Edgar Cayce (pronounced “Kay-see”) was a simple Sunday School teacher who, over the span of his lifetime (1877-1945), had more near-death-like experiences than anyone ever documented. Cayce learned at a young age that when he was hypnotized, he could leave his body and journey into the afterlife realms. His self-induced out-of-body experiences were identical to near-death experiences. Cayce made over 14,000 otherworldly journeys in his life and the information he gained from these journeys has astounded people all over the world. Part of Cayce’s revelations deal with the many reincarnations of the Christ soul which is the subject of this article.

1. Introduction to Cayce’s Revelations of the Christ
The system of metaphysical thought which emerges from the Cayce material can be described as a “Christianized” version of the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, India, and Greece. It fits Christ into the mystical tradition of one God for all people, and places Christ in his proper place, at the apex of the philosophical structure – the capstone of the pyramid.

Cayce was a fundamentalist Christian who was raised in strict nineteenth century Bible tradition. When he discovered that his subconscious information declared the ancient mystic religions to be true and acclaimed Jesus as their crowning glory, he suffered the greatest mental and emotional shock of his life. Cayce had only a seventh grade education and consciously knew nothing of what he said while in a deep trance-like state. He was only versed in the Bible and had no high school or college background of any kind. Up until his revelations, Cayce had never heard of the mystery religions. Yet the Cayce material agrees with everything about them that is known to be authentic. He spoke at length on Christian Gnosticism well before the Gnostic writings were discovered in Egypt after his death. Cayce affirmed that Christian Gnosticism is the type of Christianity that was taught by Jesus. Much of the information from Cayce has solved some of the greatest mysteries of humanity, some of which were later validated after the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early Christian writings discovered in Egypt.

Cayce’s descriptions of the Essenes of Mount Carmel reveal the religious sect to be an ideal for others who would prepare the way for the Second Coming of Christ. Cayce’s revelations of Jesus’ so-called “lost years” as a youth studying in Egypt, Persia, and India suggest an important compatibility of between the eastern and western religions. Cayce’s Christology also makes the Christ soul not only an ideal and pattern toward which everyone should aspire, but a living presence to guide people toward “at-onement” with God – the perfect divine-human unity which Jesus attained.

According to the Cayce material, Jesus and Adam were different incarnations of the same Christ soul. Eve and the Virgin Mary (Jesus’ twin soul) were also different incarnations of the same soul. This karmic connection between Adam and Jesus explains why Jesus was able to pay the “karmic debt” by atoning for the “sin of Adam.” This Adam-Jesus connection can be seen in the following excerpt from the Cayce readings:

Question: “When did the knowledge come to Jesus that he was to be the Savior of the world?”
Cayce: “When he fell in Eden.” [Cayce Reading 2067-7]

According to Cayce, many other personalities from the Old Testament and history were also incarnations of Jesus. The Cayce material describes the entire Christian Bible as part of the story of Jesus’ long struggle to attain “Christhood” and provide humanity a pattern to do the same.

2. The Incarnations of Jesus According to Cayce
The following is a list of the incarnations of Jesus according to Cayce. Note that all these incarnations of Jesus, as Cayce describes them, have in common their role as psychic revelators:

(1) Amilius

Amilius was the first expression of Divine Mind (the Logos); the Christ-soul before his incarnation into a physical body (corresponding to Genesis 1) and incarnation into a physical body (corresponding to Genesis 2). He was the entity Cayce identified as Amilius living in the lost civilization of Atlantis who redirected the process of human evolution by creating a more appropriate physical form for the influx of souls to incarnate into rather than incarnating into the ape-like human form which souls had entangled themselves in. The first wave of souls (known as “the sons of men“) became entrapped in the physical plane accidentally through their misuse of free will. These events gave rise to the legend of the “fall of the angels.” The second wave (“the sons of God“) consisted of those souls led by Amilius (the Christ-soul) who voluntarily became entrapped in flesh as Adam in order to assist the first wave.

(2) Adam

Adam was the first “son of man” and “son of God”; the Christ-soul after his incarnation into a physical body (corresponding to Genesis 2). Cayce sometimes used the word “Adam” to refer to the entire group of souls which had accompanied the Christ-soul’s incarnation into the Earth realm. These “Adams” incarnated as the five races on five separate continents. Eventually, the Christ-soul, as Adam, joined his twin soul (the Eve–Virgin Mary soul) by allowing himself to be seduced by materiality as symbolized by his acceptance of the forbidden fruit. The other “sons of God” followed suit and, as a result, interbred with the “daughters of men” (Genesis 6:2). In this light, humanity’s banishment from “the Garden of Eden” was actually a great blessing, because death, reincarnation, and karma are all designed to teach us to move away from materiality and toward our true spiritual nature.

(3) Enoch

Enoch is mentioned in several pseudepigraphal works (The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch) as well as some Kabbalistic writings, in addition to his brief mention in Genesis 5:18-24 which concludes, “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not, for God took him.” The Book of Enoch describes the fall of the “Watchers” into materiality and Enoch’s heavenly sojourns as well as his transfiguration into the angel Metatron. It is revealed to him the future up to the time of the Messiah as well. Enoch also learns about the hierarchy of the angelic realm and the divine “throne-chariot” of Ezekiel. The Book of Enoch introduces a messianic figure referred to as “the Son of Man.” In the canonical New Testament, Enoch is mentioned in Hebrews 11:5 and Jude 14-15. The passage in Jude quotes directly from the pseudepigaphal Book of Enoch which shows the author of the Epistle of Jude, the brother of Jesus, considered the Book of Enoch to be sacred scripture.

(4) Hermes

“Hermes” of the Cayce readings is the one who designed and build the Great Pyramid under the direction of Ra Ta. There is another historical connection between a “Hermes” and Egypt which is found in the Hellenistic writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus – the sage who began the Hermetic tradition. Hermes is also referred to in the Poimandres, as the “shepherd of men” who teaches that “the Word which came forth from the Light is the Son of God.” Accordingly, Hermes also taught that human nature consists of such divine elements as Nature, Light, Mind, and Life; and that by recognizing them we may return to the invisible, immaterial world of Truth.

(5) Melchizedek

Melchizedek was the “king of Salem” and “priest of the most high God” who shares bread and wine with Abraham in Genesis 14: 18-20.) He is also mentioned both in the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QMelch) and the Melchizedek in the Nag Hammadi codex where he appears as a cosmic angelic figure, the risen Christ. Hebrews 5:8-10 calls Jesus “a high priest after the order of Melchizedek,” which explains how Jesus was a priestly Messiah without being a Levite. According to Cayce, Melchizedek wrote the Book of Job, which contains many mysterious passages that Cayce liked. Cayce once said, “For, as the sons of God came together to reason, as recorded by Job, “WHO recorded same? The Son of Man! Melchizedek wrote Job!.”

(6) Joseph

Joseph was the son of Jacob who became the Prince of Egypt. The story of Joseph appealed to Cayce, not only for its Egyptian location, but its endorsement of dream guidance and also for Joseph’s escape from the pit (anticipating Jesus’ resurrection). In fact there are many parallels between the life of Joseph and Jesus.

(7) Joshua

Joshua was the warrior who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. However, this incarnation of the Christ-soul is more difficult to account for given his military campaigns described in the Bible. Jesus’ suffering on the cross would certainly have paid his karmic debt for this transgression as well. But Cayce also saw Joshua as a member of a family which had produced many highly-skilled spiritual counselors. One of Joshua’s roles was as a scribe for Moses who psychically dictated much of the material from the books traditionally attributed to him. This explains how Joshua could have remembered to include such details as the creation of the universe and Moses’ own death. Hebrews 4:8-10 identifies Jesus as a better Joshua, as Joshua led Israel into the rest of Canaan, but Jesus leads the people of God into “God’s rest,” salvation. Among the early Church Fathers, Joshua is considered a type of Jesus Christ.

(8) Asaph

The Cayce readings give little information about Asaph except that he was the music director and seer who served under David and Solomon. However, there is much more evidence of David as being a past life of Jesus than his music director Asaph.

(9) Jeshua

Jeshua (Joshua) was the high priest who helped organize the return from exile and the rebuilding of the temple (as recounted in the Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah) and who is claimed by Cayce to have compiled and translated the books of the Bible

(10) Zend

Cayce identified “Zend” (also spelled “Zen”, “Zan”, “Sen” or “San”) as the father of Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion (of Magi fame), and the source of inspiration for the Avesta, the sacred Zoroastrian scriptures. However, the word “Zend” in Zend-Avesta means “commentary” and, in reality Zoroaster’s father was named Pourushaspa. It appears the sleeping Cayce was inspired by the Book of Esther and Matthew’s story of the Magi to base this “Zend” personality upon. Of interest is the fact that it was during the Israelites exile in Babylon when Judaism (and then Gnosticism, Christianity and Islam) incorporated the Zoroastrian theological system of monotheism, the Messiah, the dualistic struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, angels and demons, heaven and hell, God and Satan, the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the Dead.

(11) Jesus

Jesus was the man who attained complete “at-onement” and human-divine unity and therefore became “the Christ.” Note that “Joshua”, “Jeshua”, and “Jesus” are really the same name. The name “Jesus” is a Latinization of the Aramaic “Jeshua” or “Yeshua” which is in turn taken from the Hebrew “Yehoshua” or “Joshua.” So the name “Jesus” refers to many heroes in the Hebrew Bible. Cayce therefore assigned the soul-entity Jesus to the same name for three separate incarnations. Cayce also revealed that the Jesus of the New Testament was registered by his Essene school under the name of “Jeshua.”

(12) ????? of the Second Coming

The Christ-soul will walk the Earth again as the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets in order to usher in the so-called “Throne of David” (i.e., the kingdom of heaven) on Earth as revealed in Revelation 11:15. Cayce sometimes interpreted the Second Coming of Christ as being an internal, psychic event within the individual seeker (as in Cayce’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation), and sometimes as the actual return of Jesus Christ in particular. In discussing the massive geological changes predicted for the “last days,” he adds that “these will begin in those periods from 1958 to 1998. when these will be proclaimed as the periods when His light will be seen in the clouds.” While this passage might be interpreted psychologically, elsewhere Cayce insists that Jesus will return in the flesh and rule for one thousand years as mentioned in Revelation 20:1-3. During this thousand-year time period, Cayce states that souls from the lower afterlife realms will not be permitted to reincarnate in order to establish the kingdom of God on Earth. Afterward, when the kingdom of God is established, souls from the lower afterlife realms will be permitted to reincarnate. According to Cayce, “As given, for a thousand years he will walk and talk with men of every clime. Then in groups, in masses, and then they shall reign of the first resurrection for a thousand years; for this will be when the changes materially come.” Although Cayce gives the year date of the “entrance of the Messiah into this period as 1998,” he also admits that no one knows the exact time of the Second Coming, since it cannot occur “until His enemies (and the Earth) are wholly in subjection to His will, His powers.” A future incarnation of Jesus into flesh may not be necessary because Jesus has already transcended the necessity of reincarnating through his obedience of going to the cross.