Zsuzsanna Budapest
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Zsuzsanna Budapest (b. 30 January 1940) is the pen name and religious name assumed by Zsuzsanna Emese Moukesay, an American author of Hungarian origin, who writes on feminist spirituality and Dianic Wicca.
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[edit] Biography
Zsuzsanna Emese Budapest was born in Budapest, Hungary, on January 30, 1940. Her mother, Masika Szilagyi, was a medium and a practicing witch who supported herself and her daughter with her art, as a sculptress. Masika's themes celebrated the Triple Goddess and the Fates, and Zsuzsanna ("Z") grew up respecting and appreciating Mother Nature as a god. The poverty of postwar Europe and political oppression under the Russian occupation created a fierce political consciousness in Z, so when the Hungarian Revolution broke out in 1956 she became one of the sixty-five thousand political refugees who left the country, mostly young workers and students like herself. She finished high school in Innsbruck, graduated from a bilingual gymnasium, and won a scholarship to the University of Vienna where she studied languages.
IN 1959, Z emigrated to the United States. She studied at the University of Chicago, married, and gave birth to two sons. However, she later divorced after identifying as a lesbian and choosing to avoid the "duality" between man and woman[1]. In Chicago she also studied with Second City, an improvisational theatrical school, the only one in the country at that time. During this time, she began practicing her family's spiritual tradition in at her home altar in her backyard. When she entered her Saturn cycle at the age of thirty, she became involved with the women's liberation movement in Los Angeles and became an activist, staffing the Women's Center there for many years.
In the midst of this work, she recognized a need for a spiritual dimension within the feminist movement and started the women's spirituality movement. She founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number l, the first feminist witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups across the nation. Her first book, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, was published in 1975 and then re-published in 1989 as The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. This book served as the first hands-on book to lead women into their own spiritual/Goddess heritage.
Z was arrested in 1975 in Los Angeles for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. She lost the trial, which resulted in a $300 fine and probation, whereby she was forbidden to read Tarot cards for others. However, she instead began teaching Tarot classes, in addition to courses in divination and witchcraft. The municipal code against fortune-telling (by someone other than a religious leader) was struck down nine years later. Z has led rituals, lectured, taught classes, given workshops, written articles tirelessly, and published in many women's newspapers across the country. She has powerfully influenced many of the future teachers and writers in the Goddess Movement.
Her circles are exclusive to women only, and she prefers an equal mix of heterosexual and lesbian women, which she believes provides balance in her rituals. According to Z, "We have women's circles. You don't put men in women's circles - they wouldn't be women's circles any more. Our goddess is life, and women should be free to worship from their ovaries." [2]
Today Z lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published 10 books, one play, and two CDs. She teaches, gives workshops and lectures, continues to write, is the star of her own cable TV show called 13th Heaven, and acts as the director of the Women's Spirituality Forum, a nonprofit organization sponsoring a monthly lecture series in the Bay Area, spirituality retreats, and annual spiral dances on Halloween.
In 2003, The California Institute of Integral Studies recognized Z's contribution to the women's spirituality movement by honoring her as a Foremother of the Women's Spirituality Movement.
[edit] Trivia
- Australian comedian Judith Lucy refers to some of Zsuzsanna's literature in her comedy stand up CD "King Of The Road" (1996).
[edit] 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
[edit] Notes
- ^ Nevill Drury, The History of Magic in the Modern Age ISBN 0-09-478740-9 (pg. 161)
- ^ ibid, pg. 160
