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There are so many legends about wishes in our culture. Which one of us has not make a secret wish on our birthday candles?  Who hasn’t wished on the first evening star?

So often, these are the first spells we cast as children.

Sometimes, a simple wishing spell is all you need, and you don’t have to wait for your birthday, or for the first evening star, to cast it.  All you need is the Nine of Cups!

The summer issue of the progressive spiritual-political magazineTikkun includes feature essays on the topic "Thinking Anew about God" which should be of interest to PaganSquare readers. The editor of the journal suggested to contributors that though many thoughtful people have rejected the (dominant male) God out there who is in control of the world, these same people often are not aware of new ways to thinking about divinity. All of the contributors respond to the challenge to imagine and conceptualize divinity in new ways. Though most of them are not pagan, I suspect that aspects of some of their views will resonate with every reader of this blog. 

Jewish feminist Judith Plaskow and I contributed a jointly written essay. In it, I speak of Goddess as a personal presence who loves and understands the world and whose power is power-with not power-over.  Judith speaks of God as a power of creativity that is the ground of both good and evil.

The Table of Contents provides a glimpse of the exciting new ideas about Goddess and God discussed in the issue.

It's fiery Tuesday here at the PaganNewsBeagle, and we've got a full plate of activist goodies! Satanic activists take advantage of #HobbyLobby; open carry -- prayer; the IRS investigates churches; should Pagans have "ministers," and heretical Founding Fathers of the U.S.

Under the category of "Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword" the Satanic Temple (hardly the Christians who brought the original case) is now invoking the #HobbyLobby SCOTUS decision to demand a religious exemption to anti-abortion laws in several states. While it's not obvious if these Satanists are actually religious, or just clever activists, they are certainly doing a nice job of getting attention.

"Open Carry -- Prayer!" That's what Byron Ballard calls a new law promoting faith in the public schools of North Carolina. The ramifications of this (and other) new state laws on religion is discussed by Heather Greene at TWH.

and all I could do was pick elderberries.

Like most of the Pagan community, I knew Margot was ill, had been ill for a while. And now she is dead, gone to Tir Nan Og, passed into the West. She was best known, I suppose, for her terribly important book "Drawing Down the Moon," and for her love of vampires and for her smart reporting from NY on NPR.

I made a memorial candle and took it to our Beloved Crone Antiga's house tonight and we talked about Margot and watched the candle burn and celebrated her brightness.

Ellen Dugan's Witches Tarot has become my go to deck and that is a special privilege in my deck collection. I wasn't sure anything could top the connection I made with my Steampunk deck but then the Witches Tarot called to me in a dream (I kid you not) and now it is the deck at the top of my pile. This is a deck I flirted with for awhile before it showed up in my dream. I made googly eyes at it on Amazon and even drooled over the images on facebook but I had not committed to buying it.

Then it happened, it came to me in my dream time. Yes this deck is that powerful, it will communicate to you while you sleep. I dreamed of the cards and each one spoke to me, literally, it was a dream what can I say! The images imprinted themselves on my mind so when I work up I had no choice but to ring my local Pagan Store, Well of the Moon and ask them if they had the Witches Tarot in stock. Of course they did, right!

So now I had the physical deck in my hands, not a dream deck, not a virtual deck a real printed deck and boy oh boy was it vibrating. The energy that was radiating off this deck was so intense and I had not even taken it out of the box yet. The reveal of a deck for me is a scared thing, the way I take it out of the box, the way I pick up the cards, flip through the book and slowly and carefully look through each of the cards. And the reveal of this deck was extra special.

#PaganNewsBeagle #BreakingPaganNews

Very sad news, confirmed by NPR: Margot Adler has died of cancer.

Adler was both a mainstream journalist and a Wiccan priestess, as is acknowledged in her NPR obituary. Her groundbreaking book "Drawing Down the Moon" was the first major non-fiction book to bring the Neo-Pagan culture to widespread attention in a non-sensational way.

http://wvpublic.org/post/margot-adler-npr-journalist-three-decades-dies

Welcome to Airy Monday at the PaganNewsBeagle: Aleister Crowley, summer skywatching, Scottish petroglyphs, ancient cultures and a little-known museum beloved by Pagans in the American South. Enjoy your week!

The web is abuzz with images from the Scottish Highlands (blame "Outlander.") If you decide to go, check out these mysterious petroglyphs while you're there.

Summer is a great time to view the Milky Way. If you can't see the stars due to bright city lights, here's a wonderful slideshow of Milky Way photos at Space.com