Inside
the Legend: What Is And What Should Never Be
JINN/
GENIE/ DIJNN
Genie is the English term
for the Arabic ??? (jinnie). In pre-Islamic Arabian mythology
and in Islam, a jinni (also “djinni” or “djini”)
is a member of the jinn (or “djinn”), a race
of supernatural creatures. The word “jinn”
literally means anything which has the connotation of
concealment, invisibility, seclusion, and remoteness.
DJINN
IN ISLAM
The jinn are said to be
creatures with free will, made from 'smokeless fire' by
God (the literal translation being “subtle fire”,
i.e., a fire which does not give itself away through smoke),
much in the same way humans were made of earth. According
to the Recitation, jinn have free choice, and Iblis used
this freedom in front of God by refusing to bow to Adam
when God told Iblis to do so. By refusing to obey God’s
order he was thrown out of the Paradise and called “Shaitan.”
In the Qur'an, jinn are frequently mentioned and Sura
72 of the Qur'an named Al-Jinn is entirely about them.
Another Sura (Al-Naas) mentions the Jinn in the last verse.
In fact, it is mentioned in the Qur'an that Muhammad was
sent as a prophet to both “humanity and the jinn”.
The jinn have communities
much like human societies: they eat, marry, die, etc.
They live in tribes and have boundaries. They follow the
same religions as humans do, and follow the same ranks
in armies as humans do. Jinns can settle in a vast area
to a tiny hole, as they are massless and can be fit into
any space they find sufficient for them. They are invisible
to humans, but they can see humans. Sometimes they accidentally
or deliberately come into view or into contact with humans.
Jinn are believed to live much longer than humans: some
of whom are said to be still alive have seen Mohammad
(who lived during the 7th century), which would affirm
their long life. Much like humans, djinn have learned
to assimilate into the human world when they desire to
do so. In many cases they live unnoticed among people
marked only by the rather unusual or somewhat secretive
practices they keep. They cannot breed with humans. One
power that all of their descendants seem to keep despite
dilution of their bloodline is invisibility.
Jinn can transform themselves
into humans and can be summoned by humans. In Islam, humans
attempting to perform black magic on humans call Jinn
specializing in dirty deeds to perform the magic; such
black magic on humans can only be undertaken by dark Jinn
- “Ifrit” or “Marid”. In many
Islamic countries there are people who perform or supposedly
perform black magic (usually for cursing other people,
or using jinns to influence a marriage to end in divorce,
etc) in exchange for money. Thus, a person often pays
a magician, who then calls upon a dark djinn, who then
performs the magic, at least supposedly.
In Muslim beliefs, the genie
can also act as a supernatural thief. By some traditions,
Mohammed warned against thieving jinn.
The
Spirit of the Lamp in the story of Aladdin, a familiar
djinn to the Western world, was such a jinni, bound to
an oil lamp. Ways of summoning jinn were told in The Thousand
and One Nights: by writing the name of God in Hebrew characters
on a knife (whether the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, or
the Arabic Allah is used is not specified), and drawing
a diagram, with strange symbols and incantations around
it.
The jinn’s power of possession was also addressed
in the fictional Nights. It is said that by taking seven
hairs out of the tail of a cat that was all black except
for a white spot on the end of its tail, and then burning
the hairs in a small closed room with the possessed, filling
their nose with the scent, this would release them from
the spell of the jinn inside them.
Concept
of Djinn/Jin/Ghosts/Genie in Islam
DJIN
IN THE KORAN
“Jinn
have been feeding off people for centuries. They’re
all over the Koran.”
The Djin (Jinn) are a race
of beings created by Allah to serve Him. They are not
His children, nor are they deities. They were created
from searing hot, smokeless fire, some time before humans
were created from clay. Since the Koran also states that
the Angels were created from fire, it would seem that
the Djin and the Angels are the same kind of beings.
However, it is rare that
the Koran speaks of "Angels and Jinn" in the
same sentence, but often speaks of "Men and Jinn"
in one breath. It would seem that the Jinn have a strong
interest in consorting with humans, and especially in
helping them to stray from the one-true-God. Not entirely,
though, as there is at least one reference to Jinn who
are righteous and hear the Word of Allah. With those exceptions,
we expect that most humans and most Jinn will get their
"come-uppance" on judgment day and they (we)
will not be pleased with the results.
In summary, it would appear
that according to the Koran, the Jinn are a species related
to Angels which tend to consort with human-kind to the
detriment of both. Exceptions noted.
Dijn
and the Koran
Dijn
Passages in the Koran
GENIES
IN WESTERN CULTURE
The Western interpretation
of the genie is based on the Aladdin tale in the Western
version of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, which
told of a genie that lived in an oil lamp and the tale
of The Fisherman and the Jinni. Oddly, lore from these
tales seem to get twisted and mixed into each other, thanks
in no small part to Disney’s Aladdin. The number
and frequency of wishes varies, but typically it is limited
to three wishes. More mischievous genies may take advantage
of poorly worded wishes (including the Fairly Odd Parents
and in an episode of The X-Files).
Exploiting loopholes or
twisting interpretations of wishes is a classic trait
amongst genies in Western fiction. For example, in “The
Man in the Bottle” episode of The Twilight Zone,
a poor shopkeeper who finds a genie wishes to become a
leader of a great nation - and is transformed into Adolf
Hitler at the very end of World War II. Often, these stories
end with the genie’s master wishing to have never
found the genie, all his previous wishes never to have
happened, or a similar wish to cancel all the fouled wishes
that have come before.
WISHES
“A
freakin’ jinni?! So what, do you think these suckers
can really grant wishes?”
A wish is a hope or desire
for something. Fictionally, wishes can be used as plot
devices. In folklore, opportunities for "making a
wish" or for wishes to "come true" or "be
granted" are themes that are sometimes used.
In fiction a wish is a supernatural
demand placed on the recipient's unlimited request. When
it is the center of a tale, the wish is usually a template
for a morality tale, "be careful what you wish for"
writ large; it can also be a small part of a tale, in
which case it is often used as a plot device.
The template for most fictional
wishes is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, specifically
the tale of Aladdin, although in the tale of Aladdin the
actual wishes were only part of the tale. Also, Alladin's
demands, while outrageous per se, were mainly variations
on wealth (which is still often taken as the most 'common'
request).
Classically the wish provider
is often a spirit, jinni or similar entity, bound or constrained
within a commonplace object (Aladdin's oil lamp for example)
or a container closed with Solomon's seal. Releasing the
entity from its constraint, usually by some simple action,
allows the object's possessor to 'make a wish', ie. present
their demands to the entity.
The subservience of the
extraordinarily powerful entity to the wisher can be explained
in a number of ways. The entity may be grateful to be
'free' of its constraint and the wish is a thank-you gift.
The entity may be bound to obedience by its 'prison' or
some other item that the wisher possesses. The entity
may, by its nature, be unable to exercise its powers without
an initiator.
BRAIN
IN A VAT/ ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
“What
if I’m tied up somewhere? What if this is all in
my head?”
In philosophy, the brain
in a vat is any of a variety of thought experiments intended
to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge,
reality, truth, mind, and meaning. It is drawn from the
idea, common to many science fiction stories, that a mad
scientist might remove a person's brain from the body,
suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect
its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide
it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain
normally receives. According to such stories, the computer
would then be simulating a virtual reality (including
appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the
person with the "disembodied" brain would continue
to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without
these being related to objects or events in the real world.
The simplest use of brain-in-a-vat
scenarios is as an argument for philosophical skepticism
and Solipsism. A simple version of this runs as follows:
Since the brain in a vat gives and receives the exact
same impulses as it would if it were in a skull, and since
these are its only way of interacting with its environment,
then it is not possible to tell, from the perspective
of that brain, whether it is in a skull or a vat. Yet
in the first case most of the person's beliefs may be
true (if he believes, say, that he is walking down the
street, or eating ice-cream); in the latter case they
are false. Since, the argument says, you cannot know whether
you are a brain in a vat, then you cannot know whether
most of your beliefs might be completely false. Since,
in principle, it is impossible to rule out your being
a brain in a vat, you cannot have good grounds for believing
any of the things you believe; you certainly cannot know
them.
This argument is a contemporary
version of the argument given by Descartes in Meditations
on First Philosophy (which he eventually rejects) that
he could not trust his perceptions on the grounds that
an evil demon might, conceivably, be controlling his every
experience. It is also more distantly related to Descartes'
argument that he cannot trust his perceptions because
he may be dreaming (Descartes's dream argument is preceded
by Zhuangzi in "Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly".).
In this latter argument the worry about active deception
is removed.
The Allegory of the Cave
is the story of a people who have been held prisoner in
a cave deep inside a mountain. They have been there for
so long that the cave has gradually become the only world
they know.
The prisoners are laid in
chains in that prison, that are fastened behind a wall
in the cave, facing the rear of the cavern. This rock
encrusted world is the only world they know. The only
light they can see is the light from a fire that is maintained
on the other side of the wall, which is reflected off
the rocks of the cavern in front of them, and above them
(see illustration). In this manner, their world has become
a world of a faint glow of light and of huge shadows of
objects that are passed in front of the fire. The shadows,
which they all see with their senses can, thus become
a reality to them that in part defines their world, that
they react to.
A
look at the Allegory of the Cave
I
DREAM OF JEANIE
”Not really like Barbara Eden.”
I Dream of Jeannie is a
popular American sitcom with a fantasy premise. Produced
by Screen Gems, it aired from 1965 to 1970 on NBC. The
show starred Barbara Eden as a genie, and Larry Hagman
as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she
falls in love and eventually marries.
The series was created by
Sidney Sheldon in response to the great success of rival
network ABC's Bewitched series, which had debuted in 1964
as the second most watched program in the United States.
Sheldon, inspired by the movie The Brass Bottle, starring
Tony Randall, Barbara Eden, and Burl Ives as the genie
Fakrash, came up with the idea for a beautiful female
genie who wanted to grant her master's wishes, a stark
contrast to the social ideas of what a genie was and what
a genie looked like. Many Bewitched fans continue to propagate
the rumor that producer William Asher was called upon
unofficially to comment on the final script for the pilot
episode of Jeannie. NBC was hoping Jeannie would recreate
the successful ratings "Bewitched" was pulling
at that time.
The premise of the program
was very simple. The show featured a beautiful woman who
possessed magical powers and tried to integrate with the
mortal world to please the man she loved. The show's foundation
was derived from her "master's" attempts at
keeping her existence a secret, while very often needing
to use her powers to resolve situations she initially
created. The third season featured a rambunctious relative
(Jeannie's sister) also played by Barbara Eden, with a
black wig to mark her "black hat" status. The
major difference between the first season, which aired
in black-and-white, and the following four seasons, which
aired in color, was the manic and fast-paced nature of
later seasons in contrast to the more romantic and relaxed
nature of the pilot season. (Also, the jazzy title music
of the first season is different from the perkier introductory
theme of the subsequent seasons.)
Jeannie was a genie awakened
from her two thousand year imprisonment when astronaut
Anthony Nelson's final stage rocket misfired and forced
him to abort a space launch. Captain Nelson washed ashore
on a desert island where he found a bottle on the beach.
Upon opening the bottle he set Jeannie free. As legend
states, he who frees the genie becomes its master. However
upon summoning a helicopter for him, rescuing him from
being stranded, Tony claims they are even, she is free
to go. Falling in love with the first man she set eyes
on in two thousand years, Jeannie follows Tony home to
Cocoa Beach, Florida. Jeannie was initially little more
than a pesky, jealous servant, but as the series developed,
so did their relationship, and eventually the couple was
married in the fifth and final season.
SOURCES:
Wikipedia
From Shadows to Reality: Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Inside
the Legend by Dean5339
