Edgar Cayce & Lapis Linguis

Edgar Cayce is a biographer’s dream-virtually all of his extant correspondence, diaries, photographs, and press clippings have been assembled and indexed in the Edgar Cayce Foundation vault at A.R.E. headquarters. Central to this vast archive are the 14,000+ trance readings which tell the greater story of Cayce’s work and provide a comprehensive record of his daily activities. This record is, however, incomplete.

Edgar Cayce is “missing in action” for nearly an entire month during one of the most difficult and tumultuous periods in his life. He departs Virginia Beach by car on February27, 1934, gives a single three-sentence trance reading in Arizona eleven days later, and returns home by train to Norfolk to join family and friends on April 1. Thanks to the expanded and updated computer database available on-line to all A.R.E. members, and some amateur detective work, a remarkable story has now emerged.

Edgar Cayce made a 7,150-mile Southwest field trip that took him across the Arizona border to a remote azurite & copper mine in Mexico. And what happened along the way was not only relevant to students of the Cayce work, but also to the FBI, the Federal Treasury, and New York’s Museum of Natural History.

        Edgar Cayce’s MIA traveling companion was 23-year-old college student T. Mitchell Hastings, who would later, with help from Cayce’s trance counsel, pioneer FM radio at NBC and play a pivotal role in the development of computer technology at IBM.
       Beyond his many scientific accomplishments and how they relate to the trance advice he received, Hastings is significant to the Cayce story in four noteworthy ways. He was one of the rare individuals whom Cayce trusted to conduct private trance sessions, he produced the only existing voice recording of Cayce giving a reading, he was provided by Cayce with detailed building instructions and specifications for an optical device reputedly capable of helping a person to read auras (the Aurascope-see 440-7), and as would became evident on Cayce’s journey to the Southwest, and on several subsequent occasions in New York, the two men had only to be in close proximity to one another and Cayce experienced heightened powers of conscious clairvoyance. The same, apparently, was true for Hastings.

         Like the vast majority of people who received Cayce’s trance counsel, Hastings had not met Cayce in person when he first obtained a reading. That reading was conducted in New York on November 14, 1933 while Hastings was at school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Cayce family was on a fundraising trip to Manhattan. The request for a life-reading had come through Hastings’s parents, Theodore and Carolyn, wealthy Park Avenue socialites and theosophists who also received readings the following day.
         Cayce-in trance-suggested that Mitchell was a deeply talented and spiritual individual who had much to offer the world should he focus his attention on matters related to electrical energy.
         Further, he was identified, in a previous life, as one of the scientists in Atlantis who had highly developed psychic powers and who had helped to construct and maintain the ‘firestone”, or Great Crystal’ in the Atlantean power plant. This life reading appeared to be especially convincing to the Hastings family, for unknown to Cayce in his waking state, young Mitchell had already been recognized as a budding genius in the field of electromagnetic energy and was conducting experiments at Harvard University using quartz crystals to alter electrical frequencies.

The following month, when the Cayce’s were back in Virginia Beach, Edgar received a request to give Mitchell a second reading. This one, a physical reading conducted on December 13, described severe back and abdominal ailments related to an injury in which Mitchell had fractured several of his ribs. This too was convincing evidence of Cayce’s clairvoyance, since Edgar had not been told that Mitchell had seriously injured himself playing tackle football, and had indeed fractured three ribs. The diagnosis proved accurate in every detail, and after following the prescribed treatment plan, Mitchell was soon on his feet, and in later years, would win several amateur golf and tennis championships.

At Edgar’s invitation, Mitchell traveled to Virginia Beach for Christmas vacation in 1933, when he and Edgar met in person for the first time. They enjoyed one another’s company so much that Mitchell was invited to stay through the New Year and, unusual for a fledgling A.R.E. member, was given an unprecedented 14 readings over the next two months. As part of the prescribed treatments for Hastings’s back injury, the readings recommended that he spend time in Arizona where he could get out in the sun and dry air and mentally and physically recuperate. A physical reading Edgar received for himself that December also had recommended that he get out in the sun and dry air. Hence, it was only natural that the two men-one a psychic, the other a scientist-decided on the spur of the moment to take a Southwest desert vacation.

The deeper back-story, as correspondence and sleuthing now reveal, is that both Cayce and Hastings were suffering from nervous exhaustion. In addition to the recent closing of the Cayce hospital and the demise of Atlantic University, Edgar and his family had been arrested in New York and evicted from the home that their one-time business partner Morton Blumenthal had rented for them. Stressed and despondent over financial concerns, Edgar believed that his life-long dreams had been dashed and his career in Virginia Beach all but over. Mitchell too was under enormous stress, not only the result of his injury, but criticism from professors who did not share the young man’s radical theories of electromagnetism and were attempting to steer him in another direction.

     Hastings had been able to extend his Christmas holiday because he had decided to drop out of Harvard. Like two schoolboys playing hooky, Edgar and Mitchell hurriedly bid friends and family good-bye and left Virginia Beach in Mitchell’s Pontiac, accompanied by Edgar’s secretary, Gladys Davis, who hitched a ride to Selma to visit her family.
After dropping Gladys off in Alabama they drove west through Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico,  and arrived in Willcox, Arizona, on March 10, where Edgar received a wire from Gladys requesting that he give an emergency reading for a family friend who had suffered a heart attack.
     As Gladys only knew that Edgar were headed to Arizona, the telegram had been forwarded from Alabama, to Texas, and finally to Willcox, where it reached Edgar. Mitchell conducted and transcribed the five-minute long trance session, which is the only reading on file as having been conducted during Edgar’s month-long excursion.
The pair then drove to Bonita, outside of Bisbee, Arizona, where they set-up camp at the Seventy-Six Ranch, which would become the base of operations for their subsequent expedition into Mexico.

Many years would pass before details of their adventure became known to friends and family, and even then, it is only through Mitchell’s later correspondence with Edgar, brief comments Edgar made to his son Hugh Lynn, and a recent interview with Mitchell’s son, that the more complete story can be told. In all likelihood, Edgar didn’t speak candidly about the trip as he didn’t wish to draw attention to his nervous exhaustion and the sudden abandonment of his family and responsibilities.

All he would later write to friends about the trip was that he had “some quite interesting mystical experiences.” Mitchell also did not discuss their daily activities, but for other reasons. They would be difficult for most people to believe. He was already troubled by what fellow students and his Harvard professors thought of him and his work. Many years passed before details of this adventure became known to friends and family.

In addition to soaking up the sun and dry air, Mitchell and Edgar had gone in search of “talking stones.”
Most specifically they were prospecting for lapis linguis, or azurite, a dark blue mineral that occurs in either crystals or mushroom-shaped masses.

According to readings Hastings had received earlier in Virginia Beach, a psychically-inclined person could hold azurite in his or her hands for five or ten minutes, or wear it against their skin in the form of a pendant, and potentially raise their psychic vibrations to such an extent that miraculous things could happen. [See reading 440-11]
This was not an entirely new concept to the Cayce readings. In many instances Cayce had recommended that an individual surround themselves with a particular rock, mineral, crystal or gem, which would influence a variety of physical, mental and spiritual conditions. Bloodstone and rubies, for example, were recommended to a woman from Havana, Cuba, for help transcending negative influences from past incarnations. A woman born in Argentina was told to wear topaz, as its beauty, purity and clarity would bring her strength.

Knowledge of how these gems, crystals and minerals are to be used, the readings make clear, was a highly developed science in Atlantis and ancient Egypt, but sadly, in more modern times, had been corrupted or lost altogether.
Azurite holds special significance in the larger body of the Cayce readings. It was this mineral, possibly with other gemstones, which Cayce suggested was the “Urim and Thummim” mentioned in Exodus 28:15-21 which was placed on the breastplate of the high priest Aaron, and which was used by him to (transcend the physical dimensions) determine the Lord’s will for his people.

In addition to unspecified things that might happen when a psychically-inclined person handled or “listened” to the Azurite mineral, the readings suggested that azurite, when exposed or charged by sunlight, and held in the hand or against the skin, could enhance an individual’s ability to more closely follow their vocational path.

As both Cayce and Hastings had important career decisions to make, it only stands to reason that prospecting for azurite was their primary field trip activity. Beyond wanting to bask in the sun and breathe the dry air, this explains why they specifically were guided & chose to visit Southern Arizona and venture into Mexico.

Edgar was open to the possibility that handling the mineral Azurite, could help him decide whether or not to stay in Virginia Beach and continue his work, and Mitchell could use it similarly, to help him decide whether or not to return to Harvard and pursue a career as an electrical engineer.
Despite complications throughout their journey-numerous mechanical problems with the car, along with flat tires at regular intervals-they successfully found azurite in copper/lazurite mines in and around Bisbee and Douglas, Arizona, and further south, in Mexico, outside of what is presumed to be Nogales and Agua Prieta, border regions noted for high quality azurite (lapis linguis).

On one particular field trip, they ventured several hundred feet underground into an abandoned mine shaft, carrying with them pick-axes and lanterns. Prospecting readings were presumably given, similar to those Cayce gave to Texas oilmen a decade earlier, but these never found their way back to Gladys Davis and the ECF vault. Perhaps someday they will.

After selecting particularly translucent specimens of azurite, Cayce and Hastings washed and cleaned their azurite samples and placed them in the sun to dry. What happened next could easily be described as the fantastic stuff of fiction. They had remarkable lucid visions-what Hastings described as “mirages”-in which dreamlike images of people would ride toward them on horseback and strangers would approach them to impart a curious bit of information or advice.

In Mitchell’s case, he encountered a “red-haired beauty” who presented herself to him, vanished, and would later appear in flesh and blood when he returned home to New York.
Perhaps the most astonishing and revealing of these visions was one they had in a field in New Mexico. An apparition of Edgar’s deceased mother materialized. She appeared and spoke to Edgar about the future. She urged him not to give up hope and not to worry about his precarious financial situation or doubt the power and veracity of the information coming through him.

In previous visionary experiences, Edgar had only seen or heard spirit visitors. But in New Mexico, perhaps aided by Hastings’s own power of mind and the increased vibration of the azurite they carried with them, Edgar reportedly received a more tangible manifestation of the visit. His mother materialized & handed him a silver dollar, and when she had faded from sight, the coin remained in the palm of his hand.

On Easter Sunday, April 1, Cayce returned to Virginia Beach with the lucky silver dollar in his pocket and a renewed enthusiasm, as he said, “to be of greater service to my fellow man.” Mitchell, carrying bags laden with a variety of azurite mineral samples, remained at the Seventy-Six Ranch for an additional month before returning to Harvard, where he would graduate with honors, and would eventually meet and marry the “red-headed beauty” of his visions. He would also dedicate his career to creating crystalline “static eliminators” which would revolutionize the electronics industry and earn him a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost electrical engineers of his generation. In addition to holding several lucrative patents, he was instrumental in the creation of WCBN, Boston, WNCN, New York, (today called WAXQ), and WHCN, Hartford.

This is not, however, the end of the story. Thanks to the readings provided to Hastings, many students of the Cayce work have descended upon the Morgan wing of New York’s Natural History Museum, where, the readings said, a particularly enormous block of nearly pure azurite was housed. Such a specimen, nearly five feet tall, weighing 4½ tons, and mined in Bisbee, Arizona, is indeed on display at the museum, where it is known as the “singing stone” because so many museum visitors reported hearing an audible humming sound when they stood beside it.
Strangely, the stone stopped singing several years ago.

As Cayce researchers have subsequently discovered, the stone’s silence coincided with a museum renovation. The stone was removed from a prominent position in front of the gallery windows, where it stood in direct sunlight, and was placed in the back of the room, (away from the window) where it is bathed only in artificial light. Perhaps one day an enlightened curator will position the massive specimen back in the sunlight and it will sing again.

Cayce’s silver dollar has also been a subject of further research. Hugh Lynn eventually liberated it from his father. Desirous of delving deeper into an altogether unbelievable story, he sent the coin to the Federal Treasury for examination, setting into motion a chain of events that nearly resulted in his arrest. As FBI agents duly informed him, the silver dollar was perfect in just about every way. It just didn’t have a mint mark or date. Hugh Lynn escaped prosecution for counterfeiting by pleading innocence: if he had produced the coin himself, why would he have risked calling attention to himself and his family by sending it to federal authorities?

Hugh Lynn’s only regret was that nothing he said could convince the FBI to return the silver dollar. His many requests subsequently became part of the Cayce family’s permanent FBI record, which was obtained by this author through the Freedom of Information Act while writing Cayce’s biography. If only the FEDs knew the real truth!

Credits: Sydney Kirkpatrick
From: Venture Outward –  www.EdgarCayce.org