Lalish, Light, and the Sacred Calendar

From the Lesson

Every living religion has a navel of the world — a place where, in the tradition's own telling, heaven first touched earth and continues to touch it. For Jerusalem it is the Temple Mount. For Mecca it is the Kaaba. For Banaras it is the ghats of the Ganges. For the Yazidis it is a small green valley in the mountains of northern Iraq called Lalish.

The valley of Lalish

Lalish is described in Yazidi sacred narrative as the very first place the divine light touched the earth, and as the place where the ark of Noah finally came to rest after the flood. The valley contains the white-coned shrine of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir — the twelfth-century saint recognized as the manifestation of Tawûsî Melek — and a network of holy springs, sacred groves, and tomb-shrines of the great sheikhs. Every adult Yazidi is expected, if circumstances permit, to make a pilgrimage to Lalish at least once in a lifetime.

The shrines are entered barefoot. The threshold is sacred and must never be stepped on — it is kissed. The water of the Kaniya Sipî, the White Spring, is used for the baptism of every newborn child. The water of Zamzam (no relation to the Meccan well of the same name, though the name-echo is its own mystery) flows beneath the main shrine and is taken away by pilgrims as a sacrament. The valley itself is treated as the body of a living being.

Sun-prayer and the orientation of the heart

The most visible daily practice of the Yazidi faithful is the prayer at dawn, made facing the rising sun. Two more prayers are offered at noon and at sunset, also turned toward the great solar disc. This is not sun-worship in the crude sense the misunderstanding would suggest. The sun, for the Yazidi, is the visible robe of Sheikh Shems, the angel of the Sun, one of the Seven — and through Shems, the light of Xwedê Himself. To pray toward the sun is to orient one's whole body toward the visible sign of the invisible Source.

The same logic governs reverence for the moon, for fire, for clean running water, and for the four elements. Each is a window. None is the One. But because each is a true window, the disrespect of any of them is the disrespect of the light that shines through it. This is why a Yazidi will not spit on the ground, will not pollute a stream, will not extinguish a flame with breath. The world is a cathedral of windows.

Çarşema Sor — the Red Wednesday and the descent of the angel

The Yazidi New Year falls on the first Wednesday of Nîsan (April), and is called Çarşema Sor, the Red Wednesday. On this day, Yazidi sacred history teaches, Tawûsî Melek first descended to the earth, alighted on the valley of Lalish, and brought color, fertility, and the divine command to the as-yet-formless creation. Where his foot touched, the world burst into bloom.

The day is celebrated with the dyeing of eggs in brilliant red and other colors — the eggs representing the cosmic ovum from which creation hatched at the angel's touch. Houses are decorated with red anemones. Families visit the graves of the dead. Bonfires are lit. The whole village turns toward the renewal of the year.

The parallel with the dyed eggs of Christian Easter, the bonfires of Zoroastrian Nowruz, and the spring fire-festivals of ancient Mesopotamia is not a coincidence. The Yazidis are not borrowing from these traditions; they are, in many respects, the source of which those traditions are downstream branches. The Red Wednesday is older than Easter, older than the Christian church, older than the Sassanian empire that systematized Nowruz. It is the spring rite of a people who never stopped keeping it.

The Feast of the Assembly

In autumn, every Yazidi who is able returns to Lalish for the Cejna Cemaiyê, the Feast of the Assembly — seven days of pilgrimage, ritual processions, the lighting of countless oil lamps in the great courtyard of Sheikh Adi's shrine, the bathing of the sacred banner, and the renewal of the community's bond with the angel-saints. It is the closest analogue in any living religion to the great seasonal festivals of ancient Mesopotamia — the Akitu of Babylon, the new-year festival in which the king was reconfirmed and the cosmos was renewed.