A Colony of Seekers: Findhorn in the 1990s

This paper provides a case study of the Findhorn community, an internationally known ‘New Age' or ‘spiritual' community in north-east Scotland. The paper supplies an overview of Findhorn and an extended ethnography of ‘Experience Week', which is the main entry point into Findhorn's ethos and lifestyle. These descriptions and observations are connected with wider currents in post-traditional spirituality. Finally, some features of the ethnography are discussed—the discourse of ‘spirituality', the function of groups, the strategies of religious individualists—which suggest that Findhorn is not so much a ‘community' as a ‘colony'.