What initially drew you to ADF Druidry over other pagan or Druidic traditions? Has that initial spark changed over time?

Read what some of our members have to say about why they joined, and why they stick around!

The groups I had found before Stone Creed Grove were a woefully incompetent college pagan club, and a couple of groups led by manipulative Satanic types who were more about trying to get laid than do anything spiritual. I was a fairly rare pagan voice in a UU church dominated by Christians when I met ADF for the first time. I wandered into a Stone Creed ritual after my UU Sunday was over, noticed the overall competence level and effectiveness, and was interested enough to continue hanging about and learning more about what they were doing and why. About a year and a half in, I officially joined up. – T

Flexibility within a framework. Scholarship. Community. Inclusion. The first ADF ritual I took part in, I was asked to open the gates. At the time, I was an eclectic Wiccan priestess, but dissatisfied with it. When I opened the gates, my first thought was “Wow, this is what ritual is supposed to feel like!” A year later, I started Three Branch River Grove. – LSK

I know this is gonna sound a little bit strange. But I always had a hard time with the notion if casting circles. It never made any sense to me and felt like removing myself from the natural world when my goal was to connect more deeply. What has kept me here for 25+ yrs is the amazing warm hospitality. – SD

I was trying to put structure to my personal practice in my mid 20s. Wicca never really did it for me. Organizations that were heavily focused on Ceremonial Magick never really vibed well with me. Don’t get wrong there needs to be a certain amount of ritual, but not in the way I was able to get info on. Mind you, FB didn’t exist and Myspace was just beginning. Internet was there but it wasn’t like it is today. I had just gotten my own PC and we had finally gotten the Internet. Long story shorter. I woke up and remembered that a friend, that I had lost contact with, had introduced me to ADF in like 1999/2000. Pulled it up the website and reached out. ADF had the structure I was looking for at that time. I had stepped away for many many years, but a few that I had met, mostly via the net, have still been around since. I was once helping to start a PG for a few years and then moved away, so that folded. In the end I found my way back. I have looked at other groups over the years and I see some good things and all that but find discrepancies here and there. So, yeah. Hi. Let’s see where the journey further takes us. – JE

Well, I married into ADF so not a spiritual journey for that, but my Pagan stuff started way back in ’77 with Tarot cards. They were my gateway drug. Also women’s spirituality stuff back in the ’70s where I learned about goddesses. I was fortunate in the ’80s to find a Pagan community in Chicago where people for the most part knew what they were doing and where scholarship was highly valued. That’s where I learned my ritual skills, by apprenticeship to competent people. I also learned that if you can manage energy in a large public ritual (which I learned first) you can blow your socks off in a small private ritual. Where most people have to learn how to scale for bigger groups (if they ever learn), I had to learn to tone it down a smidge for the living room. Not to toot my own horn, but… There was also that kids book about a little girl in ancient Egypt which I read when I was very young. Planted a seed. – PB

I had been interested in Irish mythology, Druidry, Irish gods and goddesses, the Tuatha, fairy folklore, and the Fairy Faith for about twenty years before I joined ADF. I read as many books as I could find over the years. I’d been looking into modern neo- Druidry for awhile. The various Druid orders I’d looked into , some seemed to be similar to Wicca which I had studied for a long time as a solitary but I was looking for something more. Some druid orders were expensive to join and study with their training programs.. Then I found ADF , and they sounded Interesting. It was easy and affordable to join. When I found out I could get a clergy visit I was really impressed by that. Living in a rural New England area, I’d never met Druids before. The local Pagans are mostly eclectic, and not formally associated with any covens or groups. I really loved the ADF ritual Core order, the simplicity of it, and the giving of offerings. I have mobility problems from chronic medical problems. It was wonderful to me that ADF Clergy were willing to come and visit. I never could find a group that wanted to do ADF rituals with me. I tried but no one wanted to take it seriously. Most of the Pagan people I know go to Wiccan and Pagan events because they enjoy the social gatherings. I couldn’t find people interested in serious studying, and gathering for ritual. I was only able to get to ADF gatherings a half dozen times. I loved those events and met some great people. But unfortunately it was a lot of traveling, and getting someone to drive me was difficult. I loved participating in rituals with other ADF members. Everyone was friendly. Unfortunately I still am solitary as there are no Groves nearby. But I observe the High Days myself, and have been devoted to Brigid for years, and am one of the Flamekeepers. I also created a native plant sanctuary on my land with hundreds of native plants and wildflowers, some becoming quite rare.. This is my way of honoring the Nature Spirits. I give free tours to help educate people about the importance of native plants and why we should protect and grow them. I make herbal remedies from many plants and give them to people in need. I created my own Grove on my land and have helped out my community by doing memorial services for people in my Grove surrounded by trees and native plants. I’ve been a member of ADF since 2009. – N

It was the emphasis on scholarship that decided me.  – KT

I was in a place of transition, and wanted to try something different. Druidry popped up. I researched both OBOD and ADF, and truly think I could have excelled in either organization. But ADF was something I could justify, cost wise, without having to budget for it for a long while, so I figured what the heck, I’ll be an ADF Druid, finish this Dedicant thing in a year, and even if it’s not for me I won’t have wasted anything other than the cost of a nice dinner. Seems I rather stuck the landing. – LM

Isaac was going around to gatherings when he was first founding ADF and was talking about its goals and what would be its methods. I’d been disappointed at the poor level of scholarship in Neo-Paganism, and as soon as I heard what his goals were I knew it was for me. – DFW

I had moved back to Ohio and after being solitary most of my life, I looked around for pagan community. I went to a few local rituals that didn’t do so much for me, and then I found a Stone Creed Grove rite for Midsummer. I was immediately captivated and felt good with the people who were there. That night, I went home and joined ADF because I knew I found my humans. Since then, ADF has enriched my life and saved it multiple times. I have found long term friends and a place I can spiritually call home. – MH

The duotheistic/heteronormative focus of most of the Pagan resources available to me felt disconnected and foreign to me, but I felt a strong pull towards the beliefs of my Irish and Scottish ancestors. When I found ADF, the polytheistic focus and lack of strong heteronormative focus drew me in. The learning opportunities and warm people have kept me around since 2010. – BM

I had a dream where the god Esus cut out my heart and planted it. We both stood there and watched as a tree grew from it. Then, he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Go find the cranes.” And then I woke up. I googled “Cranes, Pagan, Spiritual” or something like that and 3 Cranes Grove was first in the search responses, holding a public ritual in ten days at a park near my house. So, I did as I was told. The rest is history. – MS

I had a loose, unstructured pagan practice for my whole life, but no pagan home. I wanted something nature centered, and open; closed-initiative practices were a hard no for me. ADF had the bones of everything I was looking for: fellowship, scholarship, virtues, and an inclusive, family friendly practice. I wanted a meaningful tradition for my family and ADF just fit. – EM

I met most of my Sassafras Grove-mates when I attended a non-ADF retreat. I was impressed with their kindness and intelligence, which made me want to join the grove and learn more about ADF. I was most attracted by the commitment to excellence, the IE traditions and the ritual structure. I was dissatisfied with Wicca because it seemed like the only purpose to do ritual was to ask for things, and I had more of a need to simply give thanks for what I already had, and to find a way to incorporate spirituality into my daily life. – TAP

Synchronicity. I had been contemplating returning to pagan practice for a while when I moved to south Houston for my doctorate program and decided to jump right in with celebrating the high days in the electric Wiccan style I learned as a teen while I did some exploring in books newer than the early aughts. That exploration led me to John Beckett’s first book, which led me to act as if Brighid might be a real person at Imbolc which led to her showing up quite in my living room.  When I was looking for somewhere to connect with people who could maybe offer some sort of perspective while I figured out wtf had just happened and what I wanted to do with it, I looked for both Druid groups and CUUPS chapters in Texas- and came across Nine Waves Grove, ADF. There’s a whole bunch more to that set of synchronicities, and the heart of it is that I found my first true spiritual home in this incredible community of beautiful souls. I didn’t know it would be that way at the beginning, of course, but it felt right enough that I joined ADF and started the Dedicant Path work immediately after attending my first meeting.  Those people in that community led me to other relationships, and to deepening relationships with the land, with friends and allies among the Kindreds, with myself. It led me to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the healing arts I practice as a psychologist and of the incredible disconnection from our inherently relational selfhood and our inherent, intimate connection with the other than human worlds that is at the heart of much of what we label individual pathology and the systemic rot which feeds them.  I stay because I was blessed enough to find another amazing community to be part of where I can offer meaningful service that is mutually nourishing. There are aspects of how ADF approaches ritual practice and relationship with the other than human that I find very valuable, but those are portable. It’s the incredible people I’ve been blessed to know through my time in ADF that keep me actively in the org. – AG

10+ years ago, I had horrible social anxiety, but I really wanted to get involved with the local pagan community and make friends. I forced myself to attend my first public ritual, hosted by Three Cranes Grove. I dunno, something about it just clicked. But I’d go back and forth about joining ADF until this year. I’m eclectic and enjoyed my freedom and I had really bad experiences with specific trads in the past, like a Hellenic Pagan group which caused a spiritual crisis in me. I wanted to join the community, but what if I couldn’t believe the same way? I didn’t want to fake it or become someone I wasn’t just for community. But I was curious about Druidry and attended as many off and online rituals of 3CG as I could because I loved the people, the atmosphere, the ritual, and the spiritual connection. Over time, as I explored Druidry here and there, I’d incorporate some things that 3CG did into my personal and public rituals. And Garanus Crane would welcome me warmly. An entity that I had never heard of or met until 3CG. In 2022, my gods initiated me into priesthood, where I had a lot of the god/spirit stuff down, I needed more training working with people. I’d searched for legit pagan priest training and read the books that I could find. I wasn’t Wiccan and I didn’t really belong to any one group, although my path is heavily influenced by my ancestors, Hellenic Paganism, and Norse Paganism. Everything, from internet searching to John Beckett articles would led me back to ADF.  Then I started getting pushes from Freyja and Baba Yaga, who said that They’d “clear the way for clergy training”. Again everything led back to ADF. After more research and seeing that the fellowship wasn’t an “our way or the highway” type of organization regarding a person’s beliefs, minus some key things of course, I decided to join in July, eagerly jumping into the Dedicant Program and attending/vibing with Virtual Fire Proto-Grove rituals and discussions. Last month, I became a Friend of Three Cranes Grove, too. My first solitary ritual, Garanus Crane was there, with a “it’s about time you arrived.” – KT

I like ADF because it is inclusive.  All are welcome.  There are many hearth cultures to choose from. – LN

I personally have always been more of a reconstructionist minded person. I am a believer that the ancients had such a deeper knowledge and connection with the gods and spirit world, that by embracing their ways and trying to relearn their lost knowledge is key to developing a strong connection ourselves. When I first found druidry I already worked with a couple roman gods, but being Celtic descended I felt I was lacking something. As I read more about druidry the more I instantly connected with it. When researching online I was under the impression that OBOD for example had a lot of influence earlier more 18th century Celica revival and early wicca and occultism, all of which is quite different from what I understood as the ancient practices. The ADF I contrast seemed to be more closer to reconstructionist. The vibe I got from reading about the ADF was “we do what we can to revive the ancient ways with what we know, but fill in the gaps with what we feel is right. If new information comes forward showing us different from the ancient druids then we are open to change to be more inline with them.” Being more favored towards reconstructionist views that was attractive. Then learning roman gods were accepted made me feel I was welcome to continue working with them, and could learn more about Celtic gods and religious traditions. – DC

This is an easy one! The initial draw and reason I stay is still the same: Community.  I was a solitary for about a decade before I went to the interwebs to seek a space to pray with like-minded folks. I was looking for a coven, but I found a grove and subsequently ADF — and here I still am all these years later. I am blessed to be in community with all of you. Hail the folk! – MA

Community was a huge draw for me, and I stayed because besides a reverence for the Earth Mother and Kindred, ADF doesn’t insist on a hearth culture or tell me I have to believe any one thing. I love how deeply flexible ADF is, and I admire how even in the past few years, it has become immensely more inclusive and accessible for people from all walks of life and all places and abilities. I am proud that ADF as an organization stands up for justice and equality, and welcomes all with open arms and public rites, even as religious intolerance grows around us. – AP