There will be much more on the Essenes and Mary in chapter 6. Here, though, is a fundamental statement by Cayce about this community:
Hence the group we refer to here as the Essenes, which was the outgrowth of the periods of preparations from the teachings by Melchizedek, as propagated by Elijah and Elisha and Samuel. These were set aside for preserving themselves in direct line of choice for the offering of themselves as channels through which there might come the new or the divine origin, see?
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Could we have an Essene group today? Could we have a School of the Prophets? We suspect not. First of all, modern society today is generally against cults—even delineations of the faith are beginning to breakdown, moving toward a more ecumenical view of religious diversity. Secondly, given today’s attitudes, most people do not dedicate their children to churches or organizations, especially secret ones. Thirdly, there is a worldwide demand for more regulatory oversight of organizations and groups, and more transparency into their internal activities and handling of young people, especially children. And given the world’s anxiety with terrorists, sleeper cells, cults, especially of a religious nature, it would be unlikely that such a group could form today without a least some serious “watch-dog” group interference, if not the local or national government agency getting involved.
However, Western beliefs in individual freedom allow people to get into whatever interests they desire, no matter how unusual they are, as long as they do not threaten the fabric of society. Even so, terrorism is cutting into the broader freedoms as governments and groups feel the need to be more aware, prepared, and preemptive.
The wisdom that came through Edgar Cayce consistently guided him and his little band of visionaries to not form a cult or schism of any kind. The guidance was to first apply the concepts and practices in their own lives and then present them to others as “see for yourself,” sharing the benefits experienced but never attempting to push the information on others or draw others into a cabal. Over these past many years, the A.R.E. has continued to make opportunities available to seekers of better health, greater consciousness, and heightened spirituality, while allowing for as much individual variations as possible without leaving the foundational concepts that came through Cayce’s amazing discourses and the faiths they were built upon.
The breadth of topics covered by the readings has made for a diverse organization with a massage and hydrotherapy school, a transpersonal psychology and leadership university, annual conferences on everything from ancient mysteries to modern remote viewing, from energy medicine to intuitive medical analysis, from mystical, universal forms of Judaism and Christianity to the physics of God!
The little organization that began with one amazing psychic, Edgar Cayce, has grown into an international association of seekers with diverse cultural, national, educational, and spiritual backgrounds and perspectives—each retaining his or her own inner source of revelation and guidance. This open association of seekers allows for much diversity with one overarching and underlying ideal: There is one infinite source of life, and there is an ultimate oneness of all souls from and in that one source. Common among these seekers is a belief that eventually evil, violence, hatred, and hierarchical dominance will vanish, leaving only goodness, love, and mutual appreciation for one another.
Chapter 3
Essenes’ Scrolls—Found
Despite a few alternative views, most every researcher agrees that the scrolls found in caves next to the Dead Sea belonged to the community that lived in Qumran, and most researchers agree that this was the community of those now known as the Essenes. However, most of the scrolls were not written by the Essenes; many appear to be collections of important spiritual and historical documents that may have been written elsewhere by various other groups or authors and then collected as well as preserved by the Essene community at Qumran.
Some forty percent of the scrolls are copies of various texts in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh! Tanakh is an acronym of the first Hebrew letter of each of the three traditional sections of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (“Teaching,” the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (“Prophets”) and Ketuvim (“Writings”)—thus: TaNaKh (there are no vowels in Hebrew, so they are added to help with pronunciation).
Roughly thirty percent of the scrolls are spiritual documents not included in the Hebrew Bible but are considered to be important, such as the Book of Enoch, the Book of Tobit, Psalms 152-155, the Wisdom of Sirach, Jubilees, and so on—all of these documents are from the Second Temple Period (516 BCE to 70 CE).
There were two Temple Periods. Nebuchadnezzar II, who was the king of the Babylonian Empire and reigned from roughly 605 to 562 BCE, destroyed the first temple. He was the king who constructed the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). In 587 BCE he invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple of Israel, which had been constructed by the Israelite King Solomon in 957 BCE. The Second Temple of Israel was built after the Persians conquered Babylon. Esther, the famous Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus, convinced her husband to allow her people to return to Jerusalem and to help them rebuild their temple. The Book of Esther is found in both the Ketuvim of the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament. While only a small portion is in the Protestant version, the whole text is in the Catholic version of the Bible. The Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE. However, in 70 CE the Roman general Titus destroyed the Second Temple, which Jesus had prophesied nearly forty years earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, when his disciples were admiring the Second Temple.
The remaining scrolls, roughly thirty percent, cover various activities and rules of the Qumran community. They are: The Copper Scroll, The Community Scroll, The War Scroll, The Temple Scroll, The Damascus Scroll, The Habakkuk Commentary, and so on. Scholars have dated some of these scrolls to as early as 408 BCE and some as late as 73 CE. You recall that in 73 CE nine hundred Jewish zealots held out against a 5000-man Roman legion at Masada (a majestic plateau in the western desert of Judea, south of the Qumran caves along the Dead Sea). Masada marked the end of a significant Jewish presence in Jerusalem, both for the traditional Jews and the burgeoning followers of Jesus Christ, who were Jews that referred to their movement as “The Way.” (Acts 24:14) Most of the “Christian” Jews migrated to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and began the now-famous “Seven Churches of Asia Minor” found in the Book of the Revelation: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos (Pergamum), Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. (Revelation 1:11) These communities became known as Christian, but this is merely a Hellenization of Messianic, which they also called themselves. It is the same as the Greek Khristos (Anglicized as Christ), which was simply a translation of the Hebrew Moshiach (modern Mashiach), both words meaning “Anointed One” in their respective languages. The term comes from Exodus 30:25-30 where the holy anointing oil was used to sanctify one for a special spiritual purpose.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were initially discovered by Bedouin shepherds Muhammed Edh-Dhib, Jum’a Muhammed, and Khalil Musa between November 1946 and February 1947. The shepherds discovered seven scrolls housed in jars in a cave at the Qumran site. Dr. John Trever of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) later reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the shepherds. Jum’a Muhammed noticed the caves but Muhammed Edh-Dhib was the first to actually fall into one of these caves. He found some scrolls, which Dr. Trever identified as the Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and the Community Rule. Muhammed Edh-Dhib took them back to the camp to show to his family. The Bedouin eventually took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim ‘Ijha in Bethlehem. But after being warned that the scrolls might have