Z Budapest Blog

with Gayle Kimball

GK: You mentioned your life work was “Priestessing a feminist /womanist community.” How has that developed and changed over the last two decades?

ZB: I am no longer a dimple-cheeked agile young women with an attitude. I am a new Crone groping confidently for the third destiny. While I was having other plans, like becoming a great Hungarian novelist, LIFE has directed the essence of what I was to bring back the ancient Goddess into women’s lives. LIFE is the final editor. What she writes is often better than what I have thought up. She writes bolder herstories.

For the past 30 years I acted as priestess, as well as a writer, initiator, conceptualizer. Priestess is the oldest profession by the way, not prostitution. What does it mean? I facilitated hundreds of circles of women with a spiritual content and experience. I taught women how to pray to the Goddess from the heart. I was the closest to this information. I had all the stars, the Aquarian sun, the Libra moon, humanitarian and equality minded; it all hung together imperceptibly. Plus, I had a psychic mother who prayed on the winds to our ancestors. I inherited the witchy genes that manifested early in my life.

When I was four years old I could frighten away Russian soldiers from our bunker during the WW2 in Budapest. Even as a toddler I had certainty that I could pray aloud to the heavens for a protection with my skinny little arms outstretched. The soldiers were undone by this picture. They knew I was in contact with God. I have always prayed the Big Prayer to the Goddess Boldogasszony. (She was a fairy queen for the Hungarians who birthed a girl, not a boy. We renamed her for political reasons. Mary got assimilated into the local tradition, all the churches were finally to Mary, or her mother Anna, or her friends St. Katherine, or our homegrown saints St. Elisabeth and St. Teresa. There are no churches built in my country to Jesus Christ that I have ever seen.

This prayer is older than Hungarian Christianity. Boldogasszony (Glad Woman) was the power over everything and it saved us many times during the war. I still do this prayer in Hungarian when I do healing work. It goes like this in mirror translation: “Now is the time to help me, oh Maria! You merciful Virgin Mother! The deep prayers of your children you never, never deny. Where humans cannot help, you alone have the power to deliver. Where the need is keen and hopeless, your power alone can turn the tides. Show us that you are our mother! Now help us oh Maria! You merciful Virgin Mother!”

GK: The archetype of the great mother, to use Jungian terminology, always surfaces, despite patriarchy’s efforts to suppress her. What do you think about the appearances of Virgin Mary in Mexico, the US, and various parts of Europe?

ZB: All healing sites are connected with the Mother of God. All springs, healing baths and rivers are the Goddess. She is everywhere and pervades the entire culture. I think humanity noticed that the Mother of all Gods actually does good things for us, heals the sick, gives hope to the hopeless, and warns of pending disasters. She is a working God, a God who never deserted us. A true Good God. Eventually it will be normal to love nature, to love peace.

GK: What is the evolution of your personal relationship and understanding of the Goddess?

ZB: I am still a work in progress. Nothing can be more powerful; nothing is more exuberant in the evening, nothing more worthy to dress up for than a ritual circle with a sacred fire and a few hundred women ready to dance and pray. Nothing compares to the oneness we feel when imagining the Goddess together. When women imagine the world, the world actually gets better. When blending action to our inner life, we are shapers of the new mythology that has bigger power then any President. Imagination and humor has toppled the powerful before.

The spiritual revolution is imperceptible, a stealth revolution. The Goddess is coming in little pieces, a woman at a time. The great awakening is in its almost maturity, we’re almost all getting it. LIFE doesn’t mind discord or unpleasantness, or even death. LIFE doesn’t mind because she made more of us yesterday. It’s a huge continuum. LIFE runs the show.

Our Zeitgeist ( Right now Pluto in Sagittarius) is the humanistic coming to consciousness as the human race. Women always stand for all of humanity, since we have created everybody from scratch; there are only two kinds of people on Earth, the mothers and her children. This is why the Madonna with child is essentially the symbol of our human race. This is the image that occurs in every culture over and over again.

GK: What do you see as the focus of young women today?

ZB: They want to make everyone feel included, not hate each other. They enjoy a gender continuum; the whole arch from extreme masculine and feminine to androgyny they see as “cool.” They don’t hate each other for sexual orientation. They’re kick ass wonderful, they know more than we did. My sons’ girlfriends were feminists; I used to be girlfriend bait. Young women like we had before them, looking for their mission in life.

A young woman like Julia Luna Hill loves nature and acts on her beliefs; that’s is what I hope they all find, a noble mission. More women are graduating from universities with degrees, streaming into white-collar jobs. Women will run this country in ten years. They still need women’s study groups, women’s centers and bars, as existed in the 60s and 70s, although women’s centers do exist in the universities and you don’t have to pay rent for Internet chat rooms.

GK: Is the Sisterhood of the Wicce still an organization? What about other wiccean organizations around the US and other countries? Are there still goddess and wiccean conferences, newsletters and magazines?

ZB: Oh yes there are! The organizations and their public visibility have moved to the Internet. You type in Witchcraft, or Goddess, and hundreds of things will pop up, including my own website, and the Dianic University. The space where the Aquarian Age can grow up is the Internet.

In the 80s I started the Women’s Spirituality Forum, our own San Francisco Bay Area non-profit, and lead it still. We organize women’s festivals and celebrations. We come together in a special place–the redwood forest; we circle to celebrate the seasons eight times a year. For example, Halloween is the New Year when the new calendar begins. We mourn people we lost, lament, speak out, then play music to come back to the present. We use the spiral dance, the most ancient symbol, the Milky Way, spiral down to the center to the house of death, commune with ancestors, and bring them offerings. We spiral back out, purified; the soul comes out as we hold hands with the women and spiral in and out. We dance for health, for peace, what ever the high priestess puts out. She sends a kiss around, a group hug, and then we do final chanting and release it into the universe. (For more details see The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries available only on my website).

Each holiday is different as we celebrate the seasons. Winter solstice is where they stole Christmas (it used to be January 6 and still is for the Greek Orthodox church). Pick a holiday and revive it with friends in your own tradition. We opened up Pandora’s treasure chest, but there’s tons more to do to create a culture with meaning. When everyone feels included, there’s no war.

At a recent festival, we did a big Peace Ritual where we entwined a sword with olive branches and offered it to the Goddess, left it over night in the woods. We burned rose buds in the sacred fire. Working on the ethereal plane is important because manifestation begins there and then we kick it into the physical world. Women’s mysteries, where we celebrate the moons and the seasons, are the fastest growing religious activity in the pagan movement. We’re creating a new mythology, leaving behind patriarchal gods. Old Testicles and New Testicles have been cast away. The goddess represents plurality; the life force is one but it enjoys diversity. The impulse of life has to be diverse.

GK: What have you published over the decades since the first edition of the women’s culture book?

ZB: I published seven more books since the first one, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, which is now The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries and twice as long. I published with Harper and Row The Grandmother of Time, about the lost Earth holidays, and Grandmother Moon about the lost lunar holidays.

For example, in Rome, March 17 was Liberale, the celebration of freedom, when slaves were allowed to speak their mind, the foremother of speakouts. The Greek festival of Astarte was the coming together of male and female principles. One of my favorites is Hillaria, the Roman laughing day, the original Easter celebration.

Goddess in the Office was the book for the 80s as women went to work in heels and rode home in sneakers. They were on the edge, the first inheritors of the second wave’s fruits of feminism. It’s still my best seller. I created for them magical spells to do in the office. It aligns office work with the universe, each day has a meaning; I include a scent, color, and gemstone for each day as a way to align your consciousness.

Goddess in the Bedroom is for working women when they return home. It suggests varying your posture in intercourse: When the woman is on top she controls the rhythm of the thrusting. Being a wild woman allows you to revel in your lovemaking. Lesbian sex focuses on the whole body, a spiritual and emotional experience. I also write about solo sex, bedtime stories, and fairy tales from Hungary.

Summoning the Fates was about TIME and Fate and planets and herstory and the three Weird Sisters who rule over life, death and beauty. A sister book about the Spirit of our Times is the Celestial Guide for Every Year of Your Life which came out in 2003, focusing on the transpersonal planets and how they mature our spirits. For example, if you have a Saturn return you can’t unchoose it. It must be lived. The first Saturn return is age 28 to 30; it flips bright women out because things are unclear until the dust settles around age 33 and they see their second destiny and its life mission. The third destiny from 60 to 90 is the most important. More and more I am looking at on-line publishing, and an on-line business selling new books and CDs of the old ones. Being an Aquarian I like change.

GK: Do you think it would make a difference if more women were political and religious leaders? What about Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and others who don’t seem to lead any differently than men? You hoped for revolution; is it on its way?

ZB: Those leaders were better then men, but were token women and had no role models, almost like orphans without mommies. They only had the ancient queens to look to, and that was too archaic. At least they all fought short wars and won; short wars equal less corruption. They were there first and made sure there will be more women leaders, letting down the mythical roots. We need generations of women leaders, before we can develop the most excellent ones we admire. We need woman leaders who also make mistakes; how else do they develop? Call together Mrs. Arafat, and Mrs. Sharon, and the wives and sisters of all the male leaders in power now and see what they are thinking.

How about the women who have brought down male corruption? In 2002, women exposed Oracle, like Debbie Leibrock. Sharon Watkins brought down Enron, and special agent Colleen Rowley exploded the CIA. Are these women/sisters not our frontrunners? Our noble generals? They don’t have to be witches; we are all used by LIFE

The culture changes, right under our feet, and then the rest follow. We listen to music from the all ages now and from all countries that had a recording machine. We watch TV about historical events reenacted, we look and watch ourselves from around the world. Humanity is watching, bonding, witnessing themselves; the world is shrinking. Bitterness issues are being worked on. Women must resolve their own inner conflicts and step up and take more responsibility for what’s going on in the world. The questions of war and peace must be addressed publicly by women. We also must lift our voices and dare to call on the men to take responsibility for themselves as a group.

GK: What’s your focus for the future?

ZB: For the future I say let PAX, the Goddess of PEACE, manifest with us. Without Peace there is nothing, because all evolution stops when war scorches earth and her culture. All resources are sucked away. Women and children once again go back to the bottom of the list. Have you asked yourself why we never ask how is the Iraq war going to pay for itself? There is unlimited money to kill, and here hospitals are closing down, schools too. Stupefying our population is only good for cheap labor. There are 7 million more women voters registered then males, why don’t we use our votes to rule out all wars? Let a woman be elected President.

I conceived of “The Global PAX Project,” creating infomercials for PEACE. Pax is the only one who doesn’t have her 15 minutes of fame. I think Pax should have infomercials where the women solve problems the men could not. Peace should be not politics; it is the basis for commerce and arts and civilizations.

Women must be visible in the media where our realities blend. “If its not on TV, it didn’t happen,” said Flo Kennedy, the civil rights lawyer. Waiting for the male leadership to make peace when they didn’t do so for 5000 years, is like waiting for fish to grow legs. Now we are in position to make female issues mainstream. And Pax is the number one female issue.

The big picture is that patriarchal wars must fail and become obsolete. I thought this would be done by now, thirty years after Women’s Liberation, thirty years after women coming into consciousness.

After wars there is no victory for anyone, mothers cry and burry their children on both sides; there is only famine, and poverty. The reasons for the wars are quickly forgotten, or never had any (WMD in Iraq) but its takes three generations to recover from a major war.

Women voters are the Sleeping Goddesses, snoozing on their sides. They need to wake up, to use the vote in a block. Only once did we vote with power, when women put Bill Clinton in the White House. We need another gender gap, to vote out war, to vote in as many women as possible. Then we’ll have generations of women with earthy powers as well as spiritual ones, supporting each other, growing out of self-hatred and self-defeat into diverse expressions of freedom and culture.

I am back!

Oh what a feeling! I have come home from the hospital about two weeks ago. It takes that much time to reconnect with yourself. In the hospital I was just a patient. I made some good connections with a couple of nurses and cleaning ladies. They saw my small grotto of the Lady of the Guadalupe, commented on it, ‘Oh she is my saint too” said one of the Rns.

Little-by-little the staff became aware that I am a Goddess worshipper. It takes one to know one. My six weeks in room 4492 crawled first, then suddenly it was almost done, and then it was.

I came away with very high opinions on some drugs, others I didn’t take, none of the so called narcotics. I tried them, but felt lobotomized next day.

The hip was fine. I could easily walk on my crutches. And late at night when things were quiet, I would walk the halls doing my laps before bed.

I started a new way to pray; now I just hum and sing, a tune comes in, then I make up words to fit it in. It soothes me better then the repetitious prayers I learned in my childhood.

My Bobbie grew a huge zucchini in the time I was away. We had it for supper twice.  I eat a lot of berries and cantaloupes, the cherry season has come and almost gone, but the huge Bing cherries from Washington are coming to the stores. My inner flora is restored almost. The six weeks twice a day antibiotic drip wiped out my apatite, and every living organism that wasn’t nailed down in my system.

The goddess answered my prayers about finding a private water place to strengthen my muscles.  Patricia was in the same room at the first hospital, where the surgeries are done. She offered me her ever-swim pool. I have never seen one in real life. I visited her last week, and wow! The ever-swim is huge, you swim against a current, and she had a hot tub right next to the pool. So I have somewhere to go, after I come home from my trip to Madison.

All-in-all the summer is here, I am working feverishly on three projects, thankful for the chance to walk again.

Have you seen the GODDESS magazine yet? It’s getting to be a real powerful teaching tool. Make sure you send it to all your friends. We are webbing the sacred web.

It’s very hard to find quoted material that praises the working woman. Let’s enrich this derth of literature by creating honest to goodness praises for different professions or generally working women.

For example, give praises to you for your job that you are doing well.

Women must lift each other up. Nobody is praising us if we don’t. Praises are like rain on the seed. Praises are psychic currency equal to gold. Look around and if you find it in literature, collect it for me please and bring it here … post it as a comment.

If you don’t find anything, sit yourself down, take a deep breath and praise a woman with an honest heart … “praises are beyond compliments.”

All women work! We are the glue of society. Where are the praises for our universal achievements?!!

[podcast]http://wicca.dianic-wicca.com/mp3/bobbie.intro2du.mp3[/podcast]Getting started in the Dianic University

The Dianic Wicca University Online is a place for women of all ages to hone their skills and craft as witches- solitaries, circle priestesses, priestesses -in- training, maidens, mothers, crones, and amazons alike will find spiritual food for thought, activities, lessons, and a world of enchantment. Won’t you join us in sisterhood and self-discovery?

We’ve also made a video to show you how to use the Dianic Wicca Unviersity, making studying online with Z Budapest more vigina friendly.

Goddess magazine for Dianic Wicca: http://issuu.com/zbudapest/docs/goddess

I am only 7 more days in the hospital before I get to go back home. Home! I miss it!!! Six weeks in the hospital was a long vacation from reality, but soon I am back in the swing of things.

I am very much looking forward to doing tarot readings again! Touching my sacred cards, smelling the sweet scent of amber oil and speaking with women in search of themselves. Blessed be!

My you enjoy sacredness today,
ZB

I was lying in my bed watching the full moon rise over Oakland … what a luxury! I was singing her up inch-by-inch. Asking her for blessings on all my loved ones and me.

Once, when I was a child. I wished on the moon that everyday will be a full moon. I was so in love with her. She must have had a giggle. My love for her never diminished.

Ten more days to go in my hospital bed, but at least I’ve got the moon in my sight.

In order to distract myself from my early morning antibiotic drip, I watch Desperate Housewives reruns back-to-back. DH used to fascinate me when they were new, mostly because of the fashions the women were wearing. Nobody looked like a housewife even in an  upper class neighborhood. So, it’s value is pure fantasy. The only character that has realistic lines to say or life to live is played by Felicity Hoffman. Who is the most believable.

Even in this fantasy setting, I can almost hear the writer’s jam sessions as they gestate and produce the character story lines. Which amuses me! I hear gay guys talking to each other; very similar voices as I heard in Sex in the City. Are these the same writers? Michael Cherrie is.

Among the reality shows, Wife Swap was a pleasant surprise. They pick very diverse women who go and live in each other’s houses for two weeks. The second week, the women get to set the rules and everyone must obey them. What I see the producers project to the audience is an expose … class differences cannot be crossed … the very rich and the very poor don’t mix at all, but the religious and the sports freaks, the messy and the tidy come to some common ground easier.

Underlying all these shows is a subtle male bashing. Most husbands are portrayed as insensitive, lazy, often fat and disgusting. In addition to that we have, Family Guy, American Dad and The Simpsons replayed the same theme . The wives always forgiving and loving them for no sane reason.

All these shows are directed to female audiences; a subtle venting of female rage by getting entertained with this shared understanding. For women who are not filled with unexpressed rage, but yearn for some entertainment without putting someone down … there is nothing on TV for them to watch … maybe the Animal Planet?!

Male bashing pays!

When I had my right hip done in ‘04 in Budapest my brother came into my room seeing me and said, “Good thing you don’t have a third leg!”

Because I had no insurance, I had to go back to Hungary to get both hips done, new prosthesis put in where there was only worn down femur.

The hospital was very poor. After the left hip was done, there was a four days long holyday in Budapest. All the nurses and docs were minimum presence. I was left with a cauterization, some food, the blood thinners, and pain pills until they returned. I enjoyed it, because I was meeting the old country right here in the aging room. Peasants and city gals groaning under the wear and tear of life, and me the “American” mixed in. I could feel the wooden boards underneath my thin foam mattress. I found a position that worked for me, and felt relatively comfortable.

The right hip was different.

The doctors would not touch that for six months, until the left one could carry me. Finally that happened. What a difference six months could make. New beds arrived from Holland. They had real mattresses which were comfortable. Once more, I was I operated on, this time on the right side.

In Budapest, at the Semmelweis Hospital, the doctors have a routine. Each morning the morning nurse comes and inquires how you slept. This is recorded on your chart. Then the floor doctor comes with the morning pills, looking at the wounds to see how they are healing.

On Thursdays, the entire doctor’s cadre come, from all floors with the professor at the had of them and nurses in tow. They looked like fresh scrubbed white angels. They look vigorous and confident. They pause at each patient’s bed and discuss the recovery. The professor orders new bandages, or new pills, the doctor who operated on you speaks up and touches your wound, moves things around.

In the afternoon every day, the operating doctors drop by to check on their patients. There is great joy in this, because it furthers recovery. There was especially one doc who was jovial, and called out to his patients often. “Good Luck!” Because its not only skill, but it takes a lot of luck that to get up from under and start walking on bionic parts.

The “American”, me, was operated on by the Professor Ur himself. This sounded real good, and the operation was real good, but he didn’t come by for five days post-op. His docs did look in on me, but they treated me with distance, not like they treated their own patients.

These post-op five days were very difficult this time. I fell into depression. I felt neglected. I felt jealous of the other docs and their patients, how much attention was showered on them and none on me.

Once again I was a foreigner in my own country. It ripped up my old wounds from my childhood, the war, the revolution, the hardships and lack of protection. I cried openly, demanded that the professor Ur come by and see me. Nothing.

In the meantime, three days post-op I received a fabulous dream. This dream was about 17^th century Japan. Marketplace, silks, samurai, fish and ladies shopping. I was so happy, I wanted to walk amongst them, and I walked myself off my bed and fell out of the hospital bed in the middle of the night.

I didn’t feel anything got hurt. They put me back into the bed, and early next morning took me to x-ray to see if I damaged anything. They concluded that all was fine. I paid no attention to it. I moved on.

Sunday the Professor Ur showed up. I felt already better, and I visited an other lady next door, who was my forerunner. She had her left hip done when I had mine, and she was a couple of days ahead of me in recovery with her right hip. Always good to see how it developed for others to raise hope.

Professor Ur felt that he had so many things to do, he didn’t have time to baby me. Teaching at the university, having operations, he had the job once my beloved step-father had in this same hospital. This is why he operated on me; I was special.

Now it’s ‘09, five years after my operation. The left hip is great, the right one however fell apart. That dream and consequent falling out of bed had damaged the fresh operation, and slowly the cement that holds the hip in place has unraveled. I was limping, hurting and finally totally collapsed.

This time, I am old enough to get insurance. I don’t have to go to hungry. I will get it done at Alta Bates, in Berkeley, where the beds are comfy and the drugs are great. Hungarians didn’t give us any morphine. I was taking my own American Ibuprofen.

Tomorrow I enter the hospital for the right hip. A legendary well loved Chinese doctor, Dr. Chen, is my surgeon. He will have to take out the entire prosthesis the Hungarians put in, and give me the American parts. I will be half and half, better technology, better everything.

Still I am feeling scared. Not of the pain, nor the dangers, but the aftermath that no drugs can take away … the rehab part and the searing pain of the first standing up.

I am packing my little grotto of the Lady of the Guadalupe, small and cheerful, hand painted, from Mexico. Also, my nightie, my slippers and my toiletries. One more time!

It appears I didn’t have to have a third leg to get an operation once more.

Granny Rehab is hopeful, but the years now starting to show. The years on crutches hurt my neck, and I wish there was warm water pool nearby to walk in. There is one in Berkeley, but it’s so full of chlorine I get lung burns in it. Plus they have a miserable shower and cold rooms to dress. I wish I knew somebody with a swimming pool and hot tub, who would allow me to use it.

In Hungary they had Hot Springs all over the city. No need to chlorinate, they just have the hot water come in one end and go out the other. Fresh virgin waters from the earth for the first time, such a grace to sit in those.

Today I pack and eat little, and in the morning go under the merciful knife. Good luck!

I like this Holyday. This time the Xians didn’t even bother to hide the old pagan symbols, as they have attempted for xmas for example.

We have the rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and good luck. I used to eat rabbit when I lived in Hungary.

We have the many colored eggs! Eggs are the symbols of new beginnings, and are the rich source of protein. Coloring them however puzzled me. Why make them colored? Or painted? Decorated with magic symbols?

Ah, I get it. We write on eggs like a spell. We want love, we dip them in red paint, green for money etc. The magical symbols that almost every European country is famous for, are all about prayers, via eggs.

But in Hungary there is the no longer appreciated Locsolkodas. This is a custom imitating the act of fertilization, a boy comes to the door, you have never laid eyes on him before, he holds a small bottle of cheap perfume and insists to spray the stuff on you. Women often hate this. You smell like the sewers after a few of these visitors.

The girls give them an egg, and alcohol to drink. The boys get snookered. No wonder this custom still lives. They also get money.
Then they move on and “fertilize” other girls.

July 2, 2009 – July 5, 2009 (I will be there!)
Marriott Madison West Hotel & Conference Center, Middleton, Wisconsin

This is the oldest National Women’s Music Festival, where it all started. If you live nearby or want to enjoy a wonderfully hosted event … make plans to attend The 34th National Women’s Music Festival.

http://www.wiaonline.org

WHAT IS THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S MUSIC FESTIVAL?
The National Women’s Music Festival, otherwise known as NWMF, will be held indoors at the Marriott Madison West  just outside Madison, WI. There are no rained-out concerts,  no cold showers, and no “porta-janes” at this Festival.

The Festival is a four-day musical and cultural extravaganza that incorporates all facets of women’s lives. It’s a jam-packed long weekend where choices for things to do range from workshops, concerts, comedy, theatre presentations, a marketplace, newly released films and videos, a live auction, spirituality series, writer’s series, animal lovers series, and much, much more!

Most Festival attendees are women, although men can and do attend.  Attendees come from all walks of life and cultures, cutting across ethnic, racial, sexual, age, and ability boundaries. Likewise, festival programming reflects many points of view; a diversity of ideas and topics are explored and discussed in a safe environment.  Festival is an environment in which philosophies and politics are open for discussion, not mandated or judged.

Services available include a wide range of accessibility services with almost all concerts interpreted for the deaf.  Volunteer opportunities and work-exchange of 4-hour workshifts is available for reduced-price registration. This is limited and arrangements must be made prior to the festival.

Past performers include Betty, Cris Williamson, Kate Clinton, Karen Williams, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Linda Tillery, Jamie Anderson, Holly Near, the Dance Brigade, Melissa Ferrick, Sawagi Taiko, Ferron, Ellis, Ember Swift and Margie Adam to just mention a few. Guest speakers have included Geraldine Ferraro, Rita Mae Brown, Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, NPR reporter and writer Margot Adler, Katherine V. Forrest, artist Judy Chicago, Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, Pat Califia, Betty DeGeneres, Anita Hill and Judy Goldsmith.

National Women’s Music Festival is produced by Women In the Arts, Inc. a 501-c-3 nonprofit corporation. The 2009 festival will be the 34th festival which was first produced in 1974 in Champaign, Illinois.