“The primitive mind does not invent myths, it experiences them.” -- Carl Jung

For nearly 30 years I have returned to the famous “Sleeping Prophet” Edgar Cayce’s readings as a road map to try and piece together the complex origins of civilization and the creation of Homo sapiens. Cayce (March 18, 1877 – January 3, 1945) was an American Christian mystic born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky who answered questions on subjects as varied as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while in a trance state.

While only possessing an eighth-grade education (not me, HIM, but almost), Cayce would ultimately transmit not just a stunning volume of material (over 14,000 readings and some 25 million words) but also a remarkably detailed and complex body of work. A nonprofit organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment , was founded to facilitate the study of Cayce's work.

Intellectual Giants on Human Origins

I have conducted a lengthy comparative analysis of the Cayce material, the literature of Rudolph Steiner, the Rosicrucian’s, the Freemasons, the Theosophists, Plato, as well as worldwide indigenous oral traditions, myths and legends. What came forth was as unexpected as it was bizarre.

Virtually all the sources claim that Homo sapiens were created in supernatural fashion long ago on the lost continent of Atlantis, which once existed in the Atlantic Ocean. A continent that had as part of its population giants and little people. Long-lived androgynous creator gods sometimes described as possessing six fingers or toes, are claimed to have birthed humanity. Atlantis was claimed to have been eventually destroyed by a great flood roughly 12,000 years ago and survivors were said to have brought the arts of civilization to Egypt, the Americas and several other locations in its aftermath. Cayce reveals the following in reading 364-11:

“Please give a few details regarding the physiognomy, habits, customs and costumes of the people of Atlantis during the period just before the first destruction.” These took on many sizes as to the stature, from that as may be called the midget to the GIANTS – for there were GIANTS IN THE EARTH IN THOSE DAYS, men as tall as (what would be termed today) ten to twelve feet in stature, and well-proportioned throughout. (1)

Rudolph Steiner also had the following to say regarding these inhabitants of Atlantis, “Everything that refers to ‘giants’ in legends is absolutely based on knowledge of the truth ... [W]e feel it to be absolutely correct, from the spiritual scientific point of view, that the giants are stupid and the dwarfs very clever.” (2) Secret society literature, oral traditions and religious documents like the Bible all proclaim the existence of ancient giants as well.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of Steiner School system of education ( Public Domain )

On Creator Gods

As intriguing as all this was however, my investigative mind kept drawing me back to the mystery of androgynous creator gods - the first beings, who were considered the architects of humanity, who inhabited genderless androgynous forms back in deep antiquity. Let’s turn to Edgar Cayce scholar W. H. Church to help us understand what is meant by this.

"In what we may term it's primitive or pre-Atlantean phase, before the emergence of its first mighty rulers, in the days of Poseidon and Atlas, or the enlightened reign of Amilius, at what was to become the all-time zenith of Atlantean civilization, the new continent was being busily colonized. Already it promised to become what Cayce would call the "Eden of the world", and home to a most unusual race of androgynous soul beings...In Hindu mythology, the seed of our present human race were sons of God, who, during the root race associated with the Atlantean epoch, had devolved into semi-divine, androgynous beings, self-imprisoned in bodies, that had physiologically changed, becoming human in appearance. In this form, they began taking unto themselves wives who were indeed fully human in appearance and fair to gaze upon." (3)

This description is very reminiscent of the Biblical story of the Nephilim who took on human wives. Indeed, the Bible clearly speaks of Giants, six fingers and toes, androgynous creator gods and a great flood.

Church continues,

"In the early days of Amilius rule, the separation of the sexes had not yet begun to take place. Though male in their outward aspect, the androgynous sons of God embodied within themselves the nature of both male and female in one person. By turning to the creative forces, they could become channels to bring into being androgynous progeny after their own kind imbued with a double soul and a double sexed body. In this way, sexual intercourse was unnecessary as a means of propagation."( 4)

While life without sex doesn't seem like much fun, it points to a supernatural origin for humanity, an idea shared by many ancient cultures worldwide. The "miraculous birth theme" or humans being made from clay or on a potter's wheel recurs throughout world religions and mythologies. Examples are to be found in Genesis, the Qur’an, and Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, Inca, Chinese and some Native American mythologies.

Androgynous beings Khnum and Thoth create humans on a potter’s wheel ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Many of these creators are described as androgynous like the Egyptian god Khnum. Khnum is depicted on a relief at Esna creating humans on a potter's wheel while the androgynous Thoth writes the years the humans will live behind him. Interestingly the Temple of Esna was dedicated to an anonymous androgynous creator god and androgynous Khnum is depicted with six fingers.

Six Fingered androgynous Khnum, Temple of Esna, Egypt. (Author provided)

Several professionals have been exploring this strange case as well. In the Israel Exploration Journal, Volume 57, 2007, Irit Ziffer explores the idea of androgynous creator deities in his thought-provoking paper, "The first Adam, Androgyny and the Ain Ghazal two-headed busts." Ain Ghazal is an ancient site in Jordan dated to roughly 8250 BC where some of the world's most ancient statues were unearthed several decades ago.

Androgynous two-headed statues from Ain Ghazal. ( CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Ziffer makes a strong case that the two-headed statues represent androgynous creator deities. Another curious twist is that some of the statues have six fingers and toes, famously associated with the Biblical giant of Gath.

Six toed foot from Ain Ghazal Statue. Source Richard D. Barnett, Polydactylism in the Ancient World, Biblical Archaeology Review May/June 1990. (Author provided)

Ziffer explains, "Schmandt-Besserat proposed that the Ain Ghazal statues represented deities, She accounted for the polydactilism (a rare genetic syndrome) of the statues as a divine attribute, and, based on cuneiform literature, identifies the two-headed busts as the likes of the gods Marduk (according to the Epic of Creation, ‘four were his eyes, four were his ears’; Dalley 1991: 236) and Ishtar (‘Ishtar of Nineveh is Tiamat… she has [4 eyes] and 4 ears’; Livingstone 1986: 223; Schmandt-Besserat 1998a: 10–15).

The four eyes and four ears may stand for a doubled face. Barnett WHO (1986: 116; 1986–87; 1990) explained the polydactilism of the ªAin Ghazal statues as a mark of supernatural entities, such as the biblical Rephaim, a race of giants: ‘There was a giant of a man, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in all; he too was descended from the Rapha (single form of Rephaim). When he taunted Israel, Jonathan, the son of David’s brother Shimei, killed him’ (2 Sam. 21:20–21)."

Thus, the prototype androgynous human, containing both sexes, was defined through the two-headed person, claims Ziffer. What we have here is quite stunning, some of the oldest statues ever discovered represent a worship cult of deities who were androgynous and possessed six fingers and toes. Remember, the statues of Ain Ghazal are over 8000 years older than the Bible.

In Part 2 we discover more ancient examples of androgyny and six-fingered giants and gods through history.

[Read Part 2 ]

Hopefully, this information will strike the reader as profoundly as it has me and you will be open to entertain seemingly heretical notions about the past. Please join me at the Edgar Cayce Ancient Mysteries Conference on October 6th in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Origins conference on November 4th in London or at the Awake and Empowered Expo in Detroit on November 10-12 as I discuss the Lost World of Edgar Cayce.

Top image: Edgar Cayce (Credit: Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment, Author provided)

By Jim Vieira

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