{"podcast":{"title":"The Three Ravens Podcast","slug":"the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563","podcast_index_feed_id":6092563,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/6404e1f4c5ea8c0011811194","website_url":"https://shows.acast.com/threeravenspodcast","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/6404e1f4c5ea8c0011811194/1762731467101-0eb1042b-7eea-4cd5-b8b9-9f44f87aadbd.jpeg","author":"Three Ravens","episode_count":511,"summary":"Three Ravens is an English myth and folklore podcast hosted by Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux. In each weekly episode, released on Mondays, we explore a historic county, digging into the history, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Across our first six series we ventured around England's 39 historic counties twice, taking turns to tell a new version of a legend from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it may have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past. Our Bonus Episodes are then released on Thursdays ( Magic and Medicines about folk remedies and arcane spells, Three Ravens Bestiary about cryptids and mythical creatures, Forgotten Melodies about folk song types with original performances from us, and Magus , which is about the lives of the most famous witches and wizards in history). On Saturdays, we then release episodes of our interview series Local Legends, with each episode featuring a chat between us and an acclaimed folklorist, author, podcaster or historian, deepening discussions about that week's county. In b…","last_synced_at":"2026-08-02T04:21:37.212610+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563"},"episode":{"title":"Magus #13: Gerald Gardner","slug":"magus-13-gerald-gardner","published_at":"2026-07-27T05:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563/magus-13-gerald-gardner","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563","url":"https://www.threeravenspodcast.com/","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6404e1f4c5ea8c0011811194/e/6a66537bfa6cc1e0304468d6/media.mp3","summary":"This month on Magus , for our final episode of the series, we're casting a circle and exploring the life of the last great name in British magic, Gerald Gardner! Suffering with crippling asthma all his life, we begin with Gardner's youth and young manhood overseas where, accompanied by his nurse, nanny, and personal tutor, he explored Europe and parts of North Africa and the Middle East, developing an interest in folklore, paganism, and ethnography. After a career working on tea and rubber plantations, spending his free time digging into the mysteries of Malay cultures, he then became a colonial administrator, controlling the British opium monopoly during the interwar years. It is only on his return to England, alongside his wife Donna, that Gerald's magical life really begins. Through his membership of an obscure Rosicrucian order and then the New Forest Coven, he became certain that it was his task to revive an ancient British mystery cult close to extinction. How did he do this? Well, by cobbling together a lot of occult learning from yesteryear, often as presented by Aleister Crowley - an aspect of his new, duotheistic nature religion that did not sit comfortably with its High Priestesses... From his relationships with the likes of Cecil Williamson and Doreen Valiente to his boastful courting of the tabloid press, we then follow the downward trajectory of his life - as well as his legacy, as in part embodied in the hundreds of thousands of people who identify as Wiccan today. From his books to his anthropological studies, his preoccupations with flagellation and nudism to his fiction and non-fiction books, we're digging into it all. And at the end of it, bearing in mind what we've explored across the thirteen episodes of Magus, are we to believe he was really magic…","meta_description":"This month on Magus , for our final episode of the series, we're casting a circle and exploring the life of the last great name in British magic, Gerald G…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5343,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563/episodes/magus-13-gerald-gardner/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-three-ravens-podcast-6092563/magus-13-gerald-gardner.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}