Druids In Cars, Going To Festivals

This week, we chat about a commonly-requested topic: how we live our lives as Pagans, and what the lifestyle looks like to us. Part of that is just how we live our lives, and the decisions that we make that seem quite mundane: how we speak to and rear our children, how we interact with the world around us, and even how we travel. We talk about our visits to the Nashville Parthenon, and about a map of publicly accessible Pagan statues all throughout the US that resides on the Three Cranes Google account. Also, get a load of us, practicing our own advice when a surprise thought leads us down a different road than expected, quite literally... making this Part One of a two-part episode all of a sudden. Tune in next week for our escapade on our detour! Find us on Facebook, check us out at Threecranes.org/Podcast, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

We're back on the road, going to a festival, meaning that your friendly, chatty Druids are back in the full swing of the work. We recorded enough episodes to finish out the rest of the season on our way to Harvest Nights, and to provide a head start into next season as well, so get ready for regular episodes to return starting this week until the break! This week, we're talking about what it's been like to do hybrid rituals (partially private and in-person, partially public and over web conferencing software). Back in Episode 70, we described what we thought it would be like, and this seemed an opportune time to think about the experience and reflect a bit together on it. So many thanks to Charter Oak Grove, ADF, in Connecticut for putting together such a wonderful weekend in person. It was amazing. Find us on Facebook, check us out on threecranes.org/podcast, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

Did you know that one of our co-hosts, Rev. Avende, has published a children's education book? They did! It's called Kindling Sparks: A Religious Education Program for Young Pagans, and it's been available for a bit now through Rev. Avende's Patreon, and it's now been released as a book! Today, we interview Rev. Avende and talk about the process of bringing this program to life; it's development in early 2020 through today, and the path it's taken through testing and community work. You can pick up a copy of Kindling Sparks through Garanus Publishing on Lulu, at The Magical Druid, or wherever fine books are sold! You can also find their first book, The Spiraling Sun: A Winter Solstice Liturgy at The Magical Druid. Find us on Facebook, check us out at ThreeCranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org!

Finally on our way to and from a festival, even it it was virtual, Revs. Avende and Dangler are on their way out to the site of our broadcasted Summerland Unity Rite for a Druid Moon, and they spend some time discussing how they balance the religious and magical lives they lead with their mundane lives. They also get stuck in traffic at a tomato festival, because, well, what's life without a little unplanned weirdness. Summerland was great, though all online. If you're interested in a great online festival experience, we'll recommend Beyond the Gates, a festival happening over Labor Day weekend, and you can still register and see their presenters! Our next in-person festival, if everything works out, will be Charter Oak's Harvest Nights. It would be really great if we could see you there, probably masked, but we're anxious to have it be in person again. Check us out on Facebook, find us at ThreeCranes.org/Podcast, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

We sit down to discuss the sorts of things we seek out when we travel: the weird religious sites, the haunted tunnels, and the wonderful hospitality of our friends. And, of course, there's an off-the-cuff prayer to the Spirit of Couch Surfing, a solid contestant for patron of this podcast. We recorded this not in cars, but during a local, non-Pagan travel event we were both involved in. But there's way more to come. So, find us on Facebook, check us out at Threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org. --- For those curious, Rev. Avende's prayer, "Upon Encountering the Murder Ghost" from the #PrayerADay Project, Nov. 9, 2018: Hermes Diactorus, Guide of Souls, As we traveled tonight through the dark, Sleet bouncing off the windshield,  Reflectors marking the road few and far between, I thank you for traveling alongside us.  Hermes Diactorus, Guide of Souls, For holding the ghosts at bay as the fog rose about us, For keeping the shades back as we sped beneath the underpass, For maintaining the

Today, we took a listener question from an OBOD listener who wanted to know our take on the differences between spirituality and religion. We start with some dictionary definitions and work our way through our own experiences. This discussion sort of takes off from some of the ideas about orthopraxy in our previous episode, so you might be interested to tune in there as well, though this episode certainly stands alone. If you want to hear more about this idea that "Practice Begets Belief," you can find a 2012 podcast MJD did with BT Newberg over at Naturalistic Paganism. (Fun historical note: this was MJD's first experience on a podcast.) Find us on Facebook, check us out at threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

Today, we get a new vocabulary word in "orthoskhesis," a word meaning "right relationship" (versus "right belief" with orthodoxy, or "right practice" with orthopraxy). We talk a bit about how we might use this in the way we think about Druidry and Paganism in general, and about how we can be not only in a right relationship, but also in a wrong relationship (spoiler alert: it's mostly "can I set healthy boundaries?"). If you're interested in the Greekies mentioned toward the end of the discussion, you can get a look at them at The Magical Druid. Find us on Facebook, check us out at Threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org!

Two weeks ago, in Episode 75 (s4Ep8), we spoke a bit about the sensory experiences of our work as it related directly to our stoles, sickles, and other physical items we work with; last week, we went through a Dairy Queen drive-thru and had a tasty episode. Today, we wanted to dive deeper into how we experience ritual in a very physical, sensory way. We walk through the Five Senses we learned as kids in school (touch, hearing, seeing, taste, and smell), and then we also talk about three additional senses that are less well-known: our vestibular, interoceptive, and proprioceptive senses. To help us in our discussion, Rev. Dangler's wife, Maggie, joins us as our in-house expert to help us build a language around our experiences. Tonight, we're Druids in Lawn Chairs Sitting Adjacent to a Fire (no new theme songs this week, though), with a longer-than-usual podcast episode (48 minutes!), but we really had a good time on this one, and had some great experiences coming around to new understandings on our topic. W

Today, we take a special break and do a special trip suggested by one of our listeners, and we talk about how we retained our sanity and practice in a global pandemic. There's a lot of chat about tech, ritual and work, and building physical connections in the absence of physical presence. We even talk about some of our favorite Patreons, like DandelionLady, Firesighted, and TheLatestKate (and of course you can also check out Rev. Avende's and Rev. Dangler's as well). We also talk about how we've navigated the reopening process as a Grove and as individuals. If you're interested in the set of Reopening Workings from MJD that he sent out, you can find them on his Patreon. You can also check out the trailer and the stream of Rev. Avende's Animal Crossing Rite and see how we managed that. Special thanks to Mike Bierschenk for our re-written theme for this specific episode. Find us on Facebook, check us out at threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org!

We took a week off and (virtually) attended Wellspring last weekend, and we had a good time. But we're back! Learn the secret of the Stoles of the Priests of ADF, and why we do the weird things we do with them in ritual when a new priest is ordained. Then, hear us absolutely fail to recall some prayers we speak before every right because we don't have our stoles with us. We talk a little bit about how our physical actions inform our religious work and expression, and about what it's like to work with a sickle as a Druid. You can watch Rev. Avende, Rev. Castner, and Rev. Crawford receive their stoles, along with the toning process, on our YouTube channel to get a feeling of what the ceremony looks like. Find us on Facebook, check out threecranes.org/podcast for more Druids in Cars, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

We answer some reader mail this week, discussing how we find comfort in the work we do, seek creativity, and come back around to the ways that we worked before the pandemic. How do we manage projects, what processes have we fallen out of (and back into) during the pandemic, and what ways do we see forward as things trend back toward some definition of "normal?" If you want to check out the Virtual Wellspring event this year, you can find it and register at http://stonecreed.org/wellspring Find us on Facebook, check us out at threecranes.org/podcast, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

Today, we talk about our connections to the natural world, to each other, and to the Spirits. We talk about how we build these sorts of relationships, as well as first fruit offerings, and building boundaries in those relationships. We also want to remind you that we'd love to hear from you with topics: shoot us a note at druidsincars@threecranes.org Find us on Facebook, check out our Grove at Threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

Today we take another walk through the woods and speak about healing spirits and deities: how we connect with them, how we experience them, and what it's like to reach out to one. We reference a few external items, so we want to add those to the show notes as well: Episode 23 of this podcast is about "Magic That Works," and it discusses the referenced fertility cheese and teething spells. Episode 48 isn't directly referenced, but it discusses the differences between Theurgy and Thaumaturgy. Rev. Dangler's presentation on Magic and Healing at Ohio State can be found in the form of a paper on his Patreon, or you can link directly to the event to watch the video. Find us on Facebook, learn more about our Grove at threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org. 

Liminal spaces are points or areas that are "betwixt and between" states. On foot today, we wandered past a bog, and it got us thinking about the sorts of places we've encountered that were "in between" different experiences, and what it's like to work through them, and visit them. There's a bit of travel remembrance and a bit of travel planning that goes on, too! A couple of worthwhile notes on this episode: At one point, one of our microphones drops out, so there's a quality change in the last half of the episode. The lyric Michael can't quite recall from Scarborough Fair is: "Tell him to find me an acre of land / between the salt water and desert strand," or some variation thereof (the traditional wording changes). For the mentioned discussion about Cryptids and other "Weird Druidry" topics, check out Episode 28 of our podcast. Find us on Facebook, learn more at threecranes.org, and find out more about Druidry at ADF.org.

This past weekend, Three Cranes Grove, ADF, took our first steps toward reopening our public ritual practice: we conducted a small, semi-private hybrid ritual, where folks attended in person (masked and socially distanced) and remotely. On their way out to our Cutios (Rain Moon) ritual, Revs. Avende and Dangler discussed their preparations, and the basics of the setup for the ritual, along with what they hoped it would be like. Then, on the way back, they looked a bit critically at what worked, and what they found most interesting about the format after being away from public ritual for so long. Intercut into this episode are a few audio examples of how the rite sounded (an artifact of the recording process), which will let you hear how the priests worked in (and how the folk responded to) the immediate pandemic experience that was at the top of their minds. Our hope, as a Grove, is that as other pagan groups reopen (locally and distantly), some of our experiences might serve to help them build a plan to s

How do we start preparing for ritual, in both physical and spiritual ways? How is it different for us when we do group ritual and persona ritual? How can we simplify it and make it easier to get out the door, even in these weird pandemic times? Today, we take a walk in the woods, as there aren't quite festivals to go to yet in our cars, and go over how we prep for various ritual scenarios. It was a good conversation that has us ready for more. Find us on Facebook, check us out at threecranes.org/podcast, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

Season 4 is upon us! While there aren't festivals to go to (yet), we're planning and plotting for our coming season. At our Grove's annual Anagantios (Stay-At-Home Moon) rite, Revs. Dangler and Avende traveled out to their members with a slightly altered version of our usual rite. The discussion ranges from experiences of the pandemic year, the updates we've made to our practice, and the joy of doing the work, even in this strange time. This year's Anagantios rite had some last-minute changes thanks to some rather inclement weather (remember that blizzard that flowed through the US in mid-Feb?), but it gave us a chance to chat. There is, as always, more to come, and we expect our regular season to start up in April as usual, even if we aren't actually headed to specific festivals. It'll be lovely to ride along with you again. Follow us on Facebook, learn more about us at threecranes.org, and find out about Druidry at adf.org. See you soon!

It's been a year, hasn't it? We reflect on the past year of not being in cars, and pretty much not going to festivals, and talk about our content, where we've been, and where we're going. Mostly, though, we talk about the projects that got us through the past season, and what worked, and what didn't. There's a lot of stuff mentioned in this episode, so this description is going to be a bit of a linkbomb. If you can't click the links in your favorite podcast app, head over to http://druidsincars.podbean.com/ to find this episode's description, and click the links there. We talk about festivals that are tentatively planned for in-person work, if it's safe. You can find info on those festivals, including any updates to their plans, at their websites. Specifically called out in this episode are the following fests: ConVocation Trillium Wellspring Summerland We also talk about a few particular resources and videos we did. Most of these can be found on either Rev. Avende's Patreon or YouTube (where you'll

At Harvest Nights 2019, Rev. Avende sat down with Rev. Pezza, offering a window into some household practices including kids, and the impact of multifaith relationships on how we raise our kids. They also touch briefly on how ritual connects with kids coming into Deaf culture. Find us on Facebook, visit us at threecranes.org, and learn more about Druidry at adf.org.

What is "Orange?" Sometime after midnight, on the dark roads of Ohio in October 2019 returning from the Harvest Nights Gathering, we recorded a fairly slap-happy episode to keep ourselves awake. Our topic? Trancework. Our conversation? Wide-ranging and unfiltered. Our advice? Sometimes questionable. But we talk a lot about what works for us in trancework and what doesn't, and how we manage to achieve and understand our experiences. This is the last recording we did going to (or from) a festival in 2019 (don't worry, we have a bit more content coming this season). This episode also covers a lot of the practical work that we learned in Trance 1 and Trance 2 in ADF's study programs, so if you're working through the ADF Initiate or Clergy study, this might be an interesting discussion. Find us on Facebook, donate at threecranes.org/donate, and learn more about Druidry at ADF.org.