Table of Contents

Preface: Who Are the Yezidis?

Introduction

1 Books

2 Cosmogony

3 The Delirium of Origins

4 Sheikh Adi and the Sufis

5 The Redemption of Satan

6 Angelology PeaAng.indd

7 Ritual

8 Symbolique

9 Color and Alchemy

10 Esoteric Antinomianism

11 Legend and Life of the Caliph Yazid ibn Mu'awiya

12 Poems of the Caliph Yazid

Appendix: India

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Peter Lamborn Wilson has traveled and worked in India and Persia, including Iranian Kurdistan (1968-1980), where he studied the historical and mystical dimensions of Sufism with many great Sufi masters. In the 1980s, he produced a series of biweekly radio broadcasts known as the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade on WBAI-FM (NYC). The author of more than 60 books and monographs, he lives in the Hudson Valley.

Reviews

“If as some Yezidis maintain, we are all angels enjoying a temporary existence as men and women, we need no rulers, regulations, or exoteric religions. In Peacock Angel a lifelong defender of anarchism blends poetry, erudition, and spiritual insight to honor this misunderstood and persecuted group, perhaps our closest link with the primordial tradition itself.”
*Joscelyn Godwin, author of Mystery Religions in the Ancient World*

“Peacock Angel penetrates the esoteric secrets of Yezidi spirituality. The Yezidi, who believe they are followers of the oldest of religions, likely go back more than 10,000 years. Wilson explores Yezidism as a pure religion that rejects the law in order to be free to choose religious spontaneity, freedom, and passion: the way to be mad for God. Delving into their oral and shamanic roots, Wilson shows how the Yezidi ferociously practiced their love of the divine. This lovely book is a pearl of wisdom that reveals the Yezidi passion to know God in our soulless world. A must-read for spiritual seekers in our times.”
*Barbara Hand Clow, author of Awakening the Planetary Mind and The Mind Chronicles*

“Only the heterodox intellect of Peter Lamborn Wilson could expose the deeper truth behind today’s tragic headlines: that one of the world’s most brutally persecuted religious sects, the Yezidis--reduced by the thoughtless to be worshippers of a Satan that the thoughtless neither understand nor wish to understand-- may hold the key to the revitalization of didactic religion. As Wilson’s enthralling arcanum reveals, the question is less whether the Yezidis can survive but whether we can survive without them.”
*Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America, The Miracle Club, and Uncertain Places*