Zsuzsanna Budapest

Zsuzsanna "Z" Emese Budapest was born in Budapest, Hungary, 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 always celebrated the Triple Goddess and the Fates, and Zsuzsanna, grew up respecting and appreciating Mother Nature as a god. Zsuzsanna 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 being born and spreading across the nation. She wrote The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries (Weiser Publishers, 1989) which was originally published in 1975 as The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows. This book served as the first hands-on book to lead women into their own spiritual/Goddess heritage. Z was arrested in 1975 for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. She lost the trial but won the issue, and the law against psychics was struck down nine years later. Z has led rituals, lectured, taught classes, given workshops, written articles tirelessly, and published in hundreds of women's newspapers across the country. She has powerfully influenced many of the future teachers and writers about the Goddess. Today Z lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, traveling a lot, giving workshops and lectures, but always making time to smell the roses. She 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 about the Goddess, spirituality retreats, and annual spiral dances on Halloween. Z founded and sponsors the Dianic University Online, a vagina-friendly online school for Dianic Wicca and Goddess studies for women.