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A
beam of purplish light plays on the spinning figures in their white
long-skirted robes. Their faces look up to heaven as they turn to the
moving strains of the ney in the half-darkness beneath the turquoise
dome.The semazen are followers of the 13th century Turkish
mystic, Mevlana, and their dance is a search for communion with God who is
reality, and His love. The sound of the ney, a kind of ancient reed
flute, is the weeping of joy at knowledge of the divine secret
whispered into a well by Ali. The rhythm of its cry accompanies the
dervishes in their reaching out to God.The night of 17 December is the
holiest in the Mevlevî calendar, a night of union, a wedding night (Þeb-i
Arus), when Mevlana departed the mortal world to become one with He
who loves and is loved. It is not a time to mourn but to rejoice: At
my death do not lament our separation...As the sun and moon but seem
to set,In reality this is a rebirth.
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Each year thousands of people from the far corners of the world, travel to Konya in
response to Mevlana’s call of 725 years ago:
"Come, whoever you
might be, come Infidel, idolator, magian, let all come This is not the
lodge of despair If thou hast broken the oath a hundred times, come"
Pilgrims begin their stay in Konya with a visit to Mevlana’s
tomb, which is set amidst trees next to the Mevlana Museum. Nearby is
Alâaddin Mosque and its þadýrvan (fountain for ablutions).
Over the
entrance to the tomb are inscribed Mevlana’s most famous words:
"Either seem as you are or be as you seem".
Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rûmi
was born in the city of Balkh on the banks of the River Oxus in
Turkestan, the son of a scholar named Bahaeddin Veled, in 1207, and
while still a child migrated westwards into Iran and then into
Anatolia to escape the approaching Mongol hordes. Konya in central
Turkey was at that time the Seljuk capital, and destined to become a
sacred city thanks to the mystic philosophy of Mevlana based on the
search for truth and divine love. This philosophy gave rise to the
mystic Mevlevî order, whose followers abide by principles laid down
by Mevlana’s son, Sultan Veled.
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According to Mevlevî belief a person
is born twice, once from his mother and secondly from his own body.
The latter, the birth of enlightenment, is the real birth marking the
beginning of a journey to the discovery of truth. The dervishes of a
Mevlevî lodge undergo a long novitiate involving trials of patience
and submission.For the first three days the novice must sit upon a
fleece, only rising to answer calls of nature. Overcoming mortal pride
is essential, and once past the first three days the novice is then
expected to perform eighteen different menial tasks such as cleaning
and assisting in the kitchen. If he fails to show the necessary
humility his shoes are turned towards the door as a sign of rejection,
and he silently leaves. Otherwise he now begins the stage of
retirement and fasting known as halvet, which lasts for one thousand
and one days. That is followed by fakr, when the novice at last
participates in the whirling ceremony as a semazen.The semazens wear a
tall felt cap known as a sikke, a long skirted garment, jacket and
waistband.
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The sema is accompanied by the music of the ney and the
rebab, a three stringed instrument made of a coconut shell. In his
lifetime Mevlana responded to orthodox objections to the sema by
declaring that there are many ways to God, music and the sema being
the way he had chosen.Mystic belief likens the universe, consisting of
the world and man, to a circle drawn by a moving point which is God.
To the right of this point is the outer world of appearance and to its
left the inner world. According to the belief that everything returns
to this point of movement, the dervishes spin in a spiritual journey
to God, their circular orbit representing the circle of life.Many
books have been written about Mevlevî music, and Mevlana’s greatest
work, the Mesnevî, consisting of over seventy thousand couplets, has
been reprinted time after time. But those who watch the sema do not
need to read anything to discover the spiritual power of sema music.
The sound of the ney brings tranquility to the spirit, representing a
silencing of the material world. At the sema held on the night of Þeb-i
Arus all Mevlevîs remember Mevlana’s words, "Death is our
marriage with eternity."
Mevlana encouraged his followers to search
for the truth themselves rather than blindly believe in others. "To
question is half of knowledge," he declared. Tolerance of human
failing was another important part of his teaching: When wrongful
deeds are related to you, interpret them seventy times with good will
and good faith. When you are helpless tell yourself that the
perpetrator of wrongdoing must surely know the secret and forget it.
If you seek a friend without fault, you will be friendless. The
ancient soil of Anatolia has always been fertile ground for philosophy,
meditation and thought. Life is like a river which flows on without
ever stopping,’ said Mevlana, expressing the unity and continuity of
man’s attempts to reach God. Separate ways are in reality but one,
and awareness of God’s love is what we all seek. In Mevlana’s
mystic philosophy lies a message of universal peace which has drawn so
many to Konya over the centuries.
"If the heart of lovers had not
burned and shed tears There would be neither water nor fire in the
world".
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