What do the words paranormal and supernatural mean to you? Technically, when something is described as paranormal, it means it exists beyond our current understanding of nature, science, and physics. But that it might be explainable. Ghosts, UFOs, and even things like remote viewing or telepathy fall into this category.
Supernatural generally implies that it operates outside of the laws of physics, like turning five fish into five thousand, or creating something from nothing. It can certainly be muddy water, and if you're like me, the line between these things can be awfully blurry. The Middle East in particular has perhaps the richest history in the world, one the world is still fighting over, in one way or another. But through it all, exists a category of paranormal creature called the Jin.
Jin managed to stay relevant, even as the Arab world shifted towards Islam and away from the matic tribes and empires that once ruled, even popping up in the Koran from time to time, and still being role players in many legends. The Jin were created on Earth before the humans, and quite similar to the fallen angels of the Book of Enoch or the Book of Giants. They end up going rogue, and are ultimately subdued by angels, but not wiped out. You can listen to my previous episodes on the Book of Enoch and the Book of Giants for more on that timeline.
Jin is really a broad category of creatures, and in this episode I want to take a look at some of the more common types in Counter and Legend and touch on what they're all about. The most recognizable of the Jin is a type referred to as the Merid. It's a good chance you haven't heard of that word, but if you've seen the Disney movie Aladdin, well, the Genie was a Merid. Sorry if I mispronouncing that.
And it's no coincidence that the word Genie is also similar to the word Jin, and that blue ghost-like appearance is a typical representation. The Merid weren't all confined to magic lamps though. Wish-granting and magical powers were just a couple of their abilities, and as the legends go, managing to imprison one is one of the ways you could coax wishes from them. The Merid are thought to be among the most clever and powerful of the Jin.
And they're not all necessarily good or bad, though as with all Jin, it's recommended that you avoid them if you think one is around. Certainly you wouldn't want to cross an evil Genie, and in case you didn't know, the basic story of Aladdin actually comes from a collection of old Arab stories called Arabian Nights. If you've watched The Witcher on Netflix, you saw an episode where Geralt was searching a lake for a Jin in search of wishes to change his life. He eventually finds what he's after, a Jin sealed in a bottle.
It's important to note the actual seal itself. You can't just get lucky and trap a Jin. Well, I can't say exactly what the backstory is there in The Witcher. In the Quran, it was the seal atop the ring of King Solomon that could imprison the Jin.
Another group of Jin is called the Irft, and they are perhaps something like a poltergeist or a ghost haunting, a lesser demon of sorts. This is because the Irft often live in old abandoned places, which can be anything from ancient ruins of temples to an abandoned mind or a well. They're also frequently associated with the underworld. They are known for defending their territory from intruders, who might not ever even see them.
They're also known to lure the odd traveler to his doom. There is a story that you can find in Arabian Nights that captures both the similarities and differences between the Merid and the Irft. And it also mentions the seal. It's called the fisherman, and it goes something like this.
A poor old man had set out to go fishing, but every time he cast his net into the water, it came up tangled, full of useless old junk in debris. Every time he threw his net in, he grew more impatient and more irritated as he caught more junk. Finally, he cast his net one more time, and it got completely stuck on the bottom. And now he was angry, and he stripped down and dove in to untangle his net.
He found a heavy brass bottle at the bottom, and he quickly brought it up. He was excited, and he thought he could at least sell the bottle at the market for some coins. But the bottle was unusually heavy, and felt as though something was in it. His curiosity got the better of him, so he removed the seal on the bottle and out poured smoke.
The smoke materialized into a giant gin. Terrified and amazed, the fisherman looked on as the gin began babbling about God and to serve and solve him. The fisherman, thinking he had found a marita, thought he could get some wishes, and he was confused by the gin's babbling, and said, Solomon has been dead for some 1,800 years now. How did you end up in this bottle?
The gin turned to him and said, well, I'm one of the gin who rebelled, but I was locked away in this bottle after I refused to obey. It's been a long time, and once I thought I would be happy to escape and I would reward my liberator. But now, I only wish to kill, so that will be what I offer to you. The choice is yours, old man.
How would you like to die? Shocked at his rotten luck, and realizing he'd found it near feet, the fisherman struggled before an idea to get him out of this situation. You'd really kill your own savior, he said. Yes, the ear feet casually replied.
You should embrace your death, don't fear it, it's inevitable one way or another. At least this way you get to choose how you go out. Then the fisherman had an idea. Well, before you kill me, he said, answer me this one question.
How did you fit inside of that bottle anyway? By the looks of it, there's no way you could even get a single foot inside. What sort of trickery is this? That ear feet, taken aback, replied.
You really don't believe me in my power, even though I'm here before you. Unless I can see it clearly with my own eyes and undistracted, said the fisherman. The ear feet stared at him. Then began to shake, and evaporated into a cloud of smoke.
The smoke slowly returned to the bottle, and once the last wisp was in, the fisherman quickly resealed the bottle and moved quickly to toss it back to the water, yelling at the trap gin that he was about to spend an eternity at the bottom of the sea. The ear feet begged for mercy though, and after some debate, agreed that if the fisherman released him, he would help his situation and set him on the path to get his riches. The fisherman story continues with the ear feet leading the fisherman to catch four magical fish with magical abilities. And it's actually kind of a long story, so you can look that up on your own sometime.
I'll link to it at loreinlegends.net. Now the gin were very much intelligent individuals, and as the legends go, they were also capable of creating their own beliefs and having their own societies hidden from mankind, a trait that separates them from many other forms of random paranormal stuff. Another form of gin that has a much more familiar name is ghouls, which can come in a few different forms, and none of them are good. Some could be shapeshifters, much like the skinwalker, who use their ability to deceive, and others take the more familiar form of a rotting corpse, like a zombie, and they're usually the fast, terrifying kind of zombie, none of that walker nonsense.
They eat people and corpses, and are often found hanging around graveyards, kill sites, and battlefields. Female ghouls can be even more insidious, possessing the ability to disguise themselves as young, beautiful women, and lure travelers to their doom. Ghouls are sometimes thought to be the descendants of the devil himself. In some stories, powerful ghouls can take over entire towns, and even interbreed with humans.
Now the last of the gin that I'll mention in this episode is called the karine with a queue, which is actually a sort of parallel universe version of you. You've no doubt seen cartoons where a little angel sits on one shoulder of a character, and whispers in their ear the right thing to do. Well, the devil on the other shoulder is better described as a karine. Whispering in your ear, pushing you towards doing the wrong thing.
The word karine has its roots in the Arabic word for companion. Someone that stays with you, and in this case, it's a little voice, pushing you towards your bad impulses. As you can tell, gin covers a wide variety of creatures, and in Islam they exist in a world parallel to our own, misleading humans when they have the chance, and awaiting their own fates at the end of days. Gin are frequent role players in many stories and legends from the Arabic world, and I plan on doing shows that focus on Arabic mythology in a very near future.
So consider this shorter episode a sort of broad character introduction. So what do you think about paranormal or supernatural beings? Is there an overlap between the gin of the Middle East, and maybe the poltergeist or hauntings of the West? If you met a genie, how could you be sure it wasn't out to tricky?
And if it wasn't, what would you wish for? Check out loreandlegends.net for more on the gin and some notes from this episode. And as mentioned, there will be more stories featuring the gin in the near future. So be sure to click subscribe in whatever app you used to listen.
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