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Devil worship

Chapter 8: CHAPTER II
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About This Book

A scholarly translation and critical study presents an Arabic manuscript of Yezidi sacred literature, featuring a brief Kitāb al-Jilwah attributed to Šeiḫ ‘Adî and a larger Maṣḥaf Rêš that recounts creation in seven days, the emergence of angelic rulers, Adam and Eve traditions, and regulations on food, marriage, and festivals. The analytical section explores the sect's religious origins and myths, surveys Christian, Muslim, and Western interpretations, and explicates central doctrines including the community's conception of God, the elevated figure Melek Ṭâʾûs and other saintly personages. Ritual practice, sacraments, sacerdotal orders, social customs, tribal distribution, persecution, and appendixes of prayers, poems, and administrative petitions complete the work.

CHAPTER II

I requite the descendants of Adam, and reward them with various rewards that I alone know. Moreover, power and dominion over all that is on earth, both that which is above and that which is beneath, are in my hand. I do not allow friendly association with other people, nor do I deprive them that are my own and that obey me of anything that is good for them. I place my affairs in the hands of those whom I have tried and who are in accord with my desires. I appear in divers manners to those who are faithful and under my command. I give and take away; I enrich and impoverish; I cause both happiness and misery. I do all this in keeping with the characteristics of each epoch. And none has a right to interfere with my management of affairs. Those who oppose me I afflict with disease; but my own shall not die like the sons of Adam that are without. None shall live in this world longer than the time set by me; and if I so desire, I send a person a second or a third time into this world or into some other by the transmigration of souls.