Turning II: Dance of the Dervishes

 There is another embodiment of turning in the spiritual literature of human development that bears a deep kinship to the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is from the Sufis, usually described as an esoteric or mystical domain of Islam, perhaps having its origins in central Asia, but in fact at home throughout the Near and Far East and beyond. Sufism will be represented in Reckonings both in the tales of Mulla Nasrudin and in the incomparable stories and poems of Rumi. The Sufis gave birth to those we describe but little know as "whirling dervishes." Here the turning of their movement is evoked by Coleman Barks:

"The 'turn,' the moving meditation done by Mevlevi dervishes, originated with Rumi. The story goes that he was walking in the goldsmithing section of Konya [in what is now Turkey] when he heard a beautiful music in their hammering. He began turning in harmony with it, an ecstatic dance of surrender and yet with great centered discipline. He arrived at a place where ego dissolves and a resonance with universal soul comes in. Dervish literally means 'doorway.' ... Turning is an image of how the dervish becomes an empty place where human and divine can meet. To approach the whole the part must become mad, by conventional standards at least. These ecstatic holy people, called matzubs in the sufi tradition, redefine this sort of madness as true health.

Daniel Libert adds in the preface to his lovely small book of fragments from Rumi, (Santa Fe, NM, 1981): "In the ecstatic trance of the 'Sema,' this dance to wailing flute and pacing drum, Rumi extemporaneously recited thousands of odes which students hastily transcribed."


The weeping flute
remembers
the riverbed

the stick beats the drum,
“I was once green,
a living branch.”

the skin of the lute
trembles
like living flesh

the lovers turn
bewildered
like Jacob seeking Joseph

if you heard their cries
your heart would shatter
like glass

             - Rumi