laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/18/85)
Everybody wants to know more about the Yezidees. Okay, this is from memory, and some of the details may be wrong. If you are interested in more, there is a short article on them in the anthology *Satan* edited by Pere Bruno de Jesus-Marie. The Yezidees live in the Near East. Now, as I remember, there was a holy man, whose name I forget, who broke with Orthadox Islam tradition. The orthadox tradition has it that Satan incurred damnation by his jealous and exclusive love of the pure idea of the deity. This holy man believed that love sanctifies, and therefore canonized Satan. Orthadox Muslims condmened this man as an agent of Satan, but other Muslims canonized him as well. Needless to say, the main body of Islam began persecutions of the Yezidees, but it was too late -- it had taken over a body of people. They have some interesting beliefs. The believe that either the world was created by Satan, or was given to Satan by God. The Yezidees believe in God, but believe that he is so fart away that they can have no contact with him, and that he, himself, does not interest himself in human affairs. It is Satan who concerns himself with the world -- so it is Satan who should be worshipped. Incidentally, a Yezidee who hears the name of his god (Shaitan) is bound by faith to kill the speaker, or, if that is not possible, himself. The proper name of Satan must never be used -- moreoever, there are taboos agaisnt Arabic words (such as the word for thread) which could be mistaken for Shaitan because they are phonetically similar. The Yezidees cannot wear the colour blue without giving great offense. This colour is considered inimical to Satan. By the way, they discuss Satan all the time -- just not by his real name, but as ``Melak Taos'' (this may be spelled incorrectly) which means (I think) Angel Peacock. At the end of some large amount of time (10,000 years?) Satan will reenter paradise and all of his faithful will enter with him. This is abnout all I know about the Yezidees, except that there is a lot of speculative theology which I have read which links them with the Christian Gnostics. I think that somebody thinks that, in addition to the holy man whose name I forget, the Yezidees religion acquired its particular shape because it was linked with some Gnostics who thought that the Near East was a good place to avoid orthadox Christianity. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura ps some otehr people want me to explain Taoism to them. People, I am not a theology school. The Yezidees are obscure enough that finding out about them may be difficult, but it is easy to find out about Taoism. The Tao Te Ching is a very thin volume anyway, and if you uinderstand it, then you are way ahead of me.