Author’s Note December 2025: In 2017 I received an email from Kathy Tyler asking me to reflect on the difference between the Angel of Findhorn and the Landscape Angel. Kathy circulated my response with the short note shown. Through remarkable synchronicities, both Kathy and Cornelia Featherstone from the COIF Team came across this piece, independently of each other in their ‘Inspiration folder’ on each of their computers, on the eve of publishing the Topic – The Angel of Findhorn. This is one of those moments when the Angel’s touch is palpable, making sure that this piece is included. I am pleased to give my permission to have it reproduced here.

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Dearest Co-Workers of the Foundation and Members of the Community

I contacted David Spangler last night to request his wise reflections for us to bring to our hearts to consider. Here is what he wrote to me this morning … I have David’s permission to send it on to all and to the Rainbow Bridge [our weekly Community magazine] … I am personally very moved by his gentle clarity – it awakens the original call in my heart that brought me to Findhorn and has sustained that connection now for 40 years … It is a very deep blessing that we share to hold both, what is known as the Angel of Findhorn and the Landscape Angel, as our inner partners as we work together to consciously create our beloved Foundation and Community.

Grateful to be a part of our team,
Kathy

Here is David’s response in full:

Kathy, I hope this helps.

Here’s what I understand about angels and about the difference between the Angel of Findhorn and the Landscape Angel.

First, any angel is a conduit to the Sacred, to the Interiority of Life. I put it this way so that we don’t think in hierarchical or vertical terms of the Sacred above and us below with angels in-between. The physical realm and the subtle realms are more akin to the continents and the oceans, each very different environments of life but obviously interconnected and both of which rest on the central, fiery mantle of the Earth. So even though this metaphor is not entirely accurate, it is closer to the nature of things to think of the Sacred as the fiery “mantle” of creation. This means that each of us, each being, each angel, each mouse, each palm tree, each physical and subtle being, is essentially equally close to the Sacred as all rest upon and emerge from this “mantle.” But just as volcanoes give direct access to the molten earth close to the mantle, so there are beings that give more direct access to the Light and Presence, the Love, of the Sacred. Angels are among these beings.

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tetiana-gry-80x3QULJDN4-unsplash

From one perspective then, whether you pray or attune to or collaborate with the Angel of Findhorn or the Landscape Angel doesn’t make much difference if the objective is to attune to the Sacred. (Of course, you can also do the latter by going within yourself to your core, your individualized sacredness, which is a contemplative path.)

However, a volcano in Hawaii is not the same as a volcano in Italy or in South America as far as its local ecosystem goes. (And here the metaphor breaks down, since volcanoes are not consciously acting beings.) In terms of that to which an angel’s consciousness and structure are attuned, angels are not the same. A guardian angel overlighting the life of an individual is not structured the same way, if I may put it in such physical terms, as an angel overlighting a city or a landscape. All angels give access to the Sacred, but they do so in very different ways and with different intents or functions. Some work directly with the evolution of consciousness, some with form and structure, some with places, some with qualities, and so on. The ecology of angels really is a complex one, even though each angel might be seen as a “volcano” in its own right.

pg125 Hands and hearts Beverley A'Court © Adriana Sjan Bijman Findhorn Foundation

© Adriana Sjan Bijman Findhorn Foundation

The differences, as I understand them, between the Angel of Findhorn and the Landscape Angel and why it may be advantageous to work with each for different purposes, are that one is an Angel dedicated to an ecosystem and one is an Angel dedicated to a human enterprise, it’s outreach and effect in the world of humanity, and it’s impact upon consciousness development. The Landscape Angel is far older and much less human than the Angel of Findhorn. It can certainly interact with humans since we are part of the overall ecosystem or “landscape” that it overlights and “supervises.” But there are things it cannot do easily, and working with human interior development – with the mind, emotions, consciousness, and energy structure of evolving human beings – is one of them. People at Findhorn can certainly be blessed and enfolded in Light by the Landscape Angel, but in the same way that Cluny Hill is or a tree on that hill or the gorse in the Dunes or the seabirds that fly over head and so on. The Angel of Findhorn, though, as a “human angel,” can have a more direct and impactful blessing on the individual people in the community and on the community itself as a human invention.

There is another difference. Findhorn came into being with a purpose. It’s not just any old community. It was born as a spiritual community to demonstrate a way of being on the earth that dealt with the wholeness of things and with the partnership between the physical and subtle worlds. It was formed as a harbinger and demonstration of new cultural and new consciousness possibilities, however imperfectly it may actually embody them at any given time. In other words, it was formed to fulfil a mission or to have a mission at its core. Though this isn’t the best analogy, perhaps, the Foundation is like a cathedral around which a village develops. The village is just that, a village, filled with ordinary people doing ordinary things, not with monks and nuns and other kinds of religious folk. But the cathedral has a very specific spiritual function and mission as an embodiment of the Christian tradition and spirit, and it is staffed by people who are dedicated to that mission.

Findhorn is a new variation on this ancient theme, but in essence, it was founded to be a spiritual center around which a “village of Light” would form. It had and has a world purpose, which it has been fulfilling as best it can. The Angel of Findhorn is the being who most supports, overlights, empowers, energizes, blesses, and helps develop that mission and the human organizational instruments that embody it in the world. It’s like the Angel that overlights a cathedral.

Now the Angel of a cathedral is itself tied into and overlighted by a much more comprehensive and inclusive Intelligence and Heart that might be called the Angel of Christianity–not the Church in all its various forms but the actual purpose, mission, and spirit of the Christian impulse in the world, which in turn is, of course, anchored in the Mystery of Christ.

In a similar fashion, the Angel of Findhorn could be said to be tied into and itself overlighted by an Angel of the New Age or an Angel of a new humanity or a new planetary culture or a Gaian culture or a holistic sacred culture, however you like to think of it. This is not true in the same way or to the same degree with the Landscape Angel which in its ancientness far predates the current round of transformational energies at work in the world.

Now, it’s never good to form boxes around these beings, for they interweave and interact in ways that are often beyond our knowledge or understanding. Like I said, if you attune to the Landscape Angel, it can shift that attunement, if needed, over to the Angel of Findhorn, and vice versa. However, as a rule of thumb, if you are attempting to attune to the life and spirit of the land around you, the nature spirits, the elementals, the spirits of stone and wood, water and earth, and so on, then your best bet is to align with the Landscape Angel; that is its ‘wheelhouse’. If you are attuning to the spiritual mission, the consciousness, the subtle energies of the community and the humans within it–the work of Findhorn in the world–then the Angel of Findhorn is your better bet for it is structured, if you will, to deal with and assist that kind of activity and manifestation.

The Angel of Findhorn is much more than just the collective energy field and collective consciousness of the community, but it enfolds that collectivity in itself in ways the Landscape Angel does not.

Beyond this, I think it best you explore these differences and connections in your own way. The experience of angels can be very intimate and personal, like love itself, and should not be defined or overly explained by another.

Blessings,
David