The Crystal Cauldron and their HP Sandra Davies wanted to set up the first recognized Wiccan Temple in the United Kingdom. Sandra even petitioned the government to get allowance for the temple where her shop is located in Reddish.

Unfortunately, the Home Office sent Sandra a rejection letter letting them know that their application for temple status had been denied. The reasoning for denial wasn’t based on having the temple in her shop but based on not recognizing Wicca as a religion. The Home Office believes that per the Places of Worship Act of 1855 that Wicca does not worship a supreme being and is therefore not a legitimate religion.

When I first heard about the denial, I thought that maybe it was due to the temple being in the same location as a business which turned out not to be the case.

Click here to watch the news report.

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In 1782, Anna Goldi was accused of bewitching the daughter of Johann Jakob Tschudi. Anna was a servant in the Tschudi home at the time and among her charges was causing the young girl to spit pins and collapse to the ground in a fit of convulsions. General knowledge provided that John and Anna were having an affair and should that information become widely known in the area it would have seriously damaged John’s reputation who was both a doctor and a magistrate. Anna, whose family and herself denied that she was ever a witch, was tried and beheaded for the crime of witchcraft. Her sentencing was done well after the witchcraft hysteria had already run its course through Europe.

Now, after almost two hundred years Anna Goldi is being touted as the “last witch to be exonerated in Europe” despite the fact that she was never a witch. Last year her case was brought before the cantonal government in Switzerland where it was reviewed in conjunction with the Protestant Church; her case was denied. The cantonal parliament worked to persuade the government to look at the case again and this year the case was brought before both the Protestant and Catholic churches in the Swiss canton of Glarus and was accepted today.

The reason that Anna’s case was first brought to the Protestant Church in the area is due to it being the same institution that condemned her for being a witch all those years ago. The Swiss government has come out to say that the church had no legal authority to decided if Anna Goldi was guilty of being a witch or not.

In spirit of calling the exoneration a rehabilitation of Anna Goldi’s name the canton government in Glarus will base a new play on Anna and in Mollis, the canton where she was beheaded they have already opened a Goldi museum in her honor on the two hundred and twenty-fiftieth anniversary of her death from last year.

It is interesting to note that even though Anna was not a witch, that because of the way she died in an condemnation of witchcraft her legacy is now that of being the “last witch to be exonerated”. Yes, Anna is one of the the last cases of women being killed for the false accusation of witchcraft but I do doubt that in the many who came before her and the many who are still coming after her that she will really be the last one to be exonerated. The title implies that there are no more accused witches to be cleared… but there are.

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On the Isle of Lewis in Scotland there is another Pagan site that is looked to be developed in lieu of our modern society’s view of progress. First there was the road building through Tara, then they started to excavate Stonehenge and now a company wants to build a wind farm on top of Cailleach na Mointeach (Old Woman of the Moors).

Around every eighteen years Pagans and other seekers come from all over the world to witness Cailleach na Mointeach give birth to the Moon. She is apart of the Callanish Stones but from some reason although the Stones are protected as a national monument managed by Historic Scotland, Cailleach na Mointeach is not under such protection.

The Callanish Stones are a circle of 13 standing stones that have been dated by archaeologists as being erected between 3000 B.C and 1800 B.C.

Take a good look my friends, for this picture maybe the last you see of this historic Pagan monument left intact and turbine free.

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Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno gave an interview RPCV Kenya in 2006 in which he stated “Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it’s turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.” His interview was picked up by the newspaper the Scotsman which has since been pulled form online publication. You can read the Peace Corps report excerpt on the story here.

Brother Consolmagno since working through the Vatican observatory in Arizona has been witness to the religious climate in America where some groups are trying to force Creationism over evolution in public schools. Since his 2006 interview he has traveled the world informing people that taking the Bible literally is not what religion is about.

In an interview this year at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for ForaTV he stated that the Bible was not meant to be taken literally. The Book of Genesis he says should be taken more in the way that the Iliad was taken, as a poem of metaphor and similes. His comments on literalism stemmed from doing a Bible study with astronauts in Texas. One of the students came to him saying that he takes the Book of Genesis literally to which Consolmagno’s response was “Have you actually read Genesis?”

When interviewed for Astrobiology Magazine on why the Vatican funds his work he says that “There’s a political reason. It’s a simple one, that they want the world to know that the Church isn’t afraid of science, that they like science, that science is great, this is our way of seeing how God created the universe, and they want to make as strong a statement as possible that truth doesn’t contradict truth, that if you have faith, then you’re not going to ever be afraid of what science is going to come up with. Because it’s true.”

What Brother Consolmagno sees as the problem in today’s culture of keeping science and religion separate is as he states “The religious fundamentalists, basically, are scared that they don’t have faith, which is why they cling so tightly to what little they’ve got. The science fundamentalists, I think some of them just want to be taken seriously as scientists and they think, well I have to show that I’ve rejected anything else.”

What strikes me as the most interesting about Brother Consolmagno is that though he is a religious man he is an active scientist who believes that it is our species job to explore the universe. He also believes that there is more intelligent life out there yet to be discovered. And most importantly he does not see Catholicism as the one true religion, he see all religions as valid.

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