Z Budapest self-published one of the first Goddess periodical in America: Thesmophoria, along with her several jobs as High Priestess,  witch shop owner and author. She says, "The Beltane Papers had arrived for the first time in our office and we marveled and sat down and sighed gratefully,  'Now we can retire from publishing Thesmophoria; we have been eclipsed.'  The Goddess  movement was served with The Beltane Papers ever since."
Zsuzsanna Emese Budapest (“Z”), known as the mother of the Women’s Spirituality Movement in America, was born in Budapest, Hungary, on January 30, 1940. After she emigrated to America, she founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number 1, the first feminist witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups. She is the author of a dozen books about the Goddess and spirituality, including the best selling, The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries.
 Today Z lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, traveling a lot, teaching online at her own Dianic University, and she is the director of the Women's Spirituality Forum (a nonprofit organization that sponsors events and spirituality retreats such as The Goddess 3k Festival.)

One of the leaders of the contemporary earth spirituality movement, Patricia Monaghan has spent more than 20 years researching and writing about alternative spiritual visions of the earth. Raised in Alaska, she considers herself blessed to have learned the ecology of the taiga, the sub arctic forest, in her youth. She was a writer and reporter on science and energy related issues before turning her attention to the impact of myth on our daily lives.
The worldwide vision of the earth as feminine–as a goddess, called Gaia by the Greeks–led her to recognize the connection between ecological damage and the oppression of the feminine. Much of her work since that time has explored the role of feminine power in our world, in an inclusive and multicultural way. Her newest book, "The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit", explores the way that Irish mythology expresses the power of the Irish land.
In addition to her exacting research, Patricia is an award-winning poet whose work has been set to music and is performed around the world. She is also an acclaimed lecturer who has appeared at hundreds of universities, festivals, bookstores and community centers around the United States and Europe.

Ruth Barrett is a Dianic high priestess, ritualist, educator, and award winning recording artist of original Goddess songs. Since inheriting Z Budapest's Los Angeles ministry in 1980, Ruth has taught magical and ritual arts in the Dianic tradition at festivals and conferences internationally. She served the Los Angeles women's community as religious director of Circle of Aradia, until relocating to the Midwest in 2000 where she founded Temple of Diana with Falcon River. She is author of Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries: Creating Personal and Group Ritual (forthcoming from 1stBooks Library, Summer 2003).
Ruth was honored as the recipient of the 1997 L.A.C.E. award for outstanding contributions in the area of Spirituality from the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. Ruth contributed a chapter on The Power of Ritual, published in Daughters of the Goddess (Alta Mira Pub., 2000), ed. Wendy Griffin, and a chapter, Lesbian Rituals and Dianic Tradition, for Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts and the Power of Community (ed. Ramona Faith Oswald), Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc. 2003.