What's it all about then?
All of you.
Now let’s get straight (and queer at the same time! 😘)... you are ALL invited to Mischief & Magick AND ALL of you IS welcome.
It is our deepest longing that you bring yourself to our festival creation, and that we have the honour of welcoming you in your wholeness, with ALL the things that are alive and kicking for you. (We recommend you leave the dead things at home or dispose of them responsibly before arrival 😉).
Your beauty and brilliance is welcome.
Your curiosity and confusion is welcome.
Your fears are welcome.
Your ENTIRE body with it’s lumps, bumps, wobbly bits, knobbly bits, sticky bits, tricky bits, wrinkles, hairs, injuries, aches, ailments and aliveness. Welcome.
Your creative, bold, bright, quirky expression AND your incredibly dull expression in the world. WELCOME.
Your unusual desires, kinks and resistances. Welcome.
Your plain old desires and your regular run-of-the-mill resistances 🙄. Also welcome.
Your emotional bodies with all their tentative anxiousness, their splendid softness, their protective armour, their certainness and uncertainness. Welcome.
Your innocence. Welcome.
Your naughtiness. Welcome.
The dance moves you believe are questionable - Welcome.
Your terrible singing voice? Sorry - also welcome!
Your angelic voices and the dance moves that you can fully own are the best thing since sliced cake! Welcome.
Have we made you feel a bit welcome yet?
If you’re SOOOO stubborn that these delightful words of heartfelt invitation don’t land, then bring your stubbornness along to the land itself (cause you’ve guessed it - IT’S welcome too!), and see just how annoyingly and persistently welcoming we can really be.
If any of this triggers you - you’re welcome 😇.
... AND not everyone's cuppa
As we mention in our Ahimsa section, some of our workshops might be confronting and challenging for some folk. There are spaces where people’s emotions will be openly expressed (joy, sadness, fear, anger, grief). If your own, or other people’s emotion is incredibly difficult for you to be with, you might find our festival uncomfortable at times, and we ask you to consider this when you choose to join us.
As we stated, our words are invitations not enforced instructions. If you do choose to attend, we ask you to use your ‘no’ whenever something does not feel right for you, your body or mind. We want to stress that you are free to leave any workshops or spaces that you do not wish to be in. We will remind you of your freedom to 'do you' in our workshops.
We love to celebrate the human form in all of it’s glory, and it’s an honour that we can offer spaces for your bodies to be free of clothes without threat or judgement AND we are aware that naked bodies might be potentially triggering for other people. With freedom comes responsibility and a commitment to sensitivity around other people.
We ask our facilitators to be clear on whether there is an invitation for possible nakedness in their individual workshops so that you can make an informed choice. Please remember that you are a sovereign being and if you want to stay in your furry pyjamas, you stay inside them. For many workshops it will be necessary to be fully clothed to attend, and this will also be explicitly stated.
Your senses, sensuality, sexuality and sexual energy are also aspects of ourselves that are invited and explored in some of our workshops. Whilst tantra for us isn’t ‘about’ sex, most humans are a product of it, and it’s the reason we exist, so we are not prepared to leave it out of our line-up. We would describe our exploration of these topics as gentle and heart-centred where new-to-tantra folk are welcome. However if the idea of these topics is unbearable for you, then we might not be your cuppa tea.
Speaking of cuppas, please be aware we are an alcohol and drugs -free event.
We want you to get INTO IT rather than out of it!
What's it all about then?
Let's get real.
Love is at the centre of everything we are delivering at Mischief & Magick.
AND Love is messy.
Some people see the word tantra and think their journey will be a simple, sweet one of candy-floss and cuddles. Now our desserts are to die for (thank you Ronnie!), and cuddles are definitely on the menu, but when we start to gently peel the layers of armour away to access our heart, it can sometimes feel very vulnerable.
A tantric path involves really seeing all the parts of ourselves, even the parts that might have been hiding (enter your shadow-hunting self!).
When we shine a spotlight into a new corner of our being, it can be a bit of a shocker to realise our own patterns and projections; to discover that the things we might judge in others are actually the bits we might not want to accept exist inside of us!
AND once we find them... we gotta love em?! This is often easier said than done.
Can we love the beautiful messy human things that we are?
Can we fully accept our imperfect selves that are trying their best right now?
Can we see each other through the eye's of love AND come to laugh together at how we're all just fumbling around in the dark most of the time?!
Our festival is a space to stop trying to be something in particular, and just be real.
What does your authentic self actually look like?
Have you been stuck in a role too long to remember?
Maybe you need to try a few more roles first? After all, the roles can be a lot of fun! And we are very serious about fun!
What's it all about then?
Tantra Smantra!?
So what IS tantra anyway? And if we wanted to go find the answer, who has it? If we go back to the ancient textuality (cuz that’s what the tantras are - philosophical texts!) then we find Hatha yoga comes from Tantra - check out the Amṛtasiddhi if you're feeling studious.
Tantra is a Sanskrit word that translates as a million different things in English. Nowadays it can throw up images of 'weird' cults, bizarre sexual rituals, relationship dynamics that require a whole new language you can’t master with Duolingo, and a new dictionary of definitions that a whole bunch of people disagree on! 🙃
For us, Tantric practices are the things that bring us into more presence and consciousness, so that we can see and feel ourselves and each other more clearly; so that we can truly experience and embrace more of life! Everyone's journey with tantra will feel different and involve different expressions, hence the complexity in defining it, but most agree on tuning into the wisdom held in your physical body, the power of the breath, the art of slowing down to access a more refined awareness and shifting into a more meditative way of being.
“It’s the way of the light!”
“But isn’t it a dark art?”
Hmmm, our tantric friend Sadhguru suggests most of existence is a dark art. And by dark are we not just speaking of the things we can’t fully see yet? Light is actually a rarer occurrence- if light arises, something has to burn 🔥! Welcome to day three of our festival! (see our four elements journey on the main page). Whether it’s the lightbulb or the sun … if we’re in the light something is burning folks! And if something is burning - something is dying! I know we just said we're all about being FULLY alive BUT another tantric question - What wants to die? Is it guilt? Shame? Judgement? Ways of thinking? The tension held in your body? The idea that 'good' and 'bad' is really a thing?
Welcome to the mystery of tantra.
Life and death. Shiva and Shakti. Expansion and Contraction. Everything and nothing.
Silence and the wild. Nature and Creation. Strawberries and Sniffing Sunflowers. Washing the dishes and making love.