Koçagan awakened the earth. İmre made the snow weep, Yaşıl Han repainted the world in green, and Umay Ana blessed it with her silver light. The İye watch over each field, each spring, each tree. The breath of Yel Ata is laden with pollen and promises.
It is time for Hızır and İlyas to meet again.
For the span of one night and one day.
Hıdırellez.
Hızır: The Verdant One
Hızır does not move like the wind. He does not flow like water.
He is there. Immobile like the earth itself. Rooted.
Wherever he stands, the soil remembers its calling. The grass turns green. Seeds forgotten for seasons split through the dry crust of the earth. Flowers open without having been planted. Fruit trees become laden with promises.
We do not see Hızır pass. We see where he has stopped.
His name comes from the Arabic Al-Khidr. The Verdant One. He beneath whose feet green is born. He is silent fertility. The immobile force that makes the world nourish those who inhabit it.
But he also walks among us, disguised as a pilgrim, a simple traveler, a friend. He is the unexpected helping hand, the whispered counsel that illuminates your path, the hope that is reborn when all seems lost.
Hızır gibi yetişti. He arrived like Hızır.
On this day of Hıdırellez, one does not refuse whoever presents themselves at your door. It could be him. And if you send him away, it is bereket, abundance, that leaves your house with him.
İlyas: The Master of Waters
If Hızır is the earth, İlyas is the water.
Turn your gaze toward the deep seas, the rain-laden clouds and the winding rivers. There reigns İlyas, the prophet Elijah, the master of waters. The guardian of the oceans, he who commands the tempests and calms the waves. His kingdom is the fluid, changing and powerful world of water.
Always in motion. Never the same from one moment to the next.
He is the rain that washes the dust of the world, the spring that bursts from the rock, the river that fertilizes the plains, the underground current that seeks its way in the dark.
If Hızır is the seed, İlyas is the water that makes it germinate. If Hızır is patience, İlyas is movement. The purifying force, deep emotion, the great cycle of evaporation and precipitation that never stops. İlyas is the memory of the primordial ocean that flows in our veins.
For without him, the gift of Hızır is incomplete. The earth can wait eternally, without rain, without rivers, without the underground water that silently nourishes the roots of the plant world, nothing grows.
Hızır is the promise. İlyas is what makes it bloom.
Hıdırellez: The Encounter
They seek each other all year long.
Hızır dwells in the fields, the forests, at the thresholds of houses. He waits. İlyas flows through the seas, climbs the rivers, travels in the clouds, falls as rain, evaporates, begins again. He never stops.
The earth and water. One who holds the world in place. The other who ceaselessly traverses it.
And then comes the night of May 5th to 6th.
It is told that long ago, they were just two soldiers in the army of a sovereign who set out in search of the Ab-ı Hayat, the water of life. Somewhere along the way, they separated from the army. They sat by the edge of a river to eat. Just two tired men, a spring, bread, dried fish pulled from their satchel.
They had not found the water of life. They had abandoned the quest. They were eating, quite simply.
And then the river water splashed the fish.
And the dead fish came back to life.
It quivered between their hands, slipped from their fingers, and leaped into the current. Before their eyes, life recalled itself in a splash. In the most ordinary gesture in the world. A meal by the water’s edge.
An angel descended from the seventh heaven. He told them: you will live until the end of time. But you, Hızır, you will remain on the earth. And you, İlyas, you will go into the waters. You will help those who need you. And once a year, only once, you will meet again.
Since then, each year, during the night of May 5th to 6th, Hızır arrives through the hills, his feet covered with pollen and road dust. İlyas arrives by the river, his hands wet with the water that gives life. The earth meets the water.
And there, beneath the branches of the gül ağacı, a rosebush, they sit.
And the world changes.
Hıdırellez is the moment when the two forces that make the world live meet again. The moment when bereket, sacred abundance, becomes possible again.
The Era of Hızır
At dawn on May 6th, I invite you to join Hızır and İlyas.
Dressed in white, walk in the grass still wet with dew, it heals. Gather wild flowers, to make decoctions during the coming year.
And then do not forget your Hıdırellez wishes.
Entrust them to a rosebush, the very one where earth and water met again. Tie them to its branches with a red thread, offered to the wind, to the sun, to the gaze of Hızır. Or bury them among its roots, thus entrusting them to Yer Ana, to the fecund darkness, and to the water of İlyas that will make them bloom.
With Hıdırellez come the Hızır Günleri. The Days of Hızır. An invitation to live with an open heart. To remember that the world is still full of magic, and that sometimes, it is enough to believe to see miracles happen.
And if it rains on May 6th, do not complain.
These are the tears of joy of Hızır and İlyas, separated for a year. The clouds themselves weep with them.
🌿And from this encounter is born the exuberant fertility of summer, Sayagan.