Acknowledgments
Joe Dunn, a dear friend of mine for many years, urged me to rewrite this book, bringing it more up to date for those who are interested in the information that Edgar Cayce made available in his psychic readings over nearly half a century before he died. Joe was very helpful, working in the A.R.E. Press, but he also traveled on to that spiritual dimension before he could see this book published. I thank him deeply.
My wife, Dr. Peggy McGarey, was very patient with me as I struggled to finish what I had promised to do several years ago. Too many individuals to list in any form of an acknowledgment were helpful in their individual way and manner, for I spent many more years consuming foods that I did writing about or preparing them for others.
Needless to say, I had a lot of help, and for that I am sincerely appreciative.
About Edgar Cayce
In his psychic readings, Edgar Cayce saw each person as a unit of energy in the earth, a creation of Universal Forces which we call God, an entity who is distinct from every other being on the face of the earth, and who deserves to be treated as such. Thus, his suggestions were always a bit different for each seeker who came to him for help.
Cayce recognized each of us as eternal beings, created in a spiritual dimension in the image of the Creator, and then born over and over again into the earth in a pattern recognized as reincarnation.
One’s life purpose was often pointed out during the reading, even while Cayce was offering a diet to help the physical body recover a better state of health. But he recalled to mind frequently that God was indeed our Source—and our life here on planet Earth is an opportunity to make headway back to that Source, which is our rightful destiny.
Preface
About two-thirds of the psychic readings that my grandfather, Edgar Cayce, gave during his lifetime were in response to individuals’ questions about health and healing. Most of the total of some 14,500 stenographically recorded discourses given in an unconscious trance state have been indexed by subject, including those on health-related subjects. Edgar Cayce died in 1945, but now we ask, how helpful today is that information, given for individuals years ago? The author of this book, William McGarey, has taken the lead in trying to answer that question related to the health ideas in the Edgar Cayce readings.
All of us are aware of how our diet can affect how we feel. We need only reflect on the effect of an alcoholic drink or a cup of coffee, or that feeling after a big Thanksgiving dinner. Our society is also becoming more aware of the more complex and longer-term effects of our diet. I recently read in Newsweek a cover article about the relationship of nutrition to levels of stress, and there are thousands of such articles. One only need watch our national best-seller lists to see a reflection of our concern about this aspect of our lives. There are dietary and nutrition principles in the Cayce readings that are now being confirmed as important general principles for many of us to consider.
Bill McGarey has been studying these principles in the Edgar Cayce readings for more than forty years. He has tested them with his thousands of patients. He uses them himself. He has compared them with current medical research. He is especially qualified to share them. I encourage you to have a look and try them for yourself.
Charles Thomas Cayce, Ph.D.
Introduction
The purpose of this book is to add to the written literature another viewpoint of the wonders that can be found in your diet, the benefits that come about when you understand your body better, and the difficulties and roadblocks that may appear as you try to do just that and to make all of this as practical as possible.
Edgar Cayce left behind a legacy of psychic readings given from a state of extended consciousness. Two-thirds of these, resulting from individual requests, dealt with illnesses of the body and what might be done to correct them and restore the body back to a state of health.
As he looked at these bodies and the illnesses they were creating, Cayce talked about assimilations and eliminations, acid-alkaline balance, incoordinations, functions, relationships of one system or organ to another, and about disease resulting from disturbances in these kinds of physiological activities.
Throughout his suggestions on ways to correct these conditions, he spoke volumes about diet. He saw certain food combinations as helpful, some as harmful. His theme throughout the readings was keep the body and its functions balanced, often by using nutrition.
The Cayce concepts are found in the readings, piece by piece, not as a volume of information to be followed as factual data. Cayce liked to call this process, “line upon line, precept upon precept.” All of these ideas are more reasonably understood by the reader if one accepts the concept of reincarnation. We also need to add to that the idea that we are all created in the image of God, that we are here in the earth plane temporarily, over and over again from the spiritual domain—our origin. And Cayce told us that our destiny—all of us—is to learn how to love God and love our fellow man, thus becoming awakened to our ability to be one with the Creative Forces of the Universe.
Cayce talked about the Temple of Sacrifice and the Temple Beautiful at times, in the course of giving someone a life reading. One such discourse (275-33) touched on the importance of what was taught about diet in the temples as bringing about present day memories in the unconscious mind of the one obtaining the reading. We all, apparently, have richness abiding in our memory patterns, for we have all lived many past lifetimes. And little of value is lost, if we seek well enough within ourselves.
This woman was called Ai-Si in that Egyptian lifetime. Here are parts of one of her readings:
In that period, some ten thousand five hundred (10,500) years before the Prince of Peace came into Egypt as a student and seeker for the unraveling of the mystery of manifested life, the entity Ai-Si was a princess among the sons of the Libyans.
When the priest Ra Ta was banished to the land, the entity came under the influences of those teachings; as the priest dwelt there.
As would be counted in years in the present, the entity was some seventeen (17) years of age.
The entity then joined with those that would purify their bodies for a service, in the gathering of the lessons of the priest in such a manner that they (the lessons) might be given to others; much as the preparation, as would be termed in the day the entity became a student of the tenets that were presented by the priest and his followers.
Then the entity showed an aptitude and an ability in those directions of purification by the acts of individuals, as related to the feeding and the preparation of the various compounds of food; and also an aptitude in the abilities of movements in rhythm, as of service in the temple worship, in the dance . . .
When there became the necessity of establishing the temples where there were the studies of the combinations of diet—as in purifying the body from the blood, and the smearing of the flesh took on such activities as to remove scourges that arose from certain characters of diet; and there were brought through the feedings more symmetrical and harmonious proportions in the bodies of those that were in thought or work or service among those that prepared themselves—the entity Ai-Si began to be among the leaders in such activities; and also joined in the temple music.
For,