ABSTRACT

Eileen Caddy (neé Combe) was born in 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt. She went to a private school in Ireland and attended church regularly with an aunt. In the 1930s her family moved to England to pursue Christian Science treatment for her brother’s epilepsy. Caddy married an RAF officer involved in Moral Re-armament (MRA), known for its practice of ‘quiet times’ and ‘guidance’ sessions. On a tour of duty in Iraq she met Peter Caddy (see Caddy, Peter), also then in the RAF, who had additional interests in ‘psychics, spiritualism and the occult’ (Caddy 1988:19). Through him she duly met Sheena Govan (1912-67), the daughter of an evangelical Scots family. In London in the late 1940s Govan taught Caddy a practical methodology of obtaining divine ‘guidance’ through discerning an inner, divine voice during periods of quiet sitting. Caddy made her first unambiguous contact with the ‘god within’ in 1953 in Glastonbury and subsequently perfected her technique as one of a small group of committed spiritual seekers attached to Govan in London and, later, the West Highlands of Scotland. This group became the nucleus of the Findhorn Community in 1962. A first book of spiritual messages obtained through Caddy’s guidance, God Spoke to Me, was published in 1971. Apart from lecture tours with Peter Caddy, her second husband, Eileen Caddy has lived at Findhorn continuously where she has been a figure of stability in a fluid institution. She has published further collections of guidance including Footprints on the Path (1976) and Opening Doors Within (1987). Whilst immediately derived from Sheena Govan’s teaching, her technique of ‘guidance’ is also influenced by the ‘quiet times’ of MRA and the curative mental power of Christian Science.