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Zsuzsanna Budapest

Written and compiled by George Knowles

Zsuzsanna Budapest is a hereditary witch of Hungarian descent, an American author and media personality who writes predominantly on feminist spirituality.  In 1971 she founded the “Susan B. Anthony Coven”, the first women’s only coven in America, which led to the formation of the Dianic Wicca tradition of witchcraft.  She is also a director of the Women’s Spirituality Forum located in the Bay Area of San Francisco.

Born Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay in Budapest, Hungary on the 20^th January 1940, her mother Masika Szilagyi was a psychic medium and a practicing witch who supported the family as a ceramics artist and sculptress.  Masika’s work was Goddess inspired, she used ancient motifs such as the tree of life, flowers and other nature based symbols to decorate her works.  As a practicing witch she used simple trance magic induced by chants and rhymes, as well as using herbs and spells for practical uses.  She brought up her daughter to respect and appreciate nature as the Mother Goddess.

Zsuzsanna claims her family kept an Ancestor Book dating back to the year 1270, in it was listed the births and deaths of all her past family members.  She also claims that many of her family had been healers, indeed her grandmother Llona had been an herbalist and naturalist healer and her father a doctor.  As according to tradition, while she was a child her mother taught and passed on to her the family lore and secrets of the craft.  At the age of 12 Zsuzsanna met a 14-year-old boy called Tom, and knew instinctively they would marry later in life, but circumstances at the time dictated they should part.

In Hungary at that time the privations of post war Europe followed by the political oppression of Russian occupation had created an ugly mood of unrest and rebellion throughout the country.  In November 1956 that mood erupted into a violent uprising and all across Hungary protesters clashed with state authorities.  The Red Army were sent in and within a few days ruthlessly crushed the rebellion, but the cost was great, at least 2,000 Hungarians and 640 Soviet soldiers died in the conflict.  Soviet reprisals followed:  about 300 revolutionaries were executed and another 22,000 sentenced to prison terms.  Zsuzsanna along with some 200,000 Hungarians, mostly young workers and students like herself, fled the country as political refugees.

Soviet tank in occupied Hungary

After settling in Austria, Zsuzsanna continued her high school education in Innsbruck and graduated from a bilingual gymnasium (a German or Scandinavian secondary school that prepares students for university).  She then won a scholarship to the University of Vienna where she studied languages.  Having been separated during the Hungary uprising, Zsuzsanna was reunited with her childhood sweetheart Tom, when in 1958 through a family contact he was able to relocate her in Austria, soon after they were engaged.

In 1959 Zsuzsanna and her fiancé immigrated to the United States where she was awarded a scholarship at the University of Chicago.  Just three weeks after their arrival she married Tom, and during the following two years gave birth to two sons Laszo and Gabor.  Zsuzsanna studied at “The Second City” an improvisational theatrical school from where she learned the skills she would later use to conduct rituals and train Priestesses.  By this time she was already improvising and practicing her family’s tradition as a solitary witch, using a make shift alter in the backyard of her home to worship the Goddess.

In 1964 Zsuzsanna moved the family to New York were they settled in Port Washington, Long Island.  While there Zsuzsanna enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Tom took a teaching job as a mathematics professor.  By this time however, Zsuzsanna had noticed how women in America were being treated to a similar regime of oppression as she had experienced in Hungary.  Women were treated as chattel, mothers at home and slaves of the kitchen, none were treated as equal to man in the work place.  She also began to identify with her own latent lesbian tendances.  By 1970 her marriage to Tom was over and ended in divorce.

Zsuzsanna and the children moved to California where she became involved with the women’s liberation and feminist movements in Los Angeles.  She started work at a Women’s Refuge Centre and soon became an activist leader on women’s issues.  However she saw a need to develop a female centred theology that would not only help women, but also encourage woman to participate in a religion that combined empowerment with a Goddess centred spirituality.  Drawing on her family heritage and her own improvisational skills, Zsuzsanna brought together six female friends and began celebrating the sabbat rituals in her home.  This led to the founding of the first women’s only coven during the winter solstice of 1971, named after the leader of the women’s suffrage movement and called:  “The Susan B. Anthony Coven”.

As word about her rituals and women only coven became known, more and more women wanted to join and participate.  As the coven grew, her home could no longer accommodate their expanding membership, so they began to celebrate openly on the beach and then later on a mountaintop in Malibu.  Zsuzsanna called her blend of ritual and magic “Dianic Wicca”, which was based on her own family tradition of ritual and magic as she had learned it from her mother, mixed with the influences of Charles G. Leland’s “Aradia: Gospel of the Witches”, while utilizing the working tools and some of the practices of Gerald Gardner’s Gardnerian Witchcraft tradition.

Over the years as coven hived of coven, and sister covens spread across the country, Dianic Wicca became a major force in supporting modern day feminist values in the rapidly expanding feminist and witchcraft movements.  For a time in the early 1970 Dianic Wicca became synonymous with “radical lesbianism”, however Dianic Wicca is not about lesbianism, its main focus is about womens spirituality.  While lesbians are included in the mix, so are bisexual and heterosexual women, and all participate and contributed to the main focus of the tradition “spirituality”.  Zsuzsanna’s dream is the revival of a Women’s Mystery tradition for the benefit of all women.

As they evolved Dianic Wiccans followed a similar pattern to traditional Wiccans in that they both attend festivals and celebrated nature in their monthly sabbat and esbat rituals, but they differ in a number of their beliefs and practices.  The main defference being that Dianic Wiccans worship only the Goddess and their covens are strictly women only.

In traditional Wicca there is normally a year and a day wait period before a person is allowed to join a coven proper, but in Dianic Wicca new women are accepted imediately as long as everyone in the coven is comfortable with it.  In traditional covens a High Priestess and Priest lead each ritual and are looked upon as elders of the craft or coven.  In Dianic covens everyone is considered equal and the position of Priestess is nominated for one ritual only, before being passed to another so that every woman in the coven gets a chance to lead rituals.

Dianic Wiccans use much the same rituals as do traditional Wiccans, but these are adapted to suit their own needs and practices.  During the “Drawing Down the Moon” ritual, traditionally a man draws down the moon on a woman who is then assumed to hold the power of the Goddess.  In Dianic Wicca, a woman draws down the moon on herself and then shares the power of the Goddess with all other members of the coven.

While Dianic Wiccans profess to conform with the Wiccan Rede:  “An Harm None, Do What You Will”, contrary to traditional Wiccan practice, they are not adverse to working negative magic or binding spells if it be for postive ends, i.e. to relieve women from oppression, and more importantly to counter crimes of violence against women and aid in the capture of serial killers and rapists etc.

Zsuzsanna led the “Susan B. Anthony Coven” for nearly 10 years, while at the same time teaching and initiating Priestesses.  She opened the first women’s spirituality shop called “The Feminist Wicca” in Venice, California, and self-published what was to become the classic textbook of Dianic Wicca:  “The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows” (1975).  Later she sold the book to the publisher Weiser Books who reissued it as “The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries” (1989).

The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries

In 1975 Zsuzsanna made headline news when an undercover policewomen arrested her for giving an unlawful Tarot Card reading.  She was charged under a municipal law prohibiting professional fortune telling and psychic readings.  When her case went to trial Zsuzsanna lost and received a $300 fine plus a period of probation, she was also forbidden to give any further professional readings.  Instead of doing reading herself, Zsuzsanna then started to teach Tarot reading classes and ran other courses in divination and witchcraft.  The old law was finally repealed nine years later.

Ruth Barrett

In the early 1980’s health issues caused by the polluted air of Los Angeles, forced Zsuzsanna to close her shop and turn over the “Susan B. Anthony Coven” to Ruth Barrett another Priestess and leader.  She then moved to Oakland near San Francisco where the air quality was much better.  There she formed a new coven called the “Laughing Goddess”, but sadly this coven failed to succeed, due in part to conflicting internal politics brought on through an in balance of heterosexual, bi and lesbian women.  Rather than start another coven, Zsuzsanna began to develop her skills as an author, speaker, teacher and media personality.

Today Zsuzsanna still lives in San Francisco and is the author of 10 books, one play and two CDs, as well as sponsoring the “Dianic University Online” an online school for Dianic Wicca and Goddess studies for women.  She continues to lead rituals and give lectures while teaching classes and presenting workshops, at the same time as writing articles and defending women’s issues in publications across the country.  She hosts her own cable TV show called “13^th Heaven” and is a director of the Women’s Spirituality Forum, a nonprofit organization sponsoring monthly lectures, women’s spiritual retreats and annual spiral dances on Halloween.

Over the years Zsuzsanna has influenced and inspired many other feminist teachers and writers in the Goddess movement.  One of her early pupils was Starhawk, who later became prominent as a woman’s leader and author in her own right.  In 2003, the California Institute of Integral Studies recognized her contribution to the advancement of women’s spirituality, and honoured her as a “Foremother” of the Women’s Spirituality Movement.  Her vision for the future is one of “Global Goddess Consciousness”, acknowledging the oneness of all as children of one Mother, the planet Earth.

Her Books:

The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, 1975

The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries, 1989

Grandmother Time, 1989

Grandmother Moon, 1991

The Goddess in the Office, 1993

The Goddess in the Bedroom, 1995

Summoning the Fates, 2003

Celestial Wisdom (with Diana Paxson), 2003

Rastadogs, 2003

Selene, 2004

End.

Sources:

Penguin Hutchinson Reference Library Copyright (c) 1996 Helicon Publishing and Penguin Books Ltd

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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 Encyclopedia of Witches &Witchcraft  - By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft  - By Raven Grimassi

Drawing down the Moon  -  by Margot Adler

http://www.zbudapest.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsuzsanna_Budapest

“Dianic University Online”  -  http://wicca.zbudapest.com/

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=uswi&c=trads&id=8451

Written and compiled on the 14^th March 2008  ©  George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be