Call for Queer Spirit 2024

QUEER SPIRIT FESTIVAL, 15th August to 19th August 2024

The spirits are calling! We are gathering!
The elements are calling! The animals are calling!
The trees are calling! The Earth is calling!
The rivers are calling! The ancestors are calling!
The Queer in me and you is calling! Above all Love is calling!
Queer Spirit is calling!
Come and join us!
Carriers of Consciousness, Cosmic Connectors 
- Born of Earth, Born to Love -
born to reunite the worlds, below and above
with the cosmos inside each of us!

“I first attended QSF in 2019 and I met the love of my life around its campfire, so it felt particularly poignant for us to have our 4 year anniversary around the same magical fire. But as good as the 2019 festival was nothing could’ve prepared me for the wonder of this years festivities. From the quality and variety of amazing workshops to the gorgeousness of the music and cabaret tent, let alone the wonder and splendour of the grounds. To be able to perambulate amongst wild deer and ancient trees one minute, have grand high tea in a manor house the next, followed by an ecstatic dance with a pagan fire eater, all whilst wearing a see through wedding dress and nothing else made for the most liberating and memorable festival of my life. And the fact it’s back in the same spot next year make this the must attend festival of the summer for all queer anarchist mischief makers and their allies.”      Kai Reich, facilitator at Egyptian Sex Magic workshops at Queer Spirit 2023.

Over 700 people are expected at the 5th Queer Spirit Festival, at beautiful Bridwell Park in Devon, 15-19 August 2024. We gather to relax, play and make new friends, absorb the healing energies of nature, to share our stories, explore and discover new ideas and practices, honour our ancestry, sing and dance under the full moon and dream new dreams...
Dozens of facilitators are sharing their skills in the Workshop Dome, Campaigns Area, Women's Space, Yoga Space, Sacred Sexuality Temple and outside around the park. There will be group ceremonies, fire circles, drumming, dj sets and two performance stages featuring singer-songwriters, poets, bands, drag, clowns and more. Plus cafés, welfare space, crafts area, traders, healing garden, sauna & Accessible, Quiet and Family camping areas.
In this welcoming and inclusive space, hundreds of us will gather to celebrate the creativity, insight and joy that queerness gifts us –  re-discovering the long-suppressed connections between same sex love, gender-fluidity and the sacred, reclaiming queer nature as as mystical and magical, exploring how the dance of the genders within opens gates to the inner being, to transcendence and to the spirits of the earth. We are also remembering that queer people were once respected in cultures the world over that honoured the sacred feminine: In West Africa queer people were known as Gatekeepers, in ancient Europe and Middle East we served the Goddess, in India today the hijra still do, and in America today the Two Spirits of the native tribes are reclaiming their ancient, sacred, roles, which include community ritual, healing practices, communicating with land spirits, creating rites for the dying, acting as mediators between the binary genders, between nations, between dimensions of matter and spirit.

LGBTQ+ are a section of humanity only recently able to safely find each other in large numbers, declare pride in who we are, find our voice - but as a people we still have not had much space to tell our stories, heal our history and uncover the healing gifts that queer nature brings to the world. Many queer people are drawn to spirituality, and some find it through recovery from sickness or addictions. However, religious attitudes can deter queers from exploring our connection to the spiritual side of life. At Queer Spirit Festival we get time to slow down and talk to each other, form connections, learn and grow together. At QS all parts of the Rainbow Tribe gather to honour and celebrate our differences and our mutuality:

“It’s tragic that many in the LGBTQ community struggle with issues around spirituality. We confuse it with religion and, no wonder, given the treatment we have received at the hands of most religions, but what’s ironic about that is that before the patriarchal cultures and religions, people that we today refer to as LGBTQ were not only spiritually inclined, but were honored for the roles of spiritual service and leadership they played all over the world.”  Christian de la Huerta, author of Coming Out Spiritually and Awakening the Soul of Power

Judy Grahn, Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds:
“The tribal attitude said, and continues to say, that Gay people are especially empowered because we are able to identify with both sexes and can see into more than one world at once, having the capacity to see from more than one point of view at a time.”

Toby Johnson: Gay Spirituality, The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness:
“There is an enlightenment that goes with being gay, an understanding of the real meaning and message of religion. Not all gay people avail themselves of this enlightenment. Some are blinded to it by momentary attractions of the flesh and the glamour of a liberated gay life. Some are blinded by the guilt and confusion instilled in them by a homophobic society. And some are blinded by the misinformation perpetuated by institutionalized religion. Yet this spiritual enlightenment is there for us, if only we open our eyes.

Rev. Mona West, Ph. D. Queer Spirituality | Religious Institute.
“Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender people have a unique history as spiritual people and our expressions of spirituality are being manifested in powerful and healing ways today.
“Queer spirituality often involves the process and practice of letting go of ideas about God, the Bible, church, family, sexuality, and our own bodies that are not true to our experience. What is most important in this spiritual practice is honoring and recognizing that our experience is a source of revelation and can be trusted to point us to the Divine.”
“Because of prejudice and religious abuse Queer people today have rejected or lost our connection with our spiritual heritage. It is time for us to look inside, to do the work of self-discovery and reclaim our spiritual nature as teachers, healers, prophets, artists, visionaries, mediators, messengers, entertainers, priests and priestesses, and keepers of beauty.”

John McNeil: Gay Dimensions to Spiritual Life
National Catholic Reporter. March 26, 1993: 
“... gay people have a keen awareness that spiritual life is not a head trip but a heart trip. Thus, a healthy spiritual life must be holistic; it cannot be based on a denial and rejection of the necessary sexual component in our search for intimacy with God. To totally suppress that component can place a major obstacle in the path of spiritual growth.”

Caitlin Breedlove, Auburn Seminary in Phoenix:
“There are ancient ways of understanding spirituality and our spiritual connection that predate monotheism and contemporary white supremacy and capitalism.”
"I actually believe it is not overstated to say we are in a struggle for the Soul of the LGBTQ movement—to see if we are about Queer Liberation–which means the liberation of bodies and spirits from colonialisms of all kind–or if we are simply exchanging limited rights for more rights through the quiet but gruesome process of assimilation. LGBTQ people are so much more than a set of peoples who have to prove that we are like anyone else to ‘merit’ rights–we have fought too bravely for our lives on our terms to surrender that now." 

Shokti, organiser Queer Spirit Festival:
“Everyone on earth is an incarnation of the divine miracle, and deserving of the right to self-expression, to be who they truly are and to love whom they wish to love. This is the message Queer Spirit brings to the world, the same message that the Gay Liberation Front was voicing from the early 1970s, and which is the point of Gay Prides the world over, but now we need to take that liberation all the way home, into the spiritual realms.”