Dorothy Maclean (January 7, 1920 – March 12, 2020) was a Canadian writer and educator on spiritual subjects who was one of the original three adults at what is now the

Findhorn Foundation The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain.''The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Org ...

in northeast

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Biography

Maclean was born in

Guelph Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly east of Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wel ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. She obtained a 3-year

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree from the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames R ...

. From 1941 onwards she worked for the

British Security Coordination British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Its purpose was to investigate ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. After being posted to

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

, she met and married John Wood, though the couple divorced in 1951. On her way to

in 1941, Maclean had met

Sheena Govan Sheena Govan (1912–1967) was an informal spiritual teacher, and the daughter of evangelist John George Govan. Later in life she became an early influence on what would become the Findhorn Foundation. Her career demonstrated some of the links bet ...

, and it was through her that she would later meet Peter Caddy. Living in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

in the 1950s, Maclean became involved in the spiritual practices of Govan and Caddy and eventually Eileen Caddy. When the Caddys were appointed to manage a hotel in

, Maclean joined them as the hotel's secretary. After the Caddys became unemployed in 1962, they moved into a

caravan Caravan or caravans may refer to: Transport and travel *Caravan (travellers), a group of travellers journeying together **Caravanserai, a place where a caravan could stop *Camel train, a convoy using camels as pack animals *Convoy, a group of veh ...

near the village of Findhorn. In 1963, an annex was built so that Maclean could continue to work with them. A community eventually grew up around the Caddys and Maclean, and this community has since 1972 been known as the

. Maclean was known for her work with ''devas'', said to be intelligences overseeing the natural world. Her book ''To Hear the Angels Sing'' gives an overview of this work and also provides autobiographical materials. A full-length biography, ''Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic'' was published in 2010. Maclean left Findhorn in 1973 and subsequently founded an educational organization in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

with

David Spangler David Spangler (born January 7, 1945) is an American spiritual philosopher and self-described "practical mystic." He helped transform the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland into a center of residential spiritual education and was a frie ...

. Her childhood home, Woodside, at 40 Spring Street, Guelph has since been designated a heritage property under the ''

Ontario Heritage Act The ''Ontario Heritage Act'', (the ''Act'') first enacted on March 5, 1975, allows municipalities and the provincial government to designate individual properties and districts in the Province of Ontario, Canada, as being of cultural heritage ...

''. Maclean retired from public life in 2010 and lived again at Findhorn. She turned 92 years old during Findhorn Foundation's 50 Year Anniversary celebration in 2012. She turned 100 in January 2020 and died shortly after on March 12, 2020, in Findhorn.

Selected works

* ''Wisdoms'' (1971) * ''The Living Silence'' (1977) * ''The Soul of Canada'' (1977) * ''To Hear the Angels Sing'' (1980) * ''To Honour the Earth'' (1991) (with Kathleen Thormod Carr) * ''Choice of Love'' (1998) * ''Seeds of Inspiration'' (2004) * ''Call of the Trees'' (2006) * ''Come Closer'' (2007) * ''Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic'' (2010)

Documentary

* ''Opening To Angels - Guardian Angels and the Angelic Realm'' (1994)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maclean, Dorothy 1920 births 2020 deaths Canadian centenarians Canadian non-fiction writers Canadian women non-fiction writers Findhorn community New Age writers New Age spiritual leaders People from Guelph Women centenarians