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A Book Gives the New Coven Its Theology

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A Book Gives the New Coven Its Theology

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Zsuzsanna Budapest set down the theology and ritual practice of the Dianic Wicca she had founded at the Susan B. Anthony Coven No. 1 in her book The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries, first published in 1979 and expanded in 1986. The book gave the women only, Goddess centred current she had begun in Los Angeles a written text of its own, carrying its ritual and theology beyond the founding coven to other women organising similar groups elsewhere.

Where the coven's 1971 founding had established Dianic Wicca in practice, The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries supplied the explicitly feminist theology behind it in a form other groups could read and adopt directly, a documented text rather than only an oral tradition passed between covens. That distinction, a founded practice followed by a written theology, let Dianic Wicca spread as an organised current within the wider Goddess Movement rather than remaining tied to Budapest's own Los Angeles coven alone.

The book's expansion in 1986, seven years after its first publication, reflected a current that was still being actively developed and taught rather than one that had been fixed once at its 1971 founding, matching the movement's own growth as an organised alternative to the mixed gender Wiccan groups more typical of the wider witchcraft revival.

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