One word for electricity, color, sound and soul
What do the readings say about vibration?
Vibration is the word Edgar Cayce's readings reach for whenever two things act on each other: a battery and a nerve, a color and a mood, a stone and the person who wears it, a thought and the people it draws. In his own words, vibration or vibrations comes 5,839 times in 2,791 readings, about one reading in five. In 1929 he put the whole idea in one line: “All force is vibration, as all comes from one central vibration” (reading 900-422, January 13, 1929).
- His own words5,839 uses in 2,791 readings
- First use4468-1, July 26, 1909
- Peak year1923, in 186 of 348 dated readings
- Violet raynamed in 996 readings
- Wet cellnamed in 525 readings
- 432 or hertznever mentioned
1909 to 1944
From a treatment to a law of nature
The first ten readings that use the word, from 1909 to 1911 in Kentucky, mean something you do to a patient. A vibrator, or a mild electrical current along the spine, or in one 1910 case a small battery in water giving the vibration force to the nerves. It stays a treatment word into 1921.
Then it climbs. The 1922 share reaches 31 percent of dated readings and 1923 hits 53 percent, the highest share of any year. That is the same stretch in which the Theosophical vocabulary arrived, which our page on the akashic records charts quarter by quarter. After 1925 it settles at 15 to 25 percent, and the sense widens. Vibration stops being only a thing an appliance gives and becomes what everything is made of.
By 1943 he could say it in two short sentences to a man worried he had overdone his electrical treatments: “Life in its manifestation is vibration. Electricity is vibration.” (reading 1861-16, June 16, 1943). The same answer warns that creative and destructive vibration can come from one source, so the dose matters.
| Year | Dated readings | Use vibration | Share |
|---|
What travels with the word
The vibration spectrum
Every time a word stands within 15 words of vibration or vibrations in his own words, it counts once. We grouped those neighbors into eleven families and laid them out from the physical end, machines and current, to the spiritual end, attunement and soul. Bars share one scale. Tap any word for its count and the first and last reading that pairs it with vibration. Nearness is not proof of a link, so read the readings before you lean on a single pair.
Tap a word.
| Word | Family | Pairings | Readings | First | Last |
|---|
The physical half dominates. Nerves, circulation and the electrical words account for more than half of all pairings, because most readings were health readings and most vibration in them came out of an appliance. Gold is the commonest metal by far, since the wet cell was usually set up to carry the vibration of gold chloride into the body. Stones, color, music and numbers are small families, and they belong mostly to the life readings of the 1930s and 1940s.
The appliances
Wet cell, radio-active appliance and violet ray
A jar battery that he said gave a low electrical vibration, often with a solution of gold, silver, iodine or camphor in the circuit. Named in 525 readings in his words, from December 1923 (147-11), most often in 1944.
Named in 742 readings, from August 1925, peaking in 1937. The readings tell users to recharge it by setting it in ice in the evening (147-25, 1925). Its name had nothing to do with radium, and the association later renamed it the impedance device.
A hand-held high-frequency device with a glass electrode that glowed violet. Named in 996 readings, from February 1921, most often in 1924. Usually prescribed for a few minutes along the spine.
The violet ray was a commercial product, sold to doctors and households from designs derived from Tesla's high-frequency work, and it plugged into a lamp socket. A 1951 American court case found it could not treat most of what its makers claimed, and federal regulators then seized units. Most people searching for one today want to buy one. The readings simply treat it as one tool among many, along with the vibrator, the static machine and the sinusoidal current.
Color, sound, number
Color as overtone, number as rate
Asked in 1943 whether she had solved the problem of color harmony, a secretary was told, “Color is vibration, like overtones in music.” (reading 967-3, April 14, 1943). Seven years earlier a study group heard that color is only vibration and vibration is movement (281-29). Music and sound sit within 15 words of vibration about a hundred times, mostly in advice to sing or listen as part of a cure.
The readings did do numerology, though rarely and with a shrug. Reading 5751-1, given March 27, 1931 as the outline of a talk on numbers, ties number to the steps of the musical scale, to the tones of color and to the elements, then walks through one to twelve. Three is strength as in the Godhead, six is beauty and symmetry, and “NINE making for the COMPLETENESS in numbers.” That is the same three, six and nine our 369 page traces through Tesla. The same talk calls numbers a non-essential that touches only those who let it, and a 1930 reading ranks numbers as secondary. Words built on numerolog appear in 88 readings, most in 1934.
Number, metal and stone were all means to one end. A 1935 life reading speaks of “the vibrations of numbers, of metals, of stones” as aids to attune a person to the Creative Force, and warns against worshiping the aid itself (707-2).
- 1The beginning, the essence of all force
- 2Strength and also weakness
- 3Strength, as in the Godhead
- 4Beauty, but weaker in division
- 5Change
- 6Beauty and symmetry of all numbers
- 7The spiritual forces
- 8Strength and weakness combined
- 9Completeness, a change coming
Like begets like
Thought, attraction and resonance
A woman asked in 1927 how she could draw people of the right vibration to her. The reply was “By the correct vibration in self. Like begets like.” (reading 2842-2, August 19, 1927). It goes on to say each person radiates the tone it is attuned to. Like begets like turns up in 60 readings. Put plainly, that is the law of attraction, worded as tuning.
The readings also use the Mental Science saying that thoughts are things, in 19 readings from January 1928. The same phrase sits in William Walker Atkinson's 1906 book Thought Vibration, where he calls it a well known statement. Cayce never cites Atkinson, and the shared phrase shows a shared shelf of New Thought books.
The physics behind the picture is resonance: a string answers a note it is already tuned to. You can try it on our sympathetic resonance simulator. On tuning numbers the readings are silent. They never name 432, a hertz value or a cycles per second figure, so the modern 432 Hz claims draw nothing from him.
The same idea runs through the 1930s teacher Neville Goddard, who worked it as assumption and feeling, and whose 1959 vision began with a vibration at the base of his skull. Interpreting any record, a 1933 reading says, needs the reader to attune to the same vibration (378-13).
Questions
Vibration in the readings
Did Cayce say everything is vibration?
The exact phrase never appears. His closest line is from January 1929, that all force is vibration and comes from one central vibration, and in 1943 he called life and electricity vibration too.
What is the Cayce wet cell?
A jar battery the readings prescribed to give a low electrical vibration to the body, often carrying the vibration of a solution such as gold chloride. It appears in 525 readings, first in December 1923.
What did Cayce say about the violet ray?
He prescribed it in 996 readings, usually for a few minutes along the spine. It was a commercial high-frequency device, and a 1951 court case found it unable to treat most conditions its makers claimed.
Did Cayce use numerology?
Sometimes. A 1931 reading outlined a talk on numbers from one to twelve and tied them to music, color and the elements, while other readings called numbers secondary and warned against leaning on them.
Did Cayce mention 432 Hz?
No. Nothing in the readings names 432, hertz or any tuning frequency, so 432 Hz claims cannot cite him.
Sources
What this page rests on
- Readings cited: 900-422, 1861-16, 967-3, 281-29, 707-2, 2842-2, 5751-1, 2541-3, 147-11, 147-25, 378-13, 4468-1, 5579-2. Counts are ours, over all 14,301 texts, with questions, conductor's suggestions and bracketed notes removed. The A.R.E. at edgarcayce.org lets members read any of them.
- Surya Bowyer, Tesla, quacks and violet rays, Wellcome Collection, December 3, 2019.
- William Walker Atkinson, Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, New Thought Publishing, Chicago, 1906.
- Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-2007 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation. All Rights Reserved.