These nine workings are meant to help to help our students gain the basic ritual and trance skills intended by our Dedicant Program, and begin a working relationship with the Gods and Spirits. The DP has had to be written with the solitary student in mind, but students who work in a Grove can have a distinct advantage. In every step of the work it is helpful to have a more senior member lead students through the basics of the techniques. These nine workings are written to help experienced members lead newer students through the basics of our trance methods, cosmology and ritual structure, leading to opportunities to meet and know the Three Kindreds, and a personal commitment to the Path of Druidry.

The Nine Works:

1. The First Oath – The student makes the decision to commit to the Old Ways, and to progressing in the Druidic path of training, and makes a public oath before the Grove, affirming it.
2. Trance & the Two Powers – Using guided entrancement, the student learns to readily enter a basic trance, and how to have the experience of the Earth and Sky Powers balanced in the body.
3. Hallowing the Home Shrine – With the help of an Elder, if desired, the student formally consecrates and establishes her Home Shrine.
4. The Vision of the Cosmos – A guided trance event in which the student experiences the whole round of the Celtic/Druidic cosmos.
5. Full Home Shrine Sacrifice – The student learns the deeper symbolism and Inner Work of full Druidic ritual performed at the Home Shrine.

The following three Works are each three-day spells, in which the student approaches and honors the Kindreds as they exist in her actual environment and home. They are meant to begin real magical relationships with the Spirits, and bring them into direct contact with the Home Shrine.

6. Meeting the God/desses – The Heights and the Depths; The Home Pantheon; Seating the Deities
7. Meeting the Dead – The Cemeteries; Feeding the Dead; The Ancestor Offering
8. Meeting the Land-spirits – The Wild Places; the Home-wights; The Sidhe Offering
9. The Dedicant’s Oath – the student convokes the cosmos, fills herself with the Powers, gathers together all the contacts she has made among the allies, and recites the Oath that makes her a Dedicant Druid.

These Nine Works are based in the ADF Dedicant’s Program. They are meant to allow Grove members to take advantage of the presence of Elders, by using their services as readers and guides for the various trances and ritual instructions in the work. In many cases, any two students could also do the work together, one reading the scripted guidance while the other does the working. There will also be recorded guidance available for many of the Works.

However they are used, these scripts and rites are meant to facilitate the most important parts of the Dedicant’s program – the skills of trance and home worship, and the personal relationship with the Gods and Spirits. They do not, in any way, replace the Dedicant’s work – they are part and parcel of it. Those who wish to go further in any of ADF’s study programs or clergy training will have to complete the reading and writing that make up the remainder of the program.