Author: lyndaadamson

100 Years? At least! Wealth as Attitude

Writing a century apart, two authors focus on the uber-wealthy’s obvious carelessness. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby. And in 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote Careless People. Wynn-Williams’s title comes from Fitzgerald’s assertion that, in the 1920s, affluent Daisy and Tom Buchanan were “careless people.” 

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby wants to reunite with Daisy whom he first met in 1917 in Louisville and fell in love with her before going to fight in World War I. Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, meets the adult Gatsby on West Egg, Long Island, where Daisy now lives. He arranges for Gatsby to have tea with her because Nick knows that Daisy’s husband Tom is having an affair with Myrtle. Afterward, Gatsby continues to seek Daisy’s company with lavish parties at his mansion across the water from her home. At lunch one day, Tom spots Daisy telling Gatsby that she loves him. That afternoon, Tom drives them into Manhattan in Gatsby’s car. When they return, Daisy drives. When Myrtle sees the car, she thinks Tom is driving and rushes into the highway to stop him. Daisy hits her. Tom subsequently tells Myrtle’s husband, George Wilson, that Gatsby owns the car but not that Daisy was driving. Thinking that Gatsby has killed his wife, George shoots him.

            Afterward, Nick learns about Jay Gatsby’s past. Jay Gatz invented himself at seventeen when he began working for Cody, a wealthy man who promised to leave money to Jay in his will but did not. Soon Gatz renames himself Gatsby and finds other means to attract the desirable Daisy whose “voice is full of money.” He becomes involved in illegal stock market deals, skimming enough money to buy a mansion with a view of Daisy and Tom’s dock.

After Gatsby dies, Tom refuses to defend him or admit what happened. Nick, who sees Tom as bigoted and self-righteous, says of him that:

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Nick understands that the green light Gatsby watches at the end of Daisy’s deck from his mansion across the bay represents “the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .”  And Nick also recognizes that they are all “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Wynn-Williams has observed the same quest for more money, no matter the source, in the wealthy owners and managers of Facebook. As a diplomatic representative from New Zealand at the United Nations, she thought that Facebook’s stated desire to unite people around the world was wonderful. She thought Facebook’s power would absolutely “change the world.” “Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.” She spent over a year creating and “pitching” a job at Facebook to market its benefits to other governments. 

In July, 2011, she became Facebook’s Manager of Global Public Policy. By the fall of 2012, Facebook had over one billion users. Wynn-Williams planned occasions around the world where Mark Zuckerberg could meet leaders of other countries. She and Zuckerberg bonded on these trips by flying together, going to bars, eating at Michelin-starred restaurants. And while also socializing with the management team, she began to recognize their preferences. Her encounters with them revealed people very different from their public personas, especially Sheryl Sandberg, who did not espouse what she wrote in her best-seller, Lean In. 

As the team grows and other persons take leadership, Wynn-Williams raises her child and copes with sexual harassment. She also observes a shift in the culture toward money from any source. The team began allowing political posts from around the world based on their revenues without monitoring them too closely. She concludes that Facebook allowed the Myramar civil war because no one at Facebook could translate Burmese and remove the vitriolic posts the two factions flung at each other. And she knew that money from political advertisements helped to elect Trump in 2016. After all, the wealth these ads generated were feeding the coffers of Facebook’s personnel.

Although Wynn-Williams wanted to leave Facebook, she could not find another job that offered Facebook’s salary and necessary health insurance. Among many issues, Meta’s revealing of data and information to China that could harm the United States concerned her. After she accused a boss of sexual harassment, Facebook fired her for “poor performance and toxic behavior,” thereby removing her capability of resigning.

Although we do not have input from those exposed in Facebook (Meta), we can assume that Wynn-Williams has represented what she saw and heard accurately. She says, “These are still the same careless people. They’ve changed the name of the company from Facebook to Meta. But leopards don’t change their spots. The DNA of the company remains the same. And the more power they grasp, the less responsible they come.” She witnessed Facebook’s beginnings and the direction it now goes. She knows that if humanity does not address what can happen with the next technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence, mistakes like Facebook’s will expand exponentially.

So “careless people” bridge one hundred years—still trying to change themselves to become what they are not. Perhaps Zuckerberg is a reincarnation of the fictional Jay Gatsby—resembling him in taking what he thinks will allow him to achieve his goals.

Fitzgerald presents the American Dream as a myth of American capitalism. Money seems to give people power over those without. In 2025, we see many “careless” people like Jay Gatsby who “take” from others with no seeming concern over the hurt and loss they engender. That kindness and car-ing will soon prevail.

Remembering Edgar Cayce

In conversations that turn to certain subjects, I ask “Do you know who Edgar Cayce was?” Almost always the answer is, “No.” I responded the same many years ago when a friend asked me. She gave me a book, Thomas Sugrue’s There Is a River, Cayce’s first biography. I read it, and my understanding of life and why we are here on Earth began changing.

Born on March 13, 1877, in a racist Kentucky town still influenced by the Civil War, Cayce felt awkward in elementary school and shared his problems with his father. An angel visited him during the night and suggested that he sleep with a book under his head. The next morning, he could recall everything in the book. He never lost this ability the rest of his life. As a teenager, he wanted to be a minister and decided to read the entire Bible every year. But he lost his voice, unable to talk above a whisper. No treatment worked until a hypnotist came to town (a new modality at the time), and desperate Cayce went to him. After experiencing this trance, Cayce’s voice returned. He soon discovered that he could hypnotize himself, but the knowledge he received included little of what he had believed as a staunch Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian. Instead of becoming a minister, he became an excellent photographer, a skill that supported him before his reputation for accurate readings changed his life’s path. Sydney D. Kirkpatrick recounts all of this and much more in his biography of 2000, Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet. He tells the story of how and why Cayce became known as the “Sleeping Prophet.”

In 1905, Cayce read the health of a young girl of 6 who had not been developing normally since she was two. Doctors decided that she had a fatal disease since she was even regressing into “baby” talk. Cayce read her body and told her parents that a fall at the age of two had injured her spine. He believed simple chiropractic treatment would return her to normal. It did. In other trances, Cayce used medical terms of which he had no knowledge when he was awake that correctly described the client’s condition. His accuracy rapidly gained him a wide reputation with people soon clamoring for readings. His fame allowed him to establish ARE, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, after he relocated to Virginia Beach, Virginia. His wife helped him, and, eventually, Gladys Davis (Turner) became his secretary, keeping meticulous verbatim records of his readings (all of which are catalogued and categorized at ARE). Because of her assiduousness, many researchers have written books about the various topics that Cayce covered in his 14, 145 readings for 5,744 people. For the last 14 years of his life, he could do readings without going into a trance. His guides told him to do no more than two readings a day toward the end of his life, but he worried that people needed his readings. He did not listen, reading up to six people a day. He “burnt” himself out devoting himself to helping others.

Cayce’s readings told him that “mind is the builder” and that “thoughts are things.” In essence, he was one of the first mediums to gain respect for presenting information beyond space and time, including information about reincarnation. Even then, police arrested him as a charlatan after he had gained renown. A well-known citizen identified Cayce, and he was immediately released. 

He did not need to have the subject in the room with him. He could identify the problem at a distance. The one reading in Cayce’s detailed biographies that convinced me of Cayce’s ability involved a woman who had written him about her condition, frantic (as were all his subjects) to find a cure. He told her to go to her local drug store for a particular medicine. She went, but the druggist said that he had not sold that drug for years. When she told Cayce, he responded that the druggist needed to look on the left side near the back of the top shelf of his bookcase. The disbelieving druggist climbed his ladder, and the medicine was there. It cured the woman. Cayce wanted people to have well-being and never made extra money with his ability. He could have “played” the stock market, but he refused. He understood that consciousness exists before birth and after death, and that death is merely a shift from one frequency to another. Other myriad examples only add to the evidence that certifies him as a true seer. Contemporary researcher Stephan Schwartz thinks that Cayce’s work is an excellent body of non-local consciousness examples.

Cayce also predicted many things that have since come to pass—both before his death on January 3, 1945, and after. He noted that Atlantis had disappeared 10,000 years ago and was located near the island of Bimini. In 171 of his readings, in the early 1930s, he described the Essenes at Qumran, long before the Dead Sea Scrolls started appearing in 1946. He knew about  that sect and the integral role of women at the time. He also recounted the life of Jesus after he disappeared from Bible stories at age twelve until becoming an adult. Jesus had traveled to India where he learned about Hinduism and Buddhism; Cayce identified himself as one of Jesus’s friends in that past life. 

Many consider Cayce to be the father of holistic medicine. Over 9,000 of his readings were concerned with health and healing. The health treatments he repeatedly suggested were castor oil packs, diet change to fewer fried foods and more vegetables and fruits, as well as massage. (ARE has a massage school on its grounds in Virginia Beach.) He predicted that doctors would soon be able to identify various illnesses in one drop of blood. But his healing went further than the physical. He felt that humans were living in an artificially limited state of consciousness. They did not understand that the consciousness one has for well-being of the world creates social consciousness such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King espoused after Cayce’s death. Cayce realized that when people try to foster well-being, they discover that are part of the whole universe; they are interdependent. 

Humans have the power to influence their physical reality through personal spirituality, holistic health, dreams, finding their life’s purpose, reincarnation, intuition, meditation, mindful living, the Akashic records, and the ancient mysteries. Cayce believed that humans should aspire to be helpful to others by eating properly (alkaline foods, pure water), meditation with attunement to the universal, and understanding their responsibility to others. That would be success, not money or prestige. 

Cayce also predicted the telegraph, the telephone, Western Union, and Westinghouse. Cayce suggested to his wealthy friends that they should get out of the stock market before the crash in 1929. Those who did kept their money. He foretold of the Depression in 1931 while noting that it would ease in 1933. On May 28, 1926, he suggested that temperatures in deep ocean currents would indicate the weather—Niño and Niña not yet known. He predicted that Hitler would rise to power in 1935 and that only a war among many countries would be his downfall. Not until World War II was he defeated. 

If you are interested in the myriad subjects about which Cayce spoke, consult edgarcayce.org to find out more about this remarkable man and the legacy he left.

Reassessment: David Guterson’s “Snow Falling on Cedars”

In graduate school, I encountered an especially insightful critical study, Louise Rosenblatt’s The Reader, the Text, the Poem. She posited that revisiting a text at a later time in a reader’s life would elicit a different interpretation because of the reader’s interim experiences and understanding. Her premise has proved true even if sometimes the poem proves to have much less import than it did at the first reading. Snow Falling on Cedars, published in 1994, unlike many texts, has an even stronger message than when first encountered.

Snow Falling on Cedars centers on the trial of Japanese American Kabuo Miyamoto for murdering Carl Heine on Carl’s boat, the Susan Marie, during the night of 16 September 1954. Art Moran, the county sheriff, and his deputy, twenty-four-year-old Abel Martinson, find Heine, a gill-netter for salmon, caught in the net of his drifting boat on Puget Sound with his skull crushed above the left ear. While searching the boat, they find an extra battery. They decide to search Miyamoto’s boat, and after finding a battery and a rope like Carl’s, Moran decides that Miyamoto has murdered Carl although the fishermen never boarded each other’s boats except in emergencies. Without any other evidence, Moran jails Miyamoto, a U.S. Army World War II veteran. 

The December 6, 1954, trial (nearly three months after Miyamoto has been incarcerated), begins during a severe snow storm. Nels Gudmundson, seventy-nine, almost blind and suffering from neurasthenia, serves as Miyamoto’s lawyer. The prosecutor, Alvin Hooks, represents the townspeople. David Guterson’s use of omniscient point of view enables the reader to learn how the witnesses feel about Miyamoto, Heine, and the alleged crime. The educated Ishmael Chambers, a local reporter who went to school with Miyamoto’s wife Hatsue, provides much of the backstory description, including his secret high-school relationship with Hatsue.

As the witnesses appear on the stand, they disclose their prejudices. The coroner Horace Whaley comments to Art, that “if he were inclined to play Sherlock Holmes he ought to start looking for a Jap with a bloody gun butt—a right-handed Jap, to be precise.” This jest reminds Art that Miyamoto is a kendo expert. The gash over Carl’s ear reminds Whaley of the war, and he says, “The Japanese soldier, trained in the art of kendo, or stick fighting, was exceptionally

proficient at killing in this manner.” Whaley also recalls that many Japanese hit their victims above the left ear with their right hands. But Carl died from drowning, and Nels notes that Carl could not have died of a head wound because the coroner said Carl was still breathing underwater. Ishmael reports that Miyamoto kept a “detached and aloof manner,” something that the jury would note. But Whaley also remembers that Carl seemed to have few friends and, although polite, always worked by himself.

Throughout the trial, people continue to judge Miyamoto on his past actions and his present demeanor. The jury learns that Carl and Miyamoto were best friends during school but that animosity between them began during World War II when Miyamoto’s famiIy had to go to Manzabar. Carl’s mother, who hated the Japanese, quickly sells land the Miyamotos were buying from Carl’s father at a profit after his death, blaming them for missing their last two payments. When the buyer Ole Jurgensen decides to sell, Carl quickly negotiates with him before Miyamoto has the opportunity. That action would give Miyamoto a motive for murdering Carl, according to observers. Because his parents have taught him to hide his emotions, Miyamoto seems distanced from the trial’s proceedings. 

But Miyamoto reveals to the reader that he feels he must suffer for the men he killed during the war. As a Buddhist subject to the laws of karma, he expects to receive the death penalty even though he did not commit the murder. Because Miyamoto trained to be a good soldier (his great grandfather had been a samurai) by learning kendo from his father, he is condemned instead of praised for his skill. During the trial, that Art Moran arrested him on circumstantial evidence involving his past rather than the present becomes clear. Miyamoto told of going aboard Carl’s boat “dead in the water” and helping him with his battery. Carl had told him that he would sell the land to him, and Miyamoto had no reason to murder him. When asked why he hadn’t given that information initially, Miyamoto said that he had not been given the opportunity.

Nels Gudmunsson, the old lawyer, concludes his remarks to the jury, “What I see is again and again the same sad human frailty. We hate one another; we are the victims of irrational fears. . . .  Will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless time and in the face of it be truly human? in God’s name, in the name of humanity, do your duty as jurors.”

While the jury deliberates during the late-day power outage, Ishmael stops at the Point White lighthouse station which has power. He finds a report that an enormous freighter came through the fishing grounds on September 16, a night with intense fog, at 1:42, but went unnoticed because the two men on duty transferred from the station the next day. Carl’s watch had stopped at 1:47. When Ishmael finally goes to the judge the next day with the information, the judge frees Miyamoto. This legal jury would have never released him without Ishmael’s discovery.

The Japanese had lived on San Piedro Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Puget Sound, since 1883, but their neighbors betrayed them after Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941. By March, Hatsue and her family were interned at Manzabar, and there she realized that she could never marry Ishmael, her teenage love. She wrote him and “confessed to experiencing a moral anguish over meeting him so secretly and deceiving her mother and father.” Hatsue’s mother had taught her Japanese beliefs. “The whites, you see, are tempted by their egos and have no means to resist. We Japanese, on the other hand . . . understand that by ourselves, alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind.” Ishmael illustrates the difference because he focuses on himself after he goes to war and loses his arm. “It seemed . . . that the world was thoroughly altered. . . . People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were

only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people.” He is self-conscious about his missing arm and thinks “that his existence in the world made others nervous.” At the trial, Hatsue asks for Ishmael’s help, but when he finds the truth that will free Miyamoto, he almost refuses to reveal it. But he soon realizes that he could not live with himself or with Hatsue if he neglected to free her husband from prejudice and false accusation. He remembers that his reporter father, when alive, “hoped for the best from his fellow islanders . . . and trusted God to guide their hearts, though he knew them to be vulnerable to hate.” While Ishmael writes his newspaper article about the trial, he understands “that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.” Trials, supposedly based on law, are sometimes unfair.  He understands that “the heart of any other, because it had a will, would remain forever mysterious.” People are the judges and the juries of other humans, and their attitudes, formed as children, often taint their decisions. Too many times, people retain membership in an anonymous mob that judges only by religion, gender, or race.

In 2025, attitudes, situations, and judgments prevalent in 1994, are the same—if not more—pronounced.

The Telepathy Tapes # 4

Segment 9 “Profound Kid Spiritual Messages”

In the penultimate segment of Season 1’s The Telepathy Tapes, Kai Dickens explores the limits of telepathy. The earlier segments contain proof of mind-to-mind communication at great distances, and the next question becomes can telepathy occur between dimensions? Dickens’s examples start with Tani, the mother of Josiah in Minnesota. His first independent sentence was “God is a good gift giver.” Then he spelled “A-U-N-T-I-E,” referring to her great aunt whom he had never met but with whom he had been communicating. Then Tani discovered that he could describe places he had never been, had knowledge he had never been taught, and knew words he had never heard. Additionally, Josiah asked his mother to deliver messages to complete strangers in the mall. His requests made her fearful, but the people she approached were happy to hear what she told them.

When Tani was writing Josiah’s Fire, Josiah started talking about someone named Max, a famous writer who lived in Louisiana. Max had slurred speech from Covid and didn’t want other people to know. Josiah knew where Max was hiding while he was writing his new book. Tani found Max and relayed the information that Josiah had told her about him. Then Josiah and Max started their own conversation. From Atlanta, Houston states that everyone with non-speaking and unreliably-speaking autism has the ability to hear thoughts and to communicate at a distance. John Paul said goodbye to all of his Hill friends, telling them that he was going to leave. The friends both comforted and dismayed his mother Libby after John Paul transitioned. John Paul had wanted to fulfill the mission that God had given him, and he shared that he lived in a cabin by the sea surrounded by children on the “Other Side” who had not had a voice on earth. 

A former military officer, Becky, had a near-death experience (NDE) in the hospital when she went to have shrapnel removed from her brain. When she recovered, she knew that her relationship to others and to the heaven that she now understood had changed. Afterward, in the grocery store, a young man in a black leather jacket was standing in front of her. He asked her to give the clerk a seven-up and say “make seven up yours.” That guy disappeared, but she did what he had asked. The clerk fainted. The leather-jacketed man had been dead for several years, and they had once been best friends. The clerk later admitted to Becky that he had planned to go home and commit suicide. Her giving him the message from this angel changed the direction of his life. Others who have had NDEs report similar events.

John Paul also communicated with Becky, saying goodbye to her when his mother was napping.  Becky told Libby that John Paul was with his grandfather and step-grandfather. She divulges to Libby that John Paul is always with her, but that he is also very happy. At John Paul’s funeral, Houston and his mother read that “earth is to love, Love is God and God is love. Nothing else matters but love.” They echo John Paul’s statement that we need an “eternal, interconnected existence where love and purpose continue to thrive.” Dickens says of the non-speakers that “they go to places most of us can’t go. They see things most of us can’t see.”

Others describe similar experiences. Houston himself loved to study, and he read Twain and Fitzgerald. He noted that he “went to school in heaven.” His favorite, Fitzgerald, expressed to him that “love really hates when we choose money.” Amelia learned at night from rabbis, Buddha, God, and an “angel took her to meet God.” Dickens notes that “heaven is feeding a lot of the most brilliant minds on earth.” Katie and Houston wrote a book, The Book of Heaven, in which Houston describes his experiences when visiting other realms. He says that all the jobs in heaven are tied to what we loved on Earth. He elaborates that he has an open vision during his supernatural experiences where he sees something that seems real but that isn’t actually happening then. “I see it with my spiritual eyes like full pictures.” 

Asher from England has experiences in another realm where he can access information on any topic. He speaks of reincarnation and that all our lives are happening at once. When we find out something amazing in this life, it will have repercussions in our other lives because “it’s all parts of our soul exploring consciousness in different ways.” However, we have to get this knowledge through our physical 3D life first. Out of these discussions, Dr. Powell has posited a simulation theory, a theory that “our reality was created by someone or something else” and another called “change blindness” when “people don’t see what they don’t expect to see.” 

Dickens concludes this segment by quoting Socrates who 2,500 years ago said that relying merely on reading and writing might give people a “false belief” that they understand something. And to counteract this, non-speakers say that time is an illusion, that other realms exist, and that telepathy is the norm. Asher notes that beings, entities, have always visited our world, but that only some people are open to that reality. These beings are guides and advisors rather than enemies. He concludes, “We need to adopt a humble and wondering attitude, because our instruments cannot measure all that is taking place in and beyond our reality.”

Segment 10 “Voices of Non-Speakers”

In the final segment of Season 1 of The Telepathy Tapes, Kai Dickens gathers the “voices” of the non-speakers. She first introduces Sammy, 25, who lives in Carmel with her family. Sammy spells for her that those who have participated in the tapes have helped them to “shatter reality for our parents . . . then we shatter reality for the schools, the teachers, the therapists.” Alex comments that neurotypicals need to understand that non-speakers are not broken, that they need support like everyone else, that they are “inside these uncooperative bodies.” 

At this point in society, many non-speakers have been lost in the care system. Their “ultra-functioning” has not been acknowledged or recognized. They have often been damaged with drugs and erroneous diagnostics. They need complementary therapies like sound healing, acupuncture, massages, Kinesiology, tuning forks, and shiatsu. One of their communication problems has been the lack of trained spellers who are willing to work with non-speakers and help them learn to use the letter boards. 

Other non-speakers also share their abilities. One sees auras and peoples’ energy. Another refuses to communicate telepathically if he does not experience loving feelings–and all non-speakers agree. Still another spells that he is a “futuristic human being. . . I’m a pure, transparent soul here to help humanity evolve . . . I am in tune with vibrational frequencies and can match specific frequences to access and to transfer thought forms into words that allow me to communicate interdimensionally.” Anthony adds that he extrapolates information from the Akashic records and works between dimensions with different energies. He needs to adjust his frequency, but he is able to do that when frequency is attuned to love. He continues, “love is eternal. Everything else is an illusion caused by separation. Great change occurs when we join our souls as one. Humans must be driven by loving kindness.” Two brothers say “What we would like for the world, for humanity, is to shut their mouths more and to connect more.” 

And Jackson from Virginia says, “it is difficult to live in my mind because it moves so fast. . . the compassion we can offer can change everything”

More non-speakers express similar thoughts. They say “we are the light workers.” And “now is the time for Waked Love to open the hearts of those who deserve understanding.” They add, “be open to the possibility that we are beyond what you think you know about our capabilities, knowledge, and worth. And finally, “emotional intelligence is the key. It goes back to the knowledge of oneself.” Another adds, “world change is not a pipe dream. It’s truly why we are here.” Lily believes that “no change in humanity will come until humanity can realize that we are all mutually connected to each other.” Finally, “love and helping others has to be more important than serving yourself.”

So much is included in these tapes, that I suggest you listen if you have time. What non-speaking persons know is astounding; what speaking persons know is not!

The Telepathy Tapes # 3

Segment 7 “Mind-reading Discovery Unveiled”

In my other two entries about The Telepathy Tapes, I describe Kai Dickens’s interviews with several non-speaking, Speller neurodivergent (autistic) subjects. Since materialism fails to explain consciousness in Segment 6, her interviews suggest that “consciousness is the foundation of the universe predating everything.” Additional interviews presented in this segment echo that conclusion.

Maura’s ten-year-old daughter Ameila from Milwaukee has DDX3X, a syndrome that physicians consider an intellectual disability in females. But when Maura began to spell with Ameila, she discovered Amelia’s immense knowledge. Amelia also shocked her “man of science” father who had difficulty believing Amelia’s astonishing ability. She indicated to them through spelling that her hands would not do what her mind wanted. She revealed her telepathy and knew other languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and hieroglyphics. Her mother believes her language facility comes from focusing on the emotion and meaning and symbolism rather than the individual words. Unfortunately, for Amelia, she also receives messages about things that will happen, and they do. For example, she had precognition of a mass shooting in the South. She has the clairs—clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and telekinesis (the ability to converse and interact with other realms). She communicates with relatives who have transitioned and have messages for family members. Amelia illustrates the concept that undesirable precognition possibly comes from lacking a dissociative boundary, the “shield” around the brain to keep out uninvited knowledge. She worries about friends on the Hill who indicate how lonely and isolated they feel and wants to help them. Her goal is to go to Harvard and become a genetics doctor.

Dickens finally meets an adult, Joe, a former New York lawyer who later became a minister in Phoenix, Arizona. He read around 40 papers from the 1990s that discredited spelling. Then he discovered around 100 papers written more recently that were approving, acknowledging that Non-speakers had been misrepresented in the past. A researcher at the University of Virginia suggested tracking eye movements and hand movements to see which happened first. They discovered that the eye went first to the letter and then the hand, indicating that the Spellers’ thoughts were their own.

Adults who had telepathy were able to learn other things. When Joe worked with Cody and Josiah from Minnesota who had communicated on the Hill, he discovered that they met because they were sincere in their wish to talk honestly. Speaking one sentence took so much effort that they were not willing to lie. A spelling facilitator able to communicate telepathically went on the Hill. She said that the autistics communicated peace and love with each other. Other teachers and therapists that developed telepathic communication with their non-speaking students found the same thing.

One of the Spellers from past segments, Asher, validated what the others said and thinks that the “new paradigm idea” should be that “maybe consciousness is the base of everything.” His former teacher says that his scope of knowledge is so advanced and metaphysical that keeping up with him became impossible. Asher could put his hand on top of hers, and after a few seconds, give her a complete summary of what she had read up to that point. He admitted that he did that with all the books for which he knew the content. Asher used words into his 20s, but then he stopped because talking took too much effort. Asher suggested to his teacher that she get rid of the clutter in her mind. By emptying her mind, she could sometimes communicate telepathically with him. Asher told her how to help her friend’s headaches by suggesting work on the brain’s myelin shield. She knew nothing about that part of the brain, but indeed, he was correct. She wishes she could start a clinic where Asher could diagnose as many people as possible.

Segment # 8 “Unlocking Hope, Battling Misconceptions”

In this segment, Kai Dickens examines the vicious attacks against Spellers. ASHA (The American Speech Language Hearing Association), in charge of licensing speech pathologists, discredited Spellers and would not admit them into regular school classes. Houston, from earlier segments, was only allowed to attend a US History class his last few months of school, the extent of his “formal” education. 

Spellers most often must have someone guide their hands to learn to spell because their bodies and their brains are disconnected. They need a touch, but “facilitated communication” led at least one non-speaker to blame the facilitator for illicit touching. Whether this proved to be an “assault,” is unsubstantiated. But RPM (rapid prompting method) began where Non-speakers could point to a letter board. When John Paul’s mother (from earlier segments) saw children communicating with letter boards, she was able to teach John Paul. Then he could express the poetry that he had in his brain and his extraordinary knowledge of mathematics. Other Spellers also reveal unexpected information that the parents do not know and certainly do not expect their child to know, like Amelia. One neurodivergent person said that he could not see his body in his mind, and Akil from an earlier segment said that he didn’t realize he had hands and fingers. Houston noted that he could not feel his tongue, and that only when he flapped his hands did he know where they were.

Wondering if other parents and children used telepathy instead of spelling, a mother, Caroline, in Cornwall, England, posted online that her son Kyle (38 years old) and she had communicated telepathically for his entire life. She decided to ask others if they had communicated telepathically with their children, and the response was enormous. Kyle would get her to lucid dream so she would remember what they communicated. Then Caroline could remember the words of Kyle’s songs and rapidly record them the following morning. Kyle, a musician, demonstrated that spiritual gifts and telepathy could exist even when someone was not spelling. Kyle has written two albums and is working on another. People including Mary Shelley, Paul McCartney, and J. K. Rowling have revealed that their ideas have also come through dreaming. Caroline explains that when one says the word “Christmas,” it’s just a word. Telepathically, “Christmas” becomes the idea and includes everything one might associate with Christmas—the season, the tree, the presents. Telepathy is the purest form of communication, “unfiltered by ego or worldview.”

The Non-speakers are not as bound to their bodies as the rest of humanity. The retired lawyer, Arthur Golden, has collected all kinds of information on the progress of telepathy and Spellers as legitimate. He now lives in Israel with his ultra-orthodox son Ben who channels spirit messages distributed to over 80,000 people. Arthur has been aware that Ben could read his mind since 1994. In the 1990s, the Autism Society of America associated with Syracuse University, suppressed telepathy. Arthur has an extensive paper trail of teachers, parents, and administrators who have either been fired or silenced because they mentioned telepathy. Dickens indicates that this gatekeeping continues to this day with the fear that telepathy will undermine the credibility of spelling. But all communicators try to clear their minds of anything that might influence the Spellers—thinking of the wrong answer, singing, saying a word that doesn’t make sense in the telepathy conversation to assure that the thoughts belong to the Speller. 

Once one accepts the idea of telepathy, one must examine the ideas being communicated—it’s love. The Hill believes that we are all one—all of us. The ideas being communicated are their worry about the climate, the planet, and how neurotypicals are destroying it. They look forward to a “new science, new medicine, new education, and new forms of parenting.” A caring exists in this community that ASHA tries to quell by not accepting that it exists. Materialism has failed. In Telepathy Tapes # 4, Dickens will discuss the spiritual messages that these neurodivergent persons receive and discuss.

The Telepathy Tapes # 2

In her series, The Telepathy Tapes, Kai Dickens relates stories of non-speaking autistics who communicate through telepathy. In segment #3, she introduced Houston from Atlanta. In Segment # 4, we meet Houston’s 16-year-old friend 6’ 8” and 300-pound John Paul whom he met after his mother Libby communicated with Houston’s mother, Katie. While John Paul and Houston played in the hot tub, Libby and Katie talked to Kai. Libby explained some of her life with John Paul. Since he will run away without warning, called “eloping,” she often sleeps with him. On vacation at Hilton Head, he disappeared in the middle of the night. After searching frantically along the beach and then calling in the Coast Guard and the police, they found him in a neighbor’s boat. John Paul wrote for his therapist that he had premedicated the escape just because he wanted some autonomy, some freedom, like his twin Thomas. 

Libby did not know about the telepathy connections or that John Paul had telepathy until Katie told her about it. A quick test showed that John Paul knew the number of which she was thinking. Then Libby recalled several times when she was tired and negative that John Paul cried inconsolably until she calmed. She also remembered hiding things from him that he immediately found. After he learned to write, he told Libby about his telepathic conversations. In their “open space,” a phrase describing “open-ended conversation” with the writing boards, he told her that he had two goals: to become a writer and to marry Lily, a lovely blonde young woman he had met at school. He and Lily spent time together, but the parents were unconcerned because they couldn’t control their bodies enough to become sexual partners. They had little kisses and held hands. The romantic John Paul brought her flowers, and she loved his poetry. When visiting, they could be on different floors, but they were always communicating. Lily called people who speak “voice users.”

Libby accepts John Paul with unconditional love, even when he appears completely naked in front of company because he lacks inhibitions. But he has also shocked people with his ability to read their minds when they thought that he understood nothing—including his brothers and their friends. In a test with Dr. Jeff Tarrant, a clinical psychologist, John Paul scored 100%. The average success is 20% with 30% or 40% correct answers both impressive and statistically meaningful. Although John Paul had difficulty staying still to be tested since the QEEG scan requires a tight head cap, ear clips, and finger sensors, he wanted to share his ability with other people. When John Paul was talking on the Hill, he would cover his head with pillows to drown out other noises in the house while he communicated with people around the world from his bedroom. John Paul said they were like the root system of trees talking to each other. Thousands converse on the Hill at the same time. 

When Kai Dickens talks to Lily’s parents, she discovers that Lily is a language savant who knows Spanish and other languages. Her parents, however, do not divulge this information because of “gatekeepers,” people who want to keep others unaware of a non-speaker’s knowledge. Non-speakers can compose music, create art, write poems, speak languages, and much more so hearing others’ thoughts does not exclude them from having their own thoughts. People in this community believe that as soon as enough of the non-speaking world can “spell,” gatekeepers will no longer be able to stop others from discovering their abilities. Dickens mentions savants including Daniel Temet who could make math calculations and recite pi up to 22,000 digits and Ramses who could read eight different languages by the age of two (Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish). A person can excel at something without having studied indicating that consciousness comes from somewhere outside the brain—an impossible condition according to materialists. 

In segment # 5, Kai Dickens talks to teachers about their experiences with non-speakers and adults—usually parents. Before one retired teacher visited Asher, a former student, she purchased his favorite butter cookies. At the store, she saw and bought chocolate donuts, chocolate chip cookies, and fish candies that he also liked. When she went inside to see him, she forgot the items in the car.  At the end of the visit, he drew their pictures on a piece of paper. She remembered thinking about him in the grocery store and realized that he received that information telepathically. Early in her career, she noticed that students had telepathy. She made videos and sent them to quantum physicists and universities, but they ignored, censored, or ridiculed her and them. Non-speakers have so much information that asking them to spell it “is like “trying to suck an elephant through a straw.” But no one wants to admit that they have misdiagnosed and underestimated non-speakers for decades, placing some non-speakers in institutions, drugging them, or even euthanizing them in some cultures. When he became an adult, Asher told her that he preferred to use telepathy because trying to coordinate breath, mouth, and throat to speak with volume, pitch, tone, expression, and intention was exhausting and crude. He wished that other adults could feel his thoughts the way that he could feel theirs.

A second teacher, a language pathologist who has worked in schools for 30 years, requested anonymity, fearing loss of her professional license and certification. Early in her career, she was talking with a paraprofessional, and one of the students began to misbehave. They discovered that he was upset that the “para” would be leaving soon. Immediately after, the para received a text from her husband asking her to rescue him since he had locked his keys inside his car. At another time, a teacher blurted to a parent that her child could read her mind. Instead of chastising, the parent expressed her belief that her child was special. An American teacher observed how a new six-year-old student in the class was quickly influencing the other children although they had exchanged no words. She realized that they were communicating telepathically, and she let them know that she wanted to be a part of their conversation. They started teaching her to use telepathy, to learn “plinking,” or communicating on the Hill.

Susie Miller, the author of Awesomism, a New Way to Understand the Diagnosis of Autism, mentions meeting her first client in 1999 and seeing a column of light floating above his physical body. The little 4-year-old said to her telepathically that she was there to put his light body back into his physical body. She had no idea what he meant, but after a year, she understood. Then she wanted to tell his mother, but he said “not yet,” because she wasn’t ready to understand. He wanted color and asked Miller to bring scarves. When they were over his head, he knew all the answers because he had synesthesia, and he could absorb pictures and words through the colors. She also found two tuning forks for him that helped regulate his body. He called the two forks that worked his “soul tone.” Eventually she wrote her book, and parents, professionals, educators, psychiatrists reached out to say they had had similar experiences.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake from Cambridge told Kai that most scientists believed in materialism—all is made of physical stuff or matter that can be calculated. They discount all else because their belief system is immutable even though irrational. He had studied telepathic communication among animals and concluded that our field-like minds extend into space and merge with other mental fields. If one thinks of a friend, and the friend soon calls, that would be merging mental fields or mental telepathy.  A huge flock of starlings changing direction all at once are obviously communicating telepathically. Sheldrake thinks social animals all communicate this way—termites, ants, birds, bison, fish, wolves. And he offers further insights in segment 6.

In segment 6, Kai Dickens reports that Dr. Sheldrake had contacted Dr. Powell when he first heard about her research. At a coffee break with Sir Rudolf Peters, a biochemist whom Queen Elizabeth had knighted, Dr Sheldrake first heard about a disabled, blind child who could read an eye chart through his mother’s eyes. Sir Peters had investigated and tested the boy and his mother in laboratories five miles apart. What he observed was valid. Dr Sheldrake’s own animal research revealed that 50% of dogs and 30% of cats knew when their owners were coming home, and he wrote a book detailing his research. He set up cameras to watch how the animals reacted when the owners were five miles away. If the owner later got detained, the animal would stop waiting. 

Amy Morgana read about Dr. Sheldrake’s research and contacted him about her African gray parrot Nikesi that knew over 1,500 words and could speak in full sentences using the proper tense. It could also create new words by combining words it knew. It acknowledged Jane Goodall when she walked into the room and commented that she had a chimp since it had seen pictures in books. Nikesi also would wake up Amy in the middle of the night to comment on her dreams. Dr. Sheldrake set up complicated experiments to test Nikesi and noted that the results were odds against chance of millions or billions. The parrot was incorrect some of the time, but it could interpret possible problems from just seeing a photograph. All of this appears in a peer-reviewed journal article.

Kai Dickens’s father questioned the validity of her involvement in telepathy research until he heard a poignant story concerning elephants. A man, Lawrence Anthony, bought a game refuge to save old animals. He heard about a herd of nine problem-causing elephants that were going to be killed. He went into the bush to live with them until they eventually trusted him. He then moved them into his game preserve, where sometime later, he unexpectedly suffered a fatal heart attack. Two days after he died, a herd of twenty-one elephants living 12 hours away arrived outside his house to stand vigil for two days before returning to the bush. They had not visited the house for one and one-half years, and no one told the animals about Anthony’s death. They just knew. For the next three or four years, they arrived at his house on March 4, the anniversary of his death, showing their unbreakable bond.

Dr. Dean Radin, an engineer and chief scientist at the Institute for Noetic Sciences (started by astronaut Ed Mitchell after returning from his Apollo 14 mission), studies the conscious universe and entangled minds. He told Dickens that “in science, we don’t have proof. We only have proof in alcohol and logic.” He mentions the Gonsfeld telepathy testing method requiring a sender and a receiver with double-blind or placebo controls as the most reliable contemporary experiment. Legitimate results are guessing right about 30 to 31 %. These phenomena have been discussed for many decades in peer-reviewed academic journals, but materialists say that they are purely entertainment. In tests, senders in an electromagnetically shielded chamber through which radio, television, or cell phone waves cannot pass try to communicate with distant receivers. The only physics that these tests don’t violate is quantum because only in quantum physics do ideas of non-local connections exist. 

Specific conditions must be met for particles to become entangled. Radin elucidates that the model for the sciences is a pyramid with physics on the bottom, chemistry on the next level, and biology above. After biology might be psychology. At the top is awareness, or consciousness, but no one knows where it comes from. He suggests that the pyramid should be reconstructed to address where consciousness might come from, “hard problem,” since it does not seem to be inside the brain. Unfortunately, the materialists control universities and the media. They accuse people who disagree with them as stupid and uninformed. Radin calls their belief system “scientism,” a fundamentalist religion.

Another converted scientist, Dr. Marjorie Wolcott, member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, didn’t question materialism until her sister convinced her to mediate. After she began writing a book about awareness, she discovered that credible people in peer-reviewed articles had already completed much research. In essence, she also determined that the bottom layer of the pyramid should be awareness, not physics. What she and others are wondering is why contemporary science has been thinking so rigidly. Perhaps our minds exist to help us separate from and block out psychic and telepathic states, but people who are neurodivergent may not have the illusion of separation. Psychic and telepathic states, including near-death experience accounts, seem to have a state of psi, or communication with the quantum field. Dickens then met Amelia, a 10-year-old, with many connections to spirits, precognition, and other psi situations that her mother tries to comprehend. Dickins covers her story in segment # 7, to be addressed in The Telepathy Tapes # 3.

Have You Heard of “The Telepathy Tapes”?

After Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, Johns Hopkins-trained and Harvard neuropsychiatrist, started studying savants, she had an unexpected result. Persons—doctors, scientists, educators, many parents—who interact with those diagnosed as non-verbal autistics, say that their inability to talk keeps them from communicating. Many of them have telepathy—they merely need to find a way to communicate that trait. Dr. Powell found that letterboards, typing on iPads, and other aids revealed another side to their abilities. Kai Dickens, a podcaster, met Dr. Powell, and these two plus technicians interviewed many non-verbal autistics. In the initial 10-tape series, Dickens wanted to create a documentary about Dr. Powell’s discoveries and the various obstacles she faced to get funding for her important project. Kai Dickens investigates different subjects, approaches, and needs, with each of her podcasts covering different facets of their situations.

In Tape 1, Dickens recounts her trip to Mexico with Dr. Powell to meet a young girl, Mia, whose mother claimed that they communicated telepathically. Three cameras and carefully-controlled tests showed that Mia could identify random numbers, objects, and colors through telepathy with her mother located in another room. Mia’s almost 100 % ability to identify these things stunned disbelieving materialist technicians filming the event.

Tape 2 introduces the non-speaking Akhil and his mother Manisha. When only 10 months, his autism surfaced. Determined to help him learn to talk and communicate, she began by teaching him to type. Then she successfully transmitted words and numbers to him without personal contact. He also learned to use a computer and was attending college when Dickens met him. They too demonstrated Akhil’s telepathic ability. Akhil’s accomplishments shocked Dr. Deepak Chopra when they met.

Dickens introduces the audience to Katie and her son Houston from Georgia in Tape 3. Houston did not talk before he was 17. His mother, divorced from his abusive father and raising four other children, was working three jobs. Houston saw her despair, and for the first time ever, looked into her eyes and said “I love you.” A psychologist told Katie that some communicate with RPM. She did not know about it—”rapid prompting method”. She called a mother who used it and realized that Houston had been enclosed in his body with no way to communicate for almost two decades. Distressed and dismayed, she decided he would learn how to use the letterboard. 

By the time he was 21, he wrote his first sentence on it. Houston loved stones, and after his mother hid some for his Christmas gift, he immediately went to the space and found them. He had read her mind and knew where they were hidden. (Stones have piezoelectric energy which can transmit mechanical to electrical and back. And each stone has its own measurable hertz, attractive to Houston.) This ability to find hidden objects is commonplace among autistic non-speakers, and parents cannot successfully hide things from them. Houston’s family had a difficult time believing that he knew anything until he told them accurately what they and their friends were thinking. Since he was young, Houston had known the horrible abusive crimes that his father had plotted and committed against members of the family but couldn’t tell them until he learned to communicate. 

Katie relates a call from a woman in Utah who told her that her nine-year-old claimed that Houston was his best friend and that they communicated telepathically. Thought is energy, and it behaves like energy, like radio waves. The brains of these non-speakers resemble cell towers, transmitting and receiving information. Houston believed that every non-speaker could communicate telepathically. But when he is in a room with other people, he may not be able to discern to whom the thought belongs. When Dickens asks Houston via Zoom if he talks to his friends through the telepathic “The Talk On The Hill,” he writes “Definitely.” The “Hill” is where many telepathic autistic non-speakers meet to discuss their lives and share information. They do not have to be in the same state—or the same country! For those who think that non-speakers are mentally challenged, this ability is mind-boggling. Non-speakers and those with apraxia (no control over their bodies) are often taught only colors or shapes because educators have thought they were unable to learn. Their testing methods have been completely unsuitable. They are, in essence, trying to teach a blind person to read. To test Houston in Atlanta, Dickens and Dr. Powell took expert Dr. Jeffrey Tarrant to conduct a brain scan. He used a hyperscanner to scan both Karie’s and Houston’s brains simultaneously. Then they conducted a series of tests, even double-blind tests, that reveal Houston’s stunningly accurate identification. The skeptical staff was amazed at what they before had not believed possible!

When I decided to write about (now the first season) of The Telepathy Tapes, I thought I would briefly summarize each one of the ten tapes. However, each of the tapes contains such interesting information that I will cover the others in future blogs. Everyone needs to know about this unexpected discovery!

Three Women Warriors

English speakers used to think “BC” meant “Before Christ.” When the acronym evolved to “BCE,” or “Before Common Era,” it expanded to include all faiths. Perhaps BC should now mean “Before Cameras.” All three of these woman warriors presented here fought for their land and their people before any photographic or bronze likenesses could be created of them. Bronze equestrian statues represent two of them, and the third, a Muslim, has no artistic guesses as to what she might have looked like since her faith condemns representation of animals or humans. In essence, we can still only imagine their countenances as they led, yes, led, their people with integrity against those who would take their land and destroy their cultures. One lived in the first century BCE and the other two in AD, from the 7th and 15th centuries respectively.

A bronze chariot with three women, the center one brandishing a sword, stands at the western end of the Westminster Bridge in London. The women—Boudicca (d. c.60-62) and her daughters suffered under the Romans. After the Romans invaded the land known as Britain, they encountered native tribes (like Native Americans in North America and the Aztecs and Mayans in South America) who refused to accept their sovereignty. One of these tribes, the Iceni, lived in the current counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. When King Prasutagus of the Iceni died, Romans raped his wife, Boudicca, and his two daughters. Then they enslaved other Iceni leaders. Boudicca gathered a large army, destroyed the Roman colony of Camulodunum (now Colchester), marched on Londinium and Veralamium (now London and Saint Albans), and sacked them. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, her troops killed around 70,000 Romans. Suetonius, Roman governor of Britain, had been fighting the Druids in Anglesey, but he rushed back to fight her with force and destroy her. In despair, Boudicca killed herself by taking poison on the battlefield. Information about Boudicca (Boadica) comes from archaeological digs and aerial reconnaissance as well as Agricola, Tacitus’s father-in-law, who was probably in London during the uprising. The Romans curtailed her bravery, but history remembers.

A’isha (614?-678) fought in the Middle East during the 7th century.  The vivacious A’isha (Ayeshah) became the favorite young wife of the Prophet Muhammad after the death of his first wife, Khadija. Muhammad had originally married A’isha when she was nine to strengthen ties with his chief advisor, her father Abu Bakr. After Muhammad’s death in 632, she became a widow of eighteen, forbidden to remarry. With no children to mother, she helped her father become the first caliph of the Muslims and used her energies for social and family activities both during his caliphate (632-34) and that of Umar I, which followed. When Uthman then ascended, A’isha became aware of his weaknesses and led opposition to his administration. Uthman was murdered in 656, and three rivals tried to take over—Ali, Talhah, and Zubair. A’isha hoped to regain the caliphate for her family, but Ali, whom A’isha thought had killed Uthman, won the succession. After A’isha took a pilgrimage to Mecca in her early forties, she returned to Medina and began a civil war against Ali. She led a battle from atop her camel, but her army lost near Bashra in 656. Ali captured her, but when she promised to avoid politics, he released her. She kept her pledge; however, followers recorded her oral statements and public speeches, and Muslims credit her with 2,010 traditions, 1,210 of them that Mohammed supposedly related to her directly. Large crowds attended her funeral, and most Muslims still admire her as “Mother of the Believers.” Even though Ali’s supporters, the Shi’ahs, still show her hostility, according to the oral tradition 150 years after her death, she had a practical knowledge of medicine and astronomy, great political energy, and an ability to organize and to perpetrate propaganda. 

Perhaps the western world knows the French warrior, Joan of Arc (1412?-1431), better than either Boudicca or A’isha. Over 37 statues of Joan of Arc surround the globe, 27 of them in France. The best-known is probably displayed on the Place des Pyramides in Paris. With little formal education, Joan of Arc helped the French overcome the English occupation. Born on January 6, 1412?, in Domrémy, she first acknowledged when twelve that she heard someone speaking to her. After hearing the voice on other occasions, she said that French defender Archangel Michael was asking her to be obedient so that God could help her and France. Joan believed that Michael had sent her three directives: go to Orléans to lift its siege, have the king crowned, and drive the English from France. The angel promised Joan that the commander of a nearby castle would help. When she met with Charles, he asked her why he should believe her, and she told him something in private that left him visibly affected. She and her troops floated down the Loire River to Or1éans, where she demanded that the British surrender. They laughed, but the French quickly won their first battle. The next day, May 5, 1429, they won a second, and finally a third battle, to save Orléans. The Burgundian troops captured her outside Compiègne in 1430, tried her, and convicted her of immodesty and blasphemy. In 1431, she was burned on the scaffold in Rouen. In 1455, when her family requested a new trial, the verdict was reversed. In 1920, the Roman Catholic Church finally canonized her as a saint. Whether she heard voices becomes irrelevant when one realizes her accomplishment.

These women supported their beliefs with their strength (only one surviving until elderly), but all of them were convinced of their rights and those of their people to live without external dominance. Would that women could do so today—oppose wrongs with strength and honor.

Strong Women From Before 100 BCE

Several years ago, I published a book, Notable Women in World History. The goal was to identify 500 women born outside of the United States who had achieved something noteworthy, summarize their lives, and briefly annotate five biographies of each published since 1970. What I discovered was that five hundred women did not have authentic biographies available, and those with none had to be excluded. I changed my criteria to include at least one full-length biography and more if available. Of those remaining women, three noteworthy women come from BCE (Before Common Era). Since many accomplished women have not been included in written history, we must acknowledge those who have been and keep them part of our history.

The earliest of these three women, Hatshepsut (1503(or 8)-1458 BCE), was the first woman pharaoh and ruler of Egypt in two thousand years. The daughter of Thutmose I, she married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and when he died in 1479 BCE, she became regent to his young heir, Thutmose III. In 1473 BCE, she assumed the title of pharaoh, the king. Although she may have fought in Nubia, her reign was generally peaceful, prosperous, and productive. She had a mortuary temple constructed at Deir el-Bahri in Thebes showing scenes of her birth and her achievements, such as bringing the obelisks to the temple at Karnak and retrieving cargoes from the expedition to the Land of Punt on the Red Sea. After her murder, Thutmose III removed her followers from their exalted positions and began his rule. By the time he died, he had smashed her statues and tarnished her reputation. Later historians characterize her rule as progressive with ambitious architectural projects and trade expansion. Proabably many more women have led countries but been erased from history by jealous men.

The second Egyptian queen, Nefertiti (c. 1370-1330 BCE), became the queen of Egypt as the wife of Akhenaton. The daughter of Queen Tiy and Amenhotep III, she promoted and then rejected her husband’s new religion worshipping the sun god Aten as the main Egyptian deity. She raised her half-brother Tutankhamen, educated him, and, after Amenhotep III died, arranged his marriage. When she had him crowned at Karnak, she ensured continuation of her power, with him reinstating the old religion. She has been known only to scholars since the nineteenth century, and information about her comes almost wholly from sites, monuments, and inscriptions. In 1912, archaeologists found a bust that they identified as Nefertiti, and it is one of the most widely recognized Egyptian artifacts. It now exhibits in Berlin’s Neues Museum. 

Aspasia (470?-400 BCE) of Miletus, noted for her beauty, genius, and political influence, was the consort of Pericles, the Athenian statesman, after he secured a divorce from his first wife. Since she was not an Athenian citizen, they could not legally marry; therefore, their son, considered illegitimate, was not allowed citizenship. Aspasia was interested in many things; subsequently, her home became a gathering place for the learned and distinguished people of Athens. Associates of the young Socrates knew her well, and she has the reputation of being the teacher of Sophocles. She was one of the two women (Diotima is the other) whom Plato mentioned in his writing. Aspasia influenced many of the decisions that Pericles made, and some historians have held her responsible for the Samian revolt and the Peloponnesian War. She is a character in the play Menexentis, and comedies often attacked her private life and her public influence on Pericles. Information about her after Pericles died of plague in 429 BCE became scarce, but she most likely continued to influence male Athenians as a rare woman in Athens who held intellectual and social power. Modern historians do recognize her influence.

These three women exerted their positions to improve conditions in Egypt and Greece. Unfortunately, we have no biographies in English about other women before 100 BCE although we can sense that many aided civilization’s advances.