Edgar Cayce & Snowmageddon

Now that is a headline I imagine you did not expect. What in the world do these two have in common and why oh why are they the subjects of this week's post? Well I'll get to that but first, for those who may not know who Edgar Cayce is a brief bio is in order.

Cayce was an American clairvoyant who gained notoriety claiming the ability to diagnose and suggest treatments for ailments through visions he had while sleeping or under hypnosis. In addition he lectured widely on spiritual and mystical topics which were revealed to him in his dreams. Cayce's prophecies appear to have been remarkably prescient in some cases, but wildly wrong in others leading to accusations of fortune telling and charlatanism, for which he was briefly arrested. Cayce was a devout Christian, which may explain why he tended to make apocalyptic pronouncements, as if he were an Old Testament prophet. To shield him from his frequent legal problems and advance his work, followers established the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, VA in 1925 and Cayce moved there establishing a library of esoteric books reputed to be the largest in the Western hemisphere.

For those who reside in Virginia Beach, as I do, one of Cayce's more notable predictions has particular relevance. Over a period of 4 years from 1932-1936, Cayce foresaw the catastrophic ruin of several major cities including San Francisco, NYC, and Los Angeles. While none of these prophecies came to pass, they were cause for considerable public speculation at the time. Cayce also spoke of a dream he had in which Virginia Beach alone survived a future cataclysm that brought widespread destruction. Over the years that prophecy has been repeated and embellished to the point it bears little resemblance to what Cayce actually claimed. In its current incarnation it is most often cited by residents as the reason Virginia Beach has never been hit directly by a major weather event, hurricane , blizzard or tornado despite its location on a coastline that is so often ravaged by storms.

As I write this post, our city which typically enjoys relatively temperate weather even in the midst of Winter, is facing the prospect of a blizzard or what meteorologists describe as a 'bomb cyclone'. Residents and not a few TV and periodical writers have jokingly described it as snowmageddon. Scoffers of course maintain that the forecasts are overblown and like so many other dire storm predictions this will pass. Indeed the National Weather Service located in nearby Wakefield, VA has suggested that the area is on a knife's edge and even small changes could steer the storm away from us at the last moment leaving behind some snow and high winds but short of a major snowstorm.

By the time you read this all will have been revealed and either Cayce's reputation for prophecy will have been upheld or not, but that isn't really why I chose to write about the subject. Rather, it is our propensity as humans to look for signs and divinations, to laden the commonplace with hidden meanings, to see dark conspiracies where none exist, and abandon fact and science for mysticism and rationalization. Looking backwards through the lens of history we might be amused by the superstitions and psuedo-science that mankind once believed but our laughter will be brief as we witness its rise again in the present day.

A new wave of counter cultural anti science has arisen wearing a guise of political occultism. According to the high priests of this new mantra science got it all wrong. They would have us believe that the very discoveries and developments which have saved countless lives and spared us so much misery were all ill conceived and should be jettisoned. In their place they offer opinions, views and philosophies buttressed by fake studies and junk science, unproven, incapable of independent verification and unrepeatable by any credible scientist. Take climate change--it isn't real we are told as glaciers melt, seal level rises and our once temperate climate sets new records, ones we hoped never to experience. Cayce would have been at home in this realm of occultism, where decades of study, evidentiary proof, and credible expertise are thrown to the side in favor of a populist tooth fairy belief system propelled by politicians and their followers for ideological reasons rather than any regard for truth.

The thing is, if we do indeed experience snowmageddon, believers will simply weasel it away, misrepresent the facts and find some exception in defense of their persistent ignorance. If we are spared it will be yet more evidence of the reliability of Cayce's vision. Either way, once we as humans abandon the knowledge and methods developed over centuries, the insightful discoveries and careful experimentation conducted by those who labored to uncover the laws of the universe, it no longer matters. They were guided by discipled reason, we are plunged backwards thousands of years into our dark past by ignorance.