The Spirit of Findhorn

This slim appendix to The Magic of Findhorn and The Findhorn Garden offers a selection of the more universal messages Eileen Caddy has received during her mystical development. These communications (God speaks through her) reveal "the spirit" of her remarkable New Age community in north Scotland in a double sense: they bear witness to the power guiding the group's growth and express the animating principles of its life. The revelations are introduced by Roy McVicar's rather adulatory biographical sketch of the woman who risked leaving husband and children to join Peter Caddy in following God's demanding lead. A kind of contemporary Taoism, her way involves getting in tune with the divine plan according to which nature and history operate - even if it means radical change and flaunting religious and moral conventions - so as to realize one's full potential and take part in a new evolutionary dawn. Whether the verse-like messages appear profoundly simple or quite commonplace depends largely on one's perspective, but Elixir (her spiritual name) emerges unambiguously as a strong, attractive figure with a beneficial vision. Still, the book scarcely stands on its own; much of its interest is contingent on prior familiarity and sympathy with the Findhorn venture. (Kirkus Reviews)