Zsuzsanna Budapest

Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay (born 1940) is a Hungarian-American writer, activist, playwright and songwriter living in America who writes about feminist spirituality and Dianic Wicca under the pen name Zsuzsanna Budapest or Z. Budapest. She is the founder of the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1, which was founded in 1971 as the first women-only witches' coven. She founded the female-only style of Dianic Wicca.

She is the founder and director of the , a nonprofit organization featuring lectures, retreats and other events, and was the lead of a cable TV show called 13th Heaven. She had an online autobiography entitled Fly by Night, and wrote for the religion section of the San Francisco Examiner on subjects related to Pagan religions. Her play The Rise of the Fates premiered in Los Angeles in the mid-seventies. She is the composer of several songs including "We All Come From the Goddess".

Early life and education Z. Budapest was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her mother, Masika Szilagyi, was a medium, a practicing witch, and a professional sculptor whose work reflected themes of goddess and nature spirituality. In 1956, when the Hungarian Revolution began, she fled to Austria as a political refugee. She finished high school in Innsbruck, graduated from a bilingual gymnasium, and won a scholarship to the University of Vienna where she studied linguistics.

Budapest emigrated to the United States in 1959, where she studied at the University of Chicago, with groundbreaking originator of the art of improvisation, Viola Spolin, and the improvisational theater group The Second City. and the ensuing trial became a focus for media and pagan protesters. Budapest was found guilty.

Following her conviction, she engaged in nine years of appeals on the grounds that reading the Tarot was an example of women spiritually counselling women within the context of their religion. With pro bono legal representation she was acquitted, and the laws against "fortune telling" were struck from California law.

Later career In the 1980s, she created the TV show 13th Heaven, which ran on syndicated cable in the San Francisco Bay area for seven years.

She has organized the Goddess Festivals, which take place every other year, since 1991 where women gather for workshops and ritual in the Redwoods of California (see website goddess-fest.com).

Works Books

With Diana Paxson

Music

Plays The Rise of the Fates: A Woman's Passion Play, 1976.

Films Released on VHS by Sony/Columbia-Tristar on August 5, 1992.