Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, Inc. (or ADF) is a non-profit religious organization based in the United States, dedicated to the study and further development of modern Druidry.
The organization's first public announcement and membership sign-up took place at the first WinterStar Symposium in 1984 at Burr Oak State Park in Glouster, Ohio.
Despite the Gaelic name, ADF Druidry actually encompasses all Indo-European religions, including Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Roman, Slavic, Gaulish, and Vedic religious practices.
Isaac Bonewits founded ADF with the goal of "researching and expanding sound modern scholarship about the ancient Celts and other Indo-European peoples, in order to reconstruct what the Old Religions of Europe really were."
Bonewits wanted to focus on scholarship as a reaction to more revisionist types of Neopaganism, such as those claiming direct descent from a "Great Matriarchy" of pre-historic times (see James Frazer's The Golden Bough).
Examples of gods and goddesses worshipped include Lugh, Cernunnos, the Morrigan, Thor, Freya, Apollo, Athena, Vesta, Ceres, and many other ancient, pre-Christian, Indo-European deities.
Again, this was partly a reaction to the secretive religious groups Isaac was familiar with, such as closed covens which were limited in size to 13 members, or Masonic-style societies.
[6] In addition to promoting cult-ish behavior, such secretism in a larger sense was seen as unnecessarily promulgating the "underground" (occult, hidden) nature of Neopaganism.
As a result of these principles and intents, ADF groves are required to have open-to-the-public rituals on or near the eight "High Days" of the common Neopagan calendar such as Bealtaine, Lughnasadh, and Samhain (the holidays of the Wheel of the Year).
[7] Thus far it has been at either the Starwood Festival or the Wellspring Gathering, presently held at Tredara in Madison, Ohio, on Memorial Day Weekend[8][9] and at Brushwood Folklore Center in the past.