STRAIGHT away we establish authoritatively that the Findhorn under advisement is not the wee village but the big foundation or community nearby, off the arguably wet shores of the Moray Firth.
The community is “alternative”, or “New Age”, so you would not expect a respectable man in my position, paragon of the establishment, exemplar to today’s young persons on matters of propriety, to endorse the Foundation’s approach and practices such as free dancing and looking inward (tried that – there’s nothing. Nothing).
Nevertheless, what follows will be a rigorously objective exposition, conducted with neither fear nor opiates. It will be fair, prejudiced, judgmental and verifiable or, failing that, certifiable. Besides, the present writer has a sneaking regard for old hippies.
Asked to save the life of a bank manager or a ponytailed chap called Merlin rhythmically banging a Tibetan tingsha aff his foreheid, the financier’s tea would be oot.
Let’s all smoke a jinkoh joss stick, then, and prepare to enter the mysterious world of Findhorn. As usual, the community’s origins lie in humans getting off with each other and talking to cabbages.
Eileen Caddy met her husband, Peter of that ilk, in Iraq, and immediately fell for the dapper RAF officer’s seductive chat-up lines about ancient wisdom, esoteric truths, and UFOs.
Leaving her squadron leader husband, a repressive, religious loonie who forbade her fags, booze and make-up, she went with Peter to – where else? – Mull, joining an embryonic spiritual community that the tabloid press (interested in their “complex personal arrangements”, © The Guardian) dubbed The Nameless Ones.
During this time, the early to mid-1950s, a Glasgow-based firm named Kleeneze gave Paul a job as a brush salesman. However, the couple were soon swept off their feet with an offer to live at Forres, near Inverness.
There, Eileen started taking guidance from a “still, small voice within” while Peter – all together now, in the still, small voice of Sybil Fawlty – ran a hotel.
Alien nation
One day, Eileen saw in her heid the word “Lucano” written in letters of fire. Telepathically, the couple learned this was the captain of a spaceship from Venus.
Accordingly, Peter cleared all the trees round the hotel to create a landing site for their “space brothers”.
Hoping the extra-terrestrials would help further his spiritual journey, Peter got his jotters instead from the Earthling hotel owner.
Eileen’s inner voice next mumbled something about going to live at a caravan park near a rubbish dump in Findhorn, where their friend Dorothy Maclean (faithful companion on their adventures hitherto) contacted garden spirits who told them to grow vegetables, not least because, with three kids in tow, they were finding it difficult getting by on the welfare.
At first, in the dry, sandy soil, things didn’t go too well, but a message to Eileen from God, received during a visit to a public lavatory, persuaded them to stick at it and, soon, they were were growing 40lb cabbages and monstrous broccoli.
Word spread around the world about this largesse arising from meditation and pixies, though it may have had more to do with the spreading of substantial quantities of horse manure donated by a local farmer.
As the vegetables grew, so did the community, this being the late 1960s and, over the next 20 years, it claimed around 300 members, attracting celebrities like Burt Lancaster, Hayley Mills and Shirley MacLaine.
The Findhorn Foundation was legally formed as a trust and charity.
The caravan park land was bought and, to cap it all, in 1975 they purchased the hotel where Peter had tried establishing a landing strip for that Lucano to land his spaceship.
Lord of the dance
ATTRACTING thousands of visitors from all over the world, the foundation became a residential spiritual education centre with a staff of over 100. Visitors attended courses like “Dancing Spirit Free” – disgraceful – and “Developing the Skill of Intuitive Self-Diagnosis”. Aye.
Alas, as we all know, success just brings hassle.
Questions were asked about less-than-austere lifestyles and, in a meeting with yon Virgin Mary at a healing centre outside Glastonbury, Eileen learned that New Age children would no longer be conceived through sex but through enlightened thought.
Accordingly, she wanted her relationship with Peter to move to a “higher spiritual level”.
Peter gave this serious consideration, then went on a trip to Hawaii with one of the foundation’s young female followers. That was the end of that, but not of the foundation. Eileen carried on (until her death in 2006, aged 89.
She received an MBE in 2004 for services to spiritual capers.
Over the years, Findhorn has been home to thousands of residents from more than 40 countries, with retreats not just in Moray but on the isles of Erraid and Iona.
The Ecovillage, with its famously low carbon footprint, features eco-homes made from recycled whisky barrels, wind turbines, and a sewage treatment plant called The Living Machine, presumably in preference to The Living Poop.
The foundation’s “spiritual community” includes an arts centre, shop, pottery, bakery, publishing company, printing company, and other charitable organisations. Together they comprise the New Findhorn Association to which two listener-conveners are elected annually.
Management at Findhorn is also carried out meditatively by “attunement”.
The book of job
THAT cannot possibly explain why, last month, the foundation announced it was “no longer financially viable” and that 50 out of 60 staff members faced possible redundancy.
A consultation process was due to begin, and all educational operations could cease by the end of next month.
The foundation said its finances had been declining for years, with the problem exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and surging energy bills.
This is all a great shame. It’s not even as if Eileen was around to nip oot for a slash and see if God had any more messages of encouragement. Meanwhile, in the great scheme of things, Scotland is better off with Findhorn than without it.
If it gies folk peace, let them crack on with it. And, if you’re somewhere out there, Lucano, just come doon from your spaceship in a parachute and gie us the benefit of your highly advanced craic.
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