October 20, 2020 • 40 mins
We know the one that rules over them by many names: Iblees. Mastema. Belzebub. Diabolos. Baphomet. Shaitaan. Satan. That's right, Satan himself. This week we trace Satan's origin story back to when the djinn ruled the earth.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yah Welcome to the Hidden Gin, A production of I
Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Long
(00:31):
before man inhabited the earth, it was the exclusive domain
of the Gin. They lived in societies and communities, had hierarchies,
kingdoms with kings and queens, tribes with chiefs and ministers,
and of course ordinary Gin citizenst century Persian polymath Zakaria
al Kaswini wrote about that time in his Marvelous Home.
(00:53):
When Cosmology called the Wonders of Creation, it is related
in that his Trees that a race of Gin in
ancient times, before the creation of Adam, inhabited the earth
and covered it the land and the sea, and the
plains and the mountains, and the favors of God were
multiplied upon them, and they had government and prophecy, and
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religion and law. But they transgressed and offended, and opposed
their profits and wickedness to abound in the earth. Whereupon God,
whose name be exalted, sent against them an army of angels,
who took possession of the earth and drove away the
jinns to the regions of the islands, and made many
of them prisoners. And of those prisoners was as a
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zeal and a slaughter was made among them at that time.
As a Zeala was young. He grew up among the
angels and became learned in their knowledge and assumed the
government of them, and his days were prolonged until he
became their chief. And thus it continued for a long time.
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This Jin as a zeal not only raised his ranks
above the gin, ruling over them for a thousand years,
but he also raised his ranks above the angels themselves.
It said that he had more knowledge of both the
seen and unseen realms, was more pious and righteous than
the angels, and even rose into heaven with them. So
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intense was his devotion to God. There wasn't a place
on heaven or earth that he had prostrated himself in worship,
such was his love for the Almighty. But one day
it all came crashing down. He lost everything, and he
went from being Azazel, a jin among angels, praised in
the heavens and earth, to how we know him today,
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despised and feared, condemned to the depths of hell. We
know him by many names, dozens, Ablis, Mastama, Belzebub, Abadon, Diabolos, Bafa,
met shadon Sama eel Satan himself, the accuser, the hated,
(03:02):
the adversary, the great deceiver. That's right, the one that
rules over the most evil jin the demons, is none
other than Satan, and all of his deception and treachery
is reserved for us, mere mortals. My name is Rob
and I'll be your guide into the world of the
(03:22):
hidden gin. Welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Every tradition that entertains the
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idea of Satan has for centuries and longer debated whether
or not Satan is an actual entity. Even in those
traditions that believe very much in God and angels and prophets,
there are groups that way how my suh of scripture
is literal and how much is figurative. For many Sufis,
those mystics of the Islamic world, Satan personifies evil, but
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may not actually exist as an evil being. Roumi, one
of the very few Sufi saints and poets known in
the Western world, viewed Satan as a manifestation of the
sins of arrogance and envy. To him, Satan, the one
I devil, represented a half blind intellect that could see
no further than the surface, unable to see the essence
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within others. Others connected the characteristics of Satan to the
mechanics of the human psyche, with the angels representing the
light in us and Satan representing the darkness. But then
there is no dearth of literature and text, and sincere
belief that Satan is much more than just an idea
or a representation of our inner condition, too many. Satan
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was and is very much in existence, just as we are.
He was born, he lives, and he will die. Satan
appears in all three of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam as a fairly similar figure, someone who took
a position among angels brilliant and beloved, called Lucifer in
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the Bible, meaning star of the morning. He didn't stay exalted.
The story of Satan's fall from grace and from heaven itself,
why he was thrown out of favor with God, why
he became an eternal enemy to mankind, That part has
some similarities, but also some interesting differences. According to the
Jewish Encyclopedia, Semma, l the head of all demons, was
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once a mighty prince of the angels in heaven. He
was born and will eventually die. He's a celestial being
that can fly through the air and can assume any
animal or human form. He's only mentioned by name as
Hassathan the Satan twice in the entire Hebrew Bible, and
both times in the Book of Job and the Book
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of Zachariah. He's present as a part a divine counsel
of sorts a heavenly court, where his role is kind
of like a public prosecutor. Hence he's the accuser. He
not only levels charges against those being tried, he urges
God to meet out the toughest punishments. Beyond these mentions,
there's not much to be said in the Talmut about Satan,
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and his role is as a figure subservient to God.
It's a different story altogether with the New Testament, though,
where Satan really comes into his own, appearing by name
thirty six times, having grown fully into the evil part
of the good versus evil dichotomy. Now we have all
heard of the various temptations of Christ by Satan, but
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it's Satan's early interactions with mankind that really deserve examining,
because that's where we unearthed the root of his enmity.
Towards mankind. And in the New Testament that happens when Satan,
in the guise of a serpent, tempts Adam and Eve
to eat the forbidden fruit. But that again begs the
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question of why why would he do that? Well? To
answer it, we have to backtrack just a bit between
the Old and the New Testament to writings that fell
in between, and there we find one ancient Jewish apocryphal
group of writings known as Apocalypse of Moses, in which
Satan minces no words with Adam and tells him exactly
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what his beef is. What asks Adam of Satan? Have
I done to you? Oh Adam, all my enmity, jealousy,
and resentment is towards you, Since on account of you,
I was expelled and alienated from my glory which I
had in heaven in the midst of the angels. On
account of you, I was cast out upon the earth.
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On account of you, I was cast out from heaven.
When you were formed, I was cast out from the
face of God and was sent forth from the company
of angels. The Lord God then said, behold, Adam, I
made you in our image and likeness, And the Archangel
Michael called all the angels, saying, worship the image of
the Lord God, just as the Lord God has commanded.
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Michael himself worshiped. Then he called me and said, worship
the image of God Jehovah. And I answered, I do
not have it within me to worship Adam. I will
not worship him who is lower and posterior to me.
I am prior to that creature, before he was made.
I had already been made. He ought to worship me.
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This is the same story that appears nearly a millennia later,
but this time in the Muslim Holy Scripture the Koran.
Satan is called by the name Eblis in the Koran,
and of the eleven times he's mentioned by name, nine
of them are connected to this incident. When Satan refused
to bow down to Adam, God says in the Koran,
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we said to the angels, prostrate to Adam. And they
prostrated except for Ablist. He said, should I austraight to
one you created from clay? Do you see this one
whom you have honored above me? If you delay me
until the day of resurrection, I will surely destroy his
descendants except for a few. Another story not from the Koran,
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but from the Stages draws this saga out further. It
says that when God created the form of Adam out
of clay, but had not yet blown a soul into him,
a Blize was mystified. He began to observe this lifeless thing,
just slowly drying out, sitting propped up outside the gates
of the Garden of Eden, and he started to suspect
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that it was just a hollow form. So it Belize
started throwing pebbles at Adam, and he heard a hollow clink.
What the heck? What was this creature? He had never
seen anything like it. He wanted to get a closer
look at the first human who lay there, quiet and
still lifeless. Yet, so it Blize entered the drawing clay form,
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swimming through the body of this new creation, and low
and behold there was nothing on the inside. It was
completely empty. That for sure didn't impress Satan no way,
Nohow was the Belize going to bow down to this muddy, hollow, dumb,
powerless thing when he himself was powerful, made out a fire,
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could travel through the heavens and the earth, knew everything
there was to know in all of the realms. And
it was this arrogance, this clear disobedience to God, that
was his downfall. But he wasn't going to go down alone.
If he would lose Paradise, so would Adam, and so
would the children of Adam now and forever. How are
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you fallen from heaven, o, Lucifer, son of the Morning
How are you cut down to the ground, you who
weakened the nation's For you have said in your heart,
I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God. I will also sit on
the mount of the congregation, on the farthest sides of
the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud.
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I will be like the most high. Yet you shall
be brought down to shield, to the lowest depths of
the pit. God was not having Lucifer's arrogance, as we
can see in this passage from Isaiah, and a new
chapter was about to begin for him. He would be
reborn from Lucifer the Morning Star to Satan the Despised.
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In Islamic theology, he went from being ablist he who
has despaired, to Satan the adversary Shathon or Satan now
fully humiliated, was ready to leave heaven, but first he
had one rather important request. Satan asked God to be
given until the end of time to show God that, hey,
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this claymation thing you think is so great, it isn't.
It's weak, it's limited, it's stupid. It won't be good
and right and pure the way you want it to be.
It will be corrupt and greedy and jealous and violent
and bloodthirsty. And I will prove it to you by
spending the rest of my days pulling it away from
everything good towards everything wrong. I'll prove to you that
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you were wrong. So Satan raises the challenge to God,
because thou hast thrown me out of the way low,
I will lie in wait for them on thy straight way.
Then I will assault them from before them and behind them,
from their right and their left. And God responded, get
out from here, be gone with you, disgraced and expelled.
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If any of them follow thee, I will fill hell
with you all tempt with your call, all whom you wish,
muster against them, all your forces, your cavalry, and your
foot soldiers, share with them riches and offspring, and seduce
them with rosy promises. Satan's promise is nothing but a deception. Still,
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God granted Staton a stay of execution if you will.
He gave him all the time in the world to
see what kind of havoc he could wreak, and ever
since then it's been on. Satan began his assault on
mankind early in the game by deceiving Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden. While the Christian tradition relates
that Satan entered the garden in the form of a snake,
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the Muslim tradition differs a bit slightly. According to it,
Satan approached a number of animals that lived in the garden,
trying to get any of them on board to work
with him, and all of them refused except for one,
a serpent. So he told the serpent, I'll protect you
from the children of Adam. If you can get me
into the garden, you'll be protected forever from them, and
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so she agreed. She smuggled Satan into the garden tucked
between her two front fangs, and as they casually idled
by the original power couple, Satan heard Adam tell Eve
that man he wished they could live forever and not
have to die. That was Satan's in Now he knew
what Adam's weakness was, and he knew exactly what to
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promise him in order to get both of these humans
to disobey God. If you remember, they basically had the
entire garden at the disposal except for a single tree.
And so it was that tree hissed Satan to Adam
and Eve that bore the fruit that would give them immortality.
We all know how that story ends. Satan succeeded, gaining
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an early lead on mankind right out of the gate.
After all, if Satan couldn't have the garden, no one would.
Now when Satan was cast out, he had enough foresight
to know if he was going to wage and never
ending war against mankind, he needed some backup. In the
Book of Jubilees, another ancient Jewish text, Satan says to
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God referring to angels, he was used to hanging out
with Lord Creator. Let some of them remain before me,
and let them park into my voice and do all
that I shall say into them. For some of them
are not left to me. I shall not be able
to execute the power of my will on the sons
of men. For these are for corruption and leading astray,
for great is the wickedness of the sons of men.
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According to the Book of Revelation, Satan took one third
of the angels with him in his fall. He gathered
together those angels and armies of Gin together to become
his legion of demons, whose sole purpose is to do
his bidding. Along with their master, these jinn were also
given an extra lease on life. They would live until
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Judgment Day, when everything on this earth perishes, and they
would only die when their leader did. Now Irish Lord, however,
says that not all those who were cast out of
heaven with Lucifer became demons. Instead, they believe some of
the fallen angels became fairies. The book The Vengeful Jin
recounts the story documented by Celtic folklorist Alexander Carmichael and
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October of eighteen seventy one, Carmichael found himself stuck on
the Scottish isle of Barra, where he met a ninety
two year old storyteller named Roderick McNeil. McNeil was a
legend himself, known to never have worn shoes in his life,
he had never fallen ill, and he had the climbing
skills of a goat. Even in his advanced age, McNeil
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regaled the stranded Carmichael with local fairy tales. But here,
he said, is how it all began. The proud Angel
fomented a rebellion among the angels of Heaven, where he
had been a leading light. He declared that he would
go out and found a kingdom of his own. When
going out at the door of Heaven, the proud Angel
brought prickly and biting lightning out the doorstep with his heels.
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Many angels followed him, so many that at last a
son called out, Father, Father, the city is being emptied,
whereupon the Father ordered the gates of Heaven and Hell
to be closed. This was instantly done, and those who
were in were in, and those who were out were out.
While the hosts who had left Heaven and had not
reached Hell, they flew into the holes of the earth.
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These are the fairy folk, ever since, doomed to live
under the ground, and only permitted to emerge when and
where the King of Heaven permits. The parallels between this lord,
Christian belief and muslutricition is pretty strong, and perhaps one
main point of difference is this was a belief or
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Lucifer as he was known, an angel himself, or was
he a gin that elevated himself to the level of angels.
Christian belief is strongly in the angel camp, but Muslim
scholars are conflicted about it. There are strong scriptural arguments
to be made that he was an angel, but just
as strong are the arguments that he was and is
a gin on some level, though it doesn't really matter.
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What matters is his role after the fall from grace
that Satan became master over the demons, the most evil Jin,
and to this day he remains oh. Some traditions say
after his victory over Adam and Eve he married the
snake that had assisted him, and they went on to
have many demon children, and the names of the most
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powerful of his sons, including the seven Jin Kings, are
well known. There's Alower, the one eyed demon, whose wheelhouse
is tempting humans to lud and vulgar behavior. Then their suit,
the father of lies, and closely related in purpose is
his brother is a lumber whose domain is dishonesty and
corruption in business. There's Dust him, whose only purpose is
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to ruin marriages by turning a couple against each other.
There's Tear, who is in charge of striking people with
disaster and injury. And finally there's Danish, the most powerful
of all of Satan's sons, who lives in every dark void,
attacks his victims with blindness, and even lurks inside the
dark wombs of women ready to cosmos carriages. Along with
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these powerful demon sons, carrying forth his royal line as
the Prince of Darkness, are hundreds of thousands of less
significant offspring. It said that Satan laid thirty eggs after
being expelled from heaven, ten in the west, ten in
the east, and ten in the middle of the earth.
From every egg, a new race of demons and gin emerged,
like the ghouls, poisonous scorpions, terrifying nightbirds, venomous snakes, and
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other creatures, each of them an enemy to mankind. Satan's seed,
if you will, is spread far and wide, and while
he has, like other jin, the ability to move between
the mortal and unseen world, he primarily lords over them
all from his very own kingdom. It said that he
presides in a huge palace that sits over a body
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of water, guarded by tens of thousands of gin where
he holds court and presumably where he lives with his big,
terrifying evil family, And that palace is exactly where you
think it would be in the lowest depths of Hell.
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Theologians have argued for millennia about Hell, just like they
have about Heaven, especially about whether it's a literal or
figurative place. Maybe we're already in Hell, having been kicked
at of paradise. Maybe Hell is all in our minds.
It's our fear and terror and despair, and maybe, just
maybe it's as real a place as the planet Earth.
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Regardless of the majority of the major world religions entertained
the concept of Hell or very much believe in it
as an actual place, and in nearly all versions, Hell
is a place of fire. Fire, no doubt, strikes terror
in all humans, whether a punishment or a purification. Fire,
when we aren't able to control it, inspires fear, causes pain,
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and in the end leaves us as nothing but ashes.
But also fire can be a means to an end,
a trial that we are willing to face, a sacrificial
device to get what we want. And thousands of years ago,
the cult of an ancient God understood that the Ammonite
deity Moloch meaning King, was a terrifying god worshiped by
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the Canaanites, terrifying because the only sacrifice that appeased him
were children. Molok is sometimes depicted as having the body
of a man in the head of a bull, although
no such descriptions actually exist from that time, but rabbinic
texts do describe the deity as being made of bronze
and hollow, with seven compartments. Some have said that Molok
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was a demon that humans made into a pagan god,
but not just any demon, one of the princes of
the underworld. In fact, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost describes
Molok as one of the chiefs of Satan's Jin's, a
great demon warrior that even delivered a speech in the
parliament of Hell, who was then transformed into a deity
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by mankind. The pagan priests made their offerings to Moloch,
and each of these compartments. In the first they put flower,
in the second, turtle doves, and the third, a you.
In the fourth, a ram in the fifth, a calf
in the sixth and ox, and in the seventh a child.
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Molok was an insatiable god, devouring everything that was offered
to him. It said that the massive bronze Idol was
built with arms that pointed into the sky, palms upward,
and that whatever was placed into the palms rolled down
into his open mouth and into the hollow belly, where
a fire burned day and night. The worshippers offered children
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and babies into Molok's flames to ward off destruction or
ensure prosperity. In a ritual. The twelfth century Rabbi Rashi
described this way, and they heeded him from his lower parts,
and his hands being stretched out and made hot. They
put the child between his hands, and it was burnt
when it vehemently cried out. But the priests beat a
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drum that the father might not hear the voice of
his own son, and that his heart might not be moved. Oftentimes,
the children had been bought from poor families, and if
the parents shed a single tear during the sacrifice, the
entire ritual would be null and void. The sacrifice wouldn't
be accepted, and they would have to return the money,
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and their child would still be dead. Now, the God
of the Israelites was having none of it, which is
why he thunders in Leviticus, and thou shalt not let
any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molick.
Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. I
am the Lord. The Hebrew Bible also names the place
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where these sacrifices were made in the Book of Jeremiah.
And they built up the high places of ball, which
are in the valley of the sons of Hainom, to
cause their sons and daughters to pass through the fire
onto Moloch, which I commanded them. Not that valley where
thousands of children were burned in sacrifice is found in Jerusalem,
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and it's known by the name of Gehenna or Gehennum.
But Gehennum is not just that physical place, that valley
in Jerusalem. In Judaism, the word Gahnum is also used
to describe the place of torment reserved for the wicked
after death, and the New Testament used the Greek form Gehenna,
mentioned twelve times in the same sense, and in the
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Islamic religion, the name of the place of eternal damnation
is mentioned dozens and dozens of times in scripture and
prophetic traditions, is called Jehannum. No horrifying detail is spared
throughout these traditions and describing this place of everlasting punishment.
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The second century Apocalypse of Peter tell us that in
Hell those who blaspheme the name of the Lord are
suspended by their tongues over flaming lake. Murder victims get
to witness the endless torment and torture of their murderers,
and those who slander others have their eyes burned out
by hot irons. The New Testament describes Hell as a
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place of no escape, a second, unending death for those
trapped in it, where the worm does not die, and
the fire is not quenched, and the smoke of the
tormented goes up forever and ever, and they have no
rest day and night. And the Islamic sources go even
further in details, describing a place where the suffering is
both physical and spiritual, where sufferers are covered in blazing
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pitch and tar, their burned skins exchanged constantly for new
ones so they continue to feel pain. Where when they
cry for food and drink, they're given boiling, putrid water
and thorny, dry vegetation that provides no respite from thirst
or hunger. Hell itself is said to be huge, split
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into levels, with seven gates of entry, sinners sorted according
to their sins, in a pit that is so deep
that if a stone is thrown into it it would
take seventy years to reach the bottom. Its walls so
thick that it would take forty years just to walk therewith.
It's said that on the day of Judgment, Hell will
be dragged before all of mankind with seventy thousand rains,
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and every single reign will be held by seventy thousand angels.
Hell will breathe inhaling and exhaling like a sentient being,
roaring and fury. And God will ask Hell whether it
is full and satisfied yet, and Hell will answer, are
there any more to come? And in this hell, according
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to sources from each of the Abrahamic religions, you will
find Satan, both captive but also commanding, trapped himself in
the hell fire, but with the power to order his
legions of demon gin to wreak havoc on mankind. At least,
according to revelations, he was locked up there for an
appointed time. Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven,
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holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit
and a great chain. He sees the dragon, the ancient serpent,
who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for
a thousand years, and threw him into the pit and
locked and sealed it over, so that he would deceive
the nation's no more until the thousand years were ended.
After that he must be let out. For most believers,
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though Satan isn't confined to anyone place, He can be
found anywhere except for where the name of God is invoked.
One prophetic tradition even says that Satan can be found
flowing through human veins right there in our own blood.
Whether Satan is still stuck in hell itself, or he
roams the earth, or flows through our bodies, or only
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occupies our minds, well, the truth is we might never
know until it's too late, But we do know this.
The hell on earth that was created at Gehenna, where
children were burned alive for the pleasure of Molok, is
long gone. The valley itself, of course, still remains, and
today if the cries of those children still echo through
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the sand and the dust, reaching across the millennia, you
may not be able to hear it because today, Gehenna
is a popular venue in Jerusalem for music concerts. When
Lucifer went from being the morning star in heaven to
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the accursed Satan in hell, everything about him was transformed.
He was described before the fall not only to be
brilliant of mind and good of spirit, but also absolutely
beautiful to behold, Lucifer outshone the angels that surrounded him
with his stunning good looks. He was so handsome, in fact,
that in Ezekiel, God says of him, you were the
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seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious
stone adorned you. Your heart was lifted up because of
your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of
your splendor. The sin of arrogance not only lost Lucifer
his rank in heaven and his favor with God, but
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also his perfect good looks. He isn't described in much
detail in any of the sacred texts in terms of
what he looked like when he was transformed into Satan,
but the Book of Revelation in the New Testament describes
the devil as an ancient serpent that looks like a
red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Some texts
say that he's blind in one eye and has exactly
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seven hairs on his chin. The story goes that Satan
once showed the prophet Enoch an egg and told him
that God had shaped the world like that egg, which
really Piste knock off because he knew it wasn't true,
so he told Satan no, No, God shaped the earth
like the eye of a needle, and he held out
a needle so Satan could get a closer look. That
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didn't end well for Satan, because Enoch took the opportunity
to jab him in the right eye, blinding him in
that eye for good. But the horned, grotesque, forked tongue
tailed monster that we tend to imagine as Satan, well,
that image didn't emerge until the Middle Ages. According to
religious scholar Jeffrey Russell, in medieval times, the Church began
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emphasizing the evil power of Satan more and more to
scare believers and the compliance, and along with that emerged
artists who didn't have much to go on from the Bible,
so they drew from various pagan deities to create images
of a fearsome prince of darkness, cloven hooves, horns, wings,
a tail, and other beastly features were cobbled together from
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various myths and traditions to give us the goat headed
Satan were familiar with. The fifty century painting called Inferno
by Italian painter Giovanni do Modina depicts a nightmare Satan
ten times the size of humans that suffer around him,
with wings and claws and two heads, one of which
is between his legs, both of them devouring some poor sinner.
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In the Muslim world, Satan was similarly visualized, appearing and
painted manuscripts as a massive, dark, beast like figure. Writers
like Dante added to the visual with fantastic details, like
giving him three heads each munching on three great traitors
in history Judas, Ascaria, Brutus, and Cassius. His Satan has
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the body of a human, six massive wings, furry lower legs,
and the claws of beast, and he's half frozen in
a lake of ice, an image made real by the
sixteenth century painter Cornelius gall. By the eighteenth century, depictions
of Satan had morphed from beastly to a human like form,
a deceptive sly we s lee figure one that we've
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seen fairly frequently in pop culture. This Satan was less
of a threat because he would tear you limb from limb,
and more so a threat because he would trick, seduce,
and persuade you into sin. Think Angel Heart or Devil's
Advocate films in which Satan is personified as a manipulative
con man, luring people deep into the darkest parts of themselves. Now,
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in many of these tales, the hapless protagonist has no
idea that they're dealing with Satan until it's too late,
until the weakness and their own soul has been thoroughly exposed.
But then there are those who willingly seek out the
devil in hopes of making a deal. But as we
all know, these deals are generally a losing prospect. Just
ask Dorian Gray or Daniel Webster. After all, the House,
(32:48):
or in this case, Satan always wins, even in court.
By the way, allow me to direct your attention to
the nineteen federal case Gerald Mayo versus Satan and his staff. Now,
I'm not making this up. Mayo alleged in his claim
that quote Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery
(33:09):
and unwarranted threats against the will of plaintiff, and that
Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has
caused Plaintiff's downfall, and had therefore deprived him of his
constitutional rights. The court didn't just dismiss the claim outright.
They actually first considered whether or not they had jurisdiction
over the devil. He was a foreign prince, mused the judge,
(33:32):
so maybe he could claim sovereign immunity. Ultimately, though, the
court had to dismiss the suit, not because the claims
were outlandish, but because the plaintiff had failed to indicate
how exactly U S. Marshals were supposed to serve the
complaint on the devil address unknown if you will. The
(33:55):
Muslim scripture that Kuran minces no words when it comes
to warning mankind about Satan. Verily, Satan is an enemy
to you, so treat him as an enemy. He only
invites his adherence so that they may become companions of
the blazing Fire. But while Satan might seem like an
undefeatable adversary, the truth is the power balance between Satan
(34:19):
and humankind actually tips in our favor. He might be
an avowed enemy to us. But even then, Satan has
no power over anyone. He can't make anyone do anything.
It's because we have free will, that most dangerous power.
We can choose right from wrong. We have the emotional
and intellectual capacity to know when we're hurting others, and
(34:41):
whether we care or not about that is also up
to us. There's a fascinating passage in the Garan that
lays this dynamic out clearly, in which the sinner condemned
to hell is pointing a finger at Satan, who isn't
having it, and Satan will say, when the matter is decided,
it was God who gave you a prom miss of truth.
(35:01):
I too promised, but I betrayed you. I had no
authority over you except to call you, but you responded
to me. Then blame me, not but blame your own souls.
I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I
reject you associating me with God, for there must be
a grievous penalty for those who do wrong and worship
false gods. And this passage takes us all the way
(35:25):
back to the beginning of Satan's story, when he fell
from heaven, disgraced, for his arrogance and disobedience to God,
we are told, But there are those who say that
we are completely misunderstanding the story and misunderstanding Satan. Some Sufis,
those esoteric mystical Muslims, believe that Satan preferred to be
(35:45):
damned to hell for eternity than betray his devotion to God. Satan,
they believe, didn't refuse to bow down to Adam out
of arrogance for thinking he was greater than this dingy
clay creature. Rather, he refused to bow down because he
was a strict monotheist, and Monotheists only worship and bow
(36:05):
down to one God. As a devout believer and the
devoted lover of God's Satan would only ever bow down
to the Almighty and never to anyone or anything else.
He knew that God was God. He had been in
God's company, in the company of God's angels. He had
witnessed both God's heaven and his Hell. How then, could
(36:26):
Satan prostrate himself to anyone other than the One True God?
Even he wasn't that lowly. In fact, there's a well
known story told by numerous classical Muslim scholars about an
encounter that Moses has with Satan. Moses asks the devil,
why did you refuse God's order to bow to Adam?
(36:46):
And Satan responds that it wasn't an order, It was
a test, a test of his singular devotion to God
and God alone in that case, said Moses, why would
God turn you out from heaven, turn you from Lucifer
into Satan? The accursed? This form, responded, Satan is just temporary.
It too shall pass, and as far as Satan was concerned,
(37:07):
his love for God remained the same. Now, I know
the reasoning here seems a bit convoluted, but it does
pose an important question about the nature of Satan versus
the nature of mankind. If Satan is able to say, hey,
I never did any of the evil stuff that was
all you. I never killed or hurt anyone. I never
worshiped false gods. I never pillaged entire nations, enslaved and
(37:31):
wiped out whole communities. I just suggested these things to you,
and your own pride and envy, greed lust led you
to commit heinous acts. Well, then who is actually the
evil one here? If it's us, then it doesn't even
seem like we need Satan, because we can do terrible
(37:52):
all by ourselves. Thanks for joining us this week. Next
week we'll be back to take you another step into
the world of the Hidden Gin. Until then, remember we
are not alone. If you loved today's episode, I'm gonna
(38:15):
ask you a big favor. Please stop my iTunes and
leave me a rating and a review, even if it's
just one short sentence. Not only is that how other
listeners discover the podcast, but it's also what keeps the
podcast going. And for every thousand reviews that I get
on iTunes, I'll release another Patreon episode absolutely free. That's right,
(38:36):
We're on Patreon, so if you're a Jin enthusiast, check
out the Companion Patreon series at patreon dot com slash
Hidden Jin. Again, that's patreon dot com slash Hidden Gin
and remember Jin is spelled d j I n N.
That's where you're gonna find an amazing series of interviews
between me, scholars, experts, aretas, historians, and every day la
(38:57):
people who have had extraordinary experiences with Jin and everybody
can check out the first episode absolutely free. It's me
and my husband sharing our Jen stories and it was
a lot of fun. And if you have any Gin stories,
well I'd love to hear from you. Email me at
the Hidden Gin at gmail dot com. Once again, it's
the Hidden Gin Gin with a D at gmail dot
(39:20):
com and you might just hear back from me, or
you might hear your story on this show. And finally,
don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram with the handle the Hidden Gin. There you
can tweet, post, insta dm me. I'd love to hear
from all of you, and believe me, I read every
single message. The Hidden Gin is a production of I
(39:46):
Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The
podcast is written and hosted by Robbia Chaudry and produced
by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and At Frederick. Music for the show was
provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Our theme song was created
(40:07):
by Patrick Cortez. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Yah Welcome to the Hidden Gin, A production of I
Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Long
(00:31):
before man inhabited the earth, it was the exclusive domain
of the Gin. They lived in societies and communities, had hierarchies,
kingdoms with kings and queens, tribes with chiefs and ministers,
and of course ordinary Gin citizenst century Persian polymath Zakaria
al Kaswini wrote about that time in his Marvelous Home.
(00:53):
When Cosmology called the Wonders of Creation, it is related
in that his Trees that a race of Gin in
ancient times, before the creation of Adam, inhabited the earth
and covered it the land and the sea, and the
plains and the mountains, and the favors of God were
multiplied upon them, and they had government and prophecy, and
(01:14):
religion and law. But they transgressed and offended, and opposed
their profits and wickedness to abound in the earth. Whereupon God,
whose name be exalted, sent against them an army of angels,
who took possession of the earth and drove away the
jinns to the regions of the islands, and made many
of them prisoners. And of those prisoners was as a
(01:37):
zeal and a slaughter was made among them at that time.
As a Zeala was young. He grew up among the
angels and became learned in their knowledge and assumed the
government of them, and his days were prolonged until he
became their chief. And thus it continued for a long time.
(01:57):
This Jin as a zeal not only raised his ranks
above the gin, ruling over them for a thousand years,
but he also raised his ranks above the angels themselves.
It said that he had more knowledge of both the
seen and unseen realms, was more pious and righteous than
the angels, and even rose into heaven with them. So
(02:17):
intense was his devotion to God. There wasn't a place
on heaven or earth that he had prostrated himself in worship,
such was his love for the Almighty. But one day
it all came crashing down. He lost everything, and he
went from being Azazel, a jin among angels, praised in
the heavens and earth, to how we know him today,
(02:40):
despised and feared, condemned to the depths of hell. We
know him by many names, dozens, Ablis, Mastama, Belzebub, Abadon, Diabolos, Bafa,
met shadon Sama eel Satan himself, the accuser, the hated,
(03:02):
the adversary, the great deceiver. That's right, the one that
rules over the most evil jin the demons, is none
other than Satan, and all of his deception and treachery
is reserved for us, mere mortals. My name is Rob
and I'll be your guide into the world of the
(03:22):
hidden gin. Welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Every tradition that entertains the
(03:46):
idea of Satan has for centuries and longer debated whether
or not Satan is an actual entity. Even in those
traditions that believe very much in God and angels and prophets,
there are groups that way how my suh of scripture
is literal and how much is figurative. For many Sufis,
those mystics of the Islamic world, Satan personifies evil, but
(04:09):
may not actually exist as an evil being. Roumi, one
of the very few Sufi saints and poets known in
the Western world, viewed Satan as a manifestation of the
sins of arrogance and envy. To him, Satan, the one
I devil, represented a half blind intellect that could see
no further than the surface, unable to see the essence
(04:30):
within others. Others connected the characteristics of Satan to the
mechanics of the human psyche, with the angels representing the
light in us and Satan representing the darkness. But then
there is no dearth of literature and text, and sincere
belief that Satan is much more than just an idea
or a representation of our inner condition, too many. Satan
(04:52):
was and is very much in existence, just as we are.
He was born, he lives, and he will die. Satan
appears in all three of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam as a fairly similar figure, someone who took
a position among angels brilliant and beloved, called Lucifer in
(05:14):
the Bible, meaning star of the morning. He didn't stay exalted.
The story of Satan's fall from grace and from heaven itself,
why he was thrown out of favor with God, why
he became an eternal enemy to mankind, That part has
some similarities, but also some interesting differences. According to the
Jewish Encyclopedia, Semma, l the head of all demons, was
(05:37):
once a mighty prince of the angels in heaven. He
was born and will eventually die. He's a celestial being
that can fly through the air and can assume any
animal or human form. He's only mentioned by name as
Hassathan the Satan twice in the entire Hebrew Bible, and
both times in the Book of Job and the Book
(05:57):
of Zachariah. He's present as a part a divine counsel
of sorts a heavenly court, where his role is kind
of like a public prosecutor. Hence he's the accuser. He
not only levels charges against those being tried, he urges
God to meet out the toughest punishments. Beyond these mentions,
there's not much to be said in the Talmut about Satan,
(06:20):
and his role is as a figure subservient to God.
It's a different story altogether with the New Testament, though,
where Satan really comes into his own, appearing by name
thirty six times, having grown fully into the evil part
of the good versus evil dichotomy. Now we have all
heard of the various temptations of Christ by Satan, but
(06:42):
it's Satan's early interactions with mankind that really deserve examining,
because that's where we unearthed the root of his enmity.
Towards mankind. And in the New Testament that happens when Satan,
in the guise of a serpent, tempts Adam and Eve
to eat the forbidden fruit. But that again begs the
(07:02):
question of why why would he do that? Well? To
answer it, we have to backtrack just a bit between
the Old and the New Testament to writings that fell
in between, and there we find one ancient Jewish apocryphal
group of writings known as Apocalypse of Moses, in which
Satan minces no words with Adam and tells him exactly
(07:24):
what his beef is. What asks Adam of Satan? Have
I done to you? Oh Adam, all my enmity, jealousy,
and resentment is towards you, Since on account of you,
I was expelled and alienated from my glory which I
had in heaven in the midst of the angels. On
account of you, I was cast out upon the earth.
(07:47):
On account of you, I was cast out from heaven.
When you were formed, I was cast out from the
face of God and was sent forth from the company
of angels. The Lord God then said, behold, Adam, I
made you in our image and likeness, And the Archangel
Michael called all the angels, saying, worship the image of
the Lord God, just as the Lord God has commanded.
(08:09):
Michael himself worshiped. Then he called me and said, worship
the image of God Jehovah. And I answered, I do
not have it within me to worship Adam. I will
not worship him who is lower and posterior to me.
I am prior to that creature, before he was made.
I had already been made. He ought to worship me.
(08:31):
This is the same story that appears nearly a millennia later,
but this time in the Muslim Holy Scripture the Koran.
Satan is called by the name Eblis in the Koran,
and of the eleven times he's mentioned by name, nine
of them are connected to this incident. When Satan refused
to bow down to Adam, God says in the Koran,
(08:53):
we said to the angels, prostrate to Adam. And they
prostrated except for Ablist. He said, should I austraight to
one you created from clay? Do you see this one
whom you have honored above me? If you delay me
until the day of resurrection, I will surely destroy his
descendants except for a few. Another story not from the Koran,
(09:15):
but from the Stages draws this saga out further. It
says that when God created the form of Adam out
of clay, but had not yet blown a soul into him,
a Blize was mystified. He began to observe this lifeless thing,
just slowly drying out, sitting propped up outside the gates
of the Garden of Eden, and he started to suspect
(09:35):
that it was just a hollow form. So it Belize
started throwing pebbles at Adam, and he heard a hollow clink.
What the heck? What was this creature? He had never
seen anything like it. He wanted to get a closer
look at the first human who lay there, quiet and
still lifeless. Yet, so it Blize entered the drawing clay form,
(09:57):
swimming through the body of this new creation, and low
and behold there was nothing on the inside. It was
completely empty. That for sure didn't impress Satan no way,
Nohow was the Belize going to bow down to this muddy, hollow, dumb,
powerless thing when he himself was powerful, made out a fire,
(10:17):
could travel through the heavens and the earth, knew everything
there was to know in all of the realms. And
it was this arrogance, this clear disobedience to God, that
was his downfall. But he wasn't going to go down alone.
If he would lose Paradise, so would Adam, and so
would the children of Adam now and forever. How are
(10:47):
you fallen from heaven, o, Lucifer, son of the Morning
How are you cut down to the ground, you who
weakened the nation's For you have said in your heart,
I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God. I will also sit on
the mount of the congregation, on the farthest sides of
the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud.
(11:09):
I will be like the most high. Yet you shall
be brought down to shield, to the lowest depths of
the pit. God was not having Lucifer's arrogance, as we
can see in this passage from Isaiah, and a new
chapter was about to begin for him. He would be
reborn from Lucifer the Morning Star to Satan the Despised.
(11:32):
In Islamic theology, he went from being ablist he who
has despaired, to Satan the adversary Shathon or Satan now
fully humiliated, was ready to leave heaven, but first he
had one rather important request. Satan asked God to be
given until the end of time to show God that, hey,
(11:52):
this claymation thing you think is so great, it isn't.
It's weak, it's limited, it's stupid. It won't be good
and right and pure the way you want it to be.
It will be corrupt and greedy and jealous and violent
and bloodthirsty. And I will prove it to you by
spending the rest of my days pulling it away from
everything good towards everything wrong. I'll prove to you that
(12:16):
you were wrong. So Satan raises the challenge to God,
because thou hast thrown me out of the way low,
I will lie in wait for them on thy straight way.
Then I will assault them from before them and behind them,
from their right and their left. And God responded, get
out from here, be gone with you, disgraced and expelled.
(12:39):
If any of them follow thee, I will fill hell
with you all tempt with your call, all whom you wish,
muster against them, all your forces, your cavalry, and your
foot soldiers, share with them riches and offspring, and seduce
them with rosy promises. Satan's promise is nothing but a deception. Still,
(12:59):
God granted Staton a stay of execution if you will.
He gave him all the time in the world to
see what kind of havoc he could wreak, and ever
since then it's been on. Satan began his assault on
mankind early in the game by deceiving Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden. While the Christian tradition relates
that Satan entered the garden in the form of a snake,
(13:20):
the Muslim tradition differs a bit slightly. According to it,
Satan approached a number of animals that lived in the garden,
trying to get any of them on board to work
with him, and all of them refused except for one,
a serpent. So he told the serpent, I'll protect you
from the children of Adam. If you can get me
into the garden, you'll be protected forever from them, and
(13:43):
so she agreed. She smuggled Satan into the garden tucked
between her two front fangs, and as they casually idled
by the original power couple, Satan heard Adam tell Eve
that man he wished they could live forever and not
have to die. That was Satan's in Now he knew
what Adam's weakness was, and he knew exactly what to
(14:06):
promise him in order to get both of these humans
to disobey God. If you remember, they basically had the
entire garden at the disposal except for a single tree.
And so it was that tree hissed Satan to Adam
and Eve that bore the fruit that would give them immortality.
We all know how that story ends. Satan succeeded, gaining
(14:27):
an early lead on mankind right out of the gate.
After all, if Satan couldn't have the garden, no one would.
Now when Satan was cast out, he had enough foresight
to know if he was going to wage and never
ending war against mankind, he needed some backup. In the
Book of Jubilees, another ancient Jewish text, Satan says to
(14:47):
God referring to angels, he was used to hanging out
with Lord Creator. Let some of them remain before me,
and let them park into my voice and do all
that I shall say into them. For some of them
are not left to me. I shall not be able
to execute the power of my will on the sons
of men. For these are for corruption and leading astray,
for great is the wickedness of the sons of men.
(15:14):
According to the Book of Revelation, Satan took one third
of the angels with him in his fall. He gathered
together those angels and armies of Gin together to become
his legion of demons, whose sole purpose is to do
his bidding. Along with their master, these jinn were also
given an extra lease on life. They would live until
(15:34):
Judgment Day, when everything on this earth perishes, and they
would only die when their leader did. Now Irish Lord, however,
says that not all those who were cast out of
heaven with Lucifer became demons. Instead, they believe some of
the fallen angels became fairies. The book The Vengeful Jin
recounts the story documented by Celtic folklorist Alexander Carmichael and
(15:59):
October of eighteen seventy one, Carmichael found himself stuck on
the Scottish isle of Barra, where he met a ninety
two year old storyteller named Roderick McNeil. McNeil was a
legend himself, known to never have worn shoes in his life,
he had never fallen ill, and he had the climbing
skills of a goat. Even in his advanced age, McNeil
(16:20):
regaled the stranded Carmichael with local fairy tales. But here,
he said, is how it all began. The proud Angel
fomented a rebellion among the angels of Heaven, where he
had been a leading light. He declared that he would
go out and found a kingdom of his own. When
going out at the door of Heaven, the proud Angel
brought prickly and biting lightning out the doorstep with his heels.
(16:44):
Many angels followed him, so many that at last a
son called out, Father, Father, the city is being emptied,
whereupon the Father ordered the gates of Heaven and Hell
to be closed. This was instantly done, and those who
were in were in, and those who were out were out.
While the hosts who had left Heaven and had not
reached Hell, they flew into the holes of the earth.
(17:07):
These are the fairy folk, ever since, doomed to live
under the ground, and only permitted to emerge when and
where the King of Heaven permits. The parallels between this lord,
Christian belief and muslutricition is pretty strong, and perhaps one
main point of difference is this was a belief or
(17:27):
Lucifer as he was known, an angel himself, or was
he a gin that elevated himself to the level of angels.
Christian belief is strongly in the angel camp, but Muslim
scholars are conflicted about it. There are strong scriptural arguments
to be made that he was an angel, but just
as strong are the arguments that he was and is
a gin on some level, though it doesn't really matter.
(17:50):
What matters is his role after the fall from grace
that Satan became master over the demons, the most evil Jin,
and to this day he remains oh. Some traditions say
after his victory over Adam and Eve he married the
snake that had assisted him, and they went on to
have many demon children, and the names of the most
(18:11):
powerful of his sons, including the seven Jin Kings, are
well known. There's Alower, the one eyed demon, whose wheelhouse
is tempting humans to lud and vulgar behavior. Then their suit,
the father of lies, and closely related in purpose is
his brother is a lumber whose domain is dishonesty and
corruption in business. There's Dust him, whose only purpose is
(18:35):
to ruin marriages by turning a couple against each other.
There's Tear, who is in charge of striking people with
disaster and injury. And finally there's Danish, the most powerful
of all of Satan's sons, who lives in every dark void,
attacks his victims with blindness, and even lurks inside the
dark wombs of women ready to cosmos carriages. Along with
(18:59):
these powerful demon sons, carrying forth his royal line as
the Prince of Darkness, are hundreds of thousands of less
significant offspring. It said that Satan laid thirty eggs after
being expelled from heaven, ten in the west, ten in
the east, and ten in the middle of the earth.
From every egg, a new race of demons and gin emerged,
like the ghouls, poisonous scorpions, terrifying nightbirds, venomous snakes, and
(19:24):
other creatures, each of them an enemy to mankind. Satan's seed,
if you will, is spread far and wide, and while
he has, like other jin, the ability to move between
the mortal and unseen world, he primarily lords over them
all from his very own kingdom. It said that he
presides in a huge palace that sits over a body
(19:45):
of water, guarded by tens of thousands of gin where
he holds court and presumably where he lives with his big,
terrifying evil family, And that palace is exactly where you
think it would be in the lowest depths of Hell.
(20:06):
Theologians have argued for millennia about Hell, just like they
have about Heaven, especially about whether it's a literal or
figurative place. Maybe we're already in Hell, having been kicked
at of paradise. Maybe Hell is all in our minds.
It's our fear and terror and despair, and maybe, just
maybe it's as real a place as the planet Earth.
(20:27):
Regardless of the majority of the major world religions entertained
the concept of Hell or very much believe in it
as an actual place, and in nearly all versions, Hell
is a place of fire. Fire, no doubt, strikes terror
in all humans, whether a punishment or a purification. Fire,
when we aren't able to control it, inspires fear, causes pain,
(20:52):
and in the end leaves us as nothing but ashes.
But also fire can be a means to an end,
a trial that we are willing to face, a sacrificial
device to get what we want. And thousands of years ago,
the cult of an ancient God understood that the Ammonite
deity Moloch meaning King, was a terrifying god worshiped by
(21:15):
the Canaanites, terrifying because the only sacrifice that appeased him
were children. Molok is sometimes depicted as having the body
of a man in the head of a bull, although
no such descriptions actually exist from that time, but rabbinic
texts do describe the deity as being made of bronze
and hollow, with seven compartments. Some have said that Molok
(21:39):
was a demon that humans made into a pagan god,
but not just any demon, one of the princes of
the underworld. In fact, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost describes
Molok as one of the chiefs of Satan's Jin's, a
great demon warrior that even delivered a speech in the
parliament of Hell, who was then transformed into a deity
(22:00):
by mankind. The pagan priests made their offerings to Moloch,
and each of these compartments. In the first they put flower,
in the second, turtle doves, and the third, a you.
In the fourth, a ram in the fifth, a calf
in the sixth and ox, and in the seventh a child.
(22:24):
Molok was an insatiable god, devouring everything that was offered
to him. It said that the massive bronze Idol was
built with arms that pointed into the sky, palms upward,
and that whatever was placed into the palms rolled down
into his open mouth and into the hollow belly, where
a fire burned day and night. The worshippers offered children
(22:46):
and babies into Molok's flames to ward off destruction or
ensure prosperity. In a ritual. The twelfth century Rabbi Rashi
described this way, and they heeded him from his lower parts,
and his hands being stretched out and made hot. They
put the child between his hands, and it was burnt
when it vehemently cried out. But the priests beat a
(23:07):
drum that the father might not hear the voice of
his own son, and that his heart might not be moved. Oftentimes,
the children had been bought from poor families, and if
the parents shed a single tear during the sacrifice, the
entire ritual would be null and void. The sacrifice wouldn't
be accepted, and they would have to return the money,
(23:28):
and their child would still be dead. Now, the God
of the Israelites was having none of it, which is
why he thunders in Leviticus, and thou shalt not let
any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molick.
Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. I
am the Lord. The Hebrew Bible also names the place
(23:49):
where these sacrifices were made in the Book of Jeremiah.
And they built up the high places of ball, which
are in the valley of the sons of Hainom, to
cause their sons and daughters to pass through the fire
onto Moloch, which I commanded them. Not that valley where
thousands of children were burned in sacrifice is found in Jerusalem,
(24:13):
and it's known by the name of Gehenna or Gehennum.
But Gehennum is not just that physical place, that valley
in Jerusalem. In Judaism, the word Gahnum is also used
to describe the place of torment reserved for the wicked
after death, and the New Testament used the Greek form Gehenna,
mentioned twelve times in the same sense, and in the
(24:35):
Islamic religion, the name of the place of eternal damnation
is mentioned dozens and dozens of times in scripture and
prophetic traditions, is called Jehannum. No horrifying detail is spared
throughout these traditions and describing this place of everlasting punishment.
(24:57):
The second century Apocalypse of Peter tell us that in
Hell those who blaspheme the name of the Lord are
suspended by their tongues over flaming lake. Murder victims get
to witness the endless torment and torture of their murderers,
and those who slander others have their eyes burned out
by hot irons. The New Testament describes Hell as a
(25:18):
place of no escape, a second, unending death for those
trapped in it, where the worm does not die, and
the fire is not quenched, and the smoke of the
tormented goes up forever and ever, and they have no
rest day and night. And the Islamic sources go even
further in details, describing a place where the suffering is
both physical and spiritual, where sufferers are covered in blazing
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pitch and tar, their burned skins exchanged constantly for new
ones so they continue to feel pain. Where when they
cry for food and drink, they're given boiling, putrid water
and thorny, dry vegetation that provides no respite from thirst
or hunger. Hell itself is said to be huge, split
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into levels, with seven gates of entry, sinners sorted according
to their sins, in a pit that is so deep
that if a stone is thrown into it it would
take seventy years to reach the bottom. Its walls so
thick that it would take forty years just to walk therewith.
It's said that on the day of Judgment, Hell will
be dragged before all of mankind with seventy thousand rains,
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and every single reign will be held by seventy thousand angels.
Hell will breathe inhaling and exhaling like a sentient being,
roaring and fury. And God will ask Hell whether it
is full and satisfied yet, and Hell will answer, are
there any more to come? And in this hell, according
(26:49):
to sources from each of the Abrahamic religions, you will
find Satan, both captive but also commanding, trapped himself in
the hell fire, but with the power to order his
legions of demon gin to wreak havoc on mankind. At least,
according to revelations, he was locked up there for an
appointed time. Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven,
(27:12):
holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit
and a great chain. He sees the dragon, the ancient serpent,
who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for
a thousand years, and threw him into the pit and
locked and sealed it over, so that he would deceive
the nation's no more until the thousand years were ended.
After that he must be let out. For most believers,
(27:36):
though Satan isn't confined to anyone place, He can be
found anywhere except for where the name of God is invoked.
One prophetic tradition even says that Satan can be found
flowing through human veins right there in our own blood.
Whether Satan is still stuck in hell itself, or he
roams the earth, or flows through our bodies, or only
(27:59):
occupies our minds, well, the truth is we might never
know until it's too late, But we do know this.
The hell on earth that was created at Gehenna, where
children were burned alive for the pleasure of Molok, is
long gone. The valley itself, of course, still remains, and
today if the cries of those children still echo through
(28:20):
the sand and the dust, reaching across the millennia, you
may not be able to hear it because today, Gehenna
is a popular venue in Jerusalem for music concerts. When
Lucifer went from being the morning star in heaven to
(28:42):
the accursed Satan in hell, everything about him was transformed.
He was described before the fall not only to be
brilliant of mind and good of spirit, but also absolutely
beautiful to behold, Lucifer outshone the angels that surrounded him
with his stunning good looks. He was so handsome, in fact,
that in Ezekiel, God says of him, you were the
(29:05):
seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious
stone adorned you. Your heart was lifted up because of
your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of
your splendor. The sin of arrogance not only lost Lucifer
his rank in heaven and his favor with God, but
(29:26):
also his perfect good looks. He isn't described in much
detail in any of the sacred texts in terms of
what he looked like when he was transformed into Satan,
but the Book of Revelation in the New Testament describes
the devil as an ancient serpent that looks like a
red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Some texts
say that he's blind in one eye and has exactly
(29:48):
seven hairs on his chin. The story goes that Satan
once showed the prophet Enoch an egg and told him
that God had shaped the world like that egg, which
really Piste knock off because he knew it wasn't true,
so he told Satan no, No, God shaped the earth
like the eye of a needle, and he held out
a needle so Satan could get a closer look. That
(30:09):
didn't end well for Satan, because Enoch took the opportunity
to jab him in the right eye, blinding him in
that eye for good. But the horned, grotesque, forked tongue
tailed monster that we tend to imagine as Satan, well,
that image didn't emerge until the Middle Ages. According to
religious scholar Jeffrey Russell, in medieval times, the Church began
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emphasizing the evil power of Satan more and more to
scare believers and the compliance, and along with that emerged
artists who didn't have much to go on from the Bible,
so they drew from various pagan deities to create images
of a fearsome prince of darkness, cloven hooves, horns, wings,
a tail, and other beastly features were cobbled together from
(30:53):
various myths and traditions to give us the goat headed
Satan were familiar with. The fifty century painting called Inferno
by Italian painter Giovanni do Modina depicts a nightmare Satan
ten times the size of humans that suffer around him,
with wings and claws and two heads, one of which
is between his legs, both of them devouring some poor sinner.
(31:18):
In the Muslim world, Satan was similarly visualized, appearing and
painted manuscripts as a massive, dark, beast like figure. Writers
like Dante added to the visual with fantastic details, like
giving him three heads each munching on three great traitors
in history Judas, Ascaria, Brutus, and Cassius. His Satan has
(31:39):
the body of a human, six massive wings, furry lower legs,
and the claws of beast, and he's half frozen in
a lake of ice, an image made real by the
sixteenth century painter Cornelius gall. By the eighteenth century, depictions
of Satan had morphed from beastly to a human like form,
a deceptive sly we s lee figure one that we've
(32:01):
seen fairly frequently in pop culture. This Satan was less
of a threat because he would tear you limb from limb,
and more so a threat because he would trick, seduce,
and persuade you into sin. Think Angel Heart or Devil's
Advocate films in which Satan is personified as a manipulative
con man, luring people deep into the darkest parts of themselves. Now,
(32:24):
in many of these tales, the hapless protagonist has no
idea that they're dealing with Satan until it's too late,
until the weakness and their own soul has been thoroughly exposed.
But then there are those who willingly seek out the
devil in hopes of making a deal. But as we
all know, these deals are generally a losing prospect. Just
ask Dorian Gray or Daniel Webster. After all, the House,
(32:48):
or in this case, Satan always wins, even in court.
By the way, allow me to direct your attention to
the nineteen federal case Gerald Mayo versus Satan and his staff. Now,
I'm not making this up. Mayo alleged in his claim
that quote Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery
(33:09):
and unwarranted threats against the will of plaintiff, and that
Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has
caused Plaintiff's downfall, and had therefore deprived him of his
constitutional rights. The court didn't just dismiss the claim outright.
They actually first considered whether or not they had jurisdiction
over the devil. He was a foreign prince, mused the judge,
(33:32):
so maybe he could claim sovereign immunity. Ultimately, though, the
court had to dismiss the suit, not because the claims
were outlandish, but because the plaintiff had failed to indicate
how exactly U S. Marshals were supposed to serve the
complaint on the devil address unknown if you will. The
(33:55):
Muslim scripture that Kuran minces no words when it comes
to warning mankind about Satan. Verily, Satan is an enemy
to you, so treat him as an enemy. He only
invites his adherence so that they may become companions of
the blazing Fire. But while Satan might seem like an
undefeatable adversary, the truth is the power balance between Satan
(34:19):
and humankind actually tips in our favor. He might be
an avowed enemy to us. But even then, Satan has
no power over anyone. He can't make anyone do anything.
It's because we have free will, that most dangerous power.
We can choose right from wrong. We have the emotional
and intellectual capacity to know when we're hurting others, and
(34:41):
whether we care or not about that is also up
to us. There's a fascinating passage in the Garan that
lays this dynamic out clearly, in which the sinner condemned
to hell is pointing a finger at Satan, who isn't
having it, and Satan will say, when the matter is decided,
it was God who gave you a prom miss of truth.
(35:01):
I too promised, but I betrayed you. I had no
authority over you except to call you, but you responded
to me. Then blame me, not but blame your own souls.
I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I
reject you associating me with God, for there must be
a grievous penalty for those who do wrong and worship
false gods. And this passage takes us all the way
(35:25):
back to the beginning of Satan's story, when he fell
from heaven, disgraced, for his arrogance and disobedience to God,
we are told, But there are those who say that
we are completely misunderstanding the story and misunderstanding Satan. Some Sufis,
those esoteric mystical Muslims, believe that Satan preferred to be
(35:45):
damned to hell for eternity than betray his devotion to God. Satan,
they believe, didn't refuse to bow down to Adam out
of arrogance for thinking he was greater than this dingy
clay creature. Rather, he refused to bow down because he
was a strict monotheist, and Monotheists only worship and bow
(36:05):
down to one God. As a devout believer and the
devoted lover of God's Satan would only ever bow down
to the Almighty and never to anyone or anything else.
He knew that God was God. He had been in
God's company, in the company of God's angels. He had
witnessed both God's heaven and his Hell. How then, could
(36:26):
Satan prostrate himself to anyone other than the One True God?
Even he wasn't that lowly. In fact, there's a well
known story told by numerous classical Muslim scholars about an
encounter that Moses has with Satan. Moses asks the devil,
why did you refuse God's order to bow to Adam?
(36:46):
And Satan responds that it wasn't an order, It was
a test, a test of his singular devotion to God
and God alone in that case, said Moses, why would
God turn you out from heaven, turn you from Lucifer
into Satan? The accursed? This form, responded, Satan is just temporary.
It too shall pass, and as far as Satan was concerned,
(37:07):
his love for God remained the same. Now, I know
the reasoning here seems a bit convoluted, but it does
pose an important question about the nature of Satan versus
the nature of mankind. If Satan is able to say, hey,
I never did any of the evil stuff that was
all you. I never killed or hurt anyone. I never
worshiped false gods. I never pillaged entire nations, enslaved and
(37:31):
wiped out whole communities. I just suggested these things to you,
and your own pride and envy, greed lust led you
to commit heinous acts. Well, then who is actually the
evil one here? If it's us, then it doesn't even
seem like we need Satan, because we can do terrible
(37:52):
all by ourselves. Thanks for joining us this week. Next
week we'll be back to take you another step into
the world of the Hidden Gin. Until then, remember we
are not alone. If you loved today's episode, I'm gonna
(38:15):
ask you a big favor. Please stop my iTunes and
leave me a rating and a review, even if it's
just one short sentence. Not only is that how other
listeners discover the podcast, but it's also what keeps the
podcast going. And for every thousand reviews that I get
on iTunes, I'll release another Patreon episode absolutely free. That's right,
(38:36):
We're on Patreon, so if you're a Jin enthusiast, check
out the Companion Patreon series at patreon dot com slash
Hidden Jin. Again, that's patreon dot com slash Hidden Gin
and remember Jin is spelled d j I n N.
That's where you're gonna find an amazing series of interviews
between me, scholars, experts, aretas, historians, and every day la
(38:57):
people who have had extraordinary experiences with Jin and everybody
can check out the first episode absolutely free. It's me
and my husband sharing our Jen stories and it was
a lot of fun. And if you have any Gin stories,
well I'd love to hear from you. Email me at
the Hidden Gin at gmail dot com. Once again, it's
the Hidden Gin Gin with a D at gmail dot
(39:20):
com and you might just hear back from me, or
you might hear your story on this show. And finally,
don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram with the handle the Hidden Gin. There you
can tweet, post, insta dm me. I'd love to hear
from all of you, and believe me, I read every
single message. The Hidden Gin is a production of I
(39:46):
Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The
podcast is written and hosted by Robbia Chaudry and produced
by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and At Frederick. Music for the show was
provided by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Our theme song was created
(40:07):
by Patrick Cortez. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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