A Teacher
Dorothy Maclean
Communication with the ‘devas’ or formative intelligences of nature
The transmission
Dorothy Maclean (January 7, 1920, Guelph, Ontario, Canada – 2020) was a Canadian-born spiritual teacher and author and one of the three founders of the Findhorn community in Scotland, alongside Eileen and Peter Caddy.
She lived and worked with the Caddys for five years at the Cluny Hill Hotel and then for seven years sharing a small caravan at the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park, where the community’s celebrated garden began in 1962. She died in 2020 at the age of 100.
Maclean’s distinctive contribution came in 1963, when her inner guidance suggested she make contact with the consciousness of nature. She adopted the term “deva” to describe what she experienced as a formless energy or intelligence overseeing the pattern and growth of each plant species, and reported receiving specific instructions on compost, water, and spacing that were credited with the garden’s unusual flourishing.
She left Findhorn in 1973 and went on to write several books and to lecture and lead workshops internationally. These are foundational New Age figures. Presented as a sincere experiment, her work proposes a participatory relationship between human attention and the formative patterns of the natural world.
What they gave
Deva contact: Originated the Findhorn practice of communicating with the formative intelligences (“devas”) of plant species.
- Findhorn co-founding: Helped establish a flagship New Age community whose garden became its founding legend.
- Cooperative-nature model: Framed gardening as a collaboration between human consciousness and the intelligence of nature.
- Books and workshops: Carried the deva teaching to an international audience through writing and teaching.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: the Sufi-influenced inner work of the Sheena Govan circle; her co-founders Eileen and Peter Caddy; and Theosophical and New Age ideas about nature intelligences.
- Influenced: the Findhorn garden and Foundation; New Age nature-spirit and deva practice; and the Lorian Association founded by her colleague David Spangler.