Leader Bio: Deborah Kest - ADF Neopagan Druidism

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(Editors' note: While Deborah is no longer ADF Preceptor or a member of World Tree Grove, she was responsible for much of the structure of ADF's Study Program, and as author of several high-quality articles on our site we are leaving her bio as-is despite it's being slightly out-of-date.)

Why I am in ADF

Because ADF is the only Neopagan organization that is devoted to scholarship, to open public worship, and to drawing our inspiration from our ancients—and specifically the Indo-Europeans—without having the attitude that we have to do everything exactly as our ancestors have done.

What I do in ADF

I am the Preceptor of the organization. That means I am working to get the Study Program going by coordinating others who are experts in the field to talk about the role they have in the organization and the training that someone needs to get to perform that role well; so I'm mostly coordinating others to talk about these issues.

I am also a member of World Tree Grove, and before that I was a member of Stone Creed. And in both cases I've been an officer, so I've acted as leadership of a grove for a long time and that is very important to me because that's the venue in which I can do the open public worship, and explore my own spirituality. I was asked to be Scribe in 1990, and I was Scribe until I was accepted to Brown, and then I told them I couldn't continue that and so I was a regular Director until the elections, when I did not run.

My personal vision for ADF's future

I'd like to see ADF as a complete community, so where we have people who want us to focus on producing priests—as though you can have priests without a religion—I think we need to be creating a whole religion. To me a whole religion means more than just priests—a whole religion means people acting in all the different capacities that a community needs to sustain itself. I want to draw our inspiration in creating these roles from the myths, what the ancients did, etc., and I see us as sacralizing our personal lives and hopefully creating a vibrant community so that we can not just get together at festivals, but where calling each other and thinking about hospitality laws is a basic part of how we're operating in our daily lives. For me, the purpose is to sacralize our time.

View all articles written by Deborah Kest

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