This book is about the Yezidi cult and their practices.
From wikipedia:
The Yazidi (also Yezidi, Kurdish: ئێزیدی or Êzidî) are a Kurdish religious group, who represent an ancient religious sect linked to Zoroastranism and Sufism. They currently live primarily in the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq. Additional communities in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Syria have been in decline since the 1990s, their members having emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. Their religion is seen as a highly syncretic complex of local Kurdish beliefs that contains Zoroastrian elements and Islamic Sufi doctrine introduced to the area by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir in the 12th century. The Yazidi believe in God as creator of the world, which he placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel.
From the Prelude:
"...In a book I wrote eighteen years ago, I repeated many tales about the Yazidis
current amongst their neighbours, and others have taken their material from
similar sources, and sometimes borrowed from my chapter. At all these
legends, reports and current tales I look now with the utmost caution and
suspicion. Years spent in studying another minority and another secret
religion have taught me how unreliable hearsay evidence is, and in this book,
therefore, I repeat only what I gather from Arabic-speaking Yazidis
themselves, or that which I myself witnessed.
The Yazidis are spoken of as Devil-Worshippers. Apart from the fact that
Shaikh ‘Adi bin Musafir, their principal saint, was recognized in his time as
an orthodox Moslem, my personal impressions are contradictory of this. I
cannot believe that they worship the Devil or even propitiate the Spirit of
Evil. Although the chief of the Seven Angels, who according to their
nebulous doctrines are charged with the rule of the universe, is one whom
they name Taw'us Melké, the PEACOCK ANGEL, he is a Spirit of Light
rather than a Spirit of Darkness.
"They say of us wrongly," said a qawwâl to me one evening, "that we
worship one who is evil."
Indeed, it is possibly the Yazidis themselves themselves, by tabooing all mention of the
name Shaitan, or Satan, as a libel upon this angel, who have fostered the idea
that the Peacock Angel is identical with the dark fallen angel whom men call
the Tempter. In one of the holy books of the Mandaeans the Peacock Angel,
called by them Malka Tausa, is portrayed as a spirit concerned with the
destinies of this world, a prince of the world of light who, because of a
divinely appointed destiny, plunged into the darkness of matter. I talked of
this with the head of the qawwâls in Baashika who, honest man, was not very
clear himself about the point, for one of the charms of the Yazidis is that they
are never positive about theology. It seemed probable to me, after this talk,
that the Peacock Angel is, in a manner, a symbol of Man himself, a divine
principle of light experiencing an avatar of darkness, which is matter and the
material world. The evil comes from man himself, or rather from his errors,
stumblings and obstinate turnings down blind alleys upon the steep path of
being. In repeated incarnations he sheds his earthliness, his evil, or else, if
hopelessly linked to the material, he perishes like the dross and illusion
that he is.
I say that this seems to me a probable conception, but I have no scrap of
evidence that it is the Yazidi theory, no documentary proof, no dictum from
the Baba Shaikh, who is the living religious head of the nation. One Yazidi
propounded to me the curious theory that the accumulated experiences of
various earthly lives was, on the Day of Resurrection, gathered into one oversoul,
but that the individuals who had once lived those lives continued as
separate entities, but how this was possible he did not explain.
However, as I have already intimated, I am not concerned here with Yazidi
creeds, but with themselves and the shape of their daily life as I saw it.
Whatever may be the vague beliefs of their religious chiefs, their practised
religion is a mystical pantheism. The name of God, Khuda, is ever on their
lips. God for them is omnipresent, but especially reverenced in the sun, the
planets, the pure mountain spring, the green and living tree, and even in
cavern and sacred Bethel stone some of the mystery and miracle of the divine
lie hidden.
As for propitiation of evil, I can say sincerely that I found less amongst them
than their neighbours. Moslems and Christians wear three amulets to the
Yazidi one, and though a Yazidi is not averse to wearing a charm against the
Evil Eye, many so-called devil-worshipping children go without, though few
Moslem or Christian mothers would dare to take their babies abroad without
sewing their clothes over with blue buttons, cowries, and scraps of Holy writ,
either Qur'an or Bible."
MsSVig
From wikipedia:
The Yazidi (also Yezidi, Kurdish: ئێزیدی or Êzidî) are a Kurdish religious group, who represent an ancient religious sect linked to Zoroastranism and Sufism. They currently live primarily in the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq. Additional communities in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Syria have been in decline since the 1990s, their members having emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. Their religion is seen as a highly syncretic complex of local Kurdish beliefs that contains Zoroastrian elements and Islamic Sufi doctrine introduced to the area by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir in the 12th century. The Yazidi believe in God as creator of the world, which he placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel.
From the Prelude:
"...In a book I wrote eighteen years ago, I repeated many tales about the Yazidis
current amongst their neighbours, and others have taken their material from
similar sources, and sometimes borrowed from my chapter. At all these
legends, reports and current tales I look now with the utmost caution and
suspicion. Years spent in studying another minority and another secret
religion have taught me how unreliable hearsay evidence is, and in this book,
therefore, I repeat only what I gather from Arabic-speaking Yazidis
themselves, or that which I myself witnessed.
The Yazidis are spoken of as Devil-Worshippers. Apart from the fact that
Shaikh ‘Adi bin Musafir, their principal saint, was recognized in his time as
an orthodox Moslem, my personal impressions are contradictory of this. I
cannot believe that they worship the Devil or even propitiate the Spirit of
Evil. Although the chief of the Seven Angels, who according to their
nebulous doctrines are charged with the rule of the universe, is one whom
they name Taw'us Melké, the PEACOCK ANGEL, he is a Spirit of Light
rather than a Spirit of Darkness.
"They say of us wrongly," said a qawwâl to me one evening, "that we
worship one who is evil."
Indeed, it is possibly the Yazidis themselves themselves, by tabooing all mention of the
name Shaitan, or Satan, as a libel upon this angel, who have fostered the idea
that the Peacock Angel is identical with the dark fallen angel whom men call
the Tempter. In one of the holy books of the Mandaeans the Peacock Angel,
called by them Malka Tausa, is portrayed as a spirit concerned with the
destinies of this world, a prince of the world of light who, because of a
divinely appointed destiny, plunged into the darkness of matter. I talked of
this with the head of the qawwâls in Baashika who, honest man, was not very
clear himself about the point, for one of the charms of the Yazidis is that they
are never positive about theology. It seemed probable to me, after this talk,
that the Peacock Angel is, in a manner, a symbol of Man himself, a divine
principle of light experiencing an avatar of darkness, which is matter and the
material world. The evil comes from man himself, or rather from his errors,
stumblings and obstinate turnings down blind alleys upon the steep path of
being. In repeated incarnations he sheds his earthliness, his evil, or else, if
hopelessly linked to the material, he perishes like the dross and illusion
that he is.
I say that this seems to me a probable conception, but I have no scrap of
evidence that it is the Yazidi theory, no documentary proof, no dictum from
the Baba Shaikh, who is the living religious head of the nation. One Yazidi
propounded to me the curious theory that the accumulated experiences of
various earthly lives was, on the Day of Resurrection, gathered into one oversoul,
but that the individuals who had once lived those lives continued as
separate entities, but how this was possible he did not explain.
However, as I have already intimated, I am not concerned here with Yazidi
creeds, but with themselves and the shape of their daily life as I saw it.
Whatever may be the vague beliefs of their religious chiefs, their practised
religion is a mystical pantheism. The name of God, Khuda, is ever on their
lips. God for them is omnipresent, but especially reverenced in the sun, the
planets, the pure mountain spring, the green and living tree, and even in
cavern and sacred Bethel stone some of the mystery and miracle of the divine
lie hidden.
As for propitiation of evil, I can say sincerely that I found less amongst them
than their neighbours. Moslems and Christians wear three amulets to the
Yazidi one, and though a Yazidi is not averse to wearing a charm against the
Evil Eye, many so-called devil-worshipping children go without, though few
Moslem or Christian mothers would dare to take their babies abroad without
sewing their clothes over with blue buttons, cowries, and scraps of Holy writ,
either Qur'an or Bible."
MsSVig