Our Grove
Grove of the Other Gods, ADF—formerly Green Man Grove, ADF—serves Druids and like-minded Pagans in the greater New York metropolitan area. We’ve held celebrations and rituals in Jersey City, New Brunswick, Manhattan, Morristown, Long Island, the Jersey Shore, Connecticut, and as far north as Woodstock. We’ve also been involved in rituals and workshops at various Pagan festivals. We’ve been around since Samhain (pronounced sow-en) 1990, when we performed our first ritual—in Liberty State Park under the skirts of the Goddess of Liberty Enlightening the World—and we’re members of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), which is Gaelic for “Our Own Druidry”. We are a group of experienced Pagans who believe that the best way to approach the Goddesses and Gods of an earth-centered religion is through practice and dedication and scholarship and fun.
Ár nDraíocht Féin is an international NeoPagan organization, whose worship centers on Indo-European pantheons. The study program is based on guilds that are devoted to specific areas of interest. They have a clergy training program, a magazine, and groves throughout North America and Europe. ADF is recognized as a non-profit religious organization, and they are also an honorary member of the British Council of Druids. To learn more about ADF, check out their web site at www.adf.org.
On Imbolc 2002 we changed the name of the grove from the one picked in 1990. Grove of the Other Gods was the new name the grove picked—out of roughly one hundred suggested names. The winning name was submitted by one of our members after he saw a fragment of an altar that was dedicated just to “the other Gods” in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The name reflects the grove’s traditional closeness to the “outsiders” as well as the pan-Indo-European nature of our worship and the exuberant joy that we take in performing old folk traditions. “The Other Gods” also celebrates the area we live in—a densely-populated and diverse area teeming with cultures and religions from all over the globe: synagogues, mosques, Hindu temples, Jain temples, Sikh temples, Santeria botanicas, Christian churches and cathedrals, various Wiccan covens, Norse hearths, and who knows what else....
Who are the Other Gods? You decide. We provide a newsletter, a web site, and a calendar of events run by grove members so you can go to the events you have an interest in when you have the time for it, or you can put your own events on the calendar. We understand that life in the NewYork / New Jersey area makes special demands on our time and energy (and yours) and we have created a format that lets people to devote as much or as little time to the grove as their needs allow.
The Metro-Pagan area is full of people who already have some general Pagan knowledge and who have experience in various arts: music, performance, poetry, prose, satire, painting and sculpture, and, of course, ritual– so we try to provide a conducive setting.
Our rituals and workshops are open to the public. We also work with the ADF Druid Dedicants Program and can hook people up with ADF's study program.
