Although hundreds of books have been written about Edgar Cayce, for some of you this may be the first introduction to the man who has been called the “sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach,” “America’s most mysterious man,” “religious seer,” and medical telepathist or clairvoyant.
Many of his contemporaries knew the “waking” Edgar Cayce as a gifted professional photographer. Others (predominantly children) admired him as a warm and friendly Sunday school teacher. His family knew him as a wonderful husband and father. However, the “sleeping” Edgar Cayce was an entirely different figure—a psychic known to thousands of people from all walks of life who had cause to be grateful for his help. Indeed, many of them believed that he alone had either saved or changed their lives when all seemed lost. The “sleeping” Edgar Cayce was a medical diagnostician, a prophet, and a devoted proponent of the Bible.
Even as a child on a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where he was born on March 18, 1877, Edgar Cayce displayed powers of perception which seemed to extend beyond the normal range of the five senses. At the age of six or seven he told his parents that he was able to see and talk to “visions,” sometimes of relatives who had recently died. His parents attributed this to the overactive imagination of a lonely child who had been influenced by the dramatic language of the revival meetings that were popular in that section of the country. Later, by sleeping with his head on his schoolbooks, he developed some form of photographic memory that helped him advance rapidly in the country school. This gift faded, however, and Edgar was only able to complete the seventh grade before he had to go to work.
By the age of twenty-one he had become the salesman for a wholesale stationery company. At this time he developed a gradual paralysis of the throat muscles, which threatened to cause the loss of his voice. When doctors were unable to find a physical cause for this condition, hypnosis was tried but failed to have any permanent effect. As a last resort Edgar asked a friend to help him reenter the same kind of hypnotic sleep that had enabled him to memorize his schoolbooks as a child. His friend gave him the necessary suggestion and, once he was in a self-induced trance, Edgar came to grips with his own problem. Speaking from an unconscious state, he recommended medication and manipulative therapy, which successfully restored his voice and repaired his system.
A group of physicians from Hopkinsville and Bowling Green, Kentucky, took advantage of his unique talent to diagnose their own patients. They soon discovered that Cayce needed to be given only the name and address of a patient, wherever he was, to be able to tune in telepathically to that individual’s mind and body as easily as if they were both in the same room. He needed no other information regarding any patient.
One of the young M.D.s, Dr. Wesley Ketchum, submitted a report on this unorthodox procedure to a clinical research society in Boston. On October 9, 1910, The New York Times carried two pages of headlines and pictures. From that day on troubled people from all over the country sought help from the “wonder man.”
When Edgar Cayce died on January 3, 1945, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, he left documented stenographic records of the telepathic clairvoyant statements he had given for more than 6,000 different people over a period of forty-three years. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc. (the A.R.E.), a psychical research society, was formed by Cayce in 1931 to preserve and research this data. Its library in Virginia Beach contains copies of 14,145 of Edgar Cayce’s psychic readings, stenographically recorded. Of this number 9,541, or about 67 percent, describe the physical disabilities of several thousand persons and suggest treatment for their ailments.
For a great many physicians, medical studies of treatment patterns for a number of major physical diseases seemed to suggest the advisability of testing Edgar Cayce’s theories. With this in mind, the physical readings have been made available to a clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. Through written reports and conferences, information on results of treatments have been made available to M.D.s and osteopaths.
The Edgar Cayce readings constitute one of the largest and most impressive records of psychic perception ever to emanate from a single individual. Together with their relevant records, correspondence, and reports, they have been cross-indexed under thousands of subject headings and placed at the disposal of psychologists, physicians, students, writers, and investigators who still come, in increasing numbers, to examine them.
The A.R.E. continues to make the information available in its library, through distribution of The Complete Edgar Cayce Readings on CD-ROM, on its Web site (www.edgarcayce.org), and through its many publications. The organization also initiates investigation and experiments into the readings and promotes conferences, seminars, and lectures.
Dr. Harold J. Reilly’s forty-five years of clinical experience with the readings constitute an invaluable addition to the record.
Dr. Harold J. Reilly was one of the leading exponents of drugless, natural physical therapy. He was recognized as one of the most outstanding physiotherapists in the world, and doctors came from all over the globe to study with him.
Dr. Reilly was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1895 and grew up in the Van Ness section of the Bronx, the eldest of seven brothers and sisters—all of whom became physiotherapists with the exception of one sister. At twelve he organized an exercise and athletic club in the family home basement. In 1916, after graduating from the National Eclectic Institute, he immediately entered the United States Army and served on the Mexican border with the 102nd Engineers, teaching jujitsu and wrestling. It was when he left the army that he took his degrees from Ithaca College and Eastern Reserve University. He also was graduated from the American School of Naturopathy and the American School of Chiropractise, and completed two years of study in osteopathy.
For several years Dr. Reilly studied at Battle Creek, Michigan, with Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of breakfast cereals and the electric cabinet, and pioneer in preventive medicine. Also during his varied career Dr. Reilly ran a health farm for the rehabilitation of alcoholic and drug addicts in Sullivan County, New York. In 1924 he established in New York City the Physicians Physiotherapy Service at 1908 Broadway, and in 1935 opened the famous Reilly Health Institute in Rockefeller Center.
Dr. Reilly’s impressive educational and professional background encompassed eight degrees, including doctor of science from Eastern Reserve University, master in physiotherapy from Ithaca College, and doctor of physiotherapy from Van Norman University of California. In addition, he was a fellow of the College of Sports Medicine, fellow of the Emerson University Research Council, diplomate of the National Board of Physical Therapy, and director of physiotherapy and rehabilitation of the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
He served fourteen terms as president of the New York State Society of Physiotherapists, was chairman of the Council of Licensed Physiotherapists of New York State, and legislative chairman of the Physiotherapy Grievance Committee appointed by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York. He was licensed in four states and Canada.
For more than thirty years, the Reilly Health Institute in Rockefeller Center was a health mecca for prominent people: government leaders such as the late Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, former Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Congressman James Delaney, and ex-Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; business tycoons such as the late David Sarnoff, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, L. Victor Weil, and Jack Kriendler, owner of the 21 Club; and labor leaders such as George Meany, David Dubinsky, Alex Rose, and John L. Lewis. These represent just a few of the many notables who repaired the ravages of responsibility and stress under the direction and healing hands of Dr. Harold J. Reilly, the institute’s founder and director.
Sonja Henie
Gloria Swanson
Mae West
Gypsy Rose Lee
Shirley Booth
Glynis Johns
Dorothy Sarnoff
Leslie Caron
Joan Fontaine
The Duke and Duchess of
Windsor The Dowager Empress of
Egypt
Cobina Wright, Sr.
Bob Hope
Eddie Albert
Phil Baker
Burgess Meredith
Bert Lahr
George Jessel
Paul Whiteman
Vincent Lopez
Harry Salter
Fred MacMurray
Walter Huston
Boris Karloff
Hume Cronyn
Jessica Tandy
Mickey Rooney
Paul Douglas
Beniamino Gigli
Helen Jepson
Rose Bampton
John Charles Thomas
Charles Kuhlman
Greta Stuckgold
Giulio Gatti-Casazza
The inscription on Bob Hope’s photograph, which hung among many others in Reilly’s office, read, “After the fine conditioning of Harold J. for eighteen years, I feel that everyone should live the life of Reilly.”
“Oh, there’s nothing so bad, but Reilly can fix it,” said Burgess Meredith on his photograph.
From Eddie Albert: “Dr. Reilly had a lot to do with my enjoying life as far back as 1935. He still has.”
Many writers and poets—Robert Frost, John Erskine, Bob and Millie Considine, Morey Bernstein, and Fannie Hurst—eloquently expressed their admiration and appreciation in photo inscriptions or in their books. For example, Maurice Zolotow, author of Marilyn Monroe: A Biography, wrote: “To Harold J. Reilly, who would have made me as voluptuous as Marilyn Monroe if I had been a woman.”
Jess Stearn, in the first edition of his book Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet, wrote: “For my Dear Friend and Mentor, Harold J. Reilly, without whom this book would have been far less.” Stearn’s book was inspired by Dr. Reilly and largely written at Reilly’s farm.
Thomas Sugrue autographed his There Is a River with these words: “To Harold J. Reilly, the best doctor on the face of the earth—even some of the arthritic angels must yearn for his ministrations. But above all, I am proud that he was Edgar Cayce’s friend and that he is mine.”
“Builder of happiness and more effective people” is how the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale described Dr. Reilly, while Hugh Lynn Cayce, in his book Venture Inward, wrote as follows: “To Harold—who has helped many people start this Venture Inward as Edgar Cayce conceived it.”
Nor were all his clients celebrities. Many were simply suffering human beings referred to him by one or more of the 3,000 practicing physicians, osteopaths, and dentists who sent their patients to him.
Despite his own impressive credentials and record, Dr. Reilly is best known for his unusual and close association with Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet” of Virginia Beach, who began sending cases to Dr. Reilly in 1930—almost two years before the two men met. At the time, Reilly had never heard of Edgar Cayce and did not suspect that the referrals were coming from a psychic.
By the time Cayce died in 1945, he had referred more than a thousand patients to Dr. Reilly and had mentioned him hundreds of times by name in the trance readings in which he diagnosed and prescribed treatment for a wide variety of medical complaints.
In Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet, Jess Stearn describes Dr. Reilly as a “portable repository of practical Cayce therapy.” Certainly he was the unquestioned living authority on the health secrets in the Cayce “readings.” Most of the dozens of books on Cayce, totaling millions of dollars in sales, celebrate Dr. Reilly’s rare skills and understanding of the Cayce treatments and his success in applying them. Dr. Reilly was not only a “master” of the Cayce theories, but had clinically tested and sifted them in over forty-five years of active practice. The ultimate fusion of Cayce’s psychic powers tapping some source of “universal knowledge” and Reilly’s empirical and scientific experience produced an invaluable treasury of health guides that seemed to work when properly administered. They now can be made available to thousands of readers seeking some sensible way out of the polluted maze of modern living.
Despite the overtones of mystery that are present when a clairvoyant of Cayce’s reputation is involved, there is no great mystery in the affinity between the two men—one a psychic and one a physical scientist. They shared an identical philosophy of health: in Dr. Reilly’s words, “Medicine and most doctors aim at curing a specific ailment. The Cayce ‘readings’ and the Reilly therapy aim at producing a healthy body which will heal itself of the ailment. We try to understand Nature and work with Nature. Then the body cures itself.”
When Dr. Reilly closed the Reilly Health Institute in 1965 and “retired” to his farm in New Jersey, he donated his physiotherapy equipment to the A.R.E. and established a physiotherapy clinic there, trained its therapists, and agreed to serve as its supervisor, a post he held until his death in 1987. He also set up the Physiotherapy Department of the A.R.E. Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and trained its personnel. However, it was not easy for Dr. Reilly to stay in retirement. When some of the patients he had been caring for—for example, David Dubinsky, who had been a “Reilly regular” for over forty years—insisted on their weekly treatment, Dr. Reilly agreed to come to New York one day a week and made arrangements to share an office with another doctor in the Capitol Theatre Building. But the time spent in the New York office expanded into two and then three days a week, and soon Dr. Reilly was working almost as hard as he had been when he was running the institute.
When the Capitol Theatre Building was demolished, Dr. Reilly embarked on what he hoped was his second retirement. It didn’t last any longer than the first because, with the publication of Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet and other books, a steady stream of men and women from all over the country began making pilgrimages to his New Jersey farm.
Helping him at the farm was his hard-working associate, Miss Betty Billings. She was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, where she received her B.S. in nutrition. She served her residency at Dayton Miami Valley Hospital in Ohio and worked as a clinic dietician at Duke University Hospital and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. She also held a degree in physiotherapy.
Miss Billings first became acquainted with Dr. Reilly in the late 1950s, when she came to him seeking help for her paralyzed mother, after all the orthodox medical avenues of help had been exhausted. She was so impressed by his treatment of her mother that she left the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where she had been working as a nutritionist-dietician, and joined the Reilly staff at Rockefeller Center. She worked with Dr. Reilly—later marrying him—until his death at 92, and both she and the doctor were in great demand as speakers and health consultants.
Dr. Reilly said of her: “I always had a feeling that Betty Billings was sent to me by Edgar Cayce ... Nutrition is so important in the Cayce therapy, but I was pretty weak in the technicalities of counting grams of everything, figuring recommended daily allowances, and keeping up with all the new research in this complicated field. I guess Cayce wanted us to work together.”
Dr. Reilly, like Edgar Cayce, specialized in “medical rejects”—those who had abandoned all hope of obtaining help from conventional drug-oriented therapies. His success in treating “hopeless” patients further spread his fame, until the patient pressure at the farm grew far beyond his capacities and those of Miss Billings to handle. As a consequence, he announced that he would have to limit his practice to members of the A.R.E.
“I wanted to discourage patients—especially those who might not take the therapy seriously,” he explained. “And besides, if they do not understand the Cayce philosophy of the unity of body, mind, and spirit, and their consciousness is not attuned to the necessary level, it takes too long to get results; sometimes it never happens.”