page_title: Eileen Caddy
section_title: The beginning of Findhorn
hierarchical_section_title: Eileen Caddy / The beginning of Findhorn
caption_attribution_description: Recycled living in the Findhorn Foundation Community made from the old vats used in whisky stills.
context_page_description: Eileen Caddy MBE was a spiritual teacher and new age author, best known as one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, near the village of Findhorn, Moray Firth, in northeast Scotland. The commune which she started in 1962 with her second husband, Peter Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean was an early New Age intentional community; as of January 2009 it has been home to over 400 residents and thousands of visitors from over 40 countries, and is one of the UK's largest alternative spiritual communities, nicknamed "the Vatican of the New Age".
context_section_description: In 1952, while posted at RAF Habbaniya, in Iraq, Combe read an article written by Squadron Leader Peter Caddy who was also posted, met him, and became interested in bringing him into the MRA fold; subsequently Eileen was introduced to Peter and his wife, Sheena Govan, daughter of the founders of the Faith Mission. Due to their shared interests in the occult and spirituality, they immediately took a liking to each other. Soon Eileen was in the circle that formed around Sheena Govan.
  Peter Caddy's marriage was already in trouble. Their friend Dorothy Maclean later recalled that Sheena had declared that she was no longer her husband's "other half", and that soon Peter would meet his "true partner".
  Eileen and Peter fell in love and in 1953 after returning to England, she asked Combe for a divorce in a letter to him in Iraq, where he was still posted. Combe immediately forbade her from seeing their five children. It was then that a traumatized Eileen visited a private sanctuary at Glastonbury with Peter, where she first claimed to have heard while meditating, the "voice of God", which said: "Be still and know that I am God." Initially she took it as a sign of a nervous breakdown, but in time she began to "love the voice as an instrument from the God within us all". Her subsequent instructions from the "voice" directed her to take on Sheena as her spiritual teacher. Sheena moved away to the Isle of Mull, Scotland, having divorced Peter Caddy. By the autumn of 1956, Peter and Eileen came over to join her nascent group of followers there, along with the two children they already had together. Following a divorce, Eileen married Peter Caddy in 1957, and they had one more son in 1968.
  Meanwhile, Sheena's group was fast gaining popularity, and was dubbed the 'Nameless Ones' by the local media, which also called her "the woman Messiah". Subsequently, from 1957, Peter and Eileen Caddy co-managed a run-down hotel in Scotland, the Cluny Hill Hotel in Forres, Moray, which they reportedly resurrected and turned into a four star hotel following practical guidance given by the "voice". Early in 1962, the couple along with most of the staff were sent by the management to resurrect another of their properties, the Trossachs Hotel, at Perthshire, but when they pleaded to be shifted back to Forres closer to their "mission", they were fired.
  Following the resulting period of unemployment, on 17 November 1962 Eileen, her husband Peter, the children and their colleague Dorothy Maclean, moved to a holiday caravan in a trailer park, a few miles from Forres and a mile from the village of Findhorn. There they began practising organic gardening as a means of supplementing their family's food supply. The garden flourished to such a remarkable extent with the help of what they claimed were plant spirit and devas that it eventually attracted national attention, and was featured in a 1965 BBC radio programme. Its supporters included Sir George Trevelyan and Lady Eve Balfour of the Soil Association.
  Beginning in 1965 a community, eventually known as the Findhorn Foundation, began to form around the work and spiritual practices of Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. The community was featured in several television documentaries by the BBC, starting in 1969, when BBC TV programme Man Alive came to Findhorn, resulting in greatly increased public awareness. Soon the place became a favorite haunt for thousands of new agers from around the world and the community bought the Cluny Hill Hotel in 1975 and turned it into a college, which stands seven miles from the Findhorn Bay Area caravan park, which was bought in 1983 More recently it was profiled by the Channel 4 documentary series, The Haven, in 2004.
  In 1971 Eileen, as "guided" by her inner voice, stopped receiving guidance for the community and from then on remained as an inspiring figure within the community. Dorothy Maclean moved to the United States in 1973, while Peter left Findhorn in 1978 after falling for a young female community member; he married twice in the following years, even started a 
caption: Recycled living in the Findhorn Foundation Community made from the old vats used in whisky stills.
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