Another Druid Fracas

[ecosophia]

(With thanks to reader Lady Cutekitten for the title)

I've been asked by several readers over on the blog about the recent blowup in the Druid organization ADF (that's Ar nDraiocht Fein if you're wondering, Irish for "Our Own Druidry") and, since that's not relevant to the theme of this week's blog post, I figured I'd take the discussion over here. 

What I know about the matter is this. In a book published several years ago, a woman accused the late Neopagan leader and ADF founder Isaac Bonewits of molesting her when she was a child of six. Two weeks ago, five senior ADF members abruptly resigned, citing the lack of responsiveness to that accusation as one of a long list of reasons for their resignation. Last week the Mother Grove -- the board of directors of the organization -- announced that they were formally repudiating Bonewits, dismissing him from his posthumous role of "Beloved Ancestor." The Mother Grove claimed that they had received other accusations of misbehavior on Bonewits' part and cited these as reasons for their actions. The result has been a great deal of anger and bad feeling on all sides, with one side arguing that concern for victims of sexual abuse should be paramount,  while the other argues that condemning him without a trial on the basis of mere accusation is exactly the modality of the "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s, which destroyed so many innocent people's lives. 

Myself, I have no dog in this fight. I joined ADF just after the turn of the millennium, and quit shaking my head a few years later; I thought the ritual and religious aspects of the organization had a great deal of promise but the organizational structure was the most dysfunctional I'd ever seen in action -- it's no exaggeration to say that Bonewits and the other founding members came up with a scheme that combines all the downsides of hierarchy and democracy, while providing none of the advantages of either. I had several interactions with Isaac Bonewits later on, when I was head of AODA, and we were civil to each other but I won't claim that I liked the man; it was kind of hard to forget that he spent much of his career spewing insults at the kind of Druidry I love and practice.

With regard to the accusations against him, that's not something I'm qualified to assess. I do know that quite literally every time I was around him for more than a minute or so, I got to watch him trying to put the moves on some woman, and I don't recall ever seeing him take a simple "no" for an answer. The guy was frankly a creep. On the other hand, I never saw him make a play for anyone who wasn't obviously adult.

Whatever the truth of that issue, though, on a magical level ADF has probably signed its own death certificate. You don't turn somebody into a "Beloved Ancestor" and spend a decade making offerings to his spirit, then suddenly turn around and give him the bum's rush -- especially when you've made him a central figure in the ritual for ADF's attempt to create an initiatory tradition. (That's a flustered cluck all its own, but we can leave it aside for now.) That's perhaps the most effective way I can think of to create a wrathful spirit: empowered by a decade of offerings, linked closely to the egregor of your organization, and now enraged by the organization's 180-degree turn...oog. Whatever ADF's principal fissures are -- I have my guesses, but we'll see -- I'd expect to see the organization splitting wide open along those in the very near future. 

It's unfortunate. As I noted above, the ritual and religious aspects of the organization were quite good, and if they hadn't been saddled with a great deal of unhelpful organizational baggage, ADF might have been around for the long haul. As it is, with the Neopagan movement generally in a state of accelerating decline, I expect to see it added to the long list of defunct American alternative spiritual movements in the not too distant future. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the commentary, Archdruid.

Is there in your opinion any hope for potential offshoots of ADF that maintain the ritual but utterly overhaul the organizational aspects? I’ve seen plans for several such movements in the Druidism subreddit, but I’m wondering whether the egregore is too far gone.

I don’t know how the loss of ADF will ultimately affect our Reconstructionist nieces and nephews, it might be quite a blow to them.

Kind regards,
Brigyn

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't they publish your A World Full of Gods long ago? I noticed it dropped out of their site for some time; it is still available, but only in the used book market (perhaps there is some new old stock floating around).

BONEwits

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

I mean, come on, the guy's name was BONEwits. So that's what he did. Nomen est omen, the name speak for itself. :)

That reminds me of one particular joke...

Q: How many Druids does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: They don't screw in light bulbs, they screw in Stone Circles.

I think it's about the ADF druids.

On a more serious note, what surprises me about the Neopagan movement as a whole is their unstoppable seething hatred of Christianity. They won't even spell the word properly, they spell it as "xtianity" (and "xtians").

Q: How many Pagans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Six. One to change it, and five to sit around complaining that light bulbs never burned out before those damned Christians came along.

In my teen years I was drawn into this hatred, but I grew out of it, I understood that it's the people who are fallible and corrupt, not the gods the represent. Perhaps ADF imploded because they refused to admit their own human imperfection?

- Polytropos

[booklover1973]

My first thought when I read about the Bonewits affair and the woes of ADF was that the organization maybe had too close associations with the Neopagan scene to avoid the toxic egregor of the Neopagan scene. I wonder if the causes for the abuse of power are similar to those in the Catholic Church or of these are two entirely different issues, origin-wise.

[(Anonymous)]

P.S. I'm sorry if I sent the same message several times, my internet connection kept dying on me. Mercury must be in retrograde.

I really should make an account here.

- Polytropos

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't that familiar with the ADF until coming across here a few times previously, and then I discovered there was an ADF grove here in my area in Nova Scotia (https://www.novascotiadruid.com/blog). I had thought about getting in touch with them, but thanks to your warning I did not, and this news makes me even more cautious about it. It's too bad, because the local grove seems OK, I like their website and they seem to be fairly active.

[ecosophia]

Oh, it could certainly be done. New name, new symbol, completely different organizational structure, and a formal founding ritual in which offerings were made to the Three Kindreds, past faults acknowledged and renounced, and a new start made -- that would do it. To put icing on the cake, get the core members ordained in the Reformed Druids of North America -- the tradition ADF spun off of -- so the new organization does an end run around what occultists call the "tainted sphere" of ADF and has a fair chance at a good start.

[ecosophia]

Yes -- they were in the process of bringing out a new edition. It'll be interesting to see if that goes through, or if I have to place it with a new publisher.

Re: BONEwits

[ecosophia]

Yeah, the whole "Xtian" business always struck me as childish. Since you imitate whatever you contemplate, the fixation on the evils of Christianity also guaranteed that the Neopagan scene would copy Christianity's bad habits.

[ecosophia]

Bonewits grew up Catholic and seems to have envisioned ADF as the One True Holy Apostolic Church of Paganism -- one of ADF's crippling problems was that it was set up from the beginning with the kind of bureaucracy you only need if you're a big denomination, and it wasn't. Still, the organizational cultures of the ADF and the Catholic Church don't have that much in common. Most of ADF's problems as I saw them came out of too much bureaucracy and too much politics; most of the Catholic church's problems come from a culture of institutionalized cruelty and a total lack of accountability.

[ecosophia]

Got it in one -- Mercury has been retrograde since the end of October.

[ecosophia]

Some local ADF groves can be worth your time -- it depends very much on who's in them and how tied into the overall organization they are. Divination might not be a bad approach!

[jjensenii]

Hmm. I had expected you would say it was appropriate to remove him as Blessed Ancestor but that the attempt to memory-hole him would be their undoing.

Now I'm curious: assuming the allegations are true, what steps could ADF have taken to salvage the situation?

[booklover1973]

In one book about Druidry edited by Philipp Carr-Gomm, I read abput the program of ADF. What was obvious to me then, was that ADF seemed to have firm ideas about what is the right belief and what is the wrong belief. So it makes sense that Isaac Bonewits brought a Catholic background to the character of the ruling principles of ADF.

The ADF logo...

[(Anonymous)]

Is it intentional that the tree looks like a middle finger?

[(Anonymous)]

"Last week the Mother Grove -- the board of directors of the organization -- announced that they were formally repudiating Bonewits, dismissing him from his posthumous role of "Beloved Ancestor."

The bigger question is why they took so long to repudiate the man. It seems that his creepy behaviour must have been obvious to virtually everyone if you noticed despite not being around him much. He should have been ousted early on and then they wouldn't have the 'wrathful spirit' or the tainted egregore to deal with.

I've noticed in another neopagan cult that most people will stand by a very flawed founder as superhuman qualities tend to be projected on to them. Plus they don't want to be outcasts or victims of smear campaigns..

[(Anonymous)]

“Institutionalized cruelty,” do you mean past as in centuries past or today?

Re: BONEwits

[(Anonymous)]

Brother Greer,

A quick bit of history of Xtian: X is the English translation of the Greek X, which together with P makes up the chi rho, found on many Christian alters. The use of the first letter of Christ to abbreviate His title is an old Christian usage. (Incidentally, the fish symbol was not only used by underground illegal Christians, but 'fish' in Greek is the initials of 'Jesus Christ, Son of God'.)

It always makes me laugh when some anti-theist thinks they are mocking Christians with Xtians or X-mas. We're as lazy as any other humans: we shortened it first! Probably the hand cramps, you know?

Uneducated Christians will get their noses bent out of joint over this shortening, but the oldest documented usage of XPmas, per a quick Duck Duck Go search, is in 1021, with the rho getting dropped after.

BoysMom

[(Anonymous)]

Well, unlike my (Roman Catholic) Church, at least they did try to unfrock the guy, however belatedly, so I’ll give them points for that.

Getting through this

[esingletary]

This whole situation has been hitting horrifically close to home for me... I am the tenant at CedarLight Grove, one of the older, larger groves in ADF, and I have been watching the growing discord in the broader organization with a nervous eye for a few years. I haven’t followed the doings of the mother grove or participated in any conferences or events since around 2017 when a mob of members and a few leaders viciously turned on me, my friends, and my family in a wildly public and cruel way and made it very clear that I was no longer welcome or safe there, or really in most of the neopagan world.

However, I’ve retained my membership mainly because of my grove. My entire world right now outside of work consists of the grove and the Masonic lodge (and the two worlds have been combining more and more lately with friends who are interested in the esoteric side of Masonry expressing interest in visiting the grove, and some grove members joining up with local lodges). And the one thing the grove offers that the lodge doesn’t is a place where I can relax and fully be myself away from the constant striving for perfection that defines lodge culture (it’s enormously beneficial as far as personal growth but also anxiety inducing sometimes).

So, when I hear about threats to ADF, even though my personal practice or belief system really has virtually nothing to do with ADF and I’ve always been known as the token OBODie and Hermeticist... It very often comes down to pretty much all of my friends, most of the world that I know, and the literal place that I live.

I sat down with our senior Druid and Priest a few weeks ago (I... felt something like this coming), and had a conversation with her about what would happen to Cedarlight if ADF collapsed as an organization. She said there would be some legal hoops and paperwork mostly to get some of the federal statuses we currently have through the National organization but it’d be fairly easy to do. For mostly legal reasons relating to our articles of incorporation, it would probably require a collapse on an organizational level for us to actually take those steps.

Regarding Isaac, Cedarlight along with several other groves are continuing to honor him for similar reasons to the ones you outlined here, I used almost your exact words Sunday... and the general attitude is that, in an ancestor venerating tradition it’s a really -really- bad idea to desecrate the dead. The mother grove did give autonomy in that decision to groves, and several will continue that veneration including ours.

So... questions:

1: What steps would you recommend for a group like Cedarlight trying to navigate this mess? We’ve always been a little different in terms of ADF, and the even back when ADF was first created we had a reputation for being an oddball grove. We’re part of ADF, but aside from the colorful stories Caryn has about the things that go on in the obligatory clergy council and Senior Druids Council boards that she has to sit in on, we don’t have much involvement in the broader organization. Most of the regular members think of themselves as Cedarlight Grove members rather than ADF members and our regular Sunday Ritual isn’t even done in ADF’s core order but rather a modified ritual the grove’s been doing since the ‘90s. So we have our own egregore that remains independent of ADF’s egregore.

2: What would you recommend someone in my situation doing on an individual level? Leaving is... not an option since that would involve losing virtually everything including my home... and all of my friends are there... but I’m also pretty terrified about all of this. As far as spiritual practices, I’ve been working on LRM for the past few years so daily LBRP, daily Tarot divination (and occasional consultation of Ogham just to keep it fresh), and Meditation plus a few hours of study a day are my primary spiritual practices for the last year and a half... (I have a Magic Monday question I’m sitting on for when I finish the course in another two months) the only things I do spiritually other than that are devotional offerings and prayers to my personal gods (mostly Manannan and Jesus) and ancestors and if it counts, relentless study and practice with blue lodge and red lodge rituals... As for natural magic, I use the red bag amulet you recommend and change it every two months and take a hoodoo bath on the last Sunday of every month. I’ve read your natural magic handbook several times and have read several Cat Yronwood books but I’ve never actually done anything in that department beyond those basic protective spells...

Is there anything that needs to be added to my spiritual toolbox if I’m going to try to weather this mess?

Re: BONEwits

[ecosophia]

Oh, I know -- but have you heard Neopagans say it "Ex-tee-uns" in a shrill sneer?

[ecosophia]

Right up to the present. During my time as head of AODA, I got to talk to a lot of people who left the religion they were born into, and many of them told he how that happened. The former Protestants and Jews had a galaxy of different reasons for having left -- but every single former Catholic who shared their reasons for leaving the Roman church told me a story of really egregious abuse on the part of clergy or religious -- and in most cases the abuse was enabled and even encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy. Some of the stories were absolutely horrific, and a thread of cruelty ran through them all.

[ecosophia]

It would have been just as bad to memory-hole it. The useful thing to my mind would have been to accept him warts and all, and then use his birthday as an annual date, organization-wide, to educate people about consent and to donate money and labor collectively to organizations that help victims of sexual abuse.

Re: The ADF logo...

[ecosophia]

Hah! I don't think so, but you're right, of course.

[ecosophia]

I'm fairly sure that the only reason they've done it now is that his behavior has become a political liability to them. His serial harassment of women was unfortunately close to normal in some Neopagan circles.