What exact Edgar Cayce readings are cited by scholars when discussing future US leaders?
Executive summary
Scholars and commentators who invoke Edgar Cayce in conversations about future U.S. leaders most often point to a handful of dramatic themes in his readings—predictions of presidential deaths and turmoil, references to a "spirit" influencing leaders, and a specific reading sometimes labeled 3976-13—but there is no single, consistently cited canonical list of "exact readings" used across academic literature [1] [2] [3]. Skeptical treatments emphasize Cayce’s more eccentric prophecies and question selective citation, while popular outlets and spiritual communities amplify readings tied to contemporary figures without always naming or contextualizing the precise source document [3] [4] [5].
1. What people mean when they say “Cayce predicted future U.S. leaders”
When writers or scholars reference Cayce on U.S. leadership they most commonly mean his trance-readings that discuss national destiny, presidential mortality, and spiritual intervention in public life; popular summaries frequently cite his comments about political turmoil and the deaths of presidents from readings given around 1939 and the 1940s [1] [2]. These themes feed narratives about a cyclical “reckoning” for the United States and are the basis for later retrofitting—matching Cayce’s broad images to later events or contemporary politicians—rather than pointing to a small set of narrowly prescriptive prophetic texts [1] [2].
2. The specific reading number that appears in the reporting
One concrete reading number that appears in the material assembled here is reading 3976-13, which a compiled source attributes to Cayce in the context of commentary about power and its corrupting effects and links to how a leader may “accede to power” [2]. That citation indicates that at least some commentators or compilers have pulled discrete reading identifiers from Cayce archives when making claims about leadership, but the available reporting does not show a wider, consistent catalogue of reading numbers that scholars routinely cite when discussing future U.S. leaders beyond occasional references like this one [2].
3. How scholars and skeptics treat those readings
Skeptical scholars and critics contextualize Cayce as a figure whose mix of healing, occult speculation, and vivid myth-making produced memorable but often unverifiable claims; mainstream skeptical summaries explicitly label many of his ideas—about Atlantis crystals or rediscovered “death rays,” for example—as discredited or eccentric, and caution against treating selective prophetic snippets as scholarly evidence [3]. Academic treatments tend to emphasize the cultural role of Cayce’s readings—how they were archived, popularized by the Association for Research and Enlightenment, and later used by believers and opportunistic commentators—rather than endorsing readings as literal forecasts of named future leaders [3] [6].
4. How popular and spiritual writers use Cayce’s readings about leaders
Popular websites, spiritual commentators, and some books recycle Cayce’s broad predictions about national crises, a “Great Reckoning,” and the rise or fall of leaders—sometimes mapping those motifs onto specific contemporary politicians—but these outlets often do not provide detailed archival citations or they reinterpret readings through modern political lenses, which can create the impression of precise predictive texts where the original readings were more elliptical [4] [5] [6]. Where reading numbers are supplied by compilers or enthusiasts (for example 3976-13), they are typically embedded in secondary retellings rather than in peer-reviewed scholarly apparatus [2].
5. What the sources do not show (and why that matters)
The assembled reporting does not present a definitive list of “exact readings” that a consensus of scholars cite when discussing future U.S. leaders; instead, it shows selective citations, popular reinterpretations, and skeptical pushback—meaning claims about Cayce’s precise prophetic texts often rest on fragmentary or partisan citation practices rather than on a stable scholarly canon [2] [3] [4]. Any rigorous scholarly claim would need direct archival references to Cayce session transcripts held by the A.R.E. and explicit citation in academic literature, evidence not supplied in the materials reviewed here [3] [2].