About the Author
Z Budapest was born in Budapest on January 30, 1940, on a terrible north-wind-whipped morning. Her mother, Masika, then only twenty-five years old, had great trouble delivering her, so she was born by cesarean section. Her mother was a famous sculptor who also happened to be a psychic, medium, and palm reader. She came from a long line of witches in the herbalist tradition. Her sister continued the line, becoming a pharmacist.
The Hungarian revolution in 1956 changed her life. SheI escaped to the West and went to school in Innsbruck and Vienna, and later at the University of Chicago, studying languages. She married and had two sons.
She studied with Second City, then with Viola Spolin, the mother of improvisation, and later at American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York.
In 1970 she discovered the Women's Liberation Movement, which led to another huge change in her life: she became a conscious woman. Feminism gave her so much. She decided to contribute seriously by connecting witchcraft with feminism, thereby sparking the women's spirituality movement. She wrote the first feminist witchcraft book, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, which later became The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries; She followed this with two other books, Grandmother of Time and Grandmother Moon.
When not working on a new book, she likes to work with women at weekend workshops, retreats, and witch camps, where they practice the remembered arts of witchcraft in safe circles of women, using tools of dance and chanting, candles, and incense to lift our spirits. They take part in guided meditations and pay visits to our ancestors and the Wild Woman. Who practice using aromas and Bach remedies for inner balance.
Zsuzsanna E. Budapest was born in Budapest, Hungary. In 1971, she founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number 1, the first feminist Witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups. The California Institute for Integral Studies recently recognized Budapest as a foremother in the women's spirituality movement. She currently stars on her own cable television show, 13th Heaven, and is the director of the Women's Spirituality Forum.
Z Budapest is one of the founding mothers of modern women's witchcraft. She catapulted herself into the media spotlight when she was tried as a witch and found guilty in 1975 after being arrested on Venice Beach for reading tarot cards. She fought the charges and after a nine year battle, won the right for every tarot reader to do so legally.
