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Title: Law and Murder (Fright Court Book Two) 

On Friday April 18, 2014, there was a barbecue at the Bundy Ranch. I was being pressured to go by my political friends who had been my campaign volunteers when I ran for office the previous year. The woman who had been my campaign manager called me and asked me to come out and lead everyone in singing Bring It Down, the Leslie Fish anarchist ballad, which we had sung at a New Years' Even party after the end of my campaign. 

What does Egyptian religious practice look like in the 21^st century?  Maybe more to the point, why do we turn for inspiration to a culture which disappeared nearly 1800 years ago? 

The second question makes me think of my friend Marion who just loves to travel.  He’s been in more countries, more times, than I can count.  He and I have mused together about how deeply one is changed by stepping outside of everyday life and being immersed in something completely new and different.  For some of us, religious travel is just the tonic needed for a weary soul. 

I am just returned from three amazing days in the Texas Hill Country, where I attended Texas SpringFest, a Goddess spirituality event. I am refreshed and renewed after spending time in a woman-centered, explicitly feminist space, communing with my Goddess and my sisterhood and the reawakening Earth. I'll be writing more about SpringFest in the next days, as I slowly return to my regular life rhythms.

I did, however, take the time to pull this week's Goddess Inspiration Oracle card, and was surprised to find Sekhmet greeting me from the deck. The Egyptian Goddess of war (among other things), Sekhmet rules our darker emotions. Known as The Mighty One, Sekhmet asks us to examine those feelings that we -- especially those of us who are women -- are encouraged to keep hidden, out of sight, out of mind. Those emotions that we are told that "nice girls" don't feel -- anger, rage, righteousness, fury.

Sekhmet is an interesting goddess; long before I traveled to Egypt, I’d begun to feel pulses of magic from the lioness-headed statues I encountered in various museums, and even in the land of the Nile, it was in a museum that I first felt a pull toward her. At the time, it struck me as a bit strange that I’d feel resonance not with the sand beneath my feet, but with the massive black granite statues of the goddess, but it makes a certain amount of sense. It’s widely believed that tremendous statues of Sekhmet guarded Egypt’s ancient borders, and some even say that in times of invasion, the statues were brushed with poisonous spores to infect the would-be invaders as they crossed into Egypt. It’s no wonder that the statues of the Lady of Pestilence pack a punch; these icons are loaded with power!

I hadn’t expected to feel so strongly drawn to this goddess during my pilgrimage to Egypt; I’m an Isis girl all the way, and while I’ve always enjoyed the other Egyptian gods, I’ve never felt pulled to work with them. But Sekhmet was insistent, from the first time I faced her in the beautiful museum in Luxor, and by the time I ventured south to the Temple of Kom Ombo, I couldn’t ignore the intense emotions her image stirred in me.

On Faithful Friday the Beagle seeks out interesting tales of religion of all kinds. Today, we have: a story of Siberian shamans; the mysterious theft of the Sehkmet statue -- solved; a new website for British traditional Witchcraft; a Buddhist shrine arises in the inner city; and how people of different faiths (or none) differ and are similar regarding morality.

This story from the Siberian Times offers a glimpse into the world of traditional Siberian shamans. (Trigger warning: story includes visceral photos.)

Last year, the statue of Sekhmet from Las Vegas area Temple of Goddess Spirituality disappeared. Now we know the rest of the story.

Sekhmet dropped in on me again the other day.  For me, she’s not been one for words, turning up on rare occasion in startling, stark gestures (I tell about the most dramatic encounter in my book, Pool of Lotus).  But during a meditation with my group the Eye of Ra reached out to me, touching my third eye with a cool sizzle that arced instantly through all of me like lightning.  “You must be hard,” she said.  Strong and unyielding like stone.  Durable as a mountain.  In fact, for you Francophones, what I heard was, “You must be dur.” 

Not what I was looking for at the end of an intensely-stressful week.  I’d just learned of the death of a close friend, finished up a tough semester of studies, juggled two jobs and conducted two weddings.  All of it was happy stuff, but somehow the current holding me steady faltered, leaving me like jelly inside, tearful and anxious on the outside.  But there was more; the next day my friend’s husband would call to ask me to lead her memorial service in a few days.  Sekhmet’s admonition began to make more sense.