Edgar Cayce Readings, 345-3

Time and Place: 3:45 P. M. Eastern Standard Time. ... N.W., Washington, D.C.

TEXT

GC: You will have around you the conditions concerning the entity on the following subjects: Illustration, Portraiture, Color, Comicstrip. Give any needed information with answers to questions concerning each, as follows:
EC: Yes, we have the body [345] and those conditions as surround the body as respecting the abilities and developments of same, in the channels as outlined. These we have had in their various phases before.
In that line of Illustration and the Comicstrip, these present the outlet or the opportunity for the greater development of the abilities of the entity.
In the Illustration, these should take on those of the historic nature, and the spirit of that represented. As an illustration: The spirit of Mother's day. The spirit of service. The spirit of Jamestown, Yorktown. Any such condition. To the body, especially, this will carry color - in a fashion, and for the atmosphere of that presented.
In the Comicstrip, let each be as a lesson for each and every one in the various phases of an individual's development. Not depicting the absurdities, nor the idiosyncrasies of individuals, but rather those of environment, with the application of the spirit of truth. Such as would be in one's way through a school of psychological, or of psychology in its applications. These present the better channels, and offer a field that will be remunerative in this world's goods.
In the present surroundings the opportunities are good for such a field, and the entity does well in its contemplated efforts. Ready for questions.
(Q) First, Illustration. How and when -
(A) (Interrupting) In that field as outlined, and begin with the various conditions as have been suggested, and as the body-mental is moved by the spirit of that as is to be depicted by the entity's efforts. BEGIN NOW.
(Q) What are the qualities most to be desired in an illustration?
(A) These are shown here, in that as given. Follow that.
(Q) Portraiture. Give constructive means whereby the entity may attain efficiency in Portraiture.
(A) Work from this beginning, as we have given here.
(Q) How best to develop in the study of color?
(A) In that depicting those elements that carry out in the atmosphere of that being depicted in the illustration of the spirit of the various historic events and conditions as arise in the entity's experience. Follow this very closely.
(Q) How should the entity apply self to best advantage in the next six months?
(A) In working up the basis for those conditions, both for the strip and for those illustrations. These to meet the needs of the various conditions as come from period to period. As of July, Labor Day, of the summer, the winter, the seasons, of the various conditions. The spirit of the vacation. The spirit of the child from school. All such offer a channel and an opportunity for the entity in its development.
(Q) Is it best to make quick changes?
(A) Let's move by the spirit!
(Q) What should the entity do in regard to travel? What sections to avoid?
(A) Best to study first that condition around and surrounding the entity, for long will this remain the hub of the universe.
(Q) Should the entity adopt a pen name? If so, what?
(A) That is to be chosen by the entity. Choosing any one of those as was the developing character in its earth's experience.
(Q) How do psychic Forces affect the entity?
(A) From that as given it would appear that these must affect a great deal! Through these channels much may come to the entity, in the application. Not only get the understanding, but most of all APPLY that known. We are through.

BACKGROUND

See 345-2 on 8/18/28 in re his life and work.
5/15/29 He submitted questions.

REPORTS

6/12/29 [345]'s ltr. to EC:
Dear Mr. Cayce,
After several attempts to write you I have finally given up the idea as I can't write what I would like to. Since receiving the reading I have been as one in a stupor thinking over what it said and its relation to what I had planned. I did not want to talk or do anything at all. It was continually on my my mind - such doubt, indecision and mental torment I have known but few times before.
Still I don't know, but I do know I was rudely awakened to the fact that if I wanted to eat tomorrow I must make a better showing than I had on the last jobs I did, and that I knew was the truth much to my dislike.
However, I have a general outline of what the cartoon shall be. I was able to get that much before being knocked off my feet. But how I shall assemble the material is what is the big question. But that does not worry me much as I know I could do it in time. Far more difficult is the question of giving up a dream that I am about to realize - one that I have worked years for and it is my last chance to realize same and that is a year of academic art study. I could only be successful in this with a free mind with undivided attention as long as it lasted and then I would feel that I had had a chance and that the future could be built from then. But I can't do both; I must do one or the other. If I don't go this fall I will forever lose this chance and if I do go and someone gets my idea of the cartoon I will forever lose that chance, but if no one gets the idea the first plan would help the other, but the reading says spend the next 6 months working up the idea. Could it mean that this training is part of the preparation? It certainly would be in the drawing as my style would be developed more. I can't get this idea out of my head entirely as it has been there for years. One minute I feel that I shouldn't give up the one and the next minute that I shouldn't give up the other if it really means that.
My idea for a cartoon is educational and everything that the reading said but entirely different from the first idea I had along this line. I feel that I would be better prepared to do it later however, but I am afraid someone else will get the jump on me and I would lose a great opportunity.
Here I know that the reading is a bit indefinite and it is reasonable to believe that it should be as it could hardly choose any favorites or advance those that ask over others that might be just as worthy but do not know of its workings. For this reason I believe the answers will always been indefinite and sometimes evasive. It is also true that with a knowledge of an individual's greatest ability even if only hinted at is enough to make a conscientious person work it out for themselves, and this I think is the better way.
I am ever in a quandary over the above questions as which to do. They mean more than bread and meat; they mean life to me, in the sense that they are the means of attaining a life well rounded not for the purpose of pleasure or personal glory but of advancement and service.
If it was pleasure I would have stayed in the mountains next to nature - for this is simple pleasure and true happiness. But there is more than being good and that's being good for something. Each one has his way. There is more to a picture than well rounded prettiness, there should be a story and that is the one of a soul.
But what I wanted to ask you about is an outline on my developed cartoon idea I am going to make. Do you think it would be well to read it to yourself and get a comment on it along with a few questions?
If so I would like to get another reading about Sat. July 6th. Will send questions and money later as I haven't either right now.
Sincerely, [345]
6/26/29 EC's ltr. to [345]:
Dear [345],
Yours of the 12th received sometime ago, but as Miss Gladys was away on her vacation and I am such a poor hand at writing on the typewriter (and you couldn't read it if I wrote otherwise), I just put off answering. Then, too, I knew that I would be unable to get any information for you until she got back. She came in last night, so I'm trying to write today.
[345], I am sure I understand just how you must feel about some of things that confront you. How often those same sort of things have come to me! though I was, as I see it, possibly a little bit differently situated, for I already had pretty big responsibilities before I ever found that I could possibly use the phenomena manifested through me for the good of humanity; yet it didn't look like it would ever be sufficiently interesting to others to enable me to give my whole time to it. You, I am afraid, feel the same way about your work, and that the time and effort you have put in it - and your very self that you have put in it - at times doesn't seem to, as you say, furnish your breakfast nor a place to sleep; yet we all know that if we are to succeed we have to just DIG IN - COMMENCE! As we apply that we already have within us, we are able to gain an insight more and more into the abilities as may manifest through us, if we don't lose sight of the fact that it IS the real divine manifesting and using us as a channel and get to the point where we think WE are IT and that it is US, or the I in us that is doing it. I would like very much to try to help you get straightened out. I would be glad to make another reading at the very first opportunity. Miss Gladys being away, naturally has made a great accumulation of requests and they run well up into the latter part of next month. Of course, we have left some days open, that we might be able to fill in from special requests and conditions we want to meet. If you will get your data together - or better still if you can be present - but this may be out of the question, from what you say. But let's make a try for it anyway. Know that we are interested - THOROUGHLY interested - and we are mighty desirous of being of help if possible. We don't want to confuse you, or to raise false hopes, but certainly would like to be of service if we may. Let us hear from you.
Sincerely, Edgar Cayce [EC:GD]
7/03/29 [345]'s ltr. to EC:
Dear Mr. Cayce,
Your kindly letter of the 26th received and much appreciated. I am sure you have had similar experiences though in a different manner. It is with a feeling of reluctance that I write of personal affairs as it may appear a bit selfish especially when the letter was completely about myself.
It is probably true that to gain a broader and deeper understanding of a life and people it's necessary to experience the joys and sorrows of others situated in a like or similar condition. If not directly experienced it takes understanding, born of experience, to feel and understand a different condition as experienced by others. Wise and lucky is the person who can thus cross bridges built by the experiences of others.
An incident that happened yesterday is probably a good illustration. The studio is divided into two rooms. In the room I am in there are about six artists. Conversations are of a general topic. Thoughts that are personal do not find much stimulus in such surroundings. But with two or three it is different. Vacation and what not had reduced our number to three, Miss A., Mr. S. and myself. Things went along very well for a while and finally Miss A, who looks at life very scientifically and has tasted enough of its pierian spring to believe that everything is contained in its formulas or seen through its microscopic sporangium, after a long period of relaxation brought up the subject of soul. With no encouragement she provided to give a list of scientific facts which proved the idea taboo then leaned back in her chair sighed and with a fat hand smoothed bobbed hair from a rotund forehead.
Mr. S. agreed and elaborated by saying that the Good Book wasn't what grandma had claimed it to be. Before such positive conditions I merely stated that I thought such a thing did exist and continues to do so regardless of what I said of the matter.
This brought forth more and more of theory and I wondered which were better, education or understanding.
Finally I asked a few questions which was rather hard to answer right off without the text book. Miss A. sighed from the depths of her stout being and said she had lost so much happiness since finding there was no soul and would like to believe there was so she could be happy again, and asked me why I believed there was.
I said that I had been convinced from personal experiences that could probably show them how in their own lives they could too.
I was told that I had two friends for life if I could show them any proof that there was.
They wanted me to start right away but I said it would take time and it ended thus. Each sat for a long time in silence. Could the invisible soul do battle with a visual micron?
Thus I imagined how your thoughts must be directed to answer such questions convincingly and how lives grow in different directions and thoughts from different angles.
To get back to my own Ego and its problems. My problems are green hobgoblins which look quite alike. Each is a different phase, blood brothers you might call them for they all seem to belong to me and I keep them in a chest and at times ignore them. Certain ones get out at times and say "Why didn't you do this" or that. If I neglect them all too long they all get out and chide me quite unmercifully, and I cannot rest until I have found the one I have offended the most.
The rest seems to slip away when I promise to do justice to his cause.
Thoughts about myself they seem to be. Queer they can't be reasoned with.
Since getting the reading I have tried to reason and think of my environment and decided to stay here. My mind was made up I would, but I did not feel right. I remember one idea which protested and kept jumping up with reasons and rode me like the old man of the sea. By heeding his advice I know the only contentment of the moment. When the leaves are tinted with the first glow of fall and cool winds hear the notes of migrating songsters to the Southland, it will find me with my harvest gathered here and my face turned toward the Northland.
What opportunities I miss I do not know but I must find out more of this elusive quantity that makes paint more than paint and paper more than the watermark, which means more to the searcher than raiment; and more to the beggar than bread.
With best wishes I set forth and may the stars in their course, God in His heaven be kindly to a fool who follows an impulse.
But yet, quite sincerely, [345]
8/01/29 EC's ltr. to [345]:
Dear [345]
I have neglected answering yours of the 3rd, simply because I haven't been able in my own mind to do justice to the thoughts you expressed there; not that I want to condone or condemn anything that was said, but I haven't known, and don't know yet, how to answer you just as I would like to answer you. I am sure, however, that you have been able long before this to convince your friends and associates that there IS still the soul - for you so beautifully expressed it, when you said you had to find out what made the paint more than paint, the paper more than water mark, that which means more to the seeker than raiment and more to the beggar than bread. That is, I am sure, the spirit of expression - and the spirit finds its self-expression in that depicted on the paper just as you or I are the manifestations of spirit, and as each blade of grass, each ocean drop, each mountain, each star, is an expression of the spirit of the infinite, or the all creative energy that He has given (that God) to each individual a body - NOT physical - but a body which is the soul, that retains that impression of the spirit association in such a way and manner as to build for itself that which makes it equal with its God, as He has promised that He would - or as we see in NATURE - or the individual damns himself into oblivion through attempting to express himself, rather than the SPIRIT itself. So, spirit may find its way of expressing itself, on paper, at the end of a pen, in the hewing of a long, in the building of a house, or the building of a character.
I don't mean to get up and soar around, [345] - but when are you coming to see us? We are keeping very busy - a long way ahead with appointments - a good many people in the hospital - then we have recently had one of our business sessions of the Board of Trustees.
Drop me a line - let me hear from you. Of course, the day is coming when you are going to be closer to us than you are at present - I mean physically. I know you are in spirit.
All send best regards.
Ever the same, Edgar Cayce
8/05/29 [345]'s ltr. to EC:
Dear Mr. Cayce,
I received your letter and was more than glad to hear from you. I value your wisdom of both the spoken and written word and know of nothing that gives me more satisfaction. I would be ideally happy to just discuss things with you. The picture in mind is of the Greek philosophers and students. It must have been a wonderful existence. But people don't seem to have time for that anymore.
It is dolefully quiet. Those with easy minds are far in the land of slumber. A cool dampness drifts in the window and the curtain is stirred by a gentle breeze from the south. Outside a Katydid foretells his prophecy of the inevitable frost. A brief song but unaffected by briefness he does not hurry or slight a single note; content in living and fulfilling his simple part in the grand symphony of things. For after him comes hundreds and thousands of others who will do it as good or better but that does not affect his immediate response to the intelligence of that particular note which contributes to the ensemble.
His note takes me back many miles and years and from the embers of the past brings forth scenes that are dear to the heart. Of trips through dark country lanes and meadows, mostly with my father who never spoke but smoked in steady contemplation. What he was thinking of I never knew. But the Katydids they were everywhere.
In hand is a letter which tells of further scattering of the family, as before the northwind leaves are blown. The key is turned in the door, vines overrun the porch and from the rank and stubble the Katydid - ever incessant. Plans I have made. The future I have tried to pierce but to no avail. I would not wish to know everything that is going to happen, but rather how to work in the present for tomorrow is the present.
He only is wise who has made many mistakes. Trees lashed by the fury of the elements on the northside of the hill seem to grow stronger than their more protected neighbors. Their roots grow deeper. Plans - I can't follow them, not even the best I make. Tried it and I know. The only plan is to work today and tomorrow will take care of itself.
What I need is more work and it must be with the hand, head and heart now, now, now.
In this way only can I look with any satisfaction for the morrow. There will be cold ones and hot ones, each will have its surprises. I will enjoy them all.
The question of soul has not been mentioned again in the studio. The members are back again and we are suspended in a more worldly line of gab. I am glad that the hospital is taking care of the sick and that your work is progressing so nicely.
With every best wish, I am Sincerely, [345]
9/05/29 [345]'s ltr. to EC:
I would like to vision a history or panoramic evolution of man that would be pictorially symbolic along the lines of the readings. But it must be done differently than anything I have seen or at present know how to do. I don't know if I will ever satisfy myself or be able to grasp that which I seek. Sometimes it seems as if it were an essence hovering over the entire scene or idea. But the minute you try to think about it, it is gone.
Of course it is a technical question. The struggle to find a concrete pictorial method that will embody and express clearly definite feelings that will give rise to ideas or thoughts of a corresponding nature in the minds of others.
It should be like a song. If it was intended to convey the feeling of happiness you should be filled with that feeling merely by looking. The same with any of the other emotions.
Form, color, drawing, are but raw materials that must be mastered and forgot. Some are mastered by drawing, by technique. Their work may knock you over at first glance, but gradually it fades as you analyze their thoughts or think as they would have, to make such a picture. I have seen pictures that annoyed me that caused drops of perspiration to stand out on the forehead as I followed the artist through successive steps that should be joyful, and finally left with a feeling that I would have for a seven day bicycle racer.
Grinding work is all right if the finished product is as fresh as the dewdrop. We are thrilled by the thought of it, the wonder of it.
I have a lot of experimenting to do and it will take time. I hope everyone is well. Tell Hugh Lynn I had some clippings I am going to send him sometime.
With every good wish I am, Sincerely, [345]
10/27/29 "I do not fit well here [The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Broad & Cherry Sts., Philadelphia, Pa.] as everything is based on well made drawings and scholarships. This gives a fine polish but often wastes years of life. It is good for those who have leisure and can afford it. Realizing my opportunity here depends on myself. I have decided to work in a manner that will give me the most of the fundamentals in as short time as possible, which includes mainly anatomy and color. I attend the day classes and the night also. I fix my own meals and iron my own clothes; in fact I do everything that there is to be done, or leave it undone which is often the case. I feel in the best of spirits as a rule, for I am doing what I needed much to do. I have neglected everything in the letter line. I intended to write some letters but just don't have time. I hope everyone is in the best of health and that the work of the hospital will continue its record of service."
1/28/30 "Business is very bad here and has been the past few months, and as yet I haven't found steady work. It is quite a problem to support one's self and go to school but many do. I have been promoted twice before the end of the year and am in the painters class. It is very well but I don't feel like I am doing my best yet. I don't seem to be able to get started. There are many problems which one has to face and decide. It comes sooner or later to all who would assume the name of artist. The past months seem as four years. I would never care to live them again, or any part of my past, as for that matter.
"Today I made a technical discovery that almost elated me. It is very simple but it put me in accord with myself again. Even now it lingers like a balm and I am anxious to go forth and try again. It was just a simple method of approach to a painting. My whole problems may be technical in a sense... I have hopes of getting a reading sometime next month." [GD's note: We didn't hear from him again until 5/24/33.]
6/03/33 See 345-4 answering questions as to his life and work.