Another Druid Fracas
Nov. 15th, 2019 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 08:59 am (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-18 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 02:43 pm (UTC)BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-15 11:31 am (UTC)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
Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-15 02:46 pm (UTC)Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-15 09:50 pm (UTC)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
Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-16 12:38 am (UTC)Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-16 06:13 pm (UTC)More seriously, the majority/minority demographics make it so if one is in the minority, and can be generally accepting of others' right to be wrong, one has a much larger social group. Otherwise, you only get to talk to the twenty or so people who agree with you.
My personal experience of neopagans is that they're a civilized bunch who'd be good guys to have around if things get squirrelly. They're gun nuts and so pretty easy to talk to-or ar least listen to! Just ask them what they took to the range last time and how they liked it, and they'll carry the conversation from there.
BoysMom
Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-16 10:57 pm (UTC)Re: BONEwits
Date: 2019-11-17 06:23 pm (UTC)Re: Guns, pagans, and sanity, oh my!
Date: 2019-11-18 09:17 am (UTC)-Korellyn
Re: Guns, pagans, and sanity, oh my!
Date: 2019-11-19 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 02:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 05:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 12:44 am (UTC)RC cruelty
Date: 2019-11-16 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 07:55 pm (UTC)My only question to this would be: in your opinion is this a fundamental fault within Catholicism in particular or does all Christianity necessarily lend itself to this kind of abuse?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 04:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 04:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 04:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 06:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 05:26 pm (UTC)From a Yogic standpoint sex is not really a problem in-and-of-itself. The problem for many spiritual cultivators is that sex - like any desire - can keep one identified with the body sensations thus making it more difficult and slower to re-ascend the Planes. The same could easily said of industrialized civilizations rise of "foodie culture" and the resulting "always eating" culture and rising obesity rates worldwide and the spiritual consequence is similar in terms of the subtle spiritual body and slower unwinding back up the Planes to infinite knowledge, power and bliss.
You can't just get away with telling yourself "I know I'm not this body or mind enjoying sex or food". The Chi energy has to be aware of it too. That's why most Left-Hand Tantric Path people are not as far along using Left-Hand sex-techniques as they might think. Most people are really using it as a spiritually-sanctified reason for knocking boots and are fooling themselves. Again, having and enjoying sex itself (or food) is not the problem. It's only a problem if one wants to rise back up the Planes in a conscious, self-directed way via sex-techniques and one is deluding oneself about how far along one is at it. Sexual misconduct is a pretty good indicator that that Celibate (usually called Right-Hand Path) is not ready for such a spiritual practice.
On another point people who can't do one (celibacy) often fall into the opposite trap (indulgence). Real Left-Hand Path people from what I can tell are rare. Probably on par with the people who's will is so strong they can hold their breath until they actually die. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says the force we call Desire and the force we call Life are the same thing. So for example, the force of desire for your next breath and the force of desire for sex is the same Life impulse so that's why real sex-tantra and/or celibacy as spiritual practices is rather difficult for most people. It's an advanced spiritual technique which is why I think it was originally reserved for Catholic Priests. Ideally, said Priest was much further along in consciously self-directing himself back up the Planes than the Laity he guided.
Sadly from my experience Abrahamaic clergy (Catholic, Protestant, Rabbi, Imam) are as clueless about the real reasons for celibacy as any average Jane or Joe you'd pull off the street impromptu and ask them about why do it. For that matter an astonishing number of Dharmic religion followers are just as ignorant about why it's done.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 05:39 pm (UTC)celibacy
Date: 2019-11-19 08:18 pm (UTC)Judaism valorizes heterosexual relations within marriage and is more relaxed about extramarital sex than either Christianity or Islam. Rabbis are expected to marry and have children.
"Christian" cruelty
Date: 2019-11-17 01:59 am (UTC)Re: "Christian" cruelty
Date: 2019-11-17 04:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 02:38 am (UTC)But it didn't have celibacy.
SamChevre
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 04:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 09:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-18 05:10 am (UTC)crucifix
Date: 2019-11-19 08:28 pm (UTC)Two Jews, three opinions, but I think many Jews find crucifixes to be both bizarre and repulsive, not just as the symbol of a religion with which Jews have had a bad history, but as an object in itself. Lenny Bruce had a famous joke about that in one of his routines.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 03:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 06:00 am (UTC)Emotion vs spiritual reality
Date: 2019-11-17 09:05 pm (UTC)Re: Emotion vs spiritual reality
Date: 2019-11-18 05:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 11:59 am (UTC)I really should make an account here.
- Polytropos
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 02:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 04:07 pm (UTC)Now I'm curious: assuming the allegations are true, what steps could ADF have taken to salvage the situation?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 12:49 am (UTC)Memory-Hole
Date: 2019-11-17 06:13 pm (UTC)Re: Memory-Hole
Date: 2019-11-17 07:07 pm (UTC)Re: Memory-Hole
Date: 2019-11-17 07:29 pm (UTC)Omg. I have read 1984 albeit several decades ago. Still managed to forget that bit. Looks like it might be time for a re-read.
The ADF logo...
Date: 2019-11-15 05:55 pm (UTC)Re: The ADF logo...
Date: 2019-11-16 12:50 am (UTC)Re: The ADF logo...
Date: 2019-11-18 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 06:10 pm (UTC)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..
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 02:53 am (UTC)Mentioning Francis (mumble mumble mumble) gave me an idea. Suppose instead of posthumously ousting Bonewits, they’d kept him but acknowledged him being the equivalent of a bad pope? Instead of calling him Beloved Ancestor, call him Jerk Who Nevertheless Founded The Organization? Would that avert the bad consequences you cited? Or is it like with (mumble mumble) Francis, what Bonewits did was so egregious he done trashed the whole egregor and there’s no choice but to start over from scratch?
For persons who wonder why Francis is worse than the bad popes, it’s because they did not attack the Church itself, they did not attack Church teaching on faith and morals. Francis did.
—Lady Cutekitten
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 08:05 pm (UTC)Obviously you've got a serious beef with Francis, have you written more anywhere on what exactly it is that you disagree with? I'm serious and just plain interested. I'm not going to argue with you about it.
Chris
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 12:20 am (UTC)A lot of Roman Catholics have a serious beef with Francis. We think he should either become a Catholic or resign the papacy.
Rod Dreher at American Conservative has gone into Francis’s un-Papal conduct in exhaustive detail. He has a wider view of the whole mess than I have, as he was first a Methodist or Baptist, I forget which, then a Catholic, now Russian Orthodox.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 12:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 04:07 am (UTC)Pope Francis
Date: 2019-11-17 02:02 am (UTC)Re: Pope Francis
Date: 2019-11-17 04:33 am (UTC)Re: Pope Francis
Date: 2019-11-17 03:27 pm (UTC)starting to deteriorate. He also has an underlying condition that
doesn't seem to get mentioned very often. He has only one lung, having
lost the other to an infection early in his life. Most people can function
well with one lung, though they may be more vulnerable if respiratory issues
crop up as they age.
JLfromNH
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-15 09:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 01:16 am (UTC)(I need a gong sound effect for moments like this.)
Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-15 10:22 pm (UTC)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: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 01:00 am (UTC)2) You should be fine, too. Keep up your banishings and meditate regularly, and that ought to keep you in good shape.
Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 01:49 am (UTC)Withdrawing from ADF probably won’t be an option as long as ADF continues to function as an organization for legal and financial reasons as well as personal loyalties on behalf of the older members who have devoted their lives to this. But we’ve definitely discussed the contingencies for worst case scenarios. This will all definitely be getting discussed in detail this Sunday.
Overall my biggest worry is the core order of ritual itself getting tainted but from your comments it doesn’t sound like that’s a concern at this point.
Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 02:32 am (UTC)Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-20 08:12 pm (UTC)RW
Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-20 08:44 pm (UTC)Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 02:40 am (UTC)(Pope Francis mumble mumble mumble)
I’m going to Reality for a while, lest I violate canon law by talking about what a jerk I think the Pope is. (Mumble mumble mumble)
—Lady Cutekitten
Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 03:23 am (UTC)—Lady Cutekitten
Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 05:01 am (UTC)Re: Getting through this
Date: 2019-11-16 04:16 am (UTC)I looked up Cedarlight Grove. In my outsider’s opinion, which is worth at least as much as you’d pay for it, you’re a fine congregation, walking your talk, and have thus earned the Prestigious Lady Cutekitten Seal Of Approval. Long may you wave!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 01:01 am (UTC)Are you remembering correctly?
Date: 2019-11-21 12:52 am (UTC)And your break with ADF... Wild Hunt has a right up about how your right to oversee an ADF protogrove was TAKEN from you for reasons I really don't want to mention.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 01:02 am (UTC)I only ran into various writings of Mr. Bonewits online. I was underwhelmed with what I read. Early in my moving toward a Druidlike path, I investigated joining ADF. I was quickly scared off by its very organized hierarchical structure, which for me was (and is) a red flag. (But my dad got us involved in the Shepherding Movement when I was in my mid teens, and I drank that koolaid, and getting out of the cult was difficult, so my radar for that type of thing is overactive.) Seeing some of the things he said about the Druid Revival was also disconcerting. More recently, a lot was made clear when reading about his attempts to turn RDNA into what became ADF after the big schism.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the ADF. I do have a lot of sympathy for anybody whose lives have been ruined by this, and for those who now have some difficult decisions to make. I've been in esingletary's position and it is NOT a pleasant place to be.
DJSpo
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 05:22 am (UTC)DJSpo
On Bonewits - then and now
Date: 2019-11-17 01:55 am (UTC)We had a creep or two in the pagan community back when I was a newbie. I don't know what happened to one of them; my newbie friends and I were in a circle run by the other, and finally quit - and did a ritual amounting to "The Lord and Lady bless him and keep him far, far from here." and "May he find happiness in another state entirely."
The Albuquerque community was policing its own and posting notices, especially at Beltane, about what behavior would and would not be tolerated. I think the fact that it was heavily female-led may have helped. Most of the leaders back when I joined had been trained by Oz Anderson, who had quit teaching when I came in and is bedridden, in very poor health, now. But the elders I did know plainly took their tome from her. Now they're all in retirement or poor health, and some of us newbies have circles of their own to run. And the scene is fragmented, so you can no longer speak of "the pagan community" but seems to be quite lively. There's a late September harvest festival in an Albuquerque public park that has very good attendance, and we're as much in love with playing dress-up as ever. Just for what that's worth.
I know I've gotten off topic here, but founders and leaders of the local scenes can make a huge difference.
"Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s
Date: 2019-11-16 02:50 am (UTC)https://operationdisclosure1.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-finders-fbi-document-dump-from.html
I'm not familiar with all the details of this story by any means, but I figured you'd want to be aware of the FBI doc if you're not already:
https://vault.fbi.gov/the-finders
Re: "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s
Date: 2019-11-16 04:20 am (UTC)Re: "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s
Date: 2019-11-16 02:06 pm (UTC)By any chance do you know of where I could read more about the story from that perspective?
Re: "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s
Date: 2019-11-16 04:31 pm (UTC)Re: "Satanic ritual abuse" fraud of the 1980s
Date: 2019-11-16 04:51 pm (UTC)Sybil seems to have been the least culpable of the three; Wilbur kept her stoned most of the time.
Bonewits and ADF
Date: 2019-11-16 05:55 pm (UTC)As for ADF not acting on the allegations by MZB's daughter--she didn't even have the courage to make an actual accusation--just vague hints in a book that seemed to extrapolate the crimes within her family to the entire Pagan community. What exactly was ADF supposed to do? Attacking your Founder for accusations made by a mentally ill person years after the event, and years after the Founder's death doesn't seem right. Were they supposed to hold a tribunal of some sort? How? no way to compel witnesses to appear, or to ensure their truthfulness. I have seen in discussions on line that everyone who has challenged the allegations has been accused of being a collaborator. Diana Paxson, for example said that Isaac was not living in her home at the same time as Moira was, leading to remarks to the effect that "she was part of that whole crowd too." Did we not learn from the Satanic Panic and the Recovered Memory movement that not all testimony is reliable? Unfortunately there are still people out there pushing the 'victims never lie' story and demanding mob action instead of fair adjudication.
As for the adult women--well, it was the 60s and 70s and a lot of people who were quite happily celebrating free love and "all acts of love and pleasure are Her rites" back then seem to be suffering from "frackers remorse" these days.
While I read the ADF publications I never joined--just didn't appeal. I did respect the re-constructionist idea of basing practice on history and knowledge of original languages. However, I am not sure how well a scholar's path mixes with building an effective religion. Isaac's ambitions for the organization were completely unrealistic. I remember an early document laying out training for the clergy of something like 7 levels in 13 paths or something like that. It would have been the equivalent of earning a dozen PhD degrees to reach the highest level. Ironically one of the first requirements was to have one's ordinary life and livelihood in order--something that Isaac seemed to have a great deal of trouble with. (this was before the illness from the contaminated tryptophan struck him).
Preoccupation with Christianity: Isaac seemed convinced that Christianity was exclusively a religion of gloom and doom, hell fire preaching, looking forward to or even actively promoting a nuclear war for the End Times. Not to mention the whole Burning Times myth of the Inquisition dragging the village's beloved herbalist off to execution. While there were Christian right wingers who were preoccupied with the End Times, a day of listening to a Christian radio station would be instructive to anyone who holds such views. You know, songs about love and hope and support from Jesus and talks about being guided through the hard times. Isaac was also preoccupied with Satanists and IMO wasted a lot of time attacking the few Satanists who wanted to hang out with Neopagans--energy that could have been used to actually publish the ADF newsletter on time. Sigh.
I don't know how much it influenced the structure or actions of ADF, but Isaac was also, in my experience, consumed with the idea that the Pagan world needed full time paid clergy. He wasn't the only one--many people were given to saying things like --real cultures support their shamans, artists, poets, etc. IMO trying to create an organization that requires full time leaders is putting the cart before the horse--like the dot.com startups who rented office space and hired people based on their optimistic projections of what they would need when business got rolling, only to go belly up when the projections didn't pan out. Not to mention that if you don't like the results of the Christian clergy model imitating it seems like a bad idea.
ADF is not the only Pagan organization flailing around for effective organization and leadership. I suspect it will also not be the only one to fall to the "OMB our early leaders lived by the mores of their time, not by ours" syndrome.
Rita
Re: Bonewits and ADF
Date: 2019-11-16 11:09 pm (UTC)Re: Bonewits and ADF
Date: 2019-11-17 01:44 am (UTC)I have some happy memories of sitting at Isaac's kitchen table, having heated discussions and intellectual arguments about matters relating to Neopaganism. He was a worthy opponent, very bright and sometimes pointing out things I hadn't considered. I really valued these discussions, which were always friendly. I was no raving beauty in those days but I was a fairly handsome woman. Isaac never touched me or hit on me or treated me disrespectfully.
As Rita says, Isaac and his then wife became initiates of the NROOGD, a San Francisco Bay Area-based witchcraft tradition in which I was also active. We were members of different covens and I never circled with him in a private setting, but NROOGD regularly did large, formal, well rehearsed sabbat rituals that were open to the public. Most of the local NROOGD initiates and various other interested people attended these. Isaac and his wife and members of their coven wrote a Samhain ritual and invited me to represent the Morrigan in it, which I did. It was an excellent ritual, poetically beautiful and magically effective.
I lost touch with him when he moved to New York.
The fact that Isaac did not hit on me when I first knew him proves nothing either way. A couple of years after that, I attended a Neopagan festival in the South and was privately warned by several people to watch out for a BNP there who was notoriously handsy. At that gathering, I was one of the priestesses in a pickup ritual in which I wore an outfit that showed a lot of skin. When I was introduced to the man I had been warned about, he was a perfect gentleman. He probably thought I was a lesbian, but that doesn't stop determined lechers.
The one thing from Bonewits' early writing which I think has stood the test of time and recommend to all and sundry is the ABCDEF (Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame). This is a list of criteria to score any organization or group a person is thinking about joining. The ABCDEF will help you determine, just from the information you can glean from initial contacts with their members and from reading their public literature, whether the group has characteristics of being controlling, a scam, exploitative, etc. He came up with this before he founded the ADF.
Re: Bonewits and ADF
Date: 2019-11-17 12:38 am (UTC)Fred Clark has written 2 funny fiskings of Left Behind that are available on Kindle.
Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat
Re: Bonewits and ADF
Date: 2019-11-17 04:12 am (UTC)Speaking of which, one of my favorite responses to that series was a website (now turned into a book) titled Exposing Satan's Left Behind. Yes, I also wondered why anyone would want to uncover either of the Devil's buttocks...
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 06:36 pm (UTC)But as you pointed out they all looked quite happy to be there.
He was one of the (as we used to call them) "BNPs" - Big Name Pagans, who was insistent that pagans of all persuasions must have a paid clergy. I was all of about 22 and I could see that wasn't going to happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-16 11:10 pm (UTC)ADF Org Chart
Date: 2019-11-17 02:54 pm (UTC)The chart is an amazing piece of work. I've even saved it to my desktop in case I ever need a perfect example of dysfunctional organizational design. It looks like a ridiculous parody of an org chart to an outsider like me, but it would seem that people who have had contact with the ADF wouldn't find it surprising at all.
Re: ADF Org Chart
Date: 2019-11-17 06:35 pm (UTC)Since it took about a year to get approval and funding for computer reprogrammings, by which time we’d be 5 or 6 PIs down the road, we would have Work Arounds, for which charts might have been useful, but since WAs officially didn’t exist we didn’t get those.
Re: ADF Org Chart
Date: 2019-11-17 07:03 pm (UTC)By contrast, AODA, the Druid order I headed, had a national leadership strictly limited to seven persons, and ran very smoothly. Of course we weren't trying to be all things to all people; the Grand Grove, our national leadership body, existed for the sole purposes of maintaining a training program, chartering local groves, and fielding inquiries. OBOD, the largest Druid order in the world these days, has a comparably simple structure.
That works. ADF doesn't.
Re: ADF Org Chart
Date: 2019-11-24 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-17 09:10 pm (UTC)I'd be curious to hear why it's such a flustered cluck. The initiatory program was one of the things that pinged my interest when I gave renewing my membership a go a few years back (finally, something that isn't purely academic or Christian-esque minister of the people). I'm not so well versed in these things to spot less obvious red flags, how glad should I be I didn't get involved?
I find this depressing, but not surprising. ADF was the first organization I joined more than ten years ago, and I had some good times in it (I'm another former Cedarlight Grove member, that really was one of their better groups) before letting my membership lapse. Looking for a sense of community again, I tried rejoining, only all I saw anymore, was politics - the exact same toxic politics you talk about on your other blog, and ADF's leadership caving to their demands way too often. I backed right off, like I've been doing since this insanity started.
I suspect, from everything I've read about this latest blow up, amid genuine (and longstanding) accusations about dysfunctional leadership, politics is a big part of what this is really all about. A few of the more vocal members of the activist wing leaving in disgust because ADF won't be as political as they want it to be, throwing buzzwords over their shoulders as they flounce away (racism! sexism! how so? don't ask). The Mother Grove needs a sacrifice to appease the activist crowd, why not a man who's been dead near ten years? Must look much easier to some people than fixing their leadership problems, or I don't know, letting the activists do whatever they want while you focus on providing religious service to people, since that's what you are, a religious organization. That the people pushing for this move don't see (or have even considered) the magical implications of what they're doing, wouldn't surprise me much at all.
This is my first time commenting here, though I've been reading both your blogs for a while now, so I just want to say thank you so much for providing an online haven of sanity NeoPagan refugees like myself can come to. Your writing has really been a huge help to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-18 05:24 am (UTC)The ritual was published -- one of many signs that they had no idea what they were doing -- and I know of rather a number of people with backgrounds in initiatory orders who had great fun chuckling over it. Have you ever read a fictional sex scene written by a teenage virgin who has only the most abstract notion of what actually happens when two people make love? That's how it compares to an actual ritual of initiation. That's why it didn't surprise me a bit that they did their 180 turn on Bonewits with no thought of the magical and spiritual consequences; it really was par for the course.
Establishing ADF's Initiatory Current
Date: 2019-11-18 03:21 pm (UTC)Re: Establishing ADF's Initiatory Current
Date: 2019-11-19 07:02 pm (UTC)Re: Establishing ADF's Initiatory Current
Date: 2019-11-19 08:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-18 06:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-11-19 06:52 pm (UTC)