News
Pioneering and Now Mainstream Work for Animal Welfare
At the time of writing, COP28, the next round of climate talks, is about to start. Working as we do on the inner level, our thoughts will be on the participants, holding them in the light and urging them to make the decisions which we hope will benefit, and perhaps rescue us all.
Many know the strong emphasis White Eagle, as a spiritual teacher, places on the respect and reverence for the world of nature, and perhaps for animals in particular. Our Earth healing work has grown out of this, and we now have over 500 members faithfully doing the Earth Healing service on their own each week and – we deeply believe – making a real difference to human minds and hearts as they walk on Mother Earth with her creatures.
White Eagle’s teaching has also inspired some to begin practical and political action in the outer world. On October 7th this year, we hosted a public event called Embracing All Life: A Celebration of Human Kinship with Nature, which encouraged attendees to explore our spiritual awareness of nature and the Natural World in a beautiful temple setting. Guest speakers from charities such as WWF and the World Food Programme also attended. One of the speakers, who sadly had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness, was the CEO of Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery. His talk was going to focus on Peter and Anna Roberts, who were not only the founders of CIWF but were also brothers of the White Eagle Lodge and were significantly inspired by White Eagle’s teaching.
Peter was a dairy farmer who also kept a flock of laying hens, and in the 1960s found himself under pressure from the Ministry of Agriculture to switch to newly fashionable intensive methods of farming, which involved keeping farmed animals indoors in cages. Peter and Anna rebelled against this, believing the new systems to be cruel. Out of this rebellion Compassion in World Farming was born. It began in 1967 very much in a back room of their house, with Peter and Anna as the only ‘staff’, and his first mailing list contained many White Eagle Lodge members.
Other animal charities rejected them at first – so far down the list of priorities were farm animals. Now, CIWF is an international and world-influencing voice on animal welfare.
Just this year, a biography of Peter and Anna was published. Entitled Roaming Wild: The Founding of Compassion in World Farming, it’s written by their granddaughter Emma Silverthorn. It tells the inside story of it all – a truly remarkable epic of courage against public and commercial scorn, of ‘keeping on keeping on’ even when things felt at their most hopeless.
White Eagle Lodge is mentioned frequently in Roaming Wild and the book is now available in most shops.
ISBN 978-184995-543-0 234 × 156mm, 176pp, with b&w and colour photographs - £18.99 (softback)
