The history of the community, briefly, is this.
In the late 1940s Sheena Govan emerged as an informal spiritual teacher to a small circle that include Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. Eileen Caddy joined them in the early 1950s. Their principal practices were Channeling and other forms of meditation, and the bringing of love and perfection to everyday tasks.
In 1957 Peter Caddy, Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean were appointed to manage the Cluny Hill Hotel near Forres. Though now separated from Sheena Govan, they continued with the practices they had learned.
In later 1962 they became unemployed and, for want of any other accommodation, settled in a travel trailer near the village of Findhorn. In early 1963 an annex was built so that Dorothy Maclean could live close to the Caddy family. They began Organic gardening as a way of growing food. To this activity they brought their spiritual practices, and this led to communication with nature spirits under whose guidance the garden flourished. Peter Caddy also introduced the positive thinking practices he had learned in the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship.
After Peter Caddy had met British New Age leaders, and after Eileen Caddy's guidance had been distibuted to a New Age mailing list in the form of a booklet titled God Spoke to Me, a community began to form around them. In 1969 the community and its garden were featured in a BBC television documentary.
Dorothy Maclean left the community in 1973, and Peter Caddy in 1979. Eileen Caddy remained, and in 2004 was awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.