Life & Work with Oberon Zell

Today we’d like to introduce you to Oberon Zell

Hi Oberon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Oberon’s story

When I was very small my parents got me a set of the wonderful ChildCraft books (1945 edition), which were put out for kids by the Worldbook Encyclopedia. There were 15 of them, each on different themes. My favorite was the one on world mythology. The very first things I read were Roman versions of the Greek myths, long before Dick and Jane or anything else. I will never forget reading about Hades and Persephone.

These stories introduced me to multiple deities, whole pantheons of interesting Gods and Goddesses. So, I did not start off with the assumption that there was only one God; I started off with the assumption that there were many deities worshipped among many peoples.

Later, when I was old enough to go to Sunday school and learned about Christianity, it was not like, “this is the only God.” I read the Bible as mythology—just like the legends of Jason, Heracles, Odysseus, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and all the other stories I had been reading. The Bible was just one more story, about one more God—the jealous and vengeful God of the Jews. And I was not Jewish, so it was not the story of my People.

My lifelong interest in magick and Wizardry was ignited when I first read stories of magick as a child—such as in fairy tales and the Greek myths. In particular, I was deeply imprinted by the animated Disney movies featuring magickal characters.

Disney’s Fantasia in particular (which came out in 1940—two years before I was born) had a huge impact on me. Of course, I loved the whole “Rite of Spring” evolution sequence, with the dinosaurs. But it was the “Pastorale” that really captured my soul. The final scene, when Nyx draws an indigo veil of night like a diamond-dusted blanket across the Arcadian sky, and we see a thin crescent of the new moon which, as we zoom in, resolves into Diana drawing her bow and releasing a meteoric arrow…well, that arrow plunged straight into my heart, where it has lodged ever since!

In the Fall of 1961 I began my freshman year at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. There I met Lance Christie, the first person I had ever encountered who seemed to be the same species as I.

Lance and I had all been avid science fiction readers (we’d cut our teeth on Heinlein juveniles) and had been particularly taken by the recurrent theme of the emergence of a new stage in human evolution (“Homo Novus”). With the hubris of youth, we thought of ourselves as the potential new Cro-Magnons in a world of Neanderthals. We had many late-night discussion sessions, planning how we might contact others like us, form a community, start a movement, etc.

And then, in October of 1961, “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein arrived in Lance’s mailbox as the Science Fiction Book Club selection of the month. Lance and I talked long about the vision therein, and on April 7, 1962, the two of us shared water, pledging to begin living a new dream, and bringing others into it.

In the novel, Valentine Michael Smith was a human born on Mars as the sole survivor of a crashed first expedition, and raised by Martians. Upon being brought back to Earth twenty years later, he established the “Church of All Worlds,” built around “nests,” a fusion of congregation, group marriage, and intentional community. A basic concept was “grokking” (literally, “drinking”), i.e. the ability to be fully empathic.

Heinlein’s SISL introduced us to the ideas of Immanent Divinity (“Thou Art God”), Pantheism (“all that groks is God”); Sacraments (water sharing); Priestesses; sexuality as divine union; social and ritual nudity; intimate extended families as a basis for community; and open, loving relationships without jealousy. By defining “love” as “that condition wherein another person’s happiness is essential to your own,” SISL affected forever the parameters of our relationships with each other (and, I believe, was enormously influential in laying a philosophical foundation for the sexual revolution of that decade). And all this in the context of a legal religious organization—a “church”—which could have all the rights and privileges granted to the mighty Church of Rome!

We turned other students on to SISL, and recruited them into our water-brotherhood, which we called Atl, an Aztec word meaning both “water” and “ancient lost homeland of our ancestors.”

By the time Lance and I graduated in 1965, we had over a hundred Atlan water-brothers and were publishing a regular newsletter. The Atlan Torch was the first “underground” paper to be published at Westminster, and it developed quite a following, especially among the faculty, as we focused much attention on issues of free speech and academic freedom.

After we left Westminster in 1965, I went on to graduate school at Washington University in St Louis (where I had a scholarship in Clinical Psychology), and Lance went on to the University of Oklahoma in Norman. We founded Nests in those places and continued publishing The Atlan Torch.

At this time (1966-67) two different directions emerged: most of the Atlans wanted to keep our water-brotherhood a secret fraternity, operating underground. Others of us felt that our vision needed to be taken to the greater society and made more influential in shaping the kind of world we wanted; and also to be more accessible to other potential Atlans as-yet-undiscovered out there.

Eventually we decided to branch into two separate groups: The Atlan Foundation (later incorporated publicly as the Association for the Tree of Life), headed by Lance, would remain underground, while the Church of All Worlds would incorporate legally and go public, with me as its Primate. This decision was implemented in the summer of 1967. Within a few months I had developed a significant following, and we filed for State and Federal incorporation as a Pagan church.

And the rest is Mystery…

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The usual problems of being a “black sheep,” “pink monkey” or “ugly duckling”—total rejection by my peers as a kid, and my parents as an adult. I was never included in any family gatherings, reunions, vacations, holidays, etc. I had to create my own family—which grew into a clan, a tribe, a community, a movement. I am the “Father” of the entire modern Pagan community!

Other problems arose a few times as some people became jealous of my status, and plotted to displace me. I weathered several “coup” attempts. The betrayals really hurt. But I survived and prospered, and they all fell away.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Professionally, I am a Wizard. And an honored Elder in the global Pagan community, which I founded in 1967.

Currently I am primarily engaged as an author and artist, with 19 books published over the past two decades. I have done profuse illustrations, posters, sculptures and jewelry designs, of which my most famous is my sculpture of Mother Earth as “The Millennial Gaia.”

I am the founder and Primate of the Church of All Worlds, since 1962. The first legally-incorporated Pagan Church. I am also the founder and publisher of “Green Egg” magazine (“A Journal of the Awakening Earth”)–at 187 issues over 56 years, the longest-running journal of magick and mystery ever (now online)

I am the founder and Headmaster Emeritus of the Grey School of Wizardry–since 2004. With more than 500 classes in 16 Departments, the finest academy of arcana in the world.

In the 1980, with my late wife Morning Glory, I raised genuine Living Unicorns, which we exhibited at every Renaissance Faire in North America before leasing them for four years to the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Morning Glory and I coined the terms “polyamory” and “polyamorous,” and we were active and instrumental in launching that movement.

I am immensely proud of all this, and the large, diverse and thriving communities I founded.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was a weird misfit kid growing up. Scary smart, creative, arrogant. I had few friends–none who continued in my life. I used to stand out in the back yard at night with a flashlight, trying to signal the flying saucers to come and take me home!

I spent as much time as possible in Nature. There were woods and fields all around us that I used to spend much of my childhood time exploring. I would go hang out with the animals. I would merge so totally with the place that the wild critters came to accept me. I would just sit at the base of a tree for hours and hours ‘til the deer would come and graze right next to me without being alarmed. I would climb up into the branches during the bird nesting season and just sit and watch them lay their eggs and raise their babies. And they would not be disturbed by me. Those were very happy times.

I did not have any social sense at all as a kid. Not with people, anyway. I got along great with animals, but I never really formed close friendships with other kids—especially boys. I just did not understand them—or trust them. And this was reciprocal; I was like a “pink monkey.” I always liked hanging out with girls more than boys. They were nicer and more interesting, and they did not want to pick fights with me. I understood them better—and I still do.

Eventually I came to understand myself through the fable of the “Ugly Duckling.” I was a changeling, a cuckoo, a “stranger in a strange land,” born into a family that was not of my own kind—whatever that might be (and I had no idea). It was not until I grew up and went off to college that I discovered others like me; the same “species,” as it were. And from that point my focus turned to seeking out such scattered kin—my People—and gathering them together into a clan of our own. I claimed a name for such as we—“Pagans”—and founded a global Pagan community. And the rest is Mystery…

Pricing:

• Prices of my boks, artwork, statujes, jewelry, etc. are listed with the Products on Amazon.com and my personal website: overonzell.com
• Prices for my public apparnces vary according to the event and venue.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oberonzell.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oberon.zell
• Other: OZ’s statues, jewelry, books, posters: https://www.themillennialgaia.com/ OZ’s jewelry from Peter Stone Co.: https://www.peterstone.com/search?q=Oberon+Zell OZ’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/oberon.zell OZ’s friends & fans FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/oberonzellwizard/community/ OZ’s Wonderful Wytches of OZ on FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wonderfulwytchesofoz OZ’s LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/mynetwork/ OZ’s Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/oberonzell OZ’s statues, jewelry, books, posters: https://www.themillennialgaia.com/ OZ’s jewelry from Peter Stone Co.: https://www.peterstone.com/search?q=Oberon+Zell OZ’s book publishers: New Page Books: http://newpagebooks.com/ (order through [email protected]) Black Moon Publishing: www.blackmoonpublishing.com Song of Gaea (children’s book): https://songofgaea.wordpress.com/ Green Egg magazine: https://greeneggmagazine.com/ GE submissions: [email protected] [email protected] Green Egg Forum FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1069823176940972 Grey School of Wizardry: www.GreySchool.com Grey School of Wizardry Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1436042009981163 Church of All Worlds: www.CAW.com