There were two generous-sized crystals, not quite the size of an adult’s fist. They’d been gifted in the late ‘70’s by a man from the USA, Ron Bonnewitz, who’d been ‘told’ while driving through one of the deserts over there – to give them to a place he’d never heard of. However, being of the bent to follow his guidance he found out where Findhorn was and presented these two magnificent crystals with all due pomp and glamour. I’d recognise him to this day although he was perfectly ordinary-looking, and agreeable to boot.

The crystals were duly installed in the Universal Hall from the centre of the skylight, on what must have been a pretty stout wire, which had gold and silver threads wound round it as a double helix. Thus right over the crossing/meeting point of the five ley lines. It was there a good few months if not a couple of years.

Until the day a young American gave a talk in the Hall. Another name lost to my memory but he was also agreeable, tall, diffident and had worked with the children and youth programmes over the summer. He’d impressed many of us with his quiet firm manner and good ways with the young, and he came from the Edgar Casey group in South Carolina. Before he left at the end of the summer we prevailed upon him to tell us about his work in USA.

He’d been talking for a good half hour, seated, most fortunately as it transpired, a couple of feet to the right of the central 2-3” glass pentagon, that allowed soft daylight into the sanctuary space beneath. Suddenly the crystals crashed down embedding themselves in the glass which shattered yet held them. The stunned silence that followed our collective shocked gasp lasted seconds before erupting into expostulations, nervous giggles and wisecracks.

Somebody dashed down to tell Eileen and as we left the Hall, talk delivered in full, she came rushing up to the café entrance. She was beaming! She’d hated those crystals and the glamour that had surrounded them, so their fall denoted the end of an era that she considered well and truly detrimental to the Purpose of the Community with its pompous distractions.

Most of us living here at the time reckoned that event began the unravelling of the age of glamour, and allowed the Angel clearer access to our consciousness to resume The Work we’re destined to serve in this Centre.

With love and blessings,

Amanda

From Liza:

I was personally involved with the Crystal story twice – the first because it affected my wedding with Lyle. We were due to be married in the Hall, which was Lyle’s ‘baby’ and at the last minute, we were told the crystals had to ‘rest’ so we had to move our wedding to the sanctuary. After a meditation involving Eileen, Peter and George Ripley, the attunement was to go along with the psychic’s feeling about the crystal. I abstained! He was Ron Bonnewitz.

At a community meeting that followed, I recall Craig leaving the hall as a demonstration of his disapproval of the glamour around the crystal. He can fill in the gaps of that story!

The second event was when I hosted the young man from USA, South Carolina, who worked with an Edgar Casey group associated with the Foundation, as a youth worker. We asked him to give a talk about their work and I put his chair in the centre, on the glass pentangle. But he moved it, saying he never liked to be in the centre. Indeed during his talk, the crystal fell and had he not moved, he would be dead! I ran to Eileen to tell her, and her response was “Thank God!”

Many years later Eileen went to Hawaii and threw that Crystal into Haleakala volcano!