Yezidi info

[chelidon]

One of my Lovely Housemates just pointed me to the Wikipedia entry on the Yezidi/Yazidi, which I had managed to miss previously. Included for you Peacock-lovers, you know who you are.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Ahh. Some Yezidis are present in Armenia. That explains a lot.

It's interesting to me how many different groups have embraced Melek/Malek Tawus/Taus as one of their own. I'm still puzzled by Feri's embrace of him (I get that he's a form of the Blue God, but I haven't seen a full list of the deities that fall into this category for Feri folk - does Quetzalcoatl count, too?). Anton LaVey argued that MT was akin to Lucifer, sparking one of my favorite passages from his book "Satanic Rituals:"

"From Mount Lalesh near the ancient city of Nineveh, the Yezidi empire stretched in an invisible band approximately three hundred miles wide to the Mediterranean junction of Turkey and Syria on one end, and the mountains of the Caucasus in Russia on the other. At intervals along this strip were seven towers - the Towers of Satan (Ziarahs) - six of them trapezoidal in form and the seventh, on Mount Lalesh, shaped like a sharp, fluted point. Each tower was topped by a brilliant heliographic reflector, and was intended to serve as a 'power house' from which a magician could beam his will to the 'descendants of Adam' and influence human events in the outside world. Like the Watchers, the fallen angels of the Book of Enoch, the Yezidis claimed to be the descendants of Azazel."

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

It's all connected together, fer sure. And Feri tends to be very syncretic in general, in large part (IMO) due to Victor Anderson's eclecticism and influences, as well as a similar tendency among a number of the well-known subsequent practitioners.

That is a delicious quote, thanks for including it!