True Tales from the Edgar Cayce Archives. Sidney D. Kirkpatrick

       Edgar Cayce and Beatrice Coffing in Virginia Beach.

      Reincarnation, at this point in Cayce’s career, was not a new subject. In addition to upwards of nearly ten thousand medical readings, he had given several hundred “Life Readings,” in which a soul’s previous incarnations were identified and descriptions were given that would help the recipients of the reading understand how their behaviors and relationships in previous lifetimes impacted their present lifetime. In Beatrice’s case, many of those relationships in her previous lifetimes had been with Edgar.

      Something highly unusual during the Life Reading happened when the reading began with the curious statement, “This isn’t the name! [But] yes, we have the records here of that entity now called Beatrice Coffing.”

      Then, the reading continued:

      In the present, then, we find that the entity is one of those that may indeed be said to be the consistent thinker and exponent of all for one, and one for all, in those things in which it has enjoined itself in active service. These attitudes make for hardships at times in the material experience in the present. But in those activities in which there may be the outlet for the greater home building, and the expression of same, may the entity find the greater field of service, the greater harmony, the greater outlook for peace and joy in the experience of this entity.

      In other words, she would find her greatest fulfillment at home and in the life she would share with others. In terms of previous lives, the reading would further reveal that she and Edgar had been together as recently as Edgar’s present incarnation in a rural farming community in Kentucky through which flowed the Little River. And yet, in the correspondence Edgar sent to Beatrice with her Life Reading, he remained unusually circumspect about sharing with her how they had known one another, only that they had.

      It was not until he met Beatrice in person that Edgar let the “secret slip out.” He had to “see the truth” for himself before he could, as he later said, “be absolutely certain.” That day, when Beatrice and her fiancé arrived in front of the Cayce’s Virginia Beach home, Edgar stood on the porch, unable to move. He couldn’t even speak to her as she had exited the car and raised her hand to greet him. Tears began to pour down his cheeks. He could barely put together more than two words. “Little Anna . . . Little Anna,” he repeated. “It’s true.”

      Before coming to Virginia Beach, Beatrice had read everything she could about Edgar, and though she believed him to be a “kindred spirit,” she was not prepared for the curious way he addressed her. Who was Little Anna? Why the tears? Edgar’s wife Gertrude and secretary Gladys Davis were equally mystified. They, too, had never heard of Little Anna nor could guess why Edgar was moved to tears.

      When Edgar and Beatrice sat down in his study and talked together, she began to understand what seeing her meant to him. She also gained a startling insight into the greater message that came through in the readings. She had not only known Edgar in her previous incarnation as Little Anna, but she had also known her fiancé, Richmond Seay, whom she had cared for during his years-long ordeal with cataracts. He was none other than Anna’s father, Barnett Seay, who had cared for her when she contracted pneumonia. Little Anna and her father Barnett Seay, who had both died of pneumonia in Kentucky in 1887, were now in 1941 Beatrice and Richmond Seay, soon to be husband and wife.

      Beatrice cared for Richmond in his hour of need as he had once cared for her. That’s how karma, which is so fundamental to the process of reincarnation, often worked out in the cycles of reincarnation described in the Cayce readings. Mothers in a previous incarnation often became daughters or sisters in the next. And invariably there was at least one family member who returned within the same family, as Edgar’s grandfather, Tom Cayce, eventually returned as Edgar’s grandson, Charles Thomas Cayce.

      What was begun in one lifetime was continued in the next, bringing forth lessons and learning experiences crucial to what the readings described as the essence of human evolution—the development or growth of a soul preparing to meet or return to its maker. Family members could be construed as team members working together in this life and the next.

      Once Beatrice and Edgar began to compare notes about their present lives, they realized how much they had in common. Both loved gardening and frequently spoke to their plants. Like Edgar’s childhood in Beverly, she had spent her formative years in Attica, Indiana, playing alone in the woods and conversing with “imaginary” playmates. Their respective spiritual paths, though very different, had also brought them to the same deeply rooted belief in Christianity.

      Edgar and Beatrice would become fast and devoted friends. She and Richmond, who soon became her husband, would move to Blackstone, Virginia, and became active leaders in the fledgling A.R.E.—the association that would carry the Cayce work to future generations. They never referred to one another as Edgar and Beatrice, but simply as Eddy and Anna.