{"id":6280,"date":"2014-02-24T15:33:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T22:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6280"},"modified":"2014-03-05T22:07:12","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T05:07:12","slug":"quick-review-the-wizard-and-the-witch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6280","title":{"rendered":"Quick Review: The Wizard and the Witch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wizard<\/a>One of my earliest entries on this blog, clear back in 2003, was a complaint about the lack of biographical and autobiographical writing in American Wicca<\/a> \u2014 and I would extend that to all types of new Paganism generally.<\/p>\n

That entry did mention Margot Adler’s Heretic’s<\/em> Heart <\/em><\/a>(1997), but I did not care for Whispers of the Moon <\/em><\/a>(1996), a biography of Scott Cunningham, because it seemed too obviously tidied-up and sanitized. (Sam Webster says that it is still valuable despite that<\/a> \u2014 I won’t dispute the point.)<\/p>\n

Michael Lloyd’s The Bull of Heaven <\/em><\/a>(2012) broke the drought. His thoroughly researched book placed Eddie Buczynski in a cultural context \u2014 the New York Pagan and Gay Liberation scenes of the 1970s \u2014 and explored a wealth of connections and possibilities without blinking.<\/p>\n

Now John C.. Sulak, who co-wrote\u00a0Modern Pagans<\/em><\/a> (2001) for RE\/Search Press, has brought us\u00a0 The Wizard and the Witch: An Oral History of Oberon Zell & Morning Glory.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

It is not just the history of a significant slice of\u00a0 American Paganism from the 1960s until now, but also the love story of a couple married for forty years.<\/p>\n

Yet Morning Glory, priestess of Aphrodite, invented the term “polyamory” (but not the concept)\u00a0 and they embraced it. Paradoxes abound.<\/p>\n

Sulak tells the story of Otter and MG through multiple voices, more like a radio documentary \u2014 there is even a voice labeled “Narrator.” I thought that was a little weird at first, but I got used to it.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the Zells may seem like Pagan rock stars, but then you see them in screaming fights, or admitting that they made mistakes in who they trusted or dealt with their families of birth or how they raised their kids\u00a0 (Those children, now grown, are also heard from.) Highs and lows, gains and losses, feasts and famines \u2014 it’s all here.<\/p>\n

Reading it, you can see how the Church of All Worlds, founded by Tim Zell and his close friend Lance Christie, started out as what we now would call “spiritual but not religious,” and changed as it encountered other overly Pagan groups (such as Feraferia) as well as various Witchcraft groups.<\/p>\n

There is much about the publishing chronicle of Green Egg <\/em><\/a>magazine and the founding of the Grey School of Wizardry<\/a> as well, not to mention the growth of the Pagan festival circuit.<\/p>\n

When people wonder, “What was the American Pagan scene like in the 1970s, 1980s, 0r 1990s?” they will do well to read The Wizard and the Witch<\/em> for one answer. It is a sign of Llewellyn’s editorial maturation that they published it<\/a>, and I applaud that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my earliest entries on this blog, clear back in 2003, was a complaint about the lack of biographical and autobiographical writing in American Wicca \u2014 and I would extend that to all types of new Paganism generally. That entry did mention Margot Adler’s Heretic’s Heart (1997), but I did not care for Whispers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,5,7,12],"class_list":["post-6280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-paganism","tag-publishing","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Di","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=36","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":0},"title":"The Middle-Initial Problem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that The Paganism Reader (see July 10th entry) is in production with Routledge (pub. date early 2004?), the odd little queries from the copy editor are starting to come in. The latest involved my middle initial. It is all right to have it on the cover, but must I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6487,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6487","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":1},"title":"The Zells’ Biographer on “Living Your Myth”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"John Sulak, who co-wrote Modern Pagans for RE\/Search and worked for a decade on The Wizard and the Witch, the new biography of Oberon and Morning Glory Zell, gives interviewer Anne Hill his own take on the Zells, the writing process, the Church of All Worlds, and others in their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":538,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=538","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":2},"title":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist earn awardFreelance writer and religion journalist Kimberly Winston won this year's American Academy of Religion journalism award in the category of \"news outlets with more than 100,000 circulation or on the Web.\"Her work has included writing on Wicca and Paganism, including a piece that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":685,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=685","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":3},"title":"Margot Adler Speaks on Paganism Today","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Margot Adler's talk from the recent Unitarian Universalist General Assembly is summarized here, together with video links.Jason Pitzl-Waters has more commentary. Here's mine:Adler, who became interested in paganism, and in particular, Wicca, during the sixties, remembers that in those days paganism was a coven-based movement. You had to join a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13965,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13965","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":4},"title":"My Thoughts on Pagan Studies, in Podcast Form","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"In February I was interviewed by Robin Douglas, an independent scholar in London who has published in various places, including The Pomegranate, and is the co-author of a new book, Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms since Antiquity.1 So you can hear a sort of scratchy-voiced me (winter respiratory\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Religion-off-the-Beaten-Track.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Religion-off-the-Beaten-Track.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Religion-off-the-Beaten-Track.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6142,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142","url_meta":{"origin":6280,"position":5},"title":"1971: Witches in Bellbottoms, Talking Heads","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a 1971 documentary from the BBC that is supposed to be about witches. But at the time it was made, no one was making much effort to sort out the new Pagan Witches, anthropological and folkloric witches, and Satanic witches of the Church of Satan variety. So what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6280"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6338,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280\/revisions\/6338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}