Celebrating Angels, Spirits and Nature

This year sees the 25th anniversary of the Angels@Findhorn2000 Conference, though the word ‘conference’ isn’t truly apt as it proved to be more a ‘happening’; an extraordinary, unique Easter week aimed at celebrating Angels, Spirits and Nature. In the first year of the new millennium and almost forty years on from the early days of the Community when active co-creation with angels and nature spirits created a new awareness of these dimensions – helping to create a little bit of heaven on earth – Angels@findhorn2000 aimed to reflect the ‘zeitgeist’ of the time.

First things first, as Eileen Caddy would say. You can click here for the Conference Report which gives a great sense of the week being full of amazing presentations and workshops, offered by a wonderful team of presenters and workshop leaders, all of whom had an active daily working relationship with the angelic and spirit worlds. The Conference Guide shows the depth, breadth and uber-thrilling scope of the Conference.

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Arriving at the Foundation/Community in 1990, I was fascinated by how the Community had evolved through co-creation with other realms and the angelic realms especially. I had encountered Angels through my Catholic upbringing, also in literature, and knew of the inspiration of muses, and had called on them … but this felt different. And, much more so, as I seemed to connect so easily with this Angel that had a ubiquitous presence and influence.

Subsequently as I explored more deeply, this interest morphed into appreciation and awe, and the genesis of the conference came about some time in 1998. I had been thinking/musing that it would be in keeping, and also timely, for the Findhorn Foundation to host a conference on angels, when Barbara Vincent came into my office, stood in front of me and said we should have a conference on angels … and I was to be the one to focalise it! By the end of the afternoon I’d drafted a brief proposal, delivered it to the conference office and carried on with my life. The ‘Yes’ came through within days. Then life got very interesting …

Community member and sensitive, Helen Martin, suggested William Bloom as my co-focaliser (insisted actually) and I was both delighted (and relieved) when he agreed. At the time I’d only ‘met him’ through his books, writings and talks, and his wisdom, down to earth approach to working with these realms as well as his love for the Findhorn Foundation Community and people qualified him! Also not least his raffish good humour, and ability not to take himself too seriously. This was the man who gained hard earned wisdom through – extreme practice this – taking a two year retreat and a very specific six month ceremony, in the Atlas Mountains, in order to meet his guardian Angel … and so he did.

William was very clear that the event should not be theoretical or indeed flaky and we swiftly established that the conference as well as being celebratory, would address four important issues:

• How do we ground our work with angels for personal, communal and ecological healing?
• How do the mythical beings of the past relate to our modern situation?
•  Is it possible to integrate this wisdom into mainstream education?
• Are there new forms of cooperation and celebration which we can develop today?

Our conference themes included:

• Healing and Guardian Spirits
• Spirits of civilisation, the home and workplace
• Ceremony, ritual, the arts and muses
• Landscape, nature and gardening
• Animism and tribal religion
• Science, holism and the new paradigm
• Children and Angels

The angels overlit the conference – the Angel of Findhorn, rather cheekily listed as the first focaliser in our conference booklet – and, attuning to these realms, we knew that the week should be interwoven with music, dance and unexpected surprises! The arts were integral to the week, given how the Community integrated this dimension into daily life. Unsurprisingly then, our resident musical angel of love, Barbara Swetina joined our team and brought in François Monnet who helped create theatrical magic at events. The momentum was building.

The Community engaged from the outset in what proved to be a two-year journey. Early on the Conference Team, led by Dorothy Noble, described the upcoming conference as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘overwhelming’, ‘extraordinary’. The Conference was fully booked by Christmas 1999 with a waiting list for the waiting list and ultimately 300 plus people gathered from 37 different countries, including psychologists, ministers and healers. Media interest was stratospheric and mostly benign!

Then and now I can only imagine what was taking place in the invisible realms to help co-create this momentous event.

photo collage by Kate Bewick

Now, I must confess, that I hadn’t realised until a month or so ago that the conference was 25 years ago and during this period I’ve often thought that everyone speaks about the ‘angels conference’ whereas it was also designed to celebrate spirit and nature. Re-reading the Conference Guide with its lists of presentations and workshops again, it is evident how this dimension – nature, shamanic – was represented by many of the presentations, many of which had beguiling, bewitching titles and themes. Oh, and one evening featured a fancy-dress ball, themed of course, angels and spirits. I recall seeing Pan dance with a Unicorn and the pea deva stepping out with Hazel the Elf, and wasn’t that the Lord of Civilisation with the Green Lady… ? I have no doubt that the Conference did absolutely celebrate and recognise Spirits and Nature, and highlight how this dimension was so integral to the Community’s creation and informed its educational programmes.

Hazel Elf

At the time I wondered if nature spirits associated with the Community in the past such as those ROC described in the Findhorn Garden, and Frances Ripley in Visions Unseen would show up during the week. I seem to remember that I spoke about this with Brian Nobbs just before his presentation, and a nodding head confirmed my perception!

William and I were clear that the aim of the Conference was not to ‘get’ community members to re-engage with these realms, the community had evolved and many different spiritual practices were woven into what formed the spiritual web at that time. William, writing in Alex Walker’s book The Kingdom Within said, “The reality is – and it is taught in all mystical, tribal and esoteric traditions – that there is a parallel world of beings who cooperate with and are involved in every part and aspect of life.”

We agreed that some, perhaps many, in the Community understood and knew this in a very instinctive way and that the Conference would serve to highlight this reality both for personal and planetary healing.

In the months, years that followed, the impact of the conference on Community members was palpable though not necessarily visible; spiritual practice has become myriad and sophisticated, reminding me of what Jesus said, “My Father’s House has many mansions”. The ‘AOF’ is still invoked for almost everything, from blessing meals to blessing the world. It isn’t for me to say whether Community members have studied these realms more carefully or just go along with it in the same way it is to go along with fairy tales, or just because everyone else does, though I was told that the conference had helped greater awareness and active engagement in this regard.

Whatever the reasons, references to the Angel of Findhorn are a frequent occurrence; just this past week someone wrote in the Rainbow Bridge, our weekly Community’s Newsletter, “I bought … [my house] after my experience week, felt called by the Angel of Findhorn to do so.”.

Winter Solstice Spiral © Peter Vallance

Contact with, and belief in, angelic realms becomes more visible each year during the Community’s Winter Solstice spiral when, after having walked through the evergreen foliage of the spiral, we sit in what is termed ‘angel heaven’ and choose an Angel to accompany us for the coming year. It is a special, and invaluable, community ritual and enables all-comers to connect with the angelic realms in a broader sense than the particular angel card they may have chosen. Simultaneously, Angels are chosen to infuse the community over the coming year. I wish I could remember the Angel card I chose, or who chose me, for 2000!

And just this past week, community elders, Mary Inglis and Judy McAllister, have spoken about both the Angel of Findhorn and the Landscape Angel during the Community Gathering.

The Angel Cards associated with the Transformation Game are, of course, a portal into these realms.

Post Conference, my own interest in and co-creation with these realms deepened and now informs every aspect of my life. As I wrote earlier my Catholic upbringing introduced me to these realms and so the Landscape Angel and the Angel of Findhorn have been evolutionary for me. I found myself co-focalising shamanic workshops – a visible sign of the impact this dimension of the conference had on me.

William Bloom and I went on to co-focalise the Spirit of Healing Conference in 2004 and many of the Presenters in 2000 returned, showing, I surmise, the impact Findhorn and the conference had had on them.

During Covid I became concerned that with guests unable to come to the Foundation the spiritual force would wane and that the purpose of the Angels would cease. I had read, part of ongoing exploration, that Angels, guardians, the spirit of a place, live on long after people have passed and if its guardian purpose is still active – this was the crucial element – and with the inevitable lockdown, closure and redundancies, I was concerned that the AOF, our ‘cross-breed angel,’ as Dorothy Maclean once described it, would lose its power. It is the spirit of the place after all. Would the Community still have a purpose, without visitors? Would its power ebb?

And what about the Cluny Angels, would their purpose wane after the closure and sale of Cluny Hill College? However from my own attunements and speaking with others this doesn’t appear to be the case. Perhaps Cluny is still under the jurisdiction of the Landscape Angel? Perhaps new Angels have come in to over light the new developments that have taken place in the Park.

Currently, I am connecting with Archangel Michael, among others of various ranks of the hierarchy, yet Michael, partly because of my name, and because he is the warrior against forces of darkness, has been uppermost in my mind because of the war waged on Ukraine. I discovered that Michael is the patron saint, protector of Kyiv and this, for me, explains in part why the Ukrainian resistance has been so fierce. On another realm Michael and hosts are fighting the forces of darkness. May they prevail.

There is so much more I could say, but for now I’ll end by saying how beyond grateful I am to all involved, seen and unseen, especially to William, my wife Jutta and to Helen Martin who both helped hold the Conference flame for two years, and to all who came and of course the Community. There is no doubt we co-created a fabulous, meaningful, joyful week of inspiration wrapped with practical wisdom. A week in which we honoured the Community’s spiritual foundations with these realms and established a platform for further deepening, preserving and expanding the legacy.

Oh my, writing this I have that tingle, sparkle, I experienced so often during the week. Perhaps you feel it too….

“I would lift you out of yourself into your Self; for that purpose was I brought into Being.”
Angel of Findhorn to Dorothy Maclean, May 1969

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REFERENCES:
The Findhorn Garden Book, Findhorn Press
Dorothy Maclean, To Hear the Angels Sing, Lorian Press
William Bloom, The Sacred Magician, HarperCollins, 1976
William Bloom, Angels, Fairies & Nature Spirits, Piatkus
Kathy Tyler and Joy Drake, The Angel Cards
Frances Ripley, Visions Unseen, Findhorn Press

Michael Hawkins

Michael lived in the Findhorn Community from 1992 to 2006, He met and married, Jutta Geissler, in the Park Sanctuary and Casper duly arrived in 2002.