Z Budapest Blog

Linking up, networking, speaking back to power.

Here we are in 010, entering the second decade of the 21^st century. It is still the sub-age of Aquarius. It is still the favorable times for humans to wake up to a new self understanding. This is happening in big quantum leaps, fueled by technology and science. Congratulations to all fellow planetary travelers! We have arrived in the future.

But now what?

We have more and more women come to us searching for a LOCAL group, contact where they can join, study and grow. This used to be rather easy in the last century. You went to your local bookstore; you hung out around the bulletin board, read the stuff on it, then added your own request, “Goddess study group forming” and the phone number. Pretty soon the first woman would call, who knew another, and in a couple of weeks you had a good little eager group; armed with Goddess books, healthy tea collections, and time set aside to be just a student of your own culture.

Women’s studies at Universities is not what it used to be, its still great we have them at all, alas under the name of Gender Studies, but who cares let’s just be grateful. These are still places where women can gather and plan actions.

Once you have created yourself an account with us, the Dianic University, we will let you use our Global Goddess Dianic Groups virtual bulletin board, look it through for women in your neighborhoods, add you name to the particular state and region you are at. Then we will have a central board  to post on for just this. Local connections.

Because we only let people we checked out on the board, you are safer to post and call whoever you find. I recommend exchanging email addresses first and get to know each other. Once you decide to meet up, do it in a public place first … maybe for coffee or tea. Check each other out and then exchange contact information.

But more than beginners, first timers, seekers of all kinds, we also need volunteers who help us battle the cultural anti-woman forces. You don’t think that the battle field is any less than before computers. Each time I go on the radio, or write something very pro-woman, anti-establishment, anti-male god material, I get attacked on the internet from men who hate that we have advanced as much as we have. They would like to see the Goddess Movement fade with my lifetime; me destroyed on the visibility field, my ideas and philosophies relegated to the trash bin.

Bobbie, my mighty Amazon, is the only one on the field battling this, so far successfully. But we could not have been defending ourselves without the help of women working in those technology citadels of power, the Goggles, wikis, who knew about the Goddess Movement. Imagine that! We are everywhere.

We need new allies with some time and skills. Not just hey I want to try to help, but rather … hey, I can battle on the techie field with the best of them and I don’t mind a little work out against the invisible forces.

This is what l’d like to put out to you. Please techie women with writing skills, step forward and make contact with me and Bobbie. The cultural war consists often in creating material, but also tracking down where the trouble comes from, correction information when it’s wrong.

Our visibility on the cultural field is crucial in the elevation of our sex.

When women don’t know how to link up, network, and publish … we can easily be marginalized again.

Don’t forget women are the majority of all humans. We create everybody from our own bodies. We raise citizens, consumers, and all the tax payers.

Women deserve their own culture. This is the part of the battle field that needs boosting. Individuals can do a lot, but we need the help, the link-up with the successful women, the higher end income women, the university program directors, and the leadership who organizes workshops, conferences, and gathering of all kinds.

For example, link us up with organizations where the women already formed groups, where we can cast a wider net when we disseminate information.

When we tighten our skills around the new technology and form a cultural staff around our own interests, then we can serve women on all level much better.

What I don’t want to end up is alone, battling the evil forces of cultural marginalization, and witness the new century pushing women’s issues, women’s needs and women’s spirituality aside.

What we have is a lucky opportunity to flood with our skillful energy into the collective consciousness, making room there for the love and respect for women; create a world where women don’t have to go to collage to learn about their past, our own  dianics, and whose shoulders we are standing on.

Information about our spiritual heritage will create a proud generation of women, talented, blooming, and confident.

Let us all go into the depth of the sub-age of Aquarius in this certainty, when women lead the planet thrives.

Blessed be,
Z Budapest

Contrasting cultures: the female witches are winning in San Francisco, but in Africa women are dying.

Yesterday I celebrated my wife’s birthday, and we went to see Wicked. This is a highly successful play, musical, it’s been to Broadway, and has many companies playing all over the globe.

I was so very pleasantly surprised.

Culturally speaking witches have gained a great friend in this play. The main characters are taken from the Wizard of Oz, before Dorothy drops in, and their struggle is about lookism, discrimination, friendship between girls. While there is a man involved who loved both young women, Glinda and Elphaba, ultimately he chooses the girl with the green face. The different one.  Her character can be seen as a feminist character. She stands up for herself. She makes waves. And when she gets angry, she shakes the rafters. She makes the stars fall all over the scene, frightening even the great Wizard. This green girl liberates the flying monkeys, saves animals. She is obviously a woman of our times.

Glinda also learns not to rely only on her looks, and to be less shallow.

At the end, the part when the couples get together, wedding bells are absent. Nobody gets married. Certainly a new twist in musicals.

The green woman gets glorified into Goddess proportions. She is elevated to the top of the theater, strong lighting makes her look like an apparition from above and later, the two women hand-in-hand take their bows, while a hundred or so little girls in their own ruby slippers cheer them on.

I am talking about the images the positive messages these little girls absorb from this musical.

The main message is that best friends outrank boyfriends. Two women can be friends even if they are from different races, or families. The green woman is just as acceptable as the “normal” one. They need each other, and there is a lot of hugging as well.

Next the musical talks about how “good” people are kind to animals. But the most important message is, a witch’s powers used for positive goals is a blessing. You don’t see this message too often. The witch’s power in Wicked is celebrated.

Contrast this with the recent Oprah show where she exposed the plight of our sisters in Africa.

Nicholas Kristof, writer and activist, was the guest with his wife. His book Half the Sky is a best seller.

Here, on the other side of the earth, women are enslaved, beaten, raped, starved, denied medical attention when injured. All of the starving, still pregnant, women die in childbirth one every minute.

Orphans left behind get to be used in the sex slave trade. The sex trade is supported by western or wealthy males, selling and buying little children.

Hexes on pedophiles! Every dark Moon witches should send them a whammy.

What I didn’t hear much about was “who” is raping these women, who is knocking them up, withholding food from them, or any support. Who is frequenting the children’s brothels?  Poverty creates a pedophile’s cheep paradise.

Oprah doesn’t like to say this, but the answer is “men.”

Women are ashamed to say that men are out of order, because we know so many real good humans. Many good men, yet they cannot change the way other men behave. Where is a movement of good men defending against violent men?

Islamic soldiers, Arab fighters on camels backs (Darfur), burning down their already impoverished homes, raping the women and children alike. Once a girl is raped, she is damaged goods, her own family abandons her. It’s a death sentence.

Oprah doesn’t like to say the negative things, naming names. She is Ms Positive. She was asking us to donate money via her website. We assume Mr. Kristof has given her the right contacts, so the money will go to the abused sisters. I trust Oprah more then anybody else on TV.

So I went and clicked on the “For All Women” registry. There I have taken on the support of a girl to go to school for at least a year. Get lunch, books and uniform. But 75 cents can get a little boy or girl dewormed. I dewormed my dogs regularly. If you have any heart, you’ll send money to these women; be part of the good guys.

Get the book Half the Sky read it, and pass it to your friends. Pagans must get involved in politics. Without our spells and money, change is slow and generations of mothers are wiped out.

The Goddess is alive in the lucky West, but she is barely alive in Africa. It will be a long time before they can see Wicked, and celebrate the female to female friendships. Or celebrate the power of righteous anger. Or that of spiritual liberation through study.

This Full moon my prayers go up to expose woman hating religions, take them down morally and financially.

Support the women who are surviving, let there be less orphans in the world.

Happy Yule to you all.

Some women shirk from fighting back. Too many years have passed since the heroic age of the seventies, when everything new started. We used to have self-defense classes, repair our own cars classes, women’s studies about who we are as women and what have women done in Herstory that we are not aware of. Gathering our treasures and our tears.

Still we live in male centered societies. Males often rule by violence and rape, and the everlasting wars. Not by law. Too many rapists have gone free, too many murderers as well. White-collar thieves live long and hardly ever fall into the hands of justice.

But something has happened here in the San Francisco Bay Area that tripped the “that’s enough!” wires for me as a witch. A lesbian was viciously gang raped by four men. Then they kidnapped her, and continued their assault for another 45 minutes. She was brutally beaten to within an inch of her life for being a woman, for being a lesbian. Then, they stole her car and left her naked in the chilled winter winds and pounding rains, daring her to survive.

She did.

I have not hexed anybody since the Trailside Killer (still in jail) in the 80’s, but something turned inside me when the crime came this close to my life. I’m much older now at 68 and somewhat incapacitated with artificial hips. I gathered enough courage to call to arms all those women who considered holding a hexing circle in defense of our lives a worthwhile effort.

13 women answered the call. It was a magical number. I went ahead.

As always we document all hexes, so there could be NO doubt we are not calling on the devil.

I contemplated the situation and carefully chose the Lady of Guadalupe as our Queen of all Americas to be the center. I asked a friend to get me some large banners of the Lady. She sent us two large banners, glorious in her appearance, the Lady in her full queenly glory. Thank you, Karen!

Next I gathered the all-important occult supplies. Yes you can cast successful spells without anything, just praying but when you are up against a rape culture, violence of this hate crime magnitude, it’s good to have some mandrake root with you, and other secret baneful herbs to burn in your cauldron.

I represented the lives of the rapists with red thread, and over the smoking cauldron, praying to the Queen, I cut their luck into many small pieces. The only man who came to our hex, Lez, helped to put them all into the burning cauldron of change. This was important. Men must stop rape. Men must come over to the women’s side and fight for us.

Rarely ever happens.

To the Queen who we invoked as grandmother (her old name used to be Tonatzin) , we asked her to help us and to bring these men, and ALL rapists down with Unluck. We cut their luck into tiny little pieces, their luck now gone.

Next I hexed them so nobody would hide them. Hexed them that their own family would give them up. Hexed them that they would turn on each other. Hexed them that the youngest one would talk.

Video of parts of this hexing ritual are on my DU website: http://wicca.dianic-wicca.com

Then we went home. I lie down on my couch and let the new year arrive. Thought it would be a little while that this spins out its necessary wheels.

By Wednesday, the news was on the front pages of the SF Chronicle. Three of the men were arrested. The younger one’s family gave him up! And then he talked as the hex had requested. They arrested two more and by Thursday the fourth criminal turned himself in. Blessed be Tonantzin!

Sisters of the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number One participated with us globally in this incredible fast Justice. In Orange County in Southern California, and elsewhere, the women gathered to support this hex. All could see the success of their labors. Enough is enough!

On the same day the arrests began here, a serial rapist was caught in Columbus, Ohio … No luck for rapists! Justicia rules! So now I have allowed myself a little victory toe-dance. Yeahh!

What I hoped would result from this experience is a nation wide hex on ALL rapists and similar gender initiated violence. This would take place annually, on the dark moon at the end of every year.

But the real change can only come from a change of consciousness. A mind change that would see women differently. Not as meat, not as holes, or whores, but as sisters and mothers and citizens with rights.

Male gods’ religion didn’t help at all. Thousands of years and the societies are still not civilized. The male gods remain the Lords. They have holy books full of violence and trashing of women. Switching back to Goddess culture and appreciation of life is what would help see women in the loving light.

After all we are the doors of life. We birthed everybody.

Where is the gratitude? Why the rage against us?

I hope that women ‘grow a pair’ and learn not to be fear driven, to stand up for themselves and each other. Learn SISTERHOOD again!

Maybe it’s time that the ‘Take Back the Night Marches’ that I started back in the 70’s, becomes an annual hexing ritual done by sisters and brothers alike. A hex on all enemies of women and peace. Maybe that will make the difference! It has to begin somewhere!

Z Budapest
www.ZBudapest.com

Copyright Z Budapest 2008

I have heard that some of the bad old myths are still alive. I have decided to attack them head on this time.

1. Dianic Tradition is for lesbians only.
This is a myth that attempts to divide the women against each other. An old ploy. In the past it worked, but not anymore. Sexual orientation is of NO importance when you are learning a spiritual path. Women are women, you love whom you please. Naturally. Herstorically, when I have revived ancient Women’s Mysteries, there was about half and half, gay women and straight women, worshiping together. But since I have never asked who is sleeping with whom, this may be a few points off either way.

2. An all women’s circle is not balanced.
A very strange myth. As if having a penis in a circle would be balancing. Underlying this remark is hostility toward women because they claim their own space. Claiming anything without men seems to enrage men and make them spin lies. Women were ignored and their traditions buried deep, but since the seventies the tradition is reclaimed and it is very satisfying. Women can exhale psychically when with each other, be themselves. When you put men into the circle, both sexes act differently. Nobody is themselves. An all women circle is balanced excellently because psychic wholeness does not depend on genitalia.

3. Dianics can raise power but they don’t know how to send it.
This must be from a man who obviously had no experience observing this. Dianics are especially good at sending energy, and even partaking in political spells when women need protection. Our spells come true most of the time. We regularly hexed rapists and mass murders; men that were hexed didn’t get away with their crimes.

4. Dianics are man-haters.
This is the most powerful accusation to divide women. We all cringe when we hear it because what it says to us is that we are hating our own children. This is the result of women’s audacity for claiming our own space to worship our Goddess. We are the life givers, we are raisers of sons and daughters; there is nobody on earth who didn’t come from our wombs. How dare you be so insecure that you call your mamas such names! Men have their priesthoods, their popes and ayatollahs, they have their religious fanatics, Osama Bin Laden, and suicide bombers, their men-only clubs and an all pervasive boys networks. Men don’t call other men woman haters, but they should. It’s a strange misguided projection on the women indeed. To belittle women, call us names because we want to worship without men, is absurd.