SOUL FOOD:The spiritual serenity of being a true whirling dervish

He wears a sikke, a tall, cylindrical felt hat made from camel's hair, which represents the ego's tombstone. His khirqa, a black cloak worn over a white shirt and a voluminous white skirt is, when removed, a symbol of the semazen's spiritual rebirth to the truth.

He withdraws from his earthly attachments and prepares to meet God. His tennure, his white skirt, acts as the ego's death shroud.

Before he starts to turn, each semazen unfolds his right arm in a skyward gesture of prayer, in expectation of receiving God's beneficence. He extends his left arm toward the earth in a gesture of bestowal.

The semazen becomes a conduit through which God's blessings are poured onto all humanity. In this sense, everyone attending the sema becomes a participant.

Each semazen turns from right to left; it is said, he turns around the heart. He whirls, his white skirt billowing.

The sema consists of seven parts. It begins with the Nat-i-Serif, a eulogy to the Prophet Muhammad, followed by the awakening call of a kettledrum.

Then come four selams, four cycles of the dervishes whirling, with their sheikh — their leader — sitting at their center.

The first selam signifies the birth of truth through knowledge; the second expresses the rapture and splendor of creation; the third represents full submission to and communion with God; the fourth, when their sheikh joins their whirling, gathers them together.

A recitation from the Koran and a greeting of peace, accompanied by ecstatic music, brings the ceremony to a close.

"It unites the three fundamental components of human nature," Kahveci said. The sema unites the mind, with knowledge and thought; the heart, with expressions of poetry and music; and the body, with the dervishes' whirling.

It is the turning of the human soul toward God. It is a communal awakening, which is the very heart of the Sufi way.