Here’s Al Jazeera’s reporting on the opening of a large Yazidi temple in Armenia last year. I have heard arguments that Crowley wanted to establish that Thelemic religion’s antecedent was the Yazidi faith. Anyway:
“Just an hour outside the capital city of Yerevan, the gleaming, seven-domed temple crowns the quiet, poplar-lined village of Aknalich.
“The temple is dedicated to Melek Taus, one of seven angels in Yazidi theology, who takes the form of a peacock.
“Peacock motifs are etched onto the wooden doors.
“Golden suns – symbols of a higher power – adorn each white dome.
“An elaborate, colourful stone carving of Melek Taus, special-ordered from Russia, is backlit to appear mystically luminescent.
“A humbler, single-domed temple, which opened in 2012, sits alongside the new addition.
“It displays a turquoise-feathered taxidermy peacock on a wooden pedestal and adjoins the local Yazidi cemetery…
“In 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) forces swept through the Yazidi homeland in Sinjar, killing men and subjecting women and girls to brutal sexual assaults, the older Sloyan wanted to begin construction on the new temple, giving Armenia’s Yazidi minority community more visibility and support.
“‘It played a role,’ said Sloyan, the nephew. ‘Before that, we were told that we were Kurds, we were Zoroastrians. But no, we are Yazidis, and we can be beheaded for our religion,’ he said. ‘We should have a place for worship.'”
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/world-biggest-yazidi-temple-armenia-191110181513743.html.
