THE charismatic founder and spiritual leader of the largest "new age'' community in the UK, the Findhorn Foundation, has died, it was announced yesterday.
Eileen Caddy, 89, who founded Findhorn 44 years ago, died on Wednesday but the news was withheld until after her funeral and cremation at the end of last week.
Mrs Caddy, who was considered a spiritual guru by tens of thousands of people across the world, had suffered from failing health for the past two years after a fall which resulted in an operation to insert steel pins into her hip and leg.
A mother of seven and grandmother of 20, she established Findhorn, near Forres on the shores of the Moray Firth, with her second husband Peter and friend Dorothy Maclean in 1962.
The Findhorn community started when Mr and Mrs Caddy, their three children and Ms Maclean set up home in a caravan park to pursue their spiritual beliefs.
They were pioneers of organic gardening, extolling the virtues of the practice decades before it became fashionable, and over the years the commune steadily grew.
Today it welcomes more than 14,000 visitors every year from more than 70 countries for spiritual retreats and workshops, and generates about GBP4m for the local economy.
The Caddy family's association with the north-east of Scotland dates back to 1957 when they took the job of managing the Cluny Hill Hotel in Forres.
Mr Caddy, who died in a car accident in Germany in 1994, was a former RAF officer who was in charge of catering on the Burma front during the Second World War.
Mrs Caddy claimed God spoke to her during meditations and the hotel was run according to the divine instructions she received.
At times, some of the divine messages bordered on the bizarre; she claimed that God told her the way to deal with a drunken cook was "to give the chef another whisky".
When they lost the job of running the hotel, they set up in the caravan park near Findhorn and eked out a living growing vegetables and claiming unemployment benefit.
Canadian-born Ms Maclean claimed she was able to commune with the spirits of plants and Mr Caddy acted on the instructions she gave him. The barren, sandy soil of Findhorn Bay started yielding huge vegetables, all grown organically.
More people started arriving to join the community and this influx accelerated after the publication of Mrs Caddy's book, God Spoke to Me, in 1967.
New community members lived in caravans beside Mr and Mrs Caddy's and in specially built cedarwood bungalows which still house guests and workshop participants today.
Mrs Caddy became the matriarch of the community and doled out daily advice she claimed she received from God. One of the divine instructions was to build a dining area for 180 people when there were just 15 members of the community.
Time proved the advice sound as today the Findhorn Foundation is the organisational heart of a widely diversified community of several hundred people, incorporating dozens of "new age'' businesses and initiatives.
The Caddys' marriage eventually broke down and Mr Caddy left Findhorn in 1979. When he died 15 years later he had married for the fifth time.
Mrs Caddy stayed on at Findhorn, where she was cared for by family and friends when her health began failing.
Her last divine message was: "No more guidance."
A statement posted on the Findhorn Foundation website said: "Our community, locally and globally, is celebrating her life and her release into the light of the Beloved, as Eileen herself has asked us to do rather than to mourn her death. A memorial service to fully and publicly honour her life and all the gifts she has given to us, will be organised early in the New Year.
"In this time of transition we ask that you share in our happiness, knowing (as she would want) that all is very, very well."
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