ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY
WILD CREATIVITY
The Return
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Not a wellness retreat, not an initiation but a third more mysterious thing…
A CREATIVE RITUAL RESIDENCY
FOR MODERN DAY PRIESTESSES
9-17 OCTOBER | ASWAN, EGYPT
Beneath the busyness and noise of our contemporary rituals there lays an ancient song. A myth older than time. A current of simple magic, of lands that flow freely and abundantly with golden waters.
And within this current there are women.
Women weaving, dancing, laughing, crying and singing together. Women awakening through their bodies. Women communing with the land and the elements in devotional acts of Beauty.
Women who lead, who serve from their hearts and who let their creative, erotic life be the guiding principle of their choices.
These women once were priestesses.
And they are returning.
What to expect
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Myth Making
Tell your story through art. The entire journey is an intimately woven myth of your own becoming. Everything we do and touch is a thread in the tapestry of your soul’s choice to be here. Through storytelling, embodied ritual art and the natural force of the island you will remember the source of your very existence.
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Deep Nourishment
Your body and heart will be fed. Through the inevitable slowing down of our daily rhythm (Egypt in October is hot!) you will enter a non-linear state of BEING. The program is spacious enough for you to enjoy a quiet morning watching the sunrise, take many daily swims in the Nile river, rest or tend to your creativity after a light lunch. Daily body temples make sure the oxytocin flows abundantly.
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Ritual Art
Leaving behind linear time. Daily rituals will guide us to invoke, anchor, celebrate and give thanks to the great unknown and the beauty of the human heart. Music, prayer and dance will be our daily anchor. From the most simple acts of devotion to lovingly crafted group rites: Be prepared to re-awaken the priestess in you.
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Fiber, Clay & Water
Before there was God, there were women working with and crafting from the elements. Together we will embrace the simplicity & richness of making things with our hands as a devotional reclamation of an unbroken bond between women and the earth. We will dissolve the artificial line between making things and living a ritualistic life.
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Kemetic Spirituality
The first myth. We will visit the temple of Auset (Isis), sit in ceremony with the pink & blue lotus, listen to the stories of The Great Forces of Nature (gods & goddesses) while sitting around the fire and walk the ancient lands of devotees. The land is our main facilitator and it is filled with tales as old as humankind.
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Sisterhood
Respect. Support. Devotion. Beyond the masks of performative sisterhood waits the relational path of Beauty. This journey wants to remind us that there is so much joy & power to be found when women meet each other as equals. All it takes is the courage to be real.
THE RETURN is an 8-day ritual art experience.
And it’s also a prayer.
A prayer to awaken the cellular knowing in us that magic comes first. That our creative aliveness has deep wisdom and healing powers for ourselves and the world.
It’s a journey to embody the force of joy, curiosity and generosity. Where who you are as human, as woman, becomes a crucial ingredient in a collective rite and linear time dissolves back into its spiralling mother.
For 8 days and 8 nights we will meet our creative edge through ritual, pleasure, rest and art.
The journey is designed as continuum. Meaning that each day feeds into the next and the last day is the beginning.
We will bridge worlds, let softness and harshness melt into each other, and let the land teach us how to bring into union what seems opposite.
The intention for this week is not to work on ourselves, not to heal and not to learn anything new, though these are all things that will most likely happen.
No.
The intention for this week is to enjoy ourselves as we excavate our original blueprint and return to our nature as mystical, creative, devotional and turned on women.
Women who come from a lineage of temple keepers.
Whatever arises during our time together will be used as fertiliser.
𓆸 Who is this for?
This experience is designed for a certain kind of woman.
You are…
in love with being a woman.done healing and in your creation era.
wanna have a good fucking time while going deep af
a leader, space holder, facilitator, entrepreneur, artist, mentor or in any other way someone who holds more than just herself.deeply spiritual in your own way. You have a spiritual practice or live a ritualistic life.sensual by nature. The realm of the body is not unknown to you and you feel mostly at ease being in your body amongst other women.desiring time off while staying creatively and spiritually satiated.full of depth and not afraid to feel deeply.able to be in stillness and sacred transmutation of your eros.familiar with retreats and events but also a bit bored of them.physically and mentally healthy.able to hold yourself or ask for support in moments of activation.a bit delulu.
This experience is not for you if you are:
not yet at peace/at war with your womanhood.looking for a place to process all your emotions.
afraid to try out new things and explore the edge of your creative life.needing a break and just a week to chill out.addicted to emotional release practices.not yet in touch with your own depth.completely new to the self-development world.physically and/or mentally challenged.recovering from burnout or exhaustionunaware of or unable to hold yourself in your activationneeding things to make sense.
THE RETURN is both, a spiritual retreat for creative women and a creative retreat for spiritual women.
No more healing. No more fixing. No more figuring yourself out. A return to the mystic, the dancer, the wild lover and beloved. The one who is embraced by life’s adventures and free in her heart & body.
Let your wild creativity flow and remind you that art + spirituality were never separate. You’ll come out of this week feeling nourished to the core in all of you.
The lands that hold us
WE WILL GATHER ON A SMALL ISLAND CLOSE TO ASWAN.
The land is hot, dry and surrounded by the most pristine Nile water, which will also be our drinking water (after being filtered).
Massive boulders create landscapes that make you want to pause, breathe and take in the fullness of the moment.
The people who live there are the descendants of medicine keepers. People from all across Egypt would come here to heal.
The land is ripe with power. A kind of power that hums in stillness.
It is a silent witness, space holder and initiator.
We will spend the entirety of our journey on this land and the surrounding islands.
This island is located next to Agilikia, where the temple of Auset (Isis) has been standing since the 70’s after it was moved by the UNESCO to save the ancient monuments from permanent submersion following the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
Important: While we will be working with strong forces, we will practice containment. Because we are in Egypt, in Nubia, we won’t be doing any loud/screaming practices. We won’t be naked. You’ll need to wear a swim suits when going into the Nile.
The Temple of Philae
The Temple of Philae, once standing on the island Philae, will be part of our creative ritual experience.
It was the main temple for the worship of Auset/Isis and one of the last active pagan sanctuaries before the rise of Christianity.
The temple itself was carefully dismantled block by block and reassembled exactly as it was on the higher ground of nearby Agilkia Island after the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.
Before that it was submerged in water (see image).
The gate of the temple has not been moved and is still being flooded when the Nile water rises.
We will visit both of these sites.
Fun fact: The dam is the reason why we’ll be able to swim in the Nile, which beyond the dam is filled with crocodiles.
The grand finale!
OUR WEEK WILL END IN A COLLABORATIVE DEVOTIONAL RITUAL ART ENACTMENT,
INCLUDING PHOTO & VIDEO SHOOT
This enactment is both a claiming and an invocation of our multidimensional nature. It’s also a way to say thank you to the lineage of the priestess in the most honest, delusional and expressive way possible. We will co-create this ritual throughout the week and weave in all your experiences through movement, sound, costumes, objects and of course... the land.
01
WOMANHOOD
NOURISHMENT GALORE
SO MUCH DEPTH
LOTS OF FUN
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RITUAL ART
RITUAL ART EVERY DAY
MYTH MAKING + STORYTELLING
ELEMENTAL ENCOUNTERS
FIBER, CLAY AND WATER
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KEMET
KEMETIC (ANCIENT EGYPTIAN) WISDOM
ANCESTOR & LINEAGE TRANSMISSIONS
BLUE & PINK LOTUS CEREMONY
KEMETIC YOGA
KEMET / ANCIENT EGYPT
You don’t have to know anything about Kemetic spirituality to join this journey.
In fact, this residency is created for women who maybe have always felt a pull towards Egypt but simply have never resonated with most of the ‘spiritual retreats’ out there.
Women who feel some sort of connection to the lineage of this ancient land but who want to meet it through gnosis. Through embodiment. Through the heart. Through the land. And not through the glamour of modern day retreat culture.
Our Team
Celeste
Facilitator & Creative Director / @devoteeoftheheartCeleste dances at the intersection of Art, Spirituality and Female Insanity. Her body of work is deeply informed by her own upbringing, her experience of otherness and the spiritual force that one has to cultivate to return to true belonging. She supports women to come into their power. Open-hearted. Embodied. Aroused. Aligned.
Over the last 6 years she’s held 10 solo retreats, a dozen collaborations and has co-facilitated two 6-week long temple initiations in a (culty) Mystery School in New Zealand. She understands retreats as creative compositions that hold the power to unchain people’s souls from the claw of forgetfulness. Her in-person events are masterfully curated pieces of art.
Jasmeen
Jasmeen is the founder of BLISS school and together with Mostafa, her husband Chris and in collaboration with the Nubian community, she founded a non-profit project (our venue) dedicated to restoring the ancient village, sustained by donations and guests. Jasmeen supports beings into shamanic processes of deep transformation through guided journeys, embodiment practices, emotional body integration and tantra.
She grew up in Egypt with an Egyptian father and an Austrian mother, and has connected deeply to the culture and her ancestors from a young age. On her Kemetic/Ancient Egyptian path, the Blue Lotus has become her totem medicine. She has lovingly served it on her world travels since 2014.
Host & Wisdom Keeper / @bliss.school
Lola
Photographer/Videographer & Assistant / @metanoia.stellarLola is an Evolutionary Astrologer, photographer and lover of all things mythological. For the last (almost) two decades she’s been capturing the world through her lens. She studied film and Astrology side by side, now returning to weaving it all into one. She believes the most beautiful images are created when we feel safe enough to show our true colours and her work is dedicated to this exact edge.
“Egypt holds such a special place in my heart and has been a huge influence on who I am today. It’s the land that showed me that magic does indeed exist and I truly can‘t wait for us all to create magic together.”
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Costs:
Double Room: 2260 EUR
Single Room: 2500 EUR
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Accommodation with AC; breakfast, dinner & a very light lunch; tea & fresh water, all art materials, boat ride to and from the island on the day of your arrival/departure; trip to Philae temple, ritual photo shoot, prep and harvest group zoom call 4 weeks before/after our time together.
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Travel costs to/from Aswan airport, taxi ride from the airport to the boat, tip money for the locals, refreshments and snacks from the café or any extra purchases you want to make.
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5 or 8 month payment plans for the retreat costs are available upon request (see application form) for an additional 100€. The accommodation costs are not included in that.
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Please make sure you meet the requirements and then fill out the application form. First come first serve. If you have never worked with me before, I will reach out to book a short clarity call with you.
To confirm your spot you need to book your room at the venue.
Refund policy can be found in the application form.
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Applications close 7 September 2026. All payments must be made by the latest 11 September 2026.
“I return to the rhythm of water, to the dark song I was in my mother’s belly.”
― Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris: A New Translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
What other women say…