Talk:Order of the Peacock Angel

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Any connection with the Simurgh?

E. S. Drower[edit]

E. S. Drower's[[1]] Peacock Angel [2] was published by John Murray London 1941. It has photographs of various Yazidi castles. people and scenes in Iraq. This order of the Yazidi or Yezidis are well known and are not an invention of Dr. Daraul. --Wool Bridge (talk) 14:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Yazidi are discussed in their own article. This article discusses an alleged secret society which is said to be influenced by the Yazidi but distinct from it, and for which Daraul's account seems to be the only non-fiction reference. (Drower's work is referenced in the Yazidi article.) -- Shunpiker (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

She is clearly describing a Peacock Angel sect as can be seen from this paragraph:

_{The first stage of our journey was a short one. We halted at Bahzané where the mîr, Said Beg, accompanied by qawwâls and the sacred peacock, were staying for the day. The sacred peacock, the sanjak, is an image in bronze, the symbol of the Peacock Angel. There are several of these images, each of which is taken round by the qawwâls at certain seasons of the year and exhibited to the faithful, who bring offerings in money or kind.1 These offerings are given to the mîr and represent a considerable yearly revenue, now diminished because, owing to difficulties and restrictions brought about though war-conditions, the qawwâls cannot cross the frontiers into other countries. The sanjak (lit. "standard") is shown in secret. Years ago, knowing that at least one such image is kept at Ba'idri where the mîr lives, I asked, while paying him a visit at his castle, whether I might be permitted to see the sacred bird. I got the answer I deserved, "It is not here."}

1. See p. 99. According to various accounts, the image varies in shape from the crude representation of something which looks like a dove or fowl, to the conventionalized bird with a fantail actually to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. How this was obtained I do not know. The reason why the peacock was chosen as the earthly symbol of the Prince of Angels has been discussed many times by the pundits, and M. Lescot, in his book recently [137] published about the Yazidis in the Jebel Sinjar, has summed up the somewhat negative result of their deliberations.

If it is so different from your version of the sect as described by Daraul, then you need to explain this, it is not obvious. You still need to mention Drower and her book in this article. --Wool Bridge (talk) 22:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's little question that the "Order of the Peacock Angel," if indeed it exists, venerates the same figure that the Yazidi do. But it doesn't follow that any group that could be described as a "Peacock Angel sect" belong to the Yazidi. (Are all of the followers of Jesus Methodists?)

It's not clear from Daraul's book whether the people involved in the Order of the Peacock Angel consider themselves to be Yazidi, or whether the Yazidi would recognize people from this organization as belonging to the same faith. Daraul, as far as I know, does not make that claim. Because he does not, and lacking a source to the contrary, it would constitute original research to assume that they do.

Unless the "Order of the Peacock Angel" -- i.e. the Twentieth Century English-speaking secret society purported to exist by that name in the UK and the USA -- is mentioned in Drower's book, I don't see how reference to her work belongs in this article. Especially since, as you point out, the Yazidi certainly exist and have been the subject of serious, scholarly attention. But Daraul is apparently the only non-fiction authority on the existence of the Order of the Peacock Angel. Conflating the subject of Drower's scholarly attentions with the possible invention of Daraul would unduly lend the weight of Drower's authority to Daraul's more dubious account. -- Shunpiker (talk) 01:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be better to make this article a redirect to Arkon Daraul, and merge the content with that article? I don't think Daraul fulfils the criteria for a reliable encyclopedic source. Jayen 466 19:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that Daraul is not much help in terms of documenting whether or not the society existed. However, there are enough independent cultural references to the the society that I think it is notable apart from Daraul and the historical verdict. -- Shunpiker (talk) 21:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if we only have novels, and the book by "Daraul" (generally held to be pseudonym of Idries Shah), which is no better than a novel in terms of academic scholarship, what is our justification for treating this like a real religious group? As an encyclopedia, we should rely on historians or religious scholars for such matters, not novels or a writer widely held by academics to have written pseudohistorical accounts (whatever other merits they may have had). If there is no reliable source we can cite in the article, we should not have the article. Jayen 466 23:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article is careful to identify its sources and stress the limit of their credibility. Far from treating the Order "like a real religious group," the article lays out the reasons for either believing or doubting its existence. I started the article when I came across a reference to the group and I wanted to know the whole story. Wikipedia didn't have an article at that time, so I did some research to provide one. If you think that the article gives too much credence to Daraul's claims, I'd like to see that corrected. But it's neither my intention nor my impression that it does. -- Shunpiker (talk) 02:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I'm pretty sure that I first came across a reference to the Order of the Peacock Angel when reading the Wikipedia article about the Yazidi. You can see from my edit to the article that I came to a more skeptical conclusion than the previous editor. This article gives other readers the opportunity to understand both why people would discuss the Order of the Peacock Angel, and why people have reason to question whether such a thing ever existed. -- Shunpiker (talk) 03:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate what you're saying. Yet I think we shouldn't touch Daraul with a barge pole as an encyclopedic source, at least not for any claims that aren't corroborated by other reliable sources (such as the existence of this cult in Putney). I think we might be better served with a redirect to Arkon Daraul, and reproducing the material provided here in that article. Without more reliable sources, it's probably best to treat Daraul as another example of myth-making, much like The Teachers of Gurdjieff. Jayen 466 04:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]