This was a performance that we attended of the Whirling Dervishes. This sect of Islam called the Mevlevi Order are a Sufi order founded by the followers of the Persian thinker Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi in 1273 in Konya (in present-day Turkey). Their dance movements are highly symbolic. The dance and music ceremony is called the sema. The Sema represents a mystical journey of man's spiritual ascent through mind and love to Perfection. Turning towards the truth, the follower grows through love, deserts his ego, finds the truth and arrives at the "Perfect." He then returns from this spiritual journey as a man who has reached maturity and a greater perfection, so as to love and to be of service to the whole of creation.
