They have been synonomous with fanatacism for centuries, but do the Whirling Dervishes deserve to have been villified in times past? They were simply 20th century victims

whirl2 Photo: marcoryan

The Whirling Dervish. A mystical dancer who stands between the material and cosmic worlds. His dance is part of a sacred ceremony in which the Dervish rotates in a precise rhythm. He represents the earth revolving on its axis while orbiting the sun. The purpose of the ritual whirling is for the Dervish to empty himself of all distracting thoughts, placing him in a trance; released from his body he conquers dizziness.

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), a Sufi Muslim poet and mystic, established the Dervish order of the Mevlevis and started the whirling dance of the ‘Sema’. The word Dervish refers to specific Sufi fraternities, who, like European mendicant friars, were known for their extreme poverty and austerity. They were renowned as a source of wisdom, medicine, poetry, enlightenment, and witticisms.

oldpic Photo: flickr

The ‘Sema’ is the Alevi ritual dance, famous for the spinning around of the performers. This holy dance has many varieties and is an inseparable part of any ceremony. It symbolizes the putting off of one’s self and union with God. This mesmerizing, seven-century old ritual features beautiful costumes, hypnotic music with flutes, string and percussion, and the Dervishes whirling.

The ritual unites the three fundamental components of human nature: the mind, the heart and the body. These three elements are thoroughly joined both in theory and in practice and as perhaps in no other ritual or system of thought. To the Sufi Muslims, there is nothing which does not revolve, because all things comprise of revolving electrons, protons and neutrons in atoms.

spin1 Photo: flickr

The human being lives by means of these revolutions as well as the revolutions of blood, body, and the stages of his life, and also by his coming from the earth and returning to it. By revolving in harmony with all things in nature the Semazen (whirler) testifies to the existence and the majesty of the Creator, thinks of Him, gives thanks to Him, and prays to Him.

The Semah ceremony represents the spiritual journey of each person, an ascent by means of intelligence and love to Perfection, known by Sufis as Kemal. They return from this spiritual journey having reached maturity and completion, able to love and serve the whole of creation and all creatures without discrimination of any kind.

dancers Photo: fisherbray

It is thought that, long before it reached Turkey, the practice of whirling may have originated in Central Asia, where ancient shamans would use the practice to induce altered states of consciousness. In order to become a Dervish, young boys were required to attend schools called tekkes, where they would undergo an intense 1001-day retreat before they could perform the dance.

whirl1 Photo: rivertray

In 1925, the tekkes were closed and the whirling ended until recently. By performing the dance, Mevlevis claim to experience the meaning of the words from the Qur’an. “To God belong the East and the West, and wherever you turn is the face of God. He is the All-Embracing, the All-Knowing.”

The Semazens (whirlers) belong to the Mevlevi sect of the Sufi, the only ones allowed to perform the dances. Some think the classification of Sufi comes from the wool cloaks they wore, since in Arabic ‘suf’ means wool. Others believe it stems from the Greek work ‘sophos’, meaning wisdom.

The Sema dance today is more for tourists, but it still follows strict rules. First, the Dervishes bow to the Sheikh. The hats they wear, called ‘sikkes’, represent their own tombstones and are pulled tightly onto their head so that they don’t fall off while the Dervishes are spinning. Then there is the Sultan Veled Walk, where they trail the Sheikh around room while wearing black cloaks that symbolize their grave.

rainbow Photo: wiki

Next, the Dervishes let the cloaks fall off as they stretch out their arms to reveal their ‘tennures’, or white robes. They start to spin around their own axis while invoking the Name of Allah. As they spin, a reed pipe called a ‘ney’ and drums are played alongside chanting by the Dervishes.

It is believed that during the Sema the power of Heaven enters into the Dervish’s upturned right palm, passes through the body, and leaves through the downward facing left palm into the Earth. The Dervish considers himself an instrument of God so he cannot direct or retain the power that enters him.

painting Photo: gogap

Rumi may well be turning in his grave. After his death in 1273, his followers carried his message of religious worship through whirling dance right up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, over 650 years. In 1925, new ruler Kemal Ataturk passed Law 677 into the Turkish Republic that ended the whirling in tekkes.

Military police entered the Mevlevi tekke in Uskudar on a Saturday in December and ordered it to close, stating that “performing dervish practices, holding meetings in the tekkes, the profession of tomb-keeping and the office of sheike and other Dervish initiations were abolished and, as of the reading, against the law of the Republic.”

dancers2 Photo: yobosayo

In 1927, Kemal Ataturk opened the Rumi tomb as a museum but said that Turkey is a modern country that had no time for Dervish magic. It took until December 1953 before the first authorized Mevlevi Sema since the late 20s occurred in Konya, Turkey. Istanbul hosts the Whirling Dervishes to this day, but it is always stressed that they be only for tourists and no longer represent religious practice.

The Dervish dance is as breathtaking a spectacle as you might ever wish to see, and a glimpse of a time seven centuries past when the rituals were exactly the same but the meaning was so very different. What a different world it must have been.