St. Petersburg Times: Photo gallery  
Yezidi
  
   


ABOVE: The wicks are soaked in olive oil then stuck one by one to each sacred spot. Anyone on the grounds of the temple must enter without their shoes. Fire, wind, water and earth are important emements for the Yezidi religion which is the original Kurdish religion and one of the oldest in the world.

[Times photo: Jamie Francis]

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Wazzir (who uses only one name), a Yezidi worker at the holy temple of Lalish in Northern Iraq distributes more than 350 burning wicks several times per day and night around the ancient place which includes underground caves, baptism sites and photographs of hundreds of Yezidi Kurds who were killed by Saddam or in the Iran-Iraq war or in the Kurdish civil war.
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