the Cayce material.In this paper I have attempted to reconstruct the sleeping Cayce's political ideologywithin the context of his particular historical, geographical, and cultural situation.The question of what Cayce believed about politics is logically distinct from theissue of whether he was right. I trust that readers will find much to admire, andat least some items to reject, in Cayce's political views as I interpret them.

While awake Cayce was a Democrat, essentially by default since that was the standardaffiliation of Southern white men under the then-prevailing Lagermentalitaet.According to Christian County historian William T. Turner, North Christian whitesand blacks everywhere voted Republican in local and national elections from 1865to 1928, outnumbering the whites in South Christian who voted Democratic. After 1928Christian County court clerk Frank Bassett persuaded black voters to realign theirsupport to the Democratic Party, which with the help of South Christian whites wonall but a few subsequent local and (until 1980) national elections.

At one point we find young Cayce joining in Christian County enthusiasm for GroverCleveland's 1892 nomination of local politician Adlai Stevenson to the U.S. vice-presidency(according to his essay "My Life and Work," Cayce was heard groggily shoutingpro-Cleveland slogans after getting hit by a baseball), but this had more to do withregional pride than the merits of anyone's political platform. Later, on the occasionof Cayce's graduation from Beverly Academy, his father had him demonstrate his phenomenalmemory by reciting a speech given by Congressman James "Quinnine Jim" McKenzieon the subject of the quinnine tariff. (For the record, McKenzie's opposition tothe tariff had the effect of making quinnine cheaper and more widely available tomalaria sufferers.) This is perhaps not altogether promising material on which toconstruct a comprehensive political philosophy. Nor do Cayce's later activities inSelma, Texas, Dayton, Chicago, or Virginia Beach shed much light on his politicalviews, although some of his relatives and acquaintances may yet come forward withrevealing information.

When the sleeping Cayce refers to "politics" or "political" matters,much of the time it is as a career field for inquirers wanting to be told the colorof their parachute, so to speak. At other times these words refer to the first-centuryPalestinian "political" situation which led to the crucifixion of Jesus."Democratic" and "Republican" are generally used in their nonpartisanmeanings--a number of inquirers are urged to be more "democratic," althoughthe sleeping Cayce somehow managed to avoid applying this principle to any of theinstitutions which he founded. A few aspiring politicians are advised to seek theendorsement of their local Democratic or Republican party, as appropriate, for practicalrather than ideological reasons.

Where Cayce is asked about a specific public figure (for example, several of hisinquirers knew FDR and/or Eleanor Roosevelt personally), he seems respectful of theircalling but mindful of their human failings, and it is difficult to discern any particularpolitical orientation from his comments about them. In 1935 Cayce intimated thatHoover would not continue in office, but blamed his seeming ineffectiveness on awhispering campaign against him (261-16); the previous year he had assigned responsibilityfor the continuation of the Great Depression to the American people as a whole (257-134).The 3976 series of "world affairs" readings contain many detailed observationsabout international politics. Among them is the "Christ at Versailles"reading (3976-12) in which Cayce praises the Christlike qualities of Woodrow Wilson,that imperialist butcher of Latin America and champion of racial segregation.

If Cayce's explicit political utterances are disappointingly sparse, the readingstouch upon some of the most central political issues conceivable through their sundrydescriptions, prescriptions, and proscriptions. Whole treatises could be writtenon his attitude towards women, Germany, economics, or a hundred other subjects withserious political significance. I propose to focus only on those elements of thereadings which suggest something of his fundamental political outlook. As we shallsee, the sleeping Cayce's political views are ultimately inseparable from his religiousbeliefs, a very common pattern cross-culturally.

Some background

Cayce's birth year, 1877, conventionally marks the end of the Reconstruction period,while his death in 1945 neatly coincides with the end of World War II. Although thisis not the place to embark upon a lengthy discussion of the history of the periodbetween these dates, some awareness of his general historical context is requiredeven if it can only be sketched in the broadest of terms.

During Cayce's lifetime the U.S. population grew from about 50 million in 1880, tothree times that in 1950. Immigration from Asia and Eastern Europe accounted formuch of that increase, inspiring a considerable amount of nativist sentiment amongthe existing white population. While the westward migration of previous eras continuedin this period, by 1900 the frontier (in the sense of viable unclaimed land) hadessentially disappeared. The ethnic cleansing of Indian territory and the "pacification"of the surviving Indian nations was largely accomplished by the mid-1870's, freeingthe United States to continue its violent expansionist drive with the Anschlussof Hawaii; conquests of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines during the Spanish-AmericanWar; and additional military interventions in East Asia and Latin America, not tospeak of the United States' twentieth-century rise to global domination.

Whereas present-day Americans often take for granted their country's basic politicaland economic stability, this would not have been true of Cayce's generation. A numberof economic crashes and periods of stagnation occurred in Cayce's lifetime, especiallyduring 1876-1886, 1893-1897, and 1929-1939. Each of these led to new controversyover how to bring about a recovery. The nineteenth-century debates centered aroundthe abolition of the gold standard, whereas the New Deals of the 1930's focused onKeynesian public works projects and banking reforms. The role of the federal governmentexpanded to include such things as Social Security, welfare, the FBI, the NationalParks Service, and a federal income tax.

Relations between whites and blacks varied widely, over time as well as by region.The social and economic effects of Emancipation inspired white reactions rangingfrom the enactment of "Jim Crow" legislation in the 1890's, to the resurgenceof the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's, to the spread of official racial segregation inthe twentieth century. Where abolition had served as an effective rallying cry forthe Union during the Civil War, after the war the pursuit of national unity led Northernwhites to make common cause with their Southern cousins at the price of betrayingblack interests, an alignment which continued throughout Cayce's life (and, someargue, still exists).

Further social upheaval resulted from the emergence of an urban-centered, industrializedeconomy dominated by large corporations. Sporadic mass rebellions occurred (the GreatArmy of Starvation in 1877, the Haymarket Square Riot in 1886), some of them nationalin scope. Labor movements were at first violently suppressed, then tolerated in alimited role, their effectiveness diluted by racial divisions which had the effectof pitting the proletariat against itself rather than against the upper classes (asin Europe). Several Populist and Agrarian parties which challenged the uneasy power-sharingarrangement between the Democratic and Republican parties (a situation which datedfrom the Reconstruction period) were either co-opted or failed to reach beyond theirlimited constituencies, and the Red Scare of 1919-1920 drove the nascent Socialistand Communist movements largely underground. Beginning in the 1890's, a popular reactionagainst the widespread political corruption resulted in many partial reforms, e.g.the rise of the popular primary, though monied interests retained basic control ofthe political system.

Cayce's generation saw numerous scientific and technological advances including theinvention of the typewriter, electric light, cash register, automobile, dirigible,sewing machine, phonograph, radio, telephone, airplane, motion picture camera, andthe modern bicycle, to name only a dozen of the most familiar. Improvements in publicsanitation combined with the discovery of new medicines, the construction of hospitals,and the regularization of the medical profession to boost life expectancy. Culturalpatterns adapted to new technological possibilities and economic realities. Familiesgrew smaller, and more women worked outside the home. Nonmarital sex increased asbirth control and privacy became widely available. This period experienced the developmentof a popular culture driven by advertising and extending to fashion, radio, music,film, consumer products, magazines, and professional spectator sports.

Prior to the New Deals of FDR, the task of cushioning U.S. society against the mostdestructive of these trends (for example, through reform movements or acts of public benevolence) fell largely to churches and fraternal organizations. Cayce and hisrelatives were members of a large and influential grouping which could be seen asthe de facto established religion in America at the time, namely a pan-Protestantcoalition whose member churches and fraternal orders tended to regard each otheras more or less interchangeable in the eyes of God--"denominations" ofa common religious currency, so to speak. This cooperative spirit lasted until the1920's or 1930's, when the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism became divisive,although this split has never followed very neatly along denominational lines. Itis often difficult for moderns to appreciate the turn-of-the-century strength ofthis pan-Protestant coalition, given the subsequent decline of many of its denominationaland fraternal constituents.

Along with religion's relatively greater societal role in Cayce's day, its significanceas a political arena was correspondingly enhanced. Individual churches were moreideologically diverse than today, since they were rooted in race/ethnicity and geographyas much as theological belief. Debate would more typically occur within churches--betweenfactions whose members were personally acquainted with one another as well as withsecular decision-makers--than among ideologically homogeneous denominations competingto influence separate secular institutions. Political influence was exercised notonly by charismatic preachers or purse-wielding ecclesiastical functionaries, butas crucially by lay activists and church groups, including not a few churchwomen.As Harmon Bro puts it,

...the church was a much bigger enterprise in the South of [Cayce's] time than it is today. Church is churchy today. Church was life then. The best analogy you could find quickly is the black church, where political issues are alive--social issues, not just religious issues. [from a May 1997 audiotape]

Much the same benevolent urges which inspired Christian churches throughout thatreligion's history to emphasize the collection of charity, led to sweeping nineteenth-centuryProtestant efforts to "civilize the frontier" through public-spirited projectsof various types. Religious money funded numerous schools and hospitals, and Cayceaspired to build one of each. (His hospital even accepted some charity patients,in contrast with the highly-commercialized alternative health industry of today.)In the wake of the abolition movement's success, church groups organized on behalfof, or against, progressive causes ranging from women's suffrage to temperence tobetter working conditions. The YMCA and YWCA were founded not as the networks ofgymnasia they ultimately became, but as job centers and dormitories designed to cushionyoung adults' transition to urban life in an environment deemed morally respectable.Christian missionary efforts were intimately linked with these social ones, as illustratedby the medical missionaries whom Cayce recruited from the ranks of his Sunday schoolstudents. More recent conservative protests that the "social gospel" isnot quite authentically Christian would probably have bewildered Cayce and his companions.

The inner spiritual life of this pan-Protestant coalition is difficult for many NewAgers to appreciate owing to its mainstream Christian character. Devout participantsorganized parachurch groups devoted to prayer and Bible study, similar in many respectsto the lay-led voluntary assemblies of Pietism or early Methodism. Revivalism andthe Sunday school movement were not then typically identified with specific denominations,as today, but were mostly cooperative efforts in which volunteers (including Cayce)from various Protestant churches would take part. These emphasized external lifestylechanges as well as an inner commitment to Christ, ideals which in turn inevitablyblurred into more social concerns such as intercessory prayer or missionary outreach.Some of the more adventurous groups cultivated an interest in charismatic healing,millennarianism, or New Thought metaphysics, and more than one new denomination grewout of this explorative spirit. Imagine something like the New Age movement of recentdecades, but occurring within mainline Protestant circles, and the result is closeto Cayce's adventurous blend of mainstream Protestantism and fraternalism with elementsdrawn from alternative spirituality and medicine.

Turn-of-the-century Protestantism's blurring of internal spiritual concerns withexternal worldly ones is a crucial point in the search for a coherent expressionof Caycean politics. Early literature for Alchoholics Anonymous, that mutant offspringof the evangelical Oxford Movement, not only envisioned founding hospitals for thetreatment of alchoholics (a quintessential type of Christian benevolent activity)but also recommended daily meditation as a part of one's spiritual regimen. The similarityof these desiderata to those of Cayce's circle may be due to their common religiousmilieu, and possibly even direct borrowing. For Cayce as well as the early A.A.,we find fairly concrete external aspirations interwoven with the cultivation of innerguidance designed at least in part to inspire these external changes. The fact thatCayce emphasized spiritual issues over what we would recognize as political ones,or that he gave priority to individuals and small groups over the "classes andmasses," in no way lessens the political content of his recommendations.

Atlantis redivus

For a core Caycean political symbol, I turn to Atlantis. Cayce's account of Atlantis(and its continuation in predynastic Egypt) shares much of the tone and significanceof the biblical epic. While Cayce affirms the historical existence of Atlantis alongthe lines of Ignatius Donnelly and turn-of-the-century Theosophical writers, theevents which he describes--like the stories of the Bible--simultaneously carry amoral or symbolic meaning. In Cayce's Atlantis and prehistoric Egypt as well as inthe Christian Bible, one finds the choices of individuals and the fate of empiresmade a part of a divine plan intent on imparting certain spiritual truths. Cayce'saddition of his Atlantean and Egyptian accounts to the biblical material (as wellas other periods, such as the Essene or Persian readings) allowed Cayce to createnew, but equally epic, moral tales expressing his own perspective with the relativefreedom of an apocryphal or midrashic approach. The fact that so many charactersfrom Atlantis and Egypt were said to have reincarnated as Cayce's companions underscoresCayce's intention to sketch a spiritual link between that primordial era and hisown time.

What did Atlantis mean to Cayce? Cayce was a child of Reconstruction, and Cayce'sAtlantis seems to recall the broad patterns of the U.S. Civil War. Today the CivilWar is the stuff of television miniseries. To Cayce's generation, however, it wasas live a reality as the recent war in Yugoslavia is to present-day citizens of itsvarious successor states. It must be said that to the extent that the analogy issustained, Cayce's interpretation of the Civil War comes across as somewhat naive--i.e.as a conflict between rival political philosophies representing good (the Union,the Sons of the Law of One) and evil (the Confederacy, the Sons of Belial), overthe question of slavery.

While it seems strange to think of Cayce, a Southerner, identifying the South withthe Sons of Belial, I do not see how we can avoid linking the two. For example, onereading describes an ancient Egyptian conflict over the status of

...automatons, or THINGS, that were retained by individuals or groups to do the labors of a household, or to cultivate the fields or the like, or to perform the activities of artisans or the like. And these were those activities through which much of the disturbing forces grew to be factors to be reckoned with, between the Children of the Law of One and the Sons of Belial. [1928-2]

The readings portray these "automatons" as biologically degenerate humansresulting from human/animal interbreeding--one of several theories which other racialtheorists sometimes invoked to explain the origin of black people. According to Cayce,the Children of the Law of One accepted that these creatures were to be regardedas persons with rights, whereas the Sons of Belial saw them as beasts suitable tobe enslaved for household or plantation work. The correspondences with black slaverycould not be clearer.

At the same time Cayce's Atlantis merges the themes of the Civil War with certainlater developments. For example, Atlantis is presented as a high civilization possessedof advanced technology, the abuse of which ultimately resulted in the breakup andsubmergence of that continent. While this is not an issue associated with the CivilWar, many of the specific examples of Atlantean technology (such as airships) correspondto those achieved by Cayce's generation. The issue of the abuse of technology forweapons of mass destruction was raised during World War I by the use of nerve gasand the machine gun, which greatly multipied the casualties of that war from comparableconflicts in earlier decades. Although Cayce never served in the military, he didagonize over friends lost in World War I (as his 95-pp. memoirs show him doing inhis 1915 "graveyards of the world" vision).

Allowing for such anachronisms, the "breakup" of Atlantis seems to roughlycorrespond to the North/South division; the earlier golden age of Atlantis to antebellumAmerica (possibly as envisioned by U.S. Masonic lore); and the continuation of theAtlantean conflict in Ra Ta's Egypt to the Civil War era's lingering antagonisms--Northand South, black and white. In Cayce's story, the continuation of the conflict inEgypt culminated in the triumphal reign of Ra Ta, who ushers in an era of spiritualgreatness based on the enigmatic "Law of One."

Intriguingly, Ra Ta is described as "the first of the pure white race in theCarpathian land" (1472-10). A number of then-contemporary occultists (amongthem William Dudley Pelley, the American Nazi whose study groups inspired the creationof the first Search For God group) had taught that white people are higher in theevolutionary chain than members of other races. Cayce affirms the evolutionary superiorityof whites over blacks in 3744-1, though other readings are liberal in their racialviews. This suggests a racial interpretation of Ra Ta's biological superiority, andCayce's Egyptian story includes a significant eugenic component (e.g. the offspringof Ra Ta and Isris), though this is not explicitly linked to race.

I hasten to point out that for all their dreadfulness, the sleeping Cayce's racialviews were probably not intended maliciously. After all, he expressed compassionfor the "automatons," described their biological rehabilitation under RaTa, and condemned the Sons of Belial for seeking their continued enslavement. Alltold, Cayce's racial beliefs were inconsistent, and his sins in this area closerto passive prejudice than the militant hatred associated with his father.

I suggest that the triumphal phase of Cayce's Egyptian account was inspired by theaforementioned pan-Protestant coalition. Where the politics of the era produced everythingfrom the agrarian populism of the Grange to the Social Darwinism of the Robber Barons,this church- and lodge-oriented culture generally stuck to a middle ground centeredaround acceptance of capitalism combined with extensive organized charity. It mayalso be relevant that Ra Ta engages in (literally) monumental public-works projectsfor the welfare of the common man, somewhat like those of the New Deals. Interestingly,some of Cayce's predecessors (e.g Baird Spalding, H. Spencer Lewis) explain thatthis archaic Egyptian civilization fell as the result of Negro invasions from moresoutherly regions of Africa. Cayce for his part never quite tells us how Ra Ta'sdivinely-inspired civilization fell. To do so would have destroyed the symmetry betweenthe Egyptian story and the American political situation, since America had not fallen.

At the same time, Ra Ta is Cayce himself as much as Lincoln or FDR, not only in theliteral sense of being one of Cayce's past incarnations but also in the sense thathis life generally mirrors Cayce's own. Cayce moved from Dayton to Virginia Beachwith his entourage; Ra Ta relocated from the Caucusus to Egypt with an army. Cayce'sTexas/Dayton period matches a similar period of wandering in Ra Ta's life (interestingly,as a punishment for committing adultery with Gertrude's character). I'm not surewhat to make of Ra Ta's peacemaking between the native Egyptians and the invadingAtlanteans--perhaps this alludes to conflicts among Cayce's circle of followers.Finally, just as the high point of Ra Ta's career was his construction of the hospital-likeTemple Beautiful and the spiritual monuments of the Giza Plateau, so did Cayce aspireto build their modern-day counterparts.

The moral significance of the Atlantean/Egyptian saga is one which Cayce repeatsin the context of twentieth-century politics. Again and again the sleeping Cayceposes Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The correct answer,of course, is understood by the mainstream of Christian tradition to be "Yes."If this principle is not accepted, "there must eventually become revolutionin this country--and there will be a dividing of the sections as one against another"(3976-16).

This, it seems, is a negative formulation of the political application of the Lawof One. "So long as there is class and mass distinction, there must be turmoilsand strife," says Cayce (3976-19), who elsewhere specifically refers to divisionsof "labor-capital," religion and "racial concern" (3976-24).Consistent with his reading of the Bible, Cayce regards society as being constantlyjudged by God, at whose hands it is sometimes chastened through political or economicupheavals. But society may be united under the common standard set by Christ:

There must be first the return to a STANDARD by which such IS to be judged, and then there may be gradually worked out that of a plausible, equitable, aplicable situation in the affairs of the world. (3976-10)

According to this 1932 reading, three individuals--two good, one evil--had determinedthe financial destiny of the world in 1929. Perhaps Cayce believed the Sons of Belialto still be operating, like the cabals described by various conspiracy theories.

The Law of One, applied to the political sphere, has a positive formulation as well.Pointing to the "In God We Trust" which had recently begun to be inscribedon U.S. coins, Cayce characterizes the United States as a Christian nation, an orientationwhich according to this 1940 reading is capable of sustaining it through the trialsand fluctuations of secular politics:

...ye must not trust in the might of man, nor in political or economic conditions. For these, too, will find their changes; and in high places many will be brought low; and many who are of low estate will be set as a city on a hill..." (3976-25)

Cayce appears to view U.S. class divisions as inhererently unstable, and their correctionas inevitable. Christians may be instrumental in determining whether this occursthrough peaceful or violent means. If violent upheaval proves unavoidable, then theycan at least expect their religion to provide a basis for a new just order in thefuture, and in the meantime, an ontological shelter from the turmoil of life in general.

Communism and fascism

One does not discuss the class struggle without reference to Marx, and amazinglyenough, in a world affairs reading from 1938, the sleeping Cayce describes the alienationof labor (which he regards as a sin):

From the conditions in these other [Communist and Fascist] lands, then, America--the United States--must take warning. For to WHOM does the wealth belong? to WHOM do the possibilities of the land belong? Does it belong to those who have inherited it, to those who have been given the positions by power? or to those who have by their labor, by the sweat of their brow PRODUCED same? [3976-19]

Cayce is not urging that profits of production be completely given over to the proletariat,as the strict Marxist interpretation holds, but is only advocating greater considerationfor workers. Here the emphasis is not on the market value of labor but on the needsof the workers, which Cayce links to those of the upper classes through vague threatsof revolution:

...Unless there is the give and take, and the considerations of those that produce--so that they have as much of the use and the divisions of the excess and profits of the labors--there must be brought greater turmoils in the land. [3976-19]

Recall that Socialism and Communism had been viable political forces in the UnitedStates mere decades earlier. In the same reading Cayce rejects the popular notionof Communism, namely "that all would be held in common as in the communisticidea, save to keep that balance, to keep that oneness..." Cayce criticizes Hitlerfor misinterpreting the "brother's keeper" principle to mean control ratherthan consideration of one's neighbor; and Russia for applying the principle not onlyin economics but also in "the mental and spiritual life. And this brings hardshipswhere it should NOT be." America will face similar upheavals if the Brotherhoodof Man is not taken to heart by those in authority. In other readings he predictsthat

...changes are coming, this may be sure--an EVOLUTION, or REVOLUTION in the ideas of religious thought. The BASIS of it for the world will eventually come out of Russia; not communism, no, but rather that which is the BASIS of the same, as the Christ taught--HIS kind of communism! [452-6]

The following reading is famous for its reference to Russia and Communism:

In Russia there comes the hope of the world, not as that sometimes termed of the Communistic, of the Bolshevistic; no. But freedom, freedom! that each man will live for his fellow man! The principle has been born. It will take years for it to be crystallized, but out of Russia comes again the hope of the world. Guided by what? That friendship with the nation that hath even set on its present monetary unit, "In God We Trust." [3976-29]

Cayceans now point to this particular reading as a successful prophecy, since itcorrectly anticipates a free, non-Communist Russia. Unfortunately no other principlehas yet emerged from Russia which appears likely to qualify as "the hope ofthe world," or even to promise modest improvement in the Russian situation atthis writing. For those of us who grew up during the Cold War, the fall of the SovietUnion represented the collapse of something which we had every reason to regard asstable. Cayce's generation, however, would have remembered the rise of the SovietUnion in the first place, and later saw that country seriously threatened by NaziGermany. Thus, it would have been much more natural for Cayce than for his Cold Warera readers to envision major changes in Russia, and in this light I wonder whetherhe was thinking of the Virgin of Fatima's 1919 message regarding that country. Recallthat Fatima was a political as well as religious event--indeed, the Marian apparitionsthere resulted in the overthrow of an anticlerical Portuguese government.

Echoes of the debate over Communism may also be found in Ra Ta's early experimentin social engineering, in which he ordered a transition from collective living tomonogamous family-based social units. The readings regard this transformation favorably,since it brought the participants further in harmony with the Law of One. This captureswell the civic-minded, family-oriented values of the turn-of-the-century church andlodge subculture as opposed to the radical approach associated with Communism. Acrucial difference of course is that while Marx would have us reject religion (tothe extent that we have any control over such broad socio-historical movements atall), Cayce sees it as essentially good, needing only to return to its spiritualroots.

As for the other great alternative political ideology of the prewar era, fascism,the following passage was given in 1939:

Q. Is the Fascist movement a danger to this country?
A. Any MOVEMENT that is other than that of the brotherhood of man, the Fatherhood of God, is dangerous...Raise not democracy or any other name above the brotherhood of man, the Fatherhood of God. [3976-24]

Turn-of-the-century American politicians often alluded to "the Brotherhood ofMan and the Fatherhood of God," so much so that the acronym BOMFOG, when usedas a verb ("to bomfog"), came to signify the utterance of empty rhetoric. While Cayce here seems suspicious of fascism as an ideology, the readings seem to endorse an essentially corporatist political system--like those then being instituted by Germany and Italy--in which the interests of the various classes or economic sectors would be balanced through careful government coordination. Rudolf Steiner (some of whose American-based followers were acquainted with Cayce and his circle) also favored such a system which, of course, is not invalidated by the fact that fascist leaders agreed with him to a certain extent.

A key element of fascism, one-party rule, finds passing endorsement in the notorious "Hitler reading" (3976-13), at least with respect to Germany in 1933. In that reading Cayce goes on to praise Nazism as "a new ideal in the hearts, in the minds of the people." As for the Jews, Cayce offers the frightening observation that "their rebelliousness and their seeking into the affairs of OTHERS has rather brought them into their present situation." As with Cayce's racial statements, his views on Judaism and Nazism are often more enlightened than this passage would suggest. In any case, it seems fair to say that although Cayce was not a fascist, he did at times feel a certain resonance with elements of the fascist and National Socialist platforms--which, after all, had arisen as responses to much the same sort of societal upheaval that Cayce feared for the United States.

Political transformation

To Cayce, class war is a threat, not a promise. Where Marx looks forward to class war as the sole and inevitable means of reordering the means of production, Cayce holds forth the hope that society as a whole will repent of its exploitive relationships and usher in a kind of liberal capitalist jubilee based on the Law of One. In fact he is almost Gandhian when he denies that "revolution" means "riot" (257-74), or that brotherhood implies pacifism (3976-20). How does Cayce suggest that this political ideal be brought about? At times he appears to subscribe to the "great man" theory of history, as in the following 1933 reading on Germany:

When any great moment is begun, whether it be political, economic, social, or religious, it gains adherents to a line of thought presented by an individual. (5756-9)

This would make Hitler, or someone like him, the heroic harbinger of the millennium. At other times Cayce urges a more individualistic approach in which a message is carried "first to the individual, THEN to the classes, then to the masses" (5756-7).

Is this realistic? That is, can an individual or small group gain enough momentum through micro-level changes in consciousness to affect the course of macro-politics? Cayce study groups do not seem to have done so, except perhaps through their prayer-energies; in any case these have never regarded politics as belonging within their purview. On the other hand the career of the Prophet Muhammad illustrates particularly well the potential for a small religious movement to achieve immense political success, and usher in the desired reforms. Cayce of course was more inclined to think of the early Christians, whose nineteenth- and twentieth-century coreligionists would achieve so much in the way of bettering humanity (at least in the eyes of other Christians).

Between individuals who experience a transformation of consciousness and large-scale societal changes, some sort of quantum leap must occur. Should we expect this to happen through individuals quietly sharing their knowledge with those around them, or through a more active process of recruitment and instruction, or perhaps through some sort of spontaneous spiritual contagion? Here lies a dilemma which Cayce never seems to adequately address: On one hand, nothing short of the fire of religious enthusiasm seems to be capable of motivating the masses to bring about major structural changes in their society. Narrower, more extreme movements seem to enjoy a natural organizing advantage over their more enlightened counterparts. On the other hand, the mass consciousness and emotionalism on which such revival movements depend bring with them problems of their own, as a glance at contemporary Iran or Afghanistan (not to speak of U.S. movements) will quickly reveal. Now I am aware that many people believe their religions to combine a high degree of individual autonomy with a voluntaristic collective momentum (I am thinking particularly of the Quakers), but on reflection these may be usually found to possess an implicit, nonnegotiable agenda which is intimately related to their group identity, Holy Spirit or no.

So far I have been discussing the implications of Cayce's religious views for politics, but to a large extent religion is itself inherently political. This observation should scandalize nobody, since politics is such an inescapable aspect of human existence. However there are many different types of political arrangements, and it could be argued that organized religion by its very nature steers human relationships into abusive modes. That is, to the extent that a religious movement is capable of unifying and motivating its believers--either as an established foundation of society or as a vehicle for social protest--it does so by overriding individual wills in favor of some overarching worldview or institutional structure whose selection is at best arbitrary and at worst coercive. Cayce's proposed solution to his society's class divisions would then turn out to be no solution at all.

Just as on the individual level, Cayce's social role as a psychic served to privilege his opinions over those of his followers, so does the "sacred" aura of larger religious groups have the effect of lending arbitrary power to the views of those who control them. For example, in a number of instances conservative and liberal U.S. Protestant churches have wrestled with the question of whether to try to change their denomination from within, or leave the denomination in order to avoid lending support to a system which marginalizes them. On one hand their members are drawn to the numinosity of tradition and community, which induce them to remain; on the other hand, this participation carries a very real social cost. Ultimately every ritual and tradition becomes an accomplice to oppression, and every prophecy or innovative interpretation an act of subversion.

If this relationship turns out to be inherent in the nature of religion--i.e. if one cannot have the fiery motivating aspect of religion without the manipulative aspect--then Cayce should be rejected in favor of Marx, for whom religion is inherently negative. This is an extraordinarily difficult question, since it encompasses all the religions which might exist in addition to those which actually do exist. I do not claim like Marx to have arrived at the ultimate truth on this matter, but I suggest that we have good grounds for regarding religion with special suspicion. While Cayce was certainly not blind to the shortcomings of the pan-Protestant coalition (his status as a churchgoing psychic could not have been altogether comfortable), it may well be that he considered such drawbacks less important than he should have. Certainly many of Cayce's present-day followers would avoid living in regions dominated by these churches, however well-intentioned the domination. On the other hand, perhaps some new religious movement or revival (probably not Caycean, but one never knows) will surprise me by squaring this particular circle.