Why do sun worshipers paint eggs in spring: Yezidis, people who believe in mercy in hell

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It seems to many that Zoroastrianism is a religion from history books, and painting eggs in spring is a purely Christian custom. But not to those who know about the people who are also called the Children of the Sun - the Yezidis. Kurds by nationality, they differ in that they profess their own kind of monotheism, not very similar to Christianity, Judaism or Islam. They worship the sun.

Painted eggs and Easter cakes

If a Russian person is brought to other parts of Armenia in one of the Wednesdays of April, he may feel as if he has fallen into time for several days. There are people around with colored eggs and pies, which are called "shred" - almost "Easter cake"! But Easter has already passed, isn't it?

But people around and do not celebrate Easter. They have "Sarsal", New Year. Yezidis always celebrate it on Wednesday, and therefore the second name of the holiday is "Charshama Sor", red Wednesday. The shells from colored eggs are scattered over the fields and vegetable gardens even before the end of the day in order to invoke fertile power in them, and seven of the pieces of the pie-shred will be dedicated to the seven angels of God.

In Sarsal, every house should be decorated with red flowers. Yezidis treat neighbors and the poor with pieces of a festive cake and carry eggs painted in yellow, green, red to family graves. It is believed that all these customs have survived to this day from the time of Mesopotamia.

Like any archaic holiday, Sarsal imposes a number of prohibitions on a person. On this day, it is strictly forbidden to wash, shave and cut your hair, share a bed with your spouse and sew. Instead of all this, it is better to get together and dance to the music in round dances, rejoicing that God has sent another angel to rule the earth for the whole next year. Each time he chooses a new manager anew before the next Sarsal.

They rejoice on this day not only in Armenia. Yezidis live in Georgia, Turkey, Russia and Iraq. However, the Yezidis in Iraq are not particularly interested in the holidays. Local Muslim fanatics exterminate them, believing that they worship Satan under the name of the Peacock Angel.

Saint Peacock, Sun God and Their Faithful Angels

The beliefs of the Yezidis are the evolution of Zoroastrianism, the very religion that is believed to be the first in Eurasia to look at everything that happens in the world as a struggle between some light and dark principles, similar to Christian God and Satan. The light deity, the creator of the world, Ahura Mazda, was incarnated at the same time in fire and sunlight.

God is served by seven faithful angels, the chief of whom is called Malak Tavus, the Peacock Angel, and he was created above all things. Seven bronze birds depicting these angels are one of the main shrines of the Yezidis. It is kept in Lalesh, the main Yezidi temple, which has stood in Iraq for many centuries. Until recently, it was generally the only Yazidi temple on earth.

Legends about the Peacock Angel are associated with the history of Lucifer among the representatives of the Abrahamic religions. The Yezidis believe that when God created Adam and told the angels to bow before man, Malak Tavus refused. But it was not pride that drove him, but loyalty: for him there was only one master - the creator. However, God at first was angry with the angel and “demoted” - placed in the Underworld to look after the souls of sinners.

For seven thousand years, the angel wept with pity, watching how human souls are tormented in hell, and flooded the Underworld with tears. Then the creator took pity and took Malak Tavus to heaven, where he became the sun itself. Since then, the Yezidis have especially venerated the angel as their protector and as the embodied goodness of the creator.

However, despite the mention of the fall and the Underworld, Satan and the Peacock Angel should not be confused. Malak Tavus teaches neither cunning nor cruelty, does not lead into temptation; rather, his role in the Yezidi religion is akin to the roles of the Holy Spirit and Christ, if we recall the concept that Christ is a manifestation of God's mercy.

Yezidis never preach their faith and find it strange to think that it can be accepted. However, after the mass genocide of Kurds, including Yezidis, by Muslim fanatics in Iraq, many Kurdish activists announced their conversion to Yezidism and began to urge other Kurds to do the same.

Murid always obeys

The faith of the Yezidis and its symbols seem so fabulous to a European that they expect extraordinary softness from a society that believes in a hell flooded with tears of mercy. However, the rules of life among the Yezidis are strict.

The entire Yezidi society is divided into castes. Above all are the sheikh priests (elders, sages). Below all are the Murids, those of the Yezidis who participate in the divine services only as a filming flock. But each of the castes is murids (disciples) in relation to the higher castes. None of the people are considered murids only sheikhs.

Yezidis are prohibited from marriages and romances outside their faith and, moreover, outside their caste. Another strict rule: not a single murid dares to raise a hand against a representative of one of the priestly castes.

The Yezidis have a special holiday akin to circumcision among Muslims and Jews, but more merciful: the ceremony of the first haircut of a boy. Sheikh conducts it. In addition to the New Year, they celebrate the day of the creation of the world - Ayda Yezid, it falls on December, and the day of remembrance of the dead in June.

The customs of the Yezidis are patriarchal. A girl is required to maintain her virginity, a woman is blamed for having a relationship with a man outside of marriage. Everything is exactly the same as among the Muslims around them since ancient times. But there is a difference.

Traditionally, Muslims renounce a raped daughter, sister or wife. At best, she will live out her life, hidden from prying eyes, in the back room of the house. At worst, she will be killed, as if she disgraced the family by committing a crime.

ISIS fighters rape girls, girls and women in the territories they occupy. Unlike Jews, Christians and Muslims, Yezidis are considered pagans, and therefore not entitled to ransom, compassion, or recognition as a wife. Considering the Yazidis to be Satanists, ISIS deliberately torture, maim, and disfigure them. The testimonies of victims and eyewitnesses are unbearably creepy to read. Fortunately, there are kind people who secretly rescue captured women. Some of them return, if not to their families, then at least to their fellow tribesmen. From the point of view of such a patriarchal culture as the Yezidis, they are undoubtedly "corrupted."

But even the caretaker of hell flooded the Underworld with his tears, seeing the torment of people strangers to him. Is it possible not to shed tears after seeing the same hell on earth, over the one that suffers for the sins of others? The Yezidis accept their sisters and daughters, wives and nieces and weep over their wounds and mutilations, not reproach for them. Alas, any Hell is flooded with tears - but human ones do not disappear because of this.

The Yazidi creator is one of several monotheistic gods that many have never even heard of, along with, for example, the Chinese Gandhi and the Korean Hananim.