by Laura Creighton

In March 1985, Laura Creighton of the University of Toronto posted a remarkable piece on net.religion: a careful, honest account of the Yazidi people from what she knew and what she had read. The Yazidis — here spelled "Yezidees" in the older transliteration — are a small religious community of the Near East whose theology centers on the worship of Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, who was given dominion over the world. Creighton wrote from memory, acknowledging possible errors, and pointed readers to the scholarship. What survives is something rare: a genuine attempt in the early internet era to introduce a little-known persecuted people to a community hungry for religious knowledge. This post predates most Western public awareness of the Yazidis by decades. The connections she draws to Islamic Sufism and Gnostic Christianity are ones scholars have continued to debate.

The Yazidis have faced centuries of persecution — called "devil worshippers" by their neighbors — for a theology their persecutors fundamentally misunderstood. Creighton's 1985 account already grasped the essential truth: the being they worship is not the Devil of Christian imagination but Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel, who sanctified love when he refused to bow before Adam. The name taboo she describes remains a living practice. This is one of the earliest popular accounts of Yazidi theology on the internet.

Everybody wants to know more about the Yezidees. Okay, this is from memory, and some of the details may be wrong. If you are interested in more, there is a short article on them in the anthology Satan edited by Pere Bruno de Jesus-Marie. The Yezidees live in the Near East.

Now, as I remember, there was a holy man, whose name I forget, who broke with Orthodox Islam tradition. The orthodox tradition has it that Satan incurred damnation by his jealous and exclusive love of the pure idea of the deity. This holy man believed that love sanctifies, and therefore canonized Satan. Orthodox Muslims condemned this man as an agent of Satan, but other Muslims canonized him as well.

Needless to say, the main body of Islam began persecutions of the Yezidees, but it was too late — it had taken over a body of people. They have some interesting beliefs. They believe that either the world was created by Satan, or was given to Satan by God. The Yezidees believe in God, but believe that he is so far away that they can have no contact with him, and that he, himself, does not interest himself in human affairs. It is Satan who concerns himself with the world — so it is Satan who should be worshipped.

Incidentally, a Yezidee who hears the name of his god (Shaitan) is bound by faith to kill the speaker, or, if that is not possible, himself. The proper name of Satan must never be used — moreover, there are taboos against Arabic words (such as the word for thread) which could be mistaken for Shaitan because they are phonetically similar.

The Yezidees cannot wear the colour blue without giving great offense. This colour is considered inimical to Satan.

By the way, they discuss Satan all the time — just not by his real name, but as "Melak Taos" (this may be spelled incorrectly) which means (I think) Angel Peacock.

At the end of some large amount of time (10,000 years?) Satan will reenter paradise and all of his faithful will enter with him.

This is about all I know about the Yezidees, except that there is a lot of speculative theology which I have read which links them with the Christian Gnostics. I think that somebody thinks that, in addition to the holy man whose name I forget, the Yezidees religion acquired its particular shape because it was linked with some Gnostics who thought that the Near East was a good place to avoid orthodox Christianity.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

Colophon

Written by Laura Creighton ([email protected]), University of Toronto Zoology Department, posted to net.religion on 17 March 1985. The post was composed from memory, with Creighton citing the anthology Satan edited by Pere Bruno de Jesus-Marie as a scholarly source. The post predates widespread Western awareness of the Yazidi people and represents one of the earliest popular accounts of their theology on the internet. The author's phonetic rendering "Melak Taos" corresponds to the standard transliteration "Melek Taus" (Peacock Angel). Original Message-ID: [email protected].

Preserved from the UTZOO Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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