DEVIL WORSHIPPERS

Press, Volume L, Issue 14970, 18 May 1914, Page 7

DEVIL WORSHIPPERS

"A REPENTANT FALLEN ANGEL.'

("Times" and '-'Sydney Sun" Service!.)

CONSTANTINOPLE, May 15. Tho Turkish Government has agreed to recognise tho Devil worshippers in Asia Minor, who use gilt images of peacocks to typify their deity, and regard tho Devil as a repentant fallen angel, who was permitted by the Creator to create tho present universe.

__ These devil-worshippers are the Yezedts, a small sect jn tho wilds of Kurdistan. Somo two years ago ".v. published a special article on this littloknown tribe, in the form of an interview with Mr Athelstan Riley, who soorrs to be the only Englishman who •has studied their strange ways. Tho Yozedis like to imagine the Devil as a powerful prince, who, eventually, is gcin_. to be welcomed* back' to heaven and tbey prefer to represent him, not as a serpent—the form which ho took on a historic occasion not many hunored miles away from their own cou ~- try—but as ono of the most resplendent of living creatures, the peacock. Th-. title they give him is Malik-i-Tauns, or "King Peacock." They also are worshippers of the Sun aud of Fire, but Satan, of whom they are decpe.--ately afraid, is their chief deity, and rude effigies of King Peacock, which Mr Riley describes as "more like a rooster than any other fowl, with a tiny head and wide-spread tail," are carried by their priests from village to viilngo\ the inhabitants of which prostrato themselves before them. Whenever any calamity threatens the country—whie.i is pretty often, as the Yezedis, on account of their Devil-worship, are hated by both the neighbouring Kurds and the Arab*-—it- is , the custom of the women of the tribe to sacrifice thoir firstborn to propitiate "King Peacock."