Cast of Characters
Note to the reader: Italicized words reflect the role the person played in this book, while up-to-date descriptions follow in roman type.
Margot Adler
A researcher who met the Zells on several occasions. Margot, author of Drawing Down the Moon, lives in New York City and is a New York correspondent for National Public Radio.
Betty and Gary Ball
Betty and Gary worked with the Zells at the Green Mac and Between the Worlds. After that, they opened the Mendocino Environmental Center and later moved to Boulder, Colorado. Gary died in May 2011. Betty continues her activism, working at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.
Wynter Rose Anduin-Weiss
A partner of Morning Glory and Wolf, and member of the Ravenheart Family. Born in 1979, Wynter grew up mostly Pagan in a poly-friendly family on the Mendocino coast, and later became part of the Church of All Worlds. She moved in with Morning Glory and Oberon in April of 1996, and met Wolf at the following CAW Beltane. Wynter and Wolf were married in 2000 but divorced a few years later. In April of 2010 she married her best friend, Morgan Anduin-Weiss; they continue to live, work, play, and create magick in San Francisco.
Kadira Belynne
A lover of Oberon’s. Kadira lives in Middle Tennessee and is single. Currently, she works for a communications company producing education support materials.
Richard Lance Christie
Oberon’s first water-brother and life-long friend. Lance entered Westminster College in 1961, where he met Tim Zell. Lance received an M.A. in experimental social psychology from UCLA. He designed and operated management information and computer systems, helped launch several environmental organizations (including Earth First!), designed and built renewable energy systems, and managed behavioral health care systems. Lance succumbed to pancreatic cancer on October 28, 2010. His book, The Renewable Deal, is at www.earthrestoration.net.
Carolyn Clark
The first ordained Priestess of the CAW. During the early 1970s, Carolyn and Oberon were the public face of CAW, lecturing and giving interviews to radio, television, newspapers, and magazines. She now lives quietly with her second ex-husband and two cats, happily retired from a career in nursing.
Catherine Crowell (C9)
A friend of MG’s in Eugene, Oregon. In 2005 Catherine retired and moved to Portland, Oregon, and then to Las Vegas, where she died of lung cancer on October 30, 2009.
Diane Darling
A triad partner of OZ and MG who lived with them on the Ranch and the Old Same Place. Diane edited Green Egg magazine and assumed many organizational and priestessly duties for the burgeoning American Neo-Pagan movement. Later she edited The Green Man and PanGaia magazines. Today she is semi-retired and living rurally with her parrot, tiny dog, horse, and donkey.
Zack Darling
Son of Diane Darling and like a son to MG and OZ. Zack has a career in graphic design, marketing, high-end websites, and stunning digital artwork (Zack Darling Creative Associates, www.zackdarling.com). He lives in Santa Rosa, California, with his beloved wife, Monicka.
Deborah Dietz
A runaway who lived with Tim and Martha in their St. Louis days. Deborah has lived in Taos, New Mexico; Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico; and has settled in Tucson, while considering becoming an expat in Latin America or even farther away. She remains single and childfree, without living relatives, but has a large wealth of friends. Her memories are great company, too.
Cerridwen Fallingstar
A fellow CAW member who also lived on the Ranch. Cerridwen has published hundreds of columns, articles, and short stories, and has been interviewed extensively by print, radio, and television media. She has published two books: The Heart of the Fire (1990), a historical novel about Witchcraft in sixteenth-century Scotland; and White as Bone Red as Blood (2009), set in twelfth-century Japan.
Gary Ferns
MG’s first husband and father of her only child. Gary is a devoted grandparent whose current interests range from history and politics to music, spirituality, and healthful living.
Farida Fox
A fellow CAW member who also lived on the Ranch. Farida has been a Witch for at least forty years and proudly maintains the honorable title of Low Priestess. Her extended family includes four grandchildren and two step-grandkids. She spends almost every waking moment in her garden.
Liza Gabriel
Partner of Oberon and member of Ravenheart Family. Liza has been a nationally recognized workshop leader, writer, and Bard whose work is focused on building spiritual and erotic community. She was a founder and three-year coordinator of The Body Sacred and a founding member of Sacred Connections. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Reed.
Alison Harlow
Owner of parcel on Ranch that OZ and MG lived on for years; CAW member. In 1982 Alison moved onto a thirty-two-acre plot of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, creating a residential cooperative community called Eclectia. During the last eight years of her life she served on the Women’s Commission of Santa Cruz County. After a brief battle with cancer, she died on June 13, 2004.
Anne Hill
Released Gwydion Pendderwen’s music on CD. Anne Hill is co-author with Starhawk of Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions. Anne writes for the Huffington Post, SageWoman Magazine, and the Blog o’ Gnosis; hosts Dream Talk Radio; and is on the faculty of Cherry Hill Seminary. See http://annehill.org.
Ayisha Homolka
A fellow CAW member who also lived on the Ranch. Ayisha completed a bachelor of science in nursing in 1994. Primary areas of her nursing practice have been as a sexual-assault nurse examiner and an ER nurse.
Anodea Judith
A fellow CAW member who also lived on the Ranch. Anodea received her M.A. in psychology and Ph.D. in mind-body health. Twice married, she has a grown son, Alexander. She teaches workshops worldwide on the chakras, healing, and cultural transformation. See www.sacredcenters.com.
Anna Korn
Friend in Eugene, Oregon, who lent her driveway to the Scarlet Succubus. Anna has devoted her professional life to the life-sciences ecology and laboratory medicine.
Eldri Littlewolf
A fellow CAW member who also lived on the Ranch. Eldri is currently living in Berkeley with two dogs and a snake, keeping a garden.
Polly Love Moore
Morning Glory’s mother. Born Pauline Browning in 1917, in Tutwiler, Mississippi, she was the youngest of thirteen children. She dropped out of college to marry James Moore in 1937, and they moved to California during World War II, where James worked in the oil fields. When James died in 1982, Morning Glory brought Polly to live in Ukiah, where she attended the Gospel Tabernacle and later the Ukiah Valley Bible Church. She died on February 11, 2006, just two months short of her eighty-ninth birthday.
Maerian Morris
Editor of Green Egg magazine and a High Priestess of the Church of All Worlds. Maerian is the founding Priestess of Westernesste, a Nest of CAW that evolved into a separate nonprofit religious organization, and she is the creative director of the Sidhevairs, Westernesste’s virtual world and community (www.sidhevair.org).
Julie Epona O’Ryan
OZ and MG’s girlfriend, who lived with them at Shady Grove. Julie has served on the board of directors for CAW and the Grey School of Wizardry, sharing her extensive business knowledge and experience. She now lives in Guerneville, California, with her son, Aidan O’Ryan-Kelly.
Gail Salvador
Morning Glory’s daughter, who changed her name from Rainbow to Gail at age fifteen. Gail worked for more than ten years as a veterinary technician, where she met her husband, Joe Salvador. They married in 2004, and their daughter, Alessandra, was born in 2006. She is now working as a high-end hairstylist and education director at Festoon Salon in the Bay Area. Gail lives with her family in Oakland, California.
Jeffrey Siegel
Promoter that brokered Unicorn deal with Ringling Bros. Jeff produces two of the larger Renaissance Festivals in the United States, held in Arizona and North Carolina annually (www.royalfaires.com), and operates his production company, Supply Studio, out of a historic warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Talyn Songdog
Lover of Morning Glory. Born in 1963, Talyn’s wife and soulmate is Maggie, and Morning Glory and Oberon are godparents to their two amazing daughters, Tam and Tyr. He lives with his family in Georgia and works as an engineer.
Wolf Dean Stiles
Partner of MG and Wynter, and member of Ravenheart Family. Wolf is now with the incomparable Miss Kat, and the two of them work together at The Green Sheet, where Wolf is a website designer.
Orion Stormcrow
A fellow CAW member and onetime publisher of Green Egg.
John C. Sulak (NARRATOR)
Narrator of this story. John is co-author of Modern Pagans (RE/Search Publications, 2001). When he was sixteen years old he went to the World Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis, and it was there that he first learned about Paganism and began the journey that would result in this book. In addition to interviewing people for The Wizard and the Witch, John also edited all the material together into the story arc that it now has. He is currently investigating polyamory and sacred sex in San Francisco for his next gonzo journalism endeavor. John writes a theatre blog (voxtheatricum.wordpress
.com), and his email address is voxtheatricum@gmail.com.
Martha Turley
Oberon’s first wife and mother of his only child. After college, she worked as a Montessori teacher, and later for the Salvation Army. She and Oberon divorced in 1972, and she remarried twice. She currently lives in Florida.
Donald Wildgrube
Water-brother and CAW member. Now retired, Don lives in a suburb of St. Louis and is still teaching and active in the Pagan community, establishing a CAW retro-Nest, based on the original teachings of the 1960s.
Tom Williams
Water-brother and CAW member. After almost thirty years of activity as a CAW Priest, Tom retired from Clergy work to devote himself to his rural homestead in Santa Cruz County, where he raises alpacas and spends his time with his shrunken-head collection and his memories.
Barry Zell
Oberon’s brother, born in 1946 in Pennsylvania. In 1989, Barry found his soul-mate, Nancy, and they married in 2002. Some of his current interests are traveling, collecting antiques, and proofreading. Barry is a Christian and a political conservative.
Bryan Zell
Oberon’s son. Born in 1963 in Elgin, Illinois, Bryan is the only child of Martha and Tim (Oberon) Zell. He earned a college degree in geriatric nursing, serving in that field for several years. In 2002, he moved to Florida to help care for his mother, working as a nurse’s aide.
Charles Zell
Oberon’s father. Charles was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1914. A devout Christian and a conservative Republican, Charlie was deeply involved in Ronald Reagan’s first presidential campaign. He lived in a suburb of Minneapolis until his death from a stroke on March 8, 2011. He was ninety-six.
Morning Glory Zell (MG)
Oberon’s soulmate. Born Diane Moore in Long Beach, California, she met her soulmate, Oberon, in September 1973 at the Gnostic Aquarian Festival in Minneapolis. They were married April 14, 1974. In 1977, the Zells moved into a Hippie homesteading community in Northern California, where they lived for eight years, raising Living Unicorns. They handfasted with Diane Darling in a ten-year triad, followed by another decade with Wolf, Wynter, and Liza as the Ravenheart Family. In 2006, Morning Glory was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (bone and blood cancer), for which she is in continuing treatment. Her greatest joy is her granddaughter, Alessandra.
Oberon Zell (OZ)
Morning Glory’s soulmate. Tim Zell was born in St. Louis in 1942 to Vera and Charlie Zell. He has a brother, Barry, born in 1946, and a sister, Shirley, born in 1948. He grew up in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and attended Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, from 1961 to 1965, receiving a B.A. There he met Lance Christie and the two of them founded Atl, the forerunner of the Church of All Worlds (CAW). Tim married Martha McCance in February 1963, and they had a son, Bryan, born the following September. Tim met Morning Glory in Minneapolis at Autumn Equinox of 1973, and they were married there the following Easter. Moving to a Hippie community in Northern California in 1976, Tim changed his first name to “Otter” in 1979. OZ and MG returned to civilization in 1985, handfasting with Diane Darling. Otter took the name “Oberon” in 1994, and they began a new relationship with Wolf, Wynter, and Liza, which became the Ravenheart Family. OZ founded the Grey School of Wizardry in 2004.
Vera Zell
Oberon’s mother. She was born Vera Bedell in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1917. She attended William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri. Her father, a dentist, died in 1941. She met and married Charlie Zell in 1940, and their first child, Tim, was born two years later. A second son, Barry, was born in 1946, after Charlie returned from the war, and their daughter, Shirley, was born in 1948. Vera and Charlie divorced in 1966. She moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to be near Shirley and her family. She died on March 25, 2010.