While in Turkey I visited Konya for the key festival of the whirling dervishes, Sebi Arabus. It is the day their founder, Mevlana Jalalludin Rumi, passed from this earth. It is celebrated as a wedding ceremony because death is viewed as reunion with the beloved, or divine, in Mevlevi philosophy.
You can see there are literally thousands of people who come from all over the world to observe Sebi Arabus! There are hundreds of TV cameras, and the whole city gears itself up for this occasion. The ceremony itself is about one hour long, but the speeches from statesmen and the pre-show musical entertainment made for a very long evening, at least 3 hours.
The dervishes are the ones turning in white, and the men in black, the two sheikhs (or leaders of the order in Konya) and the semazenbashi, or guide of the ceremony. The sheiks hold the spiritual presence of the ceremony and the semazenbashi attends to the turners, making sure they don't bump into each other and that they have enough room to move. It is a real show, with lighting changes, programs, announcements and all the rest, much different from the way the festival was celebrated 100 years ago :)
In love,
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