Reaching nirvana as the dervishes whirl
There is a ritual one must follow when viewing this arresting mystical spectacle
I’ve always wanted to see whirling dervishes perform the mystical Sufi ceremony known as a sema, in which their series of mesmerizing turns help them, and the audience, reach a state of nirvana. But my comprehension and appreciation of the ritual was sadly limited.
Here’s what I wish I had known about the tradition, including what to expect and how to behave.
Whirling dervish ceremonies were started as a form of meditation by Jalaluddin Rumi, the famous Sufi Muslim mystic and poet, in the 13th century. The Persia-born Rumi — who was living in Konya, then the capital of the Turkish Seljuk Empire — told his followers, “There are many roads which lead to God. I have chosen the one of dance and music.”
He would fast, meditate and then dance to reach a state of unparalleled enlightenment. Other sects started to spread his dance, called the sema, throughout the Ottoman Empire. The most renowned sect was the Mevlevi order; dance participants were called semazen. By the 15th century, the order had established rules for the ritual.
Dancers wear long white robes with full skirts, which symbolize the shrouds of their egos, art historian Nurhan Atasoy of the Turkish Cultural Foundation wrote in Dervis Ceyizi, her book on dervish clothing.
On the dancers’ heads sit tall conical felt hats called sikke, ranging from brown to grey to black depending on their sect; these represent the tombstones of their egos. Over the robes, the dancers wear long dark cloaks, which embody the wearers’ worldly life and are cast off during the ceremony. When the dancer is finally wearing only his long white robe, he is assumed to be without fault and ready to start the mesmerizing whirls that define the sema.
The dancers, who fast for many hours before the ceremony, start to turn in rhythmic patterns, using the left foot to propel their bodies around the right foot with their eyes open, but unfocused. Their whirling is accompanied by music — a singer, a flute-player, a kettledrummer and a cymbal player.
As the dancers turn, the skirts of their robes rise, becoming circular cones, as if standing in the air on their own volition. A team of researchers found that the edges of spinning skirts experience accelerations “of about four times Earth gravity,” reporting that the skirts “carry cusped wave patterns which seem to defy gravity and common sense.”
In 1925, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first president, closed all the orders and hermitages as part of his secularization policies. For decades, the dervishes had to retreat underground. In 1956, even though these Sufi sects were still outlawed, the Turkish government revived the whirling-dervish ceremony as a cultural asset. Dancers began to perform on the anniversary of the death of Rumi, which led to an annual December festival in Konya.
During this period, Turkish dervishes worked to spread the dance outside their country to preserve the pure sema traditions. In 1963, Munir Celebi, a direct descendant of Rumi, arrived at the philosophy-based Study Society in London to teach 60 students to turn.
Elifnaz Caliskan, a Turkish citizen in graduate school at University of Maryland, has attended many sema ceremonies in Konya and Istanbul. She said by email that while visitors can see a show at any type of venue, “if you want to feel the love, you should go to a dervish lodge.”
My husband and I, along with our two children, originally had planned to visit a dervish lodge. Instead, we wound up attending a ceremony at Hodjapasha, a cultural centre built in a restored Turkish hammam, a traditional bathhouse.
At the centre, we filed in with about 60 other spectators and took our places on metal folding chairs in a semicircle facing a platform.
After a short introduction describing the history of the Mevlevi order, strobe lights lit the circular stage as five men wearing long black coats and tan conical hats came out and placed sheepskin rugs on the floor.
Behind them on a slightly raised stage, a small group of musicians played a ney, a long, thin reed-like flute, that produced a high, desolate sound; an oud, a wooden, pear shaped lute; and kettledrums. Then the dancers knelt, rolled up their rugs, took off their cloaks to display their white robes and started to whirl on the wooden floor.
As the dancers turned, I slowly felt the jumble of life’s daily thoughts fade from my mind. But before I could enter the phase that Jacobs refers to as “the great stillness,” the lights went on and the spell was broken. Yet I knew the magic was enough to make me want to seek out this mystical world once again.