Throughout the years we’ve created several ceremonies that have become an anchor and a new tradition that we pursue every year.
These ceremonies are a part of what distinguishes the Sufi festival and makes it different from any other event.
They bring us all together to the main stage and constitute some of the highest points of the festival.
The opening ceremony is a gate for everyone coming from their daily life and taking the journey into the desert and into the womb we’re creating for the festival.
We’ll hear Rumi’s enchanting poetry and rest on the grass while the festival’s artists will play ancient instruments and read poetry according to the art of Diklama- sacred poetry reading. That will be the moment for us to close our eyes and tune in together to this experience.
Heart to heart conversation is a main tool in ancient Sufi wisdom.
Every festival, right in the middle of it, we meet up- hundreds of friends- for a conversation about truth and life here in the big desert.
We speak words of truth from the heart, we listen and we talk to share the wisdom of wisemen and artists for all of those interested to keep learning and enriching the language of the heart and the knowledge about the fascinating history of the middle east.
The word Dhikr is the Sufi version of the jewish Hasidik ‘Tshuva’.
On Friday evening we create a powerful ceremony with a large band led by Gil Ron Shama, playing live mystical and mysterious music, typical to ceremonies of that kind in central Asia.
Electric waves are passing through the crowd, growing from slow mantra into ecstatic trance that turns the whole audience into a huge quire, singing the names of god: Alla, Hai, Elohim, He, Hu…
During the ceremony the audience and the band are moving together in a big circle, eventually reaching a peak of breathing and singing, dancing and playing, joining together to a healing, releasing experience.
A powerful ceremony that invites all the festival participants to take part in the “Sama”.
A sacred space in which the body releases into the music, responding to sudden, liberating inspiration to turn and dance the dance of the Darwish, spin around ourselves, break through the suit of the body and fly with the wings of the heart.
A large orchestra will play diving live music from ancient Turkish pieces, to its sounds we will spread wings with the guidance of experienced friends.
