Spiral SpiritModern Druidry and Druidism
The historical druids have long piqued the imagination of the people who came after them. When secret societies and fraternal organizations such as Freemasonry began to flourish in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain, the idea of a band of elite sages with mysterious rituals was too good to pass up, and a number of societies of "druids" were founded. These lodges shared nothing in common with the historical druids beyond the name and some trappings that the members though were particularly "druidic", like long white robes and equally long white beards — fake ones, if that was all your face could muster. (Ladies, of course, needed not apply.)
As occultism began to gain in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th century, the image of the druids was once again mined for its association with wisdom and a deep spirituality. As the Age of Aquarius began to dawn, druidism began to look more and more towards the earth and the wisdom of the Pagan past, and to welcome the insights of women. Groups like the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) began to combine the teachings of the fraternal druids with understandings from nature and the Pagan paths to create a tradition of Druidry that could augment any spiritual path, with great success.
Finally, as the 20th century came to a close and the Aquarian religions began to find a firmer foothold in the religious consciousness of Western countries, Neopagan druids began to seek the ways of the ancients. In the early 1980s Isaac Bonewits founded ADF to take on the task of creating "a Neopagan religion based on solid (but imaginative) scholarship in the fields of linguistics, Indo-European studies, comparative religion, archeology, anthropology, Celtic & Norse & Baltic & Slavic studies, history, musicology and polytheology." Taking a middle path between strict historical reconstruction of ancient Indo-European religion and the eclecticism of much modern Neopaganism, ADF seeks to make a religion that is applicable to modern lives but grounded in real, rather than imagined or idealized, history. "Why not excellence?"