Preliminary Programme

Tuesday, 17 June

Earth-healing day 

10:00-16:00 Alessandra Belloni: Rhythm is the Cure (venue: Feszek Artists' Club, Gobelin Room)

In this workshop we will learn how to use Southern Italian ritual folk dances and rituals as a joyous form of music and dance therapy. We will begin with drumming and ancient Neapolitan chants used for healing and to honour the Black Madonna, and then learn several ancient ritual dances: the Tammurriata, a beautiful, sensual dance from Naples; the Pizzica Tarantata, a wild dance performed to exorcise a mental disease called tarantismo; and a Calabrian spinning dance, similar to certain Sufi trance-inducing arts. We will also learn the basic techniques of the tambourine, its accents and accompanying chants and discover other healing rituals. Learn how to release stress, unblock sexual energy, open your heart and throat chakras and achieve deep relaxation. Note: Participants will be barefoot. Women should preferably wear skirts, and if possible everyone should wear white clothes. The instructor will provide tambourines, but you are welcome to bring your own.

19:00-20:30 Lydia Ruyle: Ancient Mothers (venue: Quantum Center)

Lydia Ruyle, artist/scholar/author, will give an illustrated talk on Ancient Mothers / Goddess Icons of the Divine Feminine. Her work has taken her around the globe and includes the Danube basin, the Celts, Scythians, Amazons, Hittites. Lydia will focus on the Herstory of the images from these cultures and include them in a global view.

Wednesday, 18 June

Afternoon, 14:00-18:00 – Registration and preparation ceremonies (Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

We meet for registration in the central venue where Lydia Ruyle’s  wonderful Goddess Icon Banners will be joined by the beautiful and inspiring Celtic-Scythian Goddess wallhanging designed by Krisztina Lehoczky. Then we will start our journey to those Goddesses of the Carpathian Basin once loved and honoured by our Celtic and Scythian ancestors by calling in their elements; cleansing our thoughts with air and our emotions with water. We will release our old energy patterns to the transforming fire, and connect with the earth of our ancestors.  Then we will be able  to listen to  feel the Goddess within us  and listen to the voice of her spirit.

Evening, 19:00-22:00 –Opening Ceremony (Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

Although the peaceful, Goddess-loving culture of the Neolithic people disappeared in the wars of the Indo-European warrior tribes, the change in the status of women was not totally abrupt. In the Iron Age the cultures of both the Celts and the Scythians refelected a mixture of the values of the old Goddess-honouring matriarchy and of the new patriarchal ideas. The women of the Celts and Scythians enjoyed more freedom and status than European women in the 19th century, for example. Amongst the women of the Iron Age warrior people we find the Woman of the Hearth, the Priestess, the Amazon, the Queen, the Matriarch and the Enchantress. All these, however have been ignored by the bulk of Hungarian-language books written about the Celts and Scythians, which say very little about women. After the opening of the Goddess wheel of the Carpathian Basin we will travel back in time to the Iron Age to meet our Celtic and Scythian foremothers through ritual theatre and through Irish tunes and the flowerthian music from Transylvania played by Bran Music Group. 

Thursday, 19 June -  Journey in Brigit’s healing embrace (colour of the day: white)

Brigit, Bride, Brighdie, Bridie, Saint Brigit ... Her name once meant Goddess. Once She was the Great Goddess, Maiden, Lover, Mother, Crone and Lady of the four elements. She still is the healing Goddess whose presence we feel in the healing springs and in the fire of our hearts. In Hungary, the name of the very first Roman settlement in Pannonia, established on the land of the Celtic Azalus tribe,  Brigetio, bears  witness to the honour that was paid to Brigit in those days

Morning, 10:00-13:00 - Healing work-shops

Brian Charles: Inanna - the healing of shame and the journey to wholeness (venue: Goddess Temple)

Lydia Ruyle:  Create Your Soul Language. Art work-shop (Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

Lynne Orchard: Healing with Brigit’s fiery energy (venue: Quantum Center)

Afternoon, 15:00-18:00 – Brigit’s healing waters and Healing work-shops

Brigit rules over the healing springs and wells, and She has certainly blessed Budapest with a lot of them! This afternoon we will ritually offer ourselves to the healing waters of Szechenyi Spa – the biggest spa in Europe – which is watched over by Brigit’s swan – to be cleansed, refereshed and renewed. 

Healing work-shops:

Anique Radiant Heart: Chanting the chakras (venue: Quantum Center)

Evening, 20:00-23:00 – Bridie Healing Ceremony (Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

With the help of Bridie we connect with our inner child. Following Bridie’s steps we will find our way back to the enthusiastic, happy and whole child we once were. Through creation we will connect with that part of our soul, which believes the incredible, sees the invisible and expects the unexpected and thereby become  ready to make any dream true. Then our inner child  will receive  healing from Bridie through the touch of Her priestesses, and music from Bella  Bagdi.

Friday, 20 June – Journey on Epona’s white mare (colour of the day: red)

For the Romans Epona was the Goddess of horses, but for our Celtic ancestors She was, more importantly, perhaps, the Goddess of Love and Fertility. On Her white mare She is journeying between the worlds, and sometimes, taking the form of a beautiful water nymph,  She calls us to love. All our heartaches and our sometimes painful initiations into the mysteries of love as well as our pleasure and joy are known by Her rose-scented altars. 

Morning, 10:00-13:30 – Lectures (Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

10:00-11:00 - Bori Hoppál: The Sacred Yoni

11:15-12:15 – Brian Charles: Inanna and the birth of shame.

I will be looking at the stories of Inanna and exploring what they can tell us about ourselves, our civilization and how they point to a way forward. 

12:30-13:30 – Natasha Wardle: The Whore and the Sacred One

Afternoon, 15:00-17:00 – Healing the wounds of the Feminine and Masculine (venue: Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room for women, Goddess Temple for men)

When we are in love we open our hearts to happiness and pleasures, but we are also open to the old memories and wounds of past relationships. This afternoon we create two separate sacred spaces for Women and Men ... In these safe, healing spaces which will be facilitated by Kathy Jones and Mike Jones, we will uncover those wounds from this and previous lives which we still hold deep in our bodies. We will then offer these wounds  to the Goddess of Love for healing.

Bring blanket, yoga mat and comfortable loose clothing.

Evening, 19:00-23:00 – Red Veil Ceremony (venue: Quantum Room and Goddess Temple)

The Red Veil is a healing veil holding the sexual mysteries of the Goddess. In distant times, red-veiled priestesses held Her healing energy in their bodies. This evening, between the red veils of the Goddess Temple, we will ask Her to heal our sexual wounds. With the Yoni and Lingam Dance-Monologues we will speak of  the different stages of our womanhood and manhood. Then from the safe space held by the beautiful voice of Anique Radiant Heart we will go and meet the Goddess of Love embodied by Her Priestesses.

Saturday, 21 June – Journey in Tabiti’s Fire (colour of the day is fiery orange)

The fiery red-haired, beautiful Snake-Goddess Tabiti is the Mother of the Scythian people and the Creatrix of Scythia. On the day of the Summer Solstice we call to Tabiti, Goddess of the Hearth, Mother of Fire and Sun, Lady of the Beasts. Connecting with the flames of the Solstice fire, we will call on Tabiti and  on those warrior-women of Scythia that we know as the Amazons, bringing their spirit and energy into ourselves.

Morning, 10:00-13:00 – Remembering the Fire of the Amazon

10:00-11:30 – Jeannine Davis-Kimball: Nomadic Women of High Status in the First Millennium BCE

American-Russian excavations of more than 50 nomadic kurgans and over 150 burials located at Pokrovka in the southern Ural steppes revealed many artefacts that were meant for use in the afterworld. The typological methodology that was developed from the artefacts revealed that while men were generally warriors, women held diverse and prominent roles in this Early Iron Age society. The methodology, and the roles and the status of priestess, warrior women, and warrior priestesses, including the findings from the burial of a probable warrior-priestess from southern Kazakstan, are discussed in this presentation.

12:00-13:00 – Alessandra Belloni: The Spider Dance

Afternoon 15:00-17:00 - Fire of Creation

Art and Craft Fair (venue: Feszek Artists' Club, Big Room)

Kindling the Fire (venue: Goddess Temple)

Way back in the remote past, we received from the Goddess the gift of fire. Women watched and kindled the fire from one generation to the other. The hearth was kept alight, and the Goddess danced in its flames. This morning we kindle the fire together, reading in the flames the story of the endless row of mothers and daughters and breathing the power of the fire into our bodies and into our souls.

Evening 19:00 - 23:00 – Summer Solstice, Healing the Fire of the Amazon (venue: Csepel Island, YouthCamp, take the HEV from Boraros Square to Saint Imre Square, then take bus number 71)

The spiritual leaders of our Scythian ancestors were the priestesses, often warrior-priestesses. Amazon fire beat in their hearts and it beat in Celtic Queen, Boudicca of the Iceni, in her war against the  Romans. The same Amazon strength lived in the drumbeat of the old, Hungarian shamankas and the women of Eger whose wild, female power helped to repulse the mighty army of the Turks. The spirit of these old warrior priestesses reincarnated in the early feminists, who fought for the freedom of women. This same Amazon fire is awakening  in every woman and man, who is ready to stand in their own truth and hold the flame of the Goddess.

As the physical flames of the solstice fire light up the midsummer evening we will invoke the amazon within with movement and dance, with singing and breathing and connect our inner fire with the fire without. Then, as the midsummer night deepens, we will celebrate our courage with Hungarian dishes cooked on the open fire and dance to the fiery music of Alessandra Belloni.

Sunday, 22 June - Journey with the Triple Mothers (colour of the day is yellow and gold)

Deae Matrones are the triple-queens of Summer. Ruling in Roman Pannonia, they blessed the the wombs of women with life as they blessed the ripening grain and fruit. Bearing their cornucopias of abundant fruit, their bundles of wheat, and the new and fragrant bread they still walk amongst us and their touch blesses us with creativity, fertility, abundance and the joys of motherhood. 

Morning, 11:00-12:30 – Celebrating Motherhood Kindling the Fire (venue: Feszek Artist's Club, Big Room)

Motherhood is mystery, and women are the sole guardians of this mystery, the magic of creation and new life. Mystery, which cannot be learnt from books, cannot be confined within strict rules, although medical professionals sought to bring it within their strict control. As each woman and each child are different so is each birth. Deep within their souls and bodies, women hold the codes to  this mystery and by bringing these codes back we can make this mystery sacred again. This morning we will celebrate midwives, doulas, mothers, and those women and men, who over  the last few years have done so much to reclaim the sanctity of pregnancy and birth.

Afternoon, 13:00-16:00 – Goddess Procession

Wonderful goddess banners, through the busy streets of Budapest, radiating and celebrating the energy of motherhood and life. Eventually, we will end on the beautiful yoni-shaped island in the Danube, named after the nun and healer  Margaret who dedicated her life to the service of Gladwoman. There, on that sacred island, we will celebrate the abundance of the Great Mother with a shared lunch and show our gratitude to the long line of our Mothers by giving away gifts to each other. Finally we say our thanks to the Goddess in her many forms by closing the wheel of the Carpathian Basin.

Bring food to share and a small gift to give away