Day: November 3, 2025

Yezidi Religious Oral Tradition, Divination, Seers and Amulets in Northern Iraq

Eszter Spät I first started my field research among the Yezidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority of Northern Iraq, in 2002-03. At the time, it did not even occur to me to enquire about such “esoteric” practices as (written) amulets, or about seers (koçeks), who communicate with the “supernatural world,” that is the batinî (hidden, esoteric) […]