Revs. Avende and Dangler talk about their experiences of being priests in a variety of ways, focusing in on why they are priests, what it is that fulfills their vocation, and what it's like to have resonance between calls. It's a very late-night episode, full of weird metaphors and attempts at description, but also strangely coherent for the time it was recorded. We're approaching the end of the Festival Season That Wasn't, and are remarkably still running off of last year's recorded sessions. W...
Aug 27, 2020•22 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Continuing on from last week's discussion , we talk about what it's like to end a relationship with a spirit that has meant a great deal to you. Not every being who walks with us for a time is there for all our time, and that is okay. Hear our personal experiences with ending our patronage relationships, and what sorts of things we did to ensure that the relationships were ended in ways that allowed us to continue moving on. Find us on Facebook , learn more about us at ThreeCranes.Org , and lear...
Aug 20, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Summerland 2020 is here! We're still in a socially distant world that doesn't let us come together in person for festivals, but you should know that Summerland is THIS WEEKEND, August 14-15, 2020, and we're hosting it virtually. You can still register, and some of it is FREE . Check out threecranes.org/summerland and catch us for a good ritual and some workshops! As we got to the end of our long drive home from Harvest Nights, we worked through one of our most often requested topics: the patrona...
Aug 13, 2020•22 min•Season 3Ep. 19
"You cannot serve from an empty cup," and "A buried wick gives no light." Today we talk about how we manage burnout, and how we learn to recharge. It's a short conversation, but an important one about self care that we all need to have, no matter our role in the work. Find us on Facebook , visit us at threecranes.org/podcast , and learn more about Druidry at adf.org ....
Aug 06, 2020•13 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Updated Episode! There was some sort of error with the original upload: we've replaced the file and the file works now! How do you honor ancestors you never met, and never heard stories about? How do you connect to ancestor work if you're adopted? What are some strategies for managing our connections to family we might find problematic in our history? We talk about how we build connections through story and tradition, and what has created a depth of memory and family for us. Find us on Facebook ...
Jul 30, 2020•19 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Last year, ADF introduced a new program for learning and building a Druidic practice at your hearth, called The Hearth Keeper's Way . Rev. Avende is one of the authors of that program, and we wanted to share some basics with you. The best part: the program is public and you don't have to be an ADF member to access it and see if it's a good fit for you. We talk about what the program is, who wrote it, and how it was tested during creation. You can find the Hearth Keeper's Way on the ADF website ....
Jul 24, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 16
There's a lot of difference in how different priests experience priesting. We talk about what we've learned from each other, how we interact as co-priests in a Grove, and how we build our work both together and as individuals. We also talk a lot about how we've intentionally built the culture of trust in our Grove as well. Find us on Facebook , check us out at threecranes.org/podcast , or learn more about Druidry at adf.org ....
Jul 16, 2020•22 min•Season 3Ep. 15
We all fall off the horse from time to time, especially when it comes to study and the "homework" portion of our "religion with homework." Today, we talk about how we get back onto the path of study when we've had issues doing the work we wanted to finish. Strategies for organization, accountability, and mutual checkins are covered, and we talk a bit about the tools we've created to help others get through. We mostly talk about ADF study programs, but you can apply a lot of this to any sort of i...
Jul 10, 2020•18 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Priesting has a lot of strange things, and today we're going to talk about how we slide into your DMs ("direct messages") as Priests. Weird as that may sound, a large part of our work is built around personal connections, and those connections require extra steps and deeper work than the superficial feelings of connection we obtain from social media. In our modern world of social interaction, there are a lot of ways to think we are connecting with others, but often those processes do not actuall...
Jun 25, 2020•23 min•Season 3Ep. 13
How do you build positive cultures within a working group? We talk a bit about how Three Cranes Grove, ADF , builds consent culture. We also talk a bit about our local culture of trust, and how we apply these things to initiations and other religious events. Rev. Avende and Rev. Dangler both took a consent culture course through Cherry Hill Seminary (which all of ADF 's clergy have now taken as well), and the discussion moves a bit through how we took the class and applied it to our work within ...
Jun 18, 2020•23 min•Season 3Ep. 12
How do you navigate your personal experiences and the lore of ancient Pagans? We'll explore the interplay of ancient lore and unverified personal gnosis (also called "UPG"). We talk a bit about how we developed some of our Grove traditions, drawing items out of the lore and iconography of Gaul and into our modern practice. We even get a bit into "Shared Personal Gnosis" and a new concept, "Singularly Attributed Gnosis," or "SAG." You can find a bit of an expansion on the concept of SAG on Rev. D...
Jun 11, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Today, we're not in cars or headed to a festival, but we're walking together in the woods, socially distanced, and discussing how we pray in a time of fear. There's a lot going on in the world today, and sometimes it's hard to keep being there for others, to pray for them and with them. We talk about some of our strategies, projects, and pain in this walk in the woods. Also, if you need a nice change of pace, on June 7, 2020, Rev. Avende will be hosting a ritual in Animal Crossing: New Horizons,...
Jun 04, 2020•17 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Today, we took a walk in the woods, and we wanted to invite you along. Join us for this entirely unscripted, shared meditation. We needed our centers today, and we know you do too, so we recorded this just hours before this was released. This is also our first bit of work with new equipment, so it might be a bit rough, but that's part of what makes it joyful. Find your center, and walk with us. Find us on Facebook , donate at threecranes.org/donate , and learn more about Druidry at adf.org ....
Jun 02, 2020•8 min
This episode is all about finding the ways that your work is enough. We talk about the process of comparing your work to the work of others, what it's like to redefine "doing enough" in your own work, and the illusion of "I-have-it-together-ness" that social media can create. What everyone does in their personal practice has to be just that: personal. We bring up a number of ideas about how we keep doing the work, and how we help ourselves feel like we're doing the work, which is almost as impor...
May 28, 2020•26 min•Season 3Ep. 9
City Senses, Nature Awareness Meditation – A meditation for becoming aware of nature, either indoors or outdoors, either in or out of the city. This is especially well-suited to times when it is difficult to get away from the feel of the city. Led by Rev. Michael J Dangler, written by Nicole Egelhoff Find us on Facebook , and learn more about Druidry at threecranes.org
May 26, 2020•5 min
It's true, we did just one stupid dawn rite at Harvest Nights, and here we are, waking up a dawn again, like ya do. Occasionally, we're asked at festivals to run a dawn ritual, and we love to do it. But neither of us had been maintaining a personal practice recently for this work... but they quickly found out how quickly it can rekindle such a practice if you step back into it on accident. We both work with Uṣás in our religious work, and it surprised us in that not-so-surprising way that the Sp...
May 21, 2020•9 min•Season 3Ep. 8
One of the things that Rev. Avende and Rev. Dangler have been talking about (not in cars, not going to festivals, but otuside of that) is the lack of connection that social distancing and stay-at-home experiences can have on folks. So, for a while, we're going to offer meditations on this podcast every Tuesday for a while, upping our content so that folks at home can seek better connections in this disconnected time. Drawn from the ADF Hearth Keeper's Way , our first meditation is a simple Two P...
May 19, 2020•9 min
We all experience the same seasons and the same cycles, but we perceive them in different ways: markers are personal, special, and different depending on how we interact with those cycles and seasons, and today we talk a bit about how we mark the passage of time as Pagans. This is our 50th regular episode, and we have some new things on the horizon: look for a new segment next week, releasing on Tuesdays. Find us on Facebook , check us out at threecranes.org/podcast , and learn more about Druidr...
May 14, 2020•21 min•Season 3Ep. 7
What happens when your vision or your divination doesn't come to pass? There are a lot of things that happen in our Vision Eye, and oracles of cards and runes or of strange earthly perfumes give us many notions of what might come to pass. In today's episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation about the many ways that vision can be obtained, and talk about how to discern symbols and their meanings in the face of experience and our lives. Special in this episode, we hit a New England toll both, a...
May 07, 2020•28 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Theurgy! We discuss how our piety and our magical work intersect, and how the relationships we build deepen and build our work. We talk a bit about the differences between Theurgy and Thaumaturgy, some of the academic reactions to theurgic magic, and the place of hierophany (and epiphany of the sacred) in our work. Also, here's a link to an article mentioned: " Why Chaos Magicians Are Such A**holes " As always, you can find us on Facebook , donate at Threecranes.org/Donate , and learn more about...
Apr 30, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Do you need to have tools to do our work? What kinds of tools should you have? What kinds of tools have we always heard we'd need, and never found a use for? We discuss making tools, trading tools, and the types of tools that we work with. We talk about how we choose how to create tools, and our processes for that creation. Of particular interest in this discussion is the co-creation of our bell branches at Summerland 2019. [If you can't see the image of the sickle and bell branch discussed in t...
Apr 22, 2020•28 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Another content warning this week, where we talk about the process of working funerals, including some discussion of funerals for pets, children, and miscarriages. It's not the bulk of the episode, but it's not insignificant. How we wish we were going to Trillium this year, but we're not, alas. This is another episode from recording on our way to Harvest Nights Gathering last year. We often say, "Priestwork is marrying and burying people," so today's episode is the other side of the coin from la...
Apr 16, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 3
First, a quick warning: we know a lot of folks have had to postpone weddings in our current situation; this episode is very much about the joy of creating, planning, and working weddings, so we want you to know about this episode's content, since it can be pretty fresh for some folks. That said, though this was recorded before our current Stay-At-Home life, we did talk about how to manage people who cannot be present at a wedding, whether because they are ancestors, or perhaps they are unable to...
Apr 09, 2020•35 min•Season 3Ep. 2
There are lots of things that we can all do to improve our work. Rev. Avende and Rev. Dangler tackle some of their own internal critiques and bounce ideas off of each other. They discuss what they feel they can get better at in ritual, and offer solutions to each other as well. Recorded on the way to Harvest Nights Gathering in 2019 (and dealing with tolls along the way), we are back in full swing for the festival season, even if the festival season is mostly delayed due to Stay-At-Home orders. ...
Apr 02, 2020•20 min•Season 3Ep. 1
You may have heard by now that most of the early season festivals have been cancelled, including the Trillium Gathering , where we usually start our season. Well, it turns out that even though we can't actually go to festivals, we recorded a large number of episodes on the way to Harvest Nights Gathering late last year. So, we have a back catalog from a simpler time that we can all enjoy listening to during this rather difficult period. This intro was recorded during a mission to obtain the cons...
Apr 01, 2020•12 min
If you've never been to a festival, it's the time of year to start planning your season out. Whether you make it to just one festival, or you make it to a bunch like we do, it's good to know what you're getting into. This year, Three Cranes Grove, ADF , is picking up the mantle and hosting the Summerland Gathering near Yellow Springs, Ohio, on August 13-16, 2020. If you've been riding along with us for a while, you'll know that we're big on consent, inclusivity, and cooperative work. So, before ...
Jan 25, 2020•14 min•Season 2Ep. 27
What is it about talking about technology in ritual that makes us do weird things? I dunno, but come and (literally) ride along with us this time! While we're usually audio-only, on our way to Harvest Nights Gathering in Connecticut, we decided to try something new. With a 360 camera in our back seat, we experimented to see what it might be like to sit and listen in. With the topic of tech in ritual, this seemed like an obvious opportunity to try something new and different out. You can check ou...
Dec 19, 2019•19 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Here's a slightly special bonus feature: you can watch the conversation from a camera on our dash as we drive out to the Harvest Nights Gathering in Connecticut in October 2019. Check out the video on the 3CG YouTube page ... and maybe consider subscribing, because there's another video we're also working on to release shortly! In this episode we talk about the similarities and the differences of being an ADF Initiate and an ADF Priest, how the direction we came at each role affects our experien...
Dec 13, 2019•34 min•Season 2Ep. 25
We're at the end of Season 2, but we have plans for hiatus and Season 3! We'll tell you all about them, and give you an idea of what it's been like for us to do this podcast for the past two seasons. If you have ideas for future episodes, please send them to us, either via our Facebook page or via email . We really want to hear about what you're interested in, and we'll try and hit as many as we can on our trips. Plus, the trip we're taking to Harvest Nights next week is a pretty long drive, and...
Oct 03, 2019•13 min•Season 2Ep. 24
One of our big things in Three Cranes Grove, ADF , is that we love to create. After Rev. Crystal Groves ' discussion of marketing and social media strategies at Trillium 2019 , we had a discussion about the creative process, what it means to connect people to others, and what it's like to produce the words for the really hard things that happen in our lives. We also talk about ensuring that people approaching Druidry are able to see themselves as valid, joyful participants in Druidry. If you're ...
Sep 26, 2019•12 min•Season 2Ep. 23
