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An Old as a New Religion: Druidry in the United States

Welcome! Greetings in the bounty of the Earth Mother, the blessings of the , and the Way

of the Wise.

Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Fellowship (ADF) is an international fellowship devoted to creating a

public tradition of Neopagan Druidry.

So the organization Ár nDraíocht Féin, Irish for “Our Own Druidism,” introduces itself on its website

(www.adf.org). Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) is one of many contemporary Druid and Pagan groups in North

American and Europe (see Chapter Nine of Introducing ), which link themselves in some way to ancient, pre-Christian of Europe. As Michael Cooper writes, however, these groups and their followers have a significant problem, as present-day knowledge of ancient Celtic beliefs and practices is quite limited. Cooper, an evangelical Christian associated with Trinity Graduate School in

Illinois who conducted ethnographic fieldwork among ADF, stresses that much of our knowledge “about the ancient , the priestly class of the , comes from Greek and Roman archeological and written sources. There are no primary source documents of this ancient people due to their reliance on oral tradition as a means to pass on cultural patterns” (2009: 41-2).

In the absence of detailed information about past Druidry, Cooper, as well as some of the leaders and members of ADF, characterizes Ár nDraíocht Féin as a “reconstructionist movement” as much as (and perhaps more than) a “revivalist movement.” Even revivalist movements, which ostensibly seek to bring back to life a lost or moribund tradition, almost inevitably find themselves “adding something new to their historical understanding” (42-3), which is why we can rightly regard them as neo-Druid or neo-

Pagan. Reconstructionist movements, Cooper contends, “place greater significance on history and believe that ancient practices can be discovered and reconstructed by studying , epigrapha, historical records, folk traditions, and the early literature of the United Kingdom” (43). Accordingly, he quotes an ADF adherent who stated that “ADF Druidry is a reconstruction religion. We do this by researching history, archaeology, and the way humans lived and their systems and their migrations” (43).

Cooper reports that North American Druidry, in the form of the Reformed Druids of North America

(RDNA), arose at Carleton College in Minnesota in 1963 as a reaction against mandatory Christian participation on campus. One of the founders of RDNA, Robert Lawson, relocated to Berkeley, California in 1968 and acquired a disciple, , who eventually split ADF away from its parent organization over a dispute between “mesopaganism” and “neopaganism.” Bonewits regarded the original, lost religion as “paleopaganism,” while pagan-related movements and organizations that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and absorbed aspects of (like

Freemasonry or Ordo Templi Orientis) were “mesopaganism.” He was aware that he was pursuing a neopaganism and a neo-Druidry, as he wrote in 1984:

The purpose of this letter is an announcement of, and an invitation for your participation in, the creation of a new Neopagan religion: Ár nDraíocht Féin. The Irish words (pronounced “arn reeocht fane”) mean “Our own Druidism,” and that’s what I have in mind—a brand new form of Druidism, not just Pan-Celtic, but Pan-European. (By this latter term, I mean to include all of the European branches of the Indo-European culture and language tree—Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, even the pre-Classical Greek & Roman.) Paradoxically, this would resemble the original Paleopagan Druidism far more than any efforts of the last thousand years. It would be based on the best scholarly research available, combined with what has been learned (about art, psychology, small group politics and economics) through the theory and practice of modern Neopaganism, and my own knowledge of (the polytheological and practical details) magical and religious phenomena. (45)

Cooper goes on to identify the three factors that attract followers to ADF—religious deprivation, religious identity, and religious legitimacy. Since a large number of ADF members were formerly Christians, Cooper acknowledges that many of them shared a “disillusionment with western

Christianity”; some saw the Christian era as a time of “destruction and futility,” the religion acting as “an oppressive force that has subordinated women and disregarded the environment” (48). Others were seeking a different religious identity, one more in sync with new cultural and transnational realities, such as “globalization and the popular acceptance of Eastern philosophies” as well as sensitivity to the environment (51). Finally, religious legitimacy flows from the apparently authentic sources of Druidry revealed in history, archaeology, and folklore. Interestingly, many members “were drawn to ADF because of its commitment to scholarship,” which provides them with a “sense of connectedness to an imagined past” (53). We might add, as Cooper does, that Druidy offers a religion that adherents perceive as equal in stature to Christianity.

On their website, ADF offers information on cosmology, gods and spirits, nature, philosophy, and stories, as well as descriptions of liturgy and (from multiple traditions, from Celtic to Norse,

Roman, and Vedic), training programs to become a Druid and even an officiate, and schedules of events such as the Wellspring Gathering, the , and the Festival of the Midnight Flame.

Reference

Cooper, Michael T. 2009. “Pathways to Druidy: A Case Study of Ár nDraíocht Féin.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 12 (3), 40-59.