#coor

I was at an ADF (Ár nDraíocht Féin) spiritual retreat in 2016. There was a member of OBOD (Order of Bards Ovates & Druids) there who had also been studying the RDNA (Reformed Druidism) and ADF for some time beforehand. During one of the lunches at the ADF retreat, we were all casually discussing pantheons and cosmology, and got into talking about Dalon Ap Landu who is the Lord of the Groves in the RDNA.

The OBOD member asked if Dalon Ap Landu would ever be welcome as the deity of the occasion in an ADF Core Order of Ritual. Ian Corrigan, one of the members of the ADF Mother Grove in attendance interrupted sharply saying "absolutely not!" This caused an immediate awkward silence, and it gave me the impression that the subject had come up numerous times before in Mother Grove meetings, and that it was decided long ago that non-Indo-European deities could never be the deity of the occasion in an ADF ritual.

That was one of the first times I started to wonder if European ethnocentricity had been codified into ADF regulations. Though little by little it seems they are now considering permitting non-European deities to potentially be honored at the focal point of the ceremonies. Namely they mentioned they were considering allowing the Kemetic gods in.

There was some debate over the Hittite gods, as the Hittites had some crossover with mesopotamian cultures which were not Indo-European, however the Hittite language is of the Indo-European family. This gray area allowed further discussion though some people still have strong opinions on that topic.

In retrospect if Dalon Ap Landu hadn't been given a Welsh name and the RDNA would have just stuck with the original "Lord of the Groves" epithet, the deity would have more credence. Lord of the Groves exists in the historic record as mentioned by the first century Roman historian Lucan in his Pharsalia where he mentioned the druids feared to disturb the Lord of the Groves.

That phrasing has a pro-Roman spin on it, as some historians speculate the druids didn't fear the Lord of the Groves but perhaps respected him. By making the druids (and by extension, the Gauls) seem fearful and timid, it elevated the Romans. Especially when in the paragraphs beforehand it mentions the Roman soldiers being too afraid to cut down the sacred groves to build siege towers (for the Siege of Massilia), and that the only thing that emboldened them was when Julius Caesar himself started to cut down the first tree in the grove. Allegedly.

I have seen flesh torn in reality too, and I do not "like" it. It is not a thing to be liked - it is real flesh, and belongs to someone, and I am not inhuman. I watch it with utmost reverence. I would not watch it for any sort of tired hunger - that is not its purpose; for it has no purpose, being real flesh. I do not gaze upon my mummies and drybones out of anything but total awe in that dusty evening feeling, like the setting sun filtering through a mausoleum. It is the same - they are similar - I watch them and they go directly to my private mind where they join the basis of my eternal philosophy.

“ - Yoshida Shouyou lost the fight with the self inside him. But that resistance created you all, his disciples. That soul is still here.”