Podcast: Susan Cross, Fieldnotes From a Crone

Susan Cross describes herself as a “well-wisher to ravens, bears, bumblebees, rattlesnakes, and coyotes.” She is a burial shroud maker, a rawhide hand drum and rattle builder, a ceremony writer, a gardener, an old mother, a tour driver, and a self-proclaimed grief-stricken naturalist drowning her sorrows with single malt scotch.

Cross has written a number of essays for Spirituality & Health, including her essay “Rethinking Burial: Burial Shrouds and More Ideas” featured in the July/August 2021 print issue. She is also the author of a new book called A Fleeting Presence: Fieldnotes From a Crone.

In this episode, Rabbi Rami and Cross discuss the presence of the crone in all people—regardless of gender—burial shrouds, the “Disney-fication” of the feminine, and much more.

“The crone is in charge of the cauldron of transformation, and so everything that dies goes into the cauldron and is transformed and transmuted and comes out again in another form.”

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