What Is ADF?
ADF started in 1983 as a network of independent scholars interested in legitimate research about the ancient Druids and their Indo-European colleagues. More...
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ADF's approach to Druidism is often both attractive and somewhat challenging to the average newcomer. Though many of the persons involved in creating ADF have backgrounds in Wicca (some are still practicing Wiccans; it is possible to do both…) Wicca and ADF Druidism do have a number or basic differences. Such things should be discussed at length to be fair to both parties but let it suffice to say that three basic categories might cover most of the issues.
- ADF has a "community oriented" open-door format for providing modern Druid religious services to the community-at-large with open, public rites. On the other hand, Wicca is by design, a system of close-knit private groups, admission into which is gained usually by petition and/or invitation only. Both approaches have their value and their limits; like apples and oranges, it's not a matter of one being "better" than the other.
- ADF has selected to address a more limited range of cultural sources. Whereas Wicca uses cultural sources from Europe and around the world, including Middle Eastern, Egyptian, even Asian and Native American, ADF chooses to focus its attention to material originating with the various branches of what modern archaeologists and linguists now call the "Indo-European" peoples (which include: the Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, Slavic, Latin/Romance, Greek, Persian, Armenian and the Vedic/Hindu speaking peoples). Modern scholarship has shown that the peoples speaking Indo-European languages share powerful and amazingly consistent foundational patterns of mythos and cosmology, as well as their societal and religious practices. It is that tradition of commonality and consistency we are seeking to tap into; not the dangerous illusions of blood-ancestry or race. We do not intend to represent the Indo-European peoples, their folkways or their descendants as being 'better" than those of other lineages; yet we do come together because of a common affinity for that body of cultural cues (essentially, a motif); we are brought together by our "tastes" - not by our "blood."
- And finally, the reason which stands as the closest to being a true criticism of Wicca: "Historical Verity." In no way does ADF mean to represent its activity as a "survival of an ancient religion." Nor does ADF claim that its rites are "true reconstructions" of ancient Celtic (or other) religions. Nobody (nobody-) knows how the ancient Druids (or Witches) practiced and we would suggest that you avoid anyone who claims otherwise. ADF however, is creating a healthy, positive modern religious practice based on the best modern Celtic and other Indo-European scholarship available. Key here is the term "scholarship" meaning that we strive to utilize the most up to date archaeological, historical, and comparative religions reference material available and exercise a prudent degree of skepticism when drawing on folklore or "New Age" source material.
In ADF, more so than in many of the mainstream Neopagan traditions, we endeavor to thoroughly and objectively research the ways of the Old Ones to arrive at a point where our rites can achieve a certain archaic "resonance" with their ways; a format created in accord with, but still not pretending to truly recreate their ways (alas, such "re-creations" will have to wait for the advent of the time-machine and even then we must recognize that it's unlikely we would like what we'd find: a fact that may serve our spiritual, romantic and ethical tastes best in the long run anyway).
