Born with Witchy Vibes: Celebrating the Magick and Legacy of Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart
If there was ever a soul destined to disrupt the ordinary and infuse the mundane world with pure, unadulterated magick, it was Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. Today, May 27th, marks what would have been the 74th birthday of Neo-Paganism’s most radiant High Priestess, author, and cultural revolutionary. Though she crossed the veil to the Summerlands in 2014, her witchy vibes continue to ripple through the cosmos, reminding us all what it looks like to live entirely on your own spiritual terms.
Long before she was the co-matriarch of the Church of All Worlds, she was born Diana Moore in Long Beach, California, in 1948. But standard-issue mid-century America was never going to hold her. The universe had woven an unmistakable witchcraft thread straight into her DNA.
A Natural-Born Rebel with a Cause
Morning Glory’s witchy vibes didn’t wait for an invitation; they asserted themselves early. Raised in a strict, traditional religious household, she famously broke ties with the church at just 14 years old. The breaking point? A fierce argument with her minister grandfather over whether animals had souls and went to heaven. (Spoiler alert: Morning Glory knew they did).
By high school, after devouring Sybil Leek’s Diary of a Witch, the path became crystal clear. At 17, she officially began practicing witchcraft. Recognizing that her birth name carried a traditional weight of chastity that didn’t fit her free-spirited, goddess-loving nature, she shed it at age 20, renaming herself Morning Glory. She was stepping into her power, preparing to bloom exactly when and how she pleased.
The Wizard, the Witch, and a Bouquet of Lovers
In 1973, Morning Glory met her cosmic match, Timothy Zell (who would later become Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), at a Gnosticon festival. It was an instant, lightning-bolt connection of two visionary minds. Together, they became the ultimate power couple of the counterculture magickal movement.
They didn’t just practice rituals; they lived them. From the late ’70s through the ’80s, they homesteaded in Northern California, edited the influential Pagan magazine Green Egg, founded the Ecosophical Research Association to hunt for cryptids, and even raised living “unicorns” (surgically merging the horn buds of young goats, a technique ancient as time).
But Morning Glory’s legacy extends far beyond the altar. Blessed with a heart too big for conventional boxes, she was a pioneering advocate for relationship freedom. In her 1990 essay A Bouquet of Lovers, she famously coined the terms “polyamory” and “polyamorous.” She gave a voice, a framework, and a beautiful name to the practice of loving more than one person ethically and honestly, reshaping the modern relationship landscape forever.
Keeping the Fire Alive
Morning Glory was a historian, a poet, a goddess-worshipper, and a woman who could command a ritual of 4,000 people at a Stonehenge replica just as easily as she could tend to a single garden plant. She looked at the world through an enchanted lens and invited the rest of us to do the same.
So today, light a candle, pour a splash of good whiskey (she loved Tullamore Dew), and embrace your own inner strange. The world needs more people who dare to live with those fierce, beautiful, unapologetic witchy vibes.
Blessed Be,
Moonzie