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Contents Background and Life Past Life in Egypt Archaeological Hypotheses Criticisms and Commentary Media Coverage Works Works Cited Dorothy Eady/Omm Sety (reincarnation case) Dorothy Eady (1904–81) was a British woman who as a small child became obsessed with ancient Egypt following a near-fatal accident. She became a respected Egyptologist under the name of Omm Sety and in later life resided near the ruins of the temple in which she believed she had lived in a previous life. The lack of serious investigation produces serious problems of interpretation, however. Eady’s childhood accident, dreams and intense identification with Egyptian antiquity formed the experiential core of the case long before she settled in Egypt. The strongest points for believers include her claimed recognition of features at Abydos and her productive later career in Egyptology. The case remains controversial because only a few memories were independently corroborated and alternative psi-based readings remain possible. Background and Life Dorothy Louise Eady was born on 16 January 1904 in a suburb of London.1 Her father was a master tailor who went on to become a cinema entrepreneur. Aged three, she fell down a set of stairs and was found unconscious: a doctor declared her dead. However, an hour later she was found playing on her bed, showing no sign of injury. Shortly after the accident she began to have recurring dreams, in which she saw a huge building with columns and a garden filled with fruits and flowers. Often her mother would find her weeping, and when she asked why, the child would say ‘I want to go home’, refusing to accept that she already was home. As a young child, Eady displayed behaviours suggesting an obsession with ancient Egypt. During a visit to the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum, she ran through the displays kissing the feet of the statues, saying, ‘These are my people’, and was unwilling to leave. She constantly demanded that a chapter on ancient Egypt in a child’s encyclopedia be read to her. At six, having learned to read English, she stated that hieroglyphic writing was familiar, to her, but that she had forgotten how to read it. About a year later, she saw pictures of the Temple of Seti I in Abydos, Egypt, and claimed it was the building of which she had dreamed. ‘This is my home!’ she told her parents. ‘This is where I used to live! But why is it all broken, and where is the garden?’ Seeing a picture of the well-preserved mummy of Sety I, a late thirteenth century BCE pharaoh, she claimed to have known him personally. Aged ten, Eady was noticed by the eminent Egyptologist EA Wallis Budge of the British Museum, who agreed to teach her hieroglyphics. At fourteen, she experienced a night-time vision of Seti I, with an expression ‘of somebody in hell who has suddenly found a way out’. She also had a recurring dream in which she and other Egyptian women and girls lay on rush mats in an enormous room, and an old man carrying a lamp checked to see if they were in their proper places. In a subterranean chamber, a high priest interrogated her and beat her when she refused to answer. At the age of 27, Eady began writing and drawing cartoons for an Egyptian magazine. Marrying a young Egyptian, Imam Abdel Meguid, enabled her to obtain Egyptian citizenship and move to Egypt. By Eady’s account, the spirit of Seti I made more visits and was seen by family members and others. She often got up at night and wrote in hieroglyphics, telling her husband she was writing down details of her past-life that a being named Hor-Ra was dictating to her. Past Life in Egypt The story given to her was as follows. She was born to a soldier and a vegetable seller who named her Bentreshyt, meaning ‘harp of joy’. After her mother died she was raised as a priestess. At fourteen, she was noticed by the young king Seti who was visiting the temple, and they had a short affair.Found to be pregnant, she was interrogated by the high priest and beaten when she refused to answer, a scene that corresponded to her childhood nightmare. Eventually she confessed that her lover had been the king, and committed suicide to spare him embarrassment. But she remained in love with him and was happy when his spirit joined hers between incarnations. Eady and her husband divorced in 1936. She moved to a village near the Giza pyramids with their young son Seti and found work with the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, the start of a long career in Egyptology. She participated in digs, made copies of artwork, and authored papers, working with leaders in the field such as Selim Hassan, Ahmed Fakhry and Labib Habachi. In 1952, Eady made her first visit to Abydos. At the temple that Seti had built, she said she felt ‘as if I’d walked into a place where I’d lived before’. In a test set by the chief inspector of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities she claimed to have been able to locate certain scenes depicted on wall murals in pitch darkness; she also marke...

Dorothy Eady/Omm Sety (reincarnation case) – Psi Encyclopedia