Women: Called to the Path of Rumi

This is the first English-language book to share the experience of Turning by women practitioners of the Mevlevi Order of Whirling Dervishes. The beauty and mystery of the Whirling Dervishes have captured the mythic imagination of the Western world for centuries. Rumi, the great Sufi saint of 13th-century Turkey, taught both male and female students this whirling dance, but in the centuries after his death women were excluded from participation. Not until the late 1970s, when Shaikh Suleyman Dede brought the Turn ritual to North America, was this practice again opened to women. This book outlines the history of the women who have followed this way since Rumi's time. The heart of the book is the personal experience of contemporary women -- interviews with over two dozen American initiates (from adolescents to wise elders), many of whom have practised on this path for twenty years or more.