And the Phoenix Rises--Yet Again!

Welcome, Dear Reader, to the third incarnation of the legendary Green Egg! What you see before you is the culmination of decades of history, interwoven with the rise of the Neo-Pagan movement—now ranked as the 19th largest religion in the world, and the fastest-growing religious movement in all English-speaking countries! (See http://www.Adherents.net)

For over 30 years, Green Egg was my most-beloved magickal child. It began simply enough, at Spring Equinox (Ostara) of 1968, as a single-page dittoed newsletter of ideas and a calendar of coming meetings and events in our local Church of All Worlds Nest, in St. Louis, Missouri. But it expanded rapidly as we started getting letters which we printed and commented upon; and as I started including assorted cool stuff I wanted to turn people onto. Soon we were running announcements and manifestos of other groups we were contacting, who identified themselves as “Pagan.” Within a couple of years we were including entire newsletters of various Paths—such as the Gardnerians, Egyptians, Pagan Way, etc.

Thus Green Egg grew from a little newsletter to a regular printed magazine, reflecting and stimulating the increasing diversity of the growing worldwide Pagan community. I reveled in the rich potpourri of provocative ideas and no-holds-barred discussions as we turned out 77 issues over the next decade.

Margot Adler, in Drawing Down the Moon (Beacon Press, 1979), her landmark history of the Pagan movement, said: “It is popular today to talk about ‘synergy’—a combination that has a greater effect than the simple addition of its components—and that perhaps best describes the effect of Green Egg. It connected all the evolving and emerging Goddess and nature religions into one phenomenon: the Neo-Pagan movement.”

Then, in 1976, Morning Glory and I left St. Louis and moved to the West Coast, leaving Green Egg behind to continue publication under the direction of other members of the CAW. Two more issues were produced, then the zine folded.

Twelve years later, after many amazing adventures (including eight years of rural homesteading, raising Unicorns, overseas travels, and diving for Mermaids in New Guinea), I decided to resurrect my beloved magazine. With the help of Morning Glory and Diane Darling, Green Egg once again arose, like the Phoenix. Our first new issue, number 80, came out at Beltane of 1988, featuring a spectacular split-fountain color image of a rising Phoenix on the cover. In honor of the new Star Trek series that premiered at the same time, we subtitled it: “The Next Generation.” Within a few years, GE had again risen to prominence as the foremost “Journal of the New Pagan Renaissance.” It won many awards, including three times the Wiccan-Pagan Press Alliance Gold Award for “Readers’ Choice.” We were very proud of it.

However, success inevitably attracts envy. In September of 1996 I found myself embroiled in a power struggle over who was to be at the helm of the ship. Certain members of the GE staff had just been elected as Officers of the CAW Board of Directors, and they took the earliest opportunity to strip me of all decision-making power in the magazine. The justification given out was that I, as Publisher, chose to print an item by an author/artist whose personal behavior those “certain members of the GE staff” objected to, and therefore they did not want to have anything of his printed in the magazine. I, as Publisher, maintained that was my decision, not theirs; so they took that away from me.

This felt like a total betrayal, shattering decades of deep relationships. Our whole family was devastated and our tribal community was rent asunder. It took me years to deal with the extent of this wounding, and the degree to which my trust in the bonds of water-brotherhood had been demolished by it.

Under new management, but with the amazing and talented Jeanne Koelle graduating from Art Director to eventual Publisher, the magazine continued publication for a few more years. But finally and sadly, at the dawn of the new Millennium, the 136th and final issue came out, terminated by order of the new CAW Board of Directors in Ohio. Within a few more years, the Church of All Worlds itself was officially dissolved by the same BoD.

Meanwhile, however, I was incredibly busy, and had little time to be involved in these issues. My life was fully-engaged with our Ravenheart family, several moves to new homes, and the expansion of our business, Mythic Images (www.MythicImages.com), involving the creation, production, and marketing of our growing line of sacred statuary. And I was traveling all around the country—and also to Australia (with Morning Glory) and Europe (with Ariel)—attending Pagan festivals, academic conferences, business trade shows, and an eclipse of the sun.

In 2002, 40 years after Lance Christie and I first shared water, beginning the amazing odyssey of the “Galloping Garrulous Grok Flok,” I was commissioned by New Page Books to write a foundational book of Wizardry for the “Harry Potter generation.” Tapping the great pool of Pagan Elders (“sages and mages”) I had come to know over the decades of publishing Green Egg, I assembled the “Grey Council” as an advisory council for this project. And we spent the entire year of 2003 writing the Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard.

The Grimoire was released in Feb. 2004, and became an “instant classic” as one reviewer wrote. Its success compelled the immediate formation of an online school to continue the studies introduced in the book. Over the coming months I recruited and worked with a talented and dedicated team of web wizards and educators to create the Grey School of Wizardry (www.GreySchool.com), which opened its virtual doors on Aug. 1, (Lughnasadh). The Grey School has taken off phenomenally, and now has over 600 students and 35 teachers, with over 200 classes in 16 departments, at seven levels.

Hardly had the Grey School gotten off the ground, when the entire Church of All Worlds fell back into my hands upon the mass resignation of the entire Ohio BoD, immediately following their dissolution of the Ohio-based corporation. We had never allowed the California corporate charter to lapse, so we just transferred our international headquarters back here, and have been working ever since to rebuild a new and better CAW on our solid foundations. The phenomenal Cat Deville has been most instrumental in that process, and many other fine folks have been signing on. See www.CAW.org.        

The success of the Grimoire and the Grey School has led to an entire succession of books: Companion for the Apprentice Wizard (2006), Creating Circles & Ceremonies (2006), Dragonlore (2006), Gargoyles (2007), and the one I am presently working on: A Wizard’s Bestiary (due out next Dec.).

And now the latest manifestation of these magicks is here before you: the newly-resurrected Green Egg—this time as an interactive e-zine for the new Millennium! My very dear friends Ariel and Tom stepped forward to take this on, and others of our previous staff have joined us: Jeanne Koelle, Ian Lurkingbear Anderson, Carolyn Whitehorn... They say third time’s the charm—and I know that this third incarnation will continue to “boldly go where no Pagan publication has gone before.”

And as we did in 1988, we have chosen to grace the first issue of this new series with a spectacular painting of a rising Phoenix—this time by the brilliant artist Ian Daniels. I hope you enjoy it!

Drink Deeply,
Oberon Zell-Ravenheart