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Oberon & Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart.

Written and compiled by George Knowles

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (also known as: Tim Zell, Otter G’Zell and Oberon Zell), is a Founding member of the Church of All Worlds and a leading figure in the American Neo-Pagan community.  A modern Renaissance man, he is a transpersonal psychologist, a naturalist, a metaphysician, a theologian, a shaman, an author, an artist, a sculptor, lecturer, teacher and ordained Priest of the Earth-Mother, Gaia. 

Oberon Zell is also an initiate in the Egyptian Church of the Eternal Source, a Priest in the Fellowship of Isis and has been initiated into several different traditions of Witchcraft.  Academically he holds degrees in sociology, anthropology, clinical psychology and theology. 

Oberon started life as Timothy Zell, and was born in St Louis, Missouri on the 30^th November 1942.  His father was serving as a Marine in the South Pacific when he was born, and after his return from the War, moved the family to Clark’s Summit a small town outside Scranton, Pennsylvania.  As a child Tim had a natural affinity with the creatures of nature and spent much of his time alone in the woods behind the family home.  There he would sit motionless and allow the wildlife to come all around him.

This early attunement to nature and animals contributed to the emergence of psychic abilities, including the gift of telepathy.  From an early age he could hear the thoughts of those around him, and as a consequence he shunned large crowds, the psychic confusion being too much to handle.  His early years where also fraught with childhood illnesses, which he claims “erased and reprogrammed his mind several times”.

During his teenage years, Tim’s father was promoted and moved the family to Crystal Lake, northwest of Chicago, Illinois.  With his affinity for nature, Tim took naturally to the lake and quickly learned to swim.  He would imagine himself to be an Otter, folding his arms by his sides and wriggling through the water in imitation; from this he gained the nickname “Otter Zell”.  He was introspective as a teenager, but read a wide range of literature, including various works of science fiction and fantasy.

Tim attended Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri from 1961-1965.  There, together with Richard Lance Christie, he founded the Church of All Worlds on the 07^th April 1962.  They were inspired by Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science-fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”, from which they founded the Water Brotherhood out of which they later created the Church of All Worlds (CAW).

In 1963, Tim married his first wife Martha, and fathered his first and only child, a son called Bryan.  His marriage to Martha ended in 1971.  After attending graduate school at Westminster College 1965-1968, Tim earned degrees in psychology, sociology and anthropology, a teaching certificate from Harris Teachers College, and a Doctor of Divinity degree from the Life Science College.  He also entered but did not complete a doctoral program in Clinical psychology at Washington University in St Louis.

During its early stages, Tim shaped the Church of All Worlds to his own vision of religion, a connective system that joins one with time and space through the oneness of all things.  The church exists as a networking web of Nests and Proto-Nests made up of small groups similar in structure to that of a Witches coven.  Their philosophy is primarily based on Heinlein's writings in his book “Stranger in a Strange Land”.  The main character in the book is an alien male, who together with a number of other men and women, form a network of intimate relationships called line marriages.  Over the years, many of the churches members have formed their own line marriages, including the Zell’s.

The church doesn’t dictate the form or belief of a Nest, and each Nest acts autonomously in setting up there’re own rules, internal structure and aspirations.  A Nest can be a closed coven or open grove, and focus can be traditional or eclectic.  Most Nests base themselves on Druidry, ceremonial magic, ecological activism, Wicca and Witchcraft etc.  Nests and Proto-Nests are usually grouped together by branches into regions.

The Church filed for incorporation in 1967 and was formally chartered in 1968.  They finally received a 501(c)(3) exemption from the IRS on the 18^th June 1970, becoming the first Pagan church to do so.  The Church grew quickly attracting a following of intellectuals and visionaries.

Tim was the first to apply the terms "Pagan" and "Neo-Pagan" to the newly emerging Nature religions of the 1960s, and through his publication of the award-winning Pagan magazine, Green Egg (1968-1976; 1988-2000), he was instrumental in coalescing and networking the newly emerging Neo-Pagan movement with other revivalist’s and environmental movements.  He made many speaker appearances at Pagan festivals and conventions, and often carried his pet ‘boa constrictor’ on his shoulders while he gave his address.

In 1970, after a profound visionary experience, Tim formulated and published “Theagenesis”, the theology of deep ecology, which has since become known as “The Gaea Thesis”.  This thesis quickly spread around the Pagan community, were it was near universally adopted.  In this he predates a similar hypothesis written and published in 1974 by James Lovelock, called the “Gaia Hypothesis”, Lovelock’s version also gained wide popular support and public acceptance. 

In September of 1973, Tim was invited to be a keynote speaker and discuss his “Theagenesis” at the Llewellyn-sponsored Gnostic Aquarian Festival in Minneapolis.  It was here that he first met and recognized his soul mate, Morning Glory.  After the festival and without hesitation, Morning Glory accompanied Tim back to his home in St Louis. 

Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart.

Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart is an American Pagan and Goddess historian; a principal in the Church of all Worlds founded by her husband Oberon Zell and a practitioner of Celtic Shamanism.  She has dedicated herself to working towards a pantheistic, ecology-conscious ‘Goddess’ living world.

Morning Glory was born Diana Moore in Long Beach, California on the 27^th May 1948.  Her middle-class parents came from Mississippi, and moved to California during World War II where her father worked in an aircraft factory.  On her mother’s side, her family history can be traced back through three generations to her great-grandmother, a Choctaw Indian.  To avoid the privations of the Indian reservations and the subsequent forced evacuation from her homeland on the Trail of Tears (1838-1839), her great-grandmother married a white man.  On her father’s side, her grandmother was an Irish milkmaid who had immigrated to America during the Irish potato famine of 1845 to 1850, and married a wealthy Southern planter.

Her mother was a devout member of the Pentecostal Church who married young.  She came from a large family of 13 children and wanted a large family herself, however she was blessed with just one child, her daughter Diana.  She was a devoted mother who brought up her daughter up in a somewhat totalitarian Christian environment.  Diana’s grandfather was a Methodist minister, and as a child she attended the Methodist church and would debate the bible with him.

By the age of 12, Diana became disenchanted with the churches attitude toward women.  Even at this early age she was acutely aware of her own femininity, and switched her allegiance to the Pentecostal church, only to find the same biases toward women who were considered subordinate to men and not accorded the same respect or positions in church society.  A budding feminist, by the age of 14 she broke with Christianity and began to study comparative religions.  After studying Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, she joined the Vedanta Society.

It was the Vedanta Society that first led Diana to Goddess worship and today she still maintains an alter to various Hindu goddesses.  The most important being ‘Lakshmi’, the Hindu goddess of wealth and beauty, also the Dark Mother ‘Kali’, who in Hindu mythology is the goddess of destruction and death.  Her search of comparative religions also included Greek mythology, which in turn led her to Paganism and her namesake goddess ‘Diana’.  She recognized that the goddess had entered her life as a vital force and therefore dedicated herself to becoming a Pagan.

After graduating from high school aged 18, Diana continued her studies into paganism, and during a three-week vigil at Big Sur in California, she initiated herself in to witchcraft.  As part of her self-initiation, she dived off a cliff into a pool of water, a ritual baptism, and after emerging from the water dedicated herself a witch by taking a magical name.  A year later Diana legally changed her name to Morning Glory.

After spending just one semester at community collage, Morning Glory decided to drop out and follow her path in search of the Goddess.  She left California in 1968, and traveled to Eugene, Oregon, there to join a commune.  Along the way she picked up a hitchhiker called Gary and they joined the commune together.  Morning Glory was an advocate of free love and open sexuality, and they maintained an open partnership.  A year later in 1969 Glory gave birth to a daughter called Rainbow (now called Gail).

In 1971, Morning Glory claims to have had a prophetic dream that she would soon meet a man who would change her life; she saw the man clearly in her dream and told Gary about it.  In addition to being a full-time mother, Morning Glory started a part-time career as a writer, and soon became a noted authority and lecturer about the Goddess.  However, she also found herself more and more thrust into the position of and acting as an untrained Priestess for the commune.

In an effort to resolve this situation, in 1973, Morning Glory travelled to Minneapolis for the Llewellyn-sponsored Gnostica Aquarian Convention, where she hoped to meet and network with other Wiccans and arrange for the necessary training to become a Priestess.  It was at the Convention she first met Tim Zell, and heard his vision of the Earth as a living Goddess.  Morning Glory knew she had just met the man of her dreams.  After the festival and without hesitation, Morning Glory accompanied Tim back to his home in St Louis.

Tim Zell and Morning Glory Zell

Morning Glory having moved to St. Louis to be with Tim, began to study with the Church of All Worlds, travelling back and forth between Eugene and St. Louis, co-parenting her duties as a mother with Gary.  Six months after they met and during the Spring Gnosticon Festival back in Minneapolis, Tim and Glory were legally married on the 14^th April 1974.  Their spectacular handfasting ceremony was officiated by Isaac Bonewits and Carolyn Clark.  Later that year Morning Glory became a priestess in the Church of All Worlds and co-editor with Tim of the churches Green Egg magazine.

In 1976 the Zell’s left St. Louis and the central Nest of the Church of All Worlds.  They bought an old school bus and drove it to Illinois where they converted it into a mobile home.  Travelling throughout the West, they visited “Annwfn” in Mendocino County, California, a pagan retreat belonging to Gwydion Pendderwen, co-founder of the ‘Faery Tradition’ with Victor Anderson, and two other organizations co-founded with Alison Harlow:  ‘Nemeton’ a pagan networking group, and ‘Forever Forests’ a group dedicated to reforestation.  In 1978, both Nemeton and Forever Forests merged with the Church of All Worlds, Nemeton becoming their publishing arm, leaving Forever Forests free to concentrate on environment issues.

Tim and Morning Glory then moved on to Eugene, Oregon, where Morning Glory had previously stayed in a commune with Gary.  There at the local community college they taught classes on “Witchcraft, Shamanism and Third World Religions”, founded the Coven of Ithil Duath and became involved with the newly created Covenant of the Goddess (founded in California and incorporated as a non-profit religious organization in 1975).

In 1977, the Zell’s were invited to become caretakers of ‘Coeden Brith’ (Welsh for ‘speckled forest’), a 220-acre piece of wilderness owned by Alison Harlow, and situated adjacent to ‘Annwfn’ in Mendocino County, California.  There they created a monastic homestead, raised wild animals, conducted training seminars and ran the Church of All Worlds as the umbrella organization for several subsidiaries.  These now included the ‘Holy Order of Mother Earth’, founded with Harlow for the purpose of establishing and maintaining the wildness sanctuary, and the Ecosophical Research Association founded by Morning Glory to fund their various projects including: the Living Unicorn project, a hunt for Mermaids off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and trips to Europe to study various sacred sites.  They were also active volunteers for ‘Critter Care’, a wildlife animal rescue organisation.

In 1979, the Zell’s conceived and promoted a huge eclipse gathering at the full-scale Stonehenge replica on the Columbia River Dalles, which had been built at the precise point where two solar eclipse paths would cross, one in 1918 and the other on the 26^th February 1979.  Over 4,000 people and Pagan luminaries gathered from all over the United States to attend the main ritual, written especially by the Zell’s.

After the eclipse Tim started to use his nickname “Otter” and changed his surname to “G’Zell”, a contraction of ‘Glory and Zell’, and for a short time they became known as “Otter and Morning Glory G’Zell” before reverting back to their original surname “Zell”.

In 1980, Lancelot the first of the Zell’s living Unicorns was born, and for the next few years the Zells were occupied solely in travelling and promoting the Unicorns at Renaissance Festivals, County Fairs and Science-fiction Conventions throughout North America.  After countless television appearances, media interviews and feature articles in national magazines, in 1984 they signed a four-year contract with the Ringling Bros/Barnum & Bailey Circus to exhibit the Unicorns nationwide, thus making the animals famous worldwide.

Oberon and Morning Glory with a unicorn bred at Coeden Brith

The G’Zell’s had always maintained an open marriage and in 1984 they added a significant other partner “Diane Darling” to their line, which they formalised with a triad handfasting in 1989.  In 1985, Alison Harlow asked the G’Zell’s to vacate the retreat at Coeden Brith, and make way for other plans.  Together with their extended family and animals, the G’Zell’s moved to Ukiah in northern California, where for the next 11 years they lived near a bend in the Russian River.  They called their new home ”The Old Same Place”.  The family now consisted of: Otter and his son Bryan, Morning Glory and her daughter Rainbow, Diane Darling and her son Zack, and a whole menagerie of animals including: unicorns, snakes, cats, weasels, possums and a great horned owl called Archimedes.

After their move to “The Same Old Place”, the Zell’s resumed their public appearances and restarted giving lectures, workshops and classes.  They also founded Ukiah’s annual Town Festival, leading a paraded down Main Street each year in full Renaissance Fair regalia complete with a real Unicorn.  Funded by the Ecosophical Research Association in 1985, the Zell’s ventured on a diving expedition to New Guinea to study the endangered Indo-Pacific dugong and its relationship to local native myths about Mermaids.

In 1987, the Zell’s opened their own short lived fantasy store called “Between the Worlds”, and began to rejuvenate the Church of All Worlds, which had shrunk to a mainly California base during their prolonged absence.  A year later at Beltane 1988, together with Morning Glory and Diane Darling as editors, Otter reproduced the Green Egg magazine and published it quarterly until 1996, at which point Otter retired as publisher emeritus, the magazine however continued to be published until 2000 when it too was retired.  To compliment the magazine, in 1989 they also produced a children’s supplement magazine call Ham (How about Magic?), edited by Zack Darling.  Over the years both magazines have won various awards.

Inspired by their travels to ancient sites in Europe, in 1990 the Zell’s conceived and created a reconstruction of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries.  Since then the Church of All Worlds has performed it each year, each time initiating about 20 people.  In 1993 they followed it with a reconstruction of the Greek Panathenaia Festival performed at the Parthenon replica in Nashville, Tennessee, where stands a 42-foot statue of the Goddess Athena, the largest indoor statue in the Western world.

In 1994, Otter again changed his first name, this time to “Oberon” after playing the role of Hades - ‘Lord of the Underworld’ in that year’s Eleusinia festival.  Oberon assumed his new name after a ritual baptism in the river near their home.  That same year his relationship with Diane Darling came to an end, and Oberon started a long-distance relationship with Liza Gabriel, a visionary and focalizer on the East Coast.  At about the same time Morning Glory was beginning a distant courtship with “Wolf Dean Stiles, a Pagan from Texas.  Shortly after their meeting, Wolf and Oberon also formed a bond and in 1995 Wolf moved to California where the three of them handfasted in 1996.  Later in 1996, Wynter Rose joined Morning Glory as her long awaited apprentice and co-wife with Wolf, and finally Liza moved from the East Coast to join with Oberon making the family complete.   

Oberon for many years has worked as a freelance graphic artist, and his fantasy and science fiction illustrations have appeared in many popular books including:  Anodea Judith's Wheels of Life and Marion Zimmer Bradley's science-fiction series.  His images have appeared in magazines and on record albums since the 1960’s.  He also created a series of God and Goddess altar posters, and his T-shirt designs can still be seen worn at Pagan gatherings and environmental conventions.

Oberon is an accomplished author of numerous published articles, his subject matter covering:  history, theology, magic, shamanism, mythology, archaeology, cosmology, and other related topics.  He has been interviewed by news media and authors alike, and quoted extensively in many books on New Age religion, Paganism and the occult.  In the early 1980’s Oberon started on his favourite and ongoing art project sculpting a series of Gods and Goddesses figures, and of mythological and legendary creatures to add to their collection.  His master-piece work is ‘The Millennial Gaia’ which is based on his 1970 ‘s “Theagenesis” vision.

Morning Glory also writes fantasy stories, several of which have been published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's ‘Swords and Sorceresses’ anthologies, and as a poet she has appeared in many magical and feminist journals.  Glory is perhaps best known for her presentations and lectures about the Goddess, and her ever-growing collection of over 200 votive figures from around the world.  In 1990, together with Oberon, they created ‘Mythic Images’, a company producing beautiful and authentic museum quality replicas of ancient Gods and Goddesses sculpted by Oberon.  The company has now evolved into a family business called TheaGenesis LLC.

In December of 1996, the Zell’s with their new partners all moved into a large rented house on 94 acres of land outside Laytonville, California, where they all took up the family name Zell-Ravenheart.  They lived there until the property was sold in 1999, then relocated closer to San Francisco.  Since then the Zell-Ravenheart’s have been actively supporting the Polyamory movement.

Polyamory is a term first coined by Morning Glory in her article ‘A Bouquet of Lovers’, originally published in the Green Egg magazine (May 1990).  This was a germinal work in what has since evolved into a growing movement, and describes the lifestyles of multiple lovers and active line marriages similar to her own.  It has since been reprinted in an anthology on polyamory called ‘Love Without Limits’, edited by Deborah Anapol.  In 2000 the Zell-Ravenheart’s were featured in an A&E documentary series called ‘The Love Chronicles: Love in the ‘60’s’.

After the success of the children’s fantasy book series “Harry Potter” by J. K. Rowling (started in 1997), Oberon saw the need for a real book of Occult knowledge aimed at teenage children and written by a real Wizard.  “The Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard” (published in 2004) is just such a handbook, compiled from his years as a practising Wizard and Visionary, and supported by the “Grey Council” just a few of whose members include:  Ellen Evert Hopman, Raymond Buckland, Raven Grimassi, Patricia Telesco, Jesse Wolf Hardin, and his wife Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. A most have book for a young aspiring wizard, containing all they will need to know for their early development.

As of Ostara 21st March 2007, CAW's flagship magazine Green Egg was resurrected as a E-zine magazine under the direction of Ariel Monserrat and her my husband Tom Donohue.  Green Egg can now be found at - www.greeneggzine.com.

End.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft  - By Raven Grimassi

The Encyclopedia of Witches &Witchcraft  - by Rosemary Ellen Guiley.

The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-paganism - By Shelley Rabinovitch

The Witch Book - The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism  -  By Raymond Buckland

The Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard – By Oberon Zell-Ravenheart

http://www.caw.org

First published on the 04 March 2007, 18:22:06 © George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be