This memoir began as
answers to some questions toward a biography of Isaac Bonewits. This year marks
the thirtieth year of ADF’s work, and in a
few days I’ll be celebrating it at the Wellspring Gathering, with ADF
Druids from across the continent (and maybe further). I thought that I might edit up an article to
make some of this public in advance of the much more ambitious project, and
this weekend seems timely.
This is a highly personal view on the events of those early years. There was
perhaps more rancor than I have expressed, at times, but many friendships have
stood the test of time since, even if paths have diverged. The work of
organizing is the ditch-cutting and rock-hauling of our spiritual path. May the
gods and spirits bless the laborers.
Part 1 – Prehistory
of Me
I’m a working class guy from a steel town in NE Ohio. I was
raised in the 50s and 60s, came of age in the 70s, nurtured on Rock-n-roll, the
New Left, the counterculture and the occult. I was 16 in 1971 or so, when I
hitch-hiked across the border into Toronto for a taste of adventure. Among
other sights, I encountered my first real ‘occult shop’. In it was a book I
hadn’t seen before, called “Real Magic” – the edition with the great big
diploma in Magic and Thaumaturgy on the back of the dust-jacket. Wow, a modern
book on the occult, and the guy in the pic looked young. While I had to use the
little money I had for food on my journey, I soon secured a copy in its first
popular paperback edition.
Here’s a funny thing. The paperback edition of Real Magic came out in maybe
1972, and in it the dedication was made to the “Members of the Mage’s Guild of
the Middle Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism.” So when I joined
the SCA in 1973 I was instantly interested in learning whether and how it
connected with occultism and Paganism. Apparently Isaac had attempted to found
a magician’s guild in the Society, with very limited success. Isaac was
remembered in the Middle Kingdom as “Isaac the Unlikely”, though I can’t say
whether he took that name himself, or had it bestowed upon him.
In about 1977 I moved to Cleveland, Ohio. In about 1978 I joined my first
non-initiatory circle of Wiccan-syle Paganism. Incidentally, when I finally met
the HP of the sponsoring coven, he was a fellow I’d known in the SCA. At about the
same time, I became one of the founders of a Discordian cabal or something,
called the Chameleon Club. About 20 friends came together to work on organizing
events, entertainment and parties, based around the ideas of Robert Anton
Wilson, Timothy Leary, Aleister Crowley and their ilk. As early as 1978 we were
managing events in greater Cleveland, including visits by Selena Fox and Jim
Alan, which brought together Pagans from the NE Ohio area before ‘Pagan
Festivals’ had begun.
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| me c 1981, poverty-thin |
The Starwood Festival was founded
in 1981 by the Chameleon Club. We founded a winter event, held in a state park
with cabins and hotel facilities, a few years later. I don’t quite recall
whether Isaac was at the very first Winterstar, or the second. He appeared in
1984.
Following the first Starwood, at
Lughnassadh of 1981, I moved from Cleveland to Providence Rhode Island. I moved
house to pursue the traditional Craft with a coven that had a focus on Gaelic
Pagan deities, and my Celtic interest turned from Welsh to Irish. Even before
meeting Isaac I was likely to appear at festival rites in white robes, a torc
(which I had learned of in the SCA) and a staff.
In Summer of 1984 I returned to
Ohio. In the meantime I had met Isaac.
Isaac wasn’t at the late-70s and
early-80s events I attended. He had attended the Llewellyn “Witch-meets” in the
mid-70s (a bit before my time), but as far as I know his first appearance at a
more modern Pagan event was at the Winterstar Symposium in 1984. (Was he at
PanPagan ’80? My impression is no.) When
we learned that we could get Isaac out to one of our events I was delighted.
Isaac’s appearance at Winterstar was just one season
following his formal announcement of the founding of ADF at Samhain of 1983. I
remember him at that event promoting his new idea to a fairly receptive
audience, including people who are still members today. I found Isaac funny,
bright and interesting. Being an organizer of the event I was able to get some
time with him, and discovered a shared interest in Celtic lore as well as world
occultism. My response to his pitch on ADF was that I was busy developing a new
coven of my tradition, and didn’t have time for another system. Of course
Isaac’s ideas were quite raw at that time. I did become peripherally involved
with the organization, writing a bit for the first newsletter.
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| Isaac c.1990 |
Isaac would continue to appear at Starwood events throughout
the rest of his life. I was never an intimate local friend of his. Rather I
knew him at events, through long sessions of ale and theology and other
bullshit. For quite some time we were both festival horn-dogs, though I went
monogamous while Isaac never did. Nevertheless I enjoyed Isaac’s company and he
was a regular guest at our camps.
2 – Early Me & ADF Timeline
Let me outline my early history with ADF.
• 1984 – I meet Isaac at Winterstar, and tell him I have no
time to organize a Grove in Cleveland. That will remain my answer for the next
6 years or so.
• 1985ish – I work with Isaac, Tony Taylor, Ellen Hopman,
etc doing one of the first big public ADF rites, at Pagan Spirit Gathering; long
talks there about Celtic Reconstructionist ideas. (The Pagan Druidic
organization Keltria would schism from ADF in the next year or so, over issues
of Celtic-only and closed-circle policies.)
• 1986ish – Isaac appoints me to the ADF BoD. I serve an
undistinguished year, then resign, because I was busy. Throughout, I was
hanging with Isaac some at festivals and exchanging ideas. I also knew other
ADF folks from the period.
Incidentally, throughout the middle and late 80s I was
writing and leading public rites in a sort-of Celtic Wiccan format. My coven
became close to another coven in the area, and together we did several events.
Later I would enter a relationship with the priestess of that coven, Liafal,
and together we would dive into ADF.
• 1989 – Stone Creed Grove (SCG) founded in Cleveland by
Paul Maurice and others. Newly divorced, I attend the first public rite that
Fall Equinox, and jump in to meetings and organizing. Being the almost the only
person with full understanding of the ADF liturgical order, (along with JD
Labash, perhaps) I begin writing and teaching rituals.
• 1991 – SCG hosts the first Wellspring Gathering at
Brushwood. Wellspring is the first dedicated ADF festival, and we get a good
attendance from the NE, where most ADF ferment is happening.
2 – RDNA and the Founding of ADF
All of that was before I knew Isaac, but I’ll tell you what
I know.
Isaac’s primary conflict with the RDNA was his desire to
make a real Pagan religion and do real occultism. The original RDNA types were
more like anti-clerical dissenters from chapel than Neopagans, and Isaac was
just too religious for ‘em. He tried several direct offshoots, but didn’t get
any traction.
As I understand it, he was kind of out of the Druid biz when
he met a new friend (Shennain Bell) and they discovered a mutual interest in
Druidism. That led to a NYC study group in which Isaac developed a new
liturgical model, based in part on previous RDNA liturgy, but also on research
into ancient forms, and his own analysis of what makes a good ritual (he had a
sharp mind for such things). From my friend and long-time Pagan organizer Larry
Cornett I’ve had some description of the early work of the ADF proto-group that
met in Central Park in 82/83.
So ADF was an effort to make a new Druid system based on all
the ideas that Isaac had been working for, with no previous elders to nay-say
him, and with rules meant to keep him in charge as things got going.
3 - What were the first-wave
goals of ADF?
1: An independent tradition of Neopagan Druidism. There
would be no claims to ‘lineage’ or inheritance – ADF was a new thing, made by
scholarship and artistic inspiration. ADF would be based on the best
scholarship available, and be willing to adjust its work when scholarship
changed opinion.
2: Formal organization and public presence. ADF was about
making public Pagan congregations which would be charged with providing regular
open worship to the local Pagan community. There would be paid membership,
formal training and a hierarchy based on recognition of achievement. Eventually
there would be public temples of worship owned by ADF Groves.
3: Trained Professional Clergy. ADF would provide a way for
dedicated people to make a living as Pagan clergy. Isaac made no bones about
hoping that he would be one of the first of those. He certainly hoped to end up
making enough to be a full-time Archdruid. It never happened.
The motto was “Why not excellence”. The truth is that public
Pagan ritual often wasn’t very good. Methods cooked in circles of 5 – 15 people
just don’t serve up very well to 50 and more. Consensus decision-making and
formal egalitarianism become more and more difficult in larger groups, and
Isaac envisioned citywide congregations of dozens if not hundreds of members.
So Isaac taught the practice of good scripts, real rehearsals and skilled
performance of ritual. He encouraged artistic and scholastic excellence,
discarding a lot of leftover 19th century baggage.
Isaac was raised Roman Catholic, and I think it’s fair to
say that while he rejected the church’s theology and policy he rather envied
its organization. Isaac wanted a system in which a Pagan could enter an
educational system, finish training and be given a job (or a shot at a job) as
a priest. That’s what I think he would have wanted for himself as a young man
had his religious sensibilities made it possible, and it’s a sentiment I can
appreciate.
Isaac never cared for political correctness. In a decade
when feminist theory and post-marxist anarchist organizations were strong, he
proposed a gender-blind formal hierarchy with majority-rule elections. In a
religious path that often taught that money and religion don’t mix he proposed
building local bank-accounts and renting spaces.
And now?
Mainly, we’ve lowered our expectations about the money. The
first three goals above remain firmly in place, though we’ve realized that
we’re a long way from paying priests or owning buildings for the most part.
We remain committed to public Paganism, local worship and
formal training. Nothing has moved quickly, we’ve had small restarts, but we
continue to move ahead, still guided by Isaac’s original vision. (…and that’s
really the case, not just rhetoric – we refer to his original intention
documents pretty often…)
5 - What were the early
challenges in the growth of ADF?
In ADF’s first decade it struggled to extend its reach
beyond Isaac’s circle of friends and co-conspirators. The early publication,
“Druid’s Progress” was run as a ‘zine’ in the 80s style, and was intermittent
at best. Interested folks met at festivals. During the 80s there were various
Grove start-ups, but very little model or precedent for what a Grove would be
like. Isaac’s model often did not match that of the start-up groups, and Groves
came and went from the roster. The liturgical order itself was revised two or
three times by Isaac between 84 and 91ish, as well.
The first Wellspring Gathering was the beginning of the real
growth of the organization. Before Wellspring there were probably 5 working
Groves, a year later, twice that. Once solitaries saw that there was something
really happening, more Groves were founded.
I think that Wellspring was the first time that Isaac had
seen an ‘orthoprax’ ADF liturgy done by someone other than him, and with no
scripts. Over the next several years I made it my task to help reform and
refine Isaac’s ritual outline. For many years we held a roundtable on the
liturgy at Wellspring, and new and experienced Grove organizers would compare
notes and get ideas. As a result, a few years later Isaac made me ‘Chief
Liturgist’ of ADF by fiat.
I’ll digress to say that I feel confident that I have had some influence on ADF
liturgy:
I de-emphasized the use of extensive non-english
recitations. Isaac had written and performed the first script in both English
and Irish. I found the idea quite clumsy, especially for public rites, and
while we retained a few key phrases in Irish the rites were done mostly in
English. I introduced the giving of material offerings. Isaac’s
script had called for three passings of a cup, one each for three classes of
spirit. In an effort to make the work more friendly to larger groups (always a goal)
I replaced that with the giving of material offerings. We poured ale on the
ground or into a bowl for the Dead, birdseed or shinies for the Landwights, and
scented oil into the fire for the Gods. A bowl of oil with a ladle became a
standard part of the rite.
As time went by we came to agree that this had been a Good
Idea. It returned an archaic feel to the rites that brought juice of a kind
none of us had felt in years of Wiccan rites. I’ll admit to lifting it, at
least in concept, from Hindu rites and also from some Asatru customs of pouring
offerings, as well as from actual accounts of ancient Euro practices. It has
become a defining characteristic of our style by this time.
All that said… challenges. The early challenges (say, 1984 –
1994) were mainly logistical and organizational. ADF was a big-ideas attempt,
anchored by one guy in his living room (and his able wife, Deborah Lipp, I must
add). This never really worked very well. In many ways the biggest obstacle to
early ADF was Isaac. He demanded to remain the chief officer, and to appoint
the Board of Directors himself, for the full nine years that his original
design called for. Four or five years in, a growing membership was howling
pretty loudly for elections. I very much doubt that the membership would have
voted anyone else as Archdruid, but members wanted control of the other officer
positions. The member ferment produced the first elected Mother Grove position,
the Member’s Advocate, still a working seat.
Isaac had set a challenging publication goal. He wanted a
quarterly journal as well as a bi-monthly newsletter. On occasion that actually
happened. But the rate of burn-out for the production of small magazines is
well-known, and keeping a reliable editor was always an issue in the first years.
A number of membership years went by pre-internet with very little paper in
hand for a member’s dues. This was probably the major source of member
discontent.
A couple of years after, the nine years of the first phase
of Isaac’s plan had passed. It is greatly to Isaac’s credit that he did in fact
open the Board of Directors to direct election, while retaining the AD-for-life
status that he had written in to the original documents. I was the first
elected Vice-Archdruid. I think I have never bragged on it much, but Isaac
recruited me to run for that post, telling me that he trusted me with the
vision of ADF. I served on the BoD in some capacity for the next 7 or so years.
6 - Isaac's resignation as Arch-Druid
Of course, Isaac’s neuro-muscular disease is probably the
main reason that he resigned. However, his position had become quite stressful.
ADF had become quite contentious, with a dispute rising between more formal
reconstructionist members and Groves and more Neopagan or liberal members.
There was, not for the first time, real push-back against Isaac’s ideas of open
public worship in favor of a kind of neo-tribalism. There was real pressure on
Isaac to submit himself to election. The growth of the organization led to
various growing pains, including members who wanted ADF to act as various sorts
of religious court, dispute resolution, etc.
All of this added up to enough stress to be bad for Isaac’s
weakened system. We were also at a good point in ADF organizing. We had good
officers – Skip Ellison was a kick-ass scribe, and John ‘Fox’ Adelman was also
busy organizing the pile of paper from Isaac’s first decade as AD.
I got a call from Deborah Kest on a January morning. She had
gotten to her email first, and called me to say “Isaac resigned… you’re
Archdruid!”
To what extent did he
really resign?
He not only in fact resigned, he really, truly did resign. I
never got a call from the little bugger, bless him.
Skip and Fox stayed in touch as Isaac turned over the
paperwork, but it was probably 4 or 5 years before we saw him at a national
meeting again, and he kept his nose entirely out of the reforms that followed
his resignation.
To be clear, Isaac never resigned from ADF. He became
inactive for some while following his resignation, but I think we started to
see him again at events in the early 00s. In 2002 he was one of six ADF priests
to receive full ordination as part of a ‘grand-mothering’ kick-start to our clergy
training program. By that time he was again an active voice in the religion and
theology end of our work.
Isaac was received back gladly when he came. The
organization’s culture was glad to view him as the ‘extinguished flounder’ as
he always said, and he was glad to take the off-duty kibitzer role. He was
always a fine ritualist, and helped us make a team that could kick some ritual
ass in public festival rites.
7: The first
Archdruidic Election
(In the interest of discretion I will mention only the names of the victors of
the political fray that followed Isaac’s resignation)
Thus I found myself sitting as chair of some of the very
first live-chat AOL Board of Directors’ meetings. The stress that had produced
Isaac’s resignation included the difficulty of getting volunteer officers to
complete a three-year term. Isaac designed for continuity, but life gets in the
way. At the time meetings were reduced to some six or seven voting board
members.
For years the MG meetings had been held as multi-hour conference-calls,
costing hundreds of dollars per meeting. Now we had this new chat format, with
almost no custom, structure or management tools available. In early phases
non-MG members could not be kept out easily, and even the all-caps rule was
barely understood. So we had a brand new style of circus, and a dewy-fresh Archdruid.
I did not intend to stand for election . That was a miscalculation on Isaac’s
part – he expected me to take the chair. I had just launched a new business
with partners, hoping to get out of hourly-wage living. My wise and noble wife
said to me, sez she: “You can open a new business or be Archdruid, not both”.
Unable to defeat that logic, I chose not to stand.
The by-laws specified, at that time, that there were two
ways to become a candidate for Archdruid. One could either be nominated by the
Mother Grove (the board of directors), or gather petitions among the members.
At one of the first meetings that I chaired, a faction appeared that was
prepared to nominate a candidate.
Here was my first error. The election was mine to manage
under the by-laws, but I’m not the dictatorial type, really, and my mantle was
still damp. Had I had my wits about me I would have tabled the effort of this
faction by fiat, pending review. I was, myself, unable to think of any
qualification their candidate might have had at the time, yet here was a cadre
of known members with a plan. The plan was pushed through, and the MG nominated
their candidate.
John ‘Fox’ Adelman had been active in Ohio Pagan circles for
some while, and then thrown himself into ADF organizing. He volunteered to be
Isaac’s administrative assistant, leading to his appointment as ‘President’ of
ADF – a title without standing in the bylaws but reflecting the consensus at
the time that administrative work should be moved from the Archdruid’s desk to
a more secular officer. Fox was well-known among those actually managing the
org, and had begun establishing a thriving Grove in his home region. He was an
obvious choice for a candidate.
My second error – I did not move quickly to repair the
results of that first meeting and allow Fox’s candidacy. He didn’t stand up
plainly and say “I want it”, and the days ticked by until certain deadlines had
passed, making that original faction feel safe in having accomplished their
goal. Discovering that Fox was indeed interested in the position (we still
hadn’t reached the email-by-default, instant messaging stage of tech) I was
forced to pull a fast one, and push through a vote that extended the deadline
for petitions for candidacy. Fox was able to produce the signatures with ease,
but the original faction was offended that the rules had been bent to allow an
actual race. I don’t feel bad about it.
8: Archdruid Fox
Rev John “Fox’ Adelman (one of the only members to complete
the original priesthood training program, prior to his election) won the
election with 70+% of the vote, and a new Mother Grove was seated. Isaac was
gone, and there was no excuse for not making some of the changes we had been boiling
up for the past few years. It was a radical moment, but most of the leadership
approached it with Isaac’s original goals clearly in mind. Here’s what we did.
We suspended the original ADF Clergy Training program. The
history of that program really deserves a chapter of its own, but not just
here. Design difficulties and organizational bottlenecks had made it a
millstone. We suspended it in favor of the notion of a series of guilds, a
model we still use to some degree.
We ended the promise of a bi-monthly newsletter, and
combined print communication into a single quarterly magazine. At this point we
still could not predict what the internet would mean. We did succeed in
regularizing our print communication – eventually.
In a series of leadership retreats we invented the Dedicant
Work. This amounted to the first step in replacing the former training program.
It remains a valuable resource for members.
This brings us roughly to the end of ADF’s first ten years, with
Fox in the AD chair, and provides a good place to end my narrative for now.
9 – Isaac and ADF
ADF is Isaac’s creature. He shaped it from early days, and
it largely holds that shape today. It has grown well-past him, of course, and
we are growing past the Original Gangsters of 1994 into a group of leaders who
never actually met Isaac. Because of rules and models that Isaac made certain
to include, change will be gradual, and the past will be remembered for some
time as things change.
