May 5, 2022 • 46 mins
Forget everything you learned about 'genies' from Aladdin - tales of the Jinn, also called Djinn, are ancient and not at all as family-friendly as Disney might have you believe. So what are these mysterious creatures, exactly? Join the guys as they delve into the strange story of smokeless fire, parallel worlds and hidden, sentient life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we're all big, big fans of folklore. Folklore is
a fascinating way to explore history, to explore a culture,
to explore the world around you. And it may surprise
some folks living in the West to learn that things
the West treats as folklore are treated very much as
(00:25):
reality in different parts of the world. In ancient North
African and Middle Eastern belief systems, there is another type
of sentient creature that exists invisible all around you, and
they have their own beliefs, they have their own motivations.
They're called Jin. Matt, you did you epd a wonderful
(00:49):
series on Jin that happened after we did this episode. Yeah,
there's a whole show right now that you can find
called The Hidden Jin. Check it out. It's it's really great,
hosted by Robbia Shaudry and uh an excellent show. It's
on the Grim and Mild slate of shows from Aaron Mankey.
But guys, we're talking about genies, right, Yes, I know
(01:12):
these things. They're blue, they shake, shift, they do great impressions. Right,
A particular type of gin made, but there are many
types of gin. You know, the coolest part of their
origin story is that they were created out of smokeless fire,
which I always thought was so cool. Sorry, guys, sorry,
(01:35):
I guess Emily I heard we're talking about Gin Uh
you got can I have my Well, there's uh. And
we're also not talking about Jin the Rapper formally with
DMX who it was pretty good, just a splash of
tonic for me. So let's learn about together, guys. That's
(01:58):
it rom you as too, psychic powers and government conspiracies.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(02:18):
welcome back to the show. My name is Max, my
name is Noel, I'm Ben. You are you? And that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We
hope this podcast finds you amid Grand Adventure. If so,
we'd love to hear about it. So I'll just get
this out of the way, because we talk about the
Twitter and the Facebook stuff usually at the end of
the show, right us, Well, we'll just we'll just mention
(02:40):
here that if you haven't found us yet, please do.
We are conspiracy stuff on both Facebook and Twitter, and
that's one of the most immediate ways to contact us.
We would like to thank the listeners out there who
wrote to us several times over the past months and
asked us to cover this topic because it just kept
popping up in conversation, right, yeah, would pop up in
(03:00):
conversation and on the fringes of a topic that we
were discussing. It came up I think in Alchemy. I
remember you guys mentioning it, and it came up in
a couple other places right before that too. I also
seem to recall it coming up one time. I was like,
all right, all Jin demons, and Ben schooled me real quick.
So hopefully we'll get some more of that schooling. Oh
I don't know. We might get schooled on this one, guys.
(03:21):
We might. We might be the ones going to school
because this is one of our This is an episode
that's somewhere between a folklore episode, a cryptic episode of
possession episode. Jin run into a lot of things, and
first first we have to do a disclaimer for this one.
As Ben said, this is an academic exploration of this
(03:45):
topic about the folklore behind the what a gin is,
what Jin are, and we're not we're not trying to
persuade anybody to look at anything in a certain way,
especially uh to ascribe to any certain set of beliefs
or anything like that. Right, and our goal is not
to confirm or deny anyone's religious beliefs. Right. Your spiritual convictions,
as always, are your own. So let's get into this exploration.
(04:10):
This is fascinated the three of us for a long time.
If you grew up in the West and are not
uh practitioner of Islam or not familiar with some of
the beliefs surrounding the Middle East and other related parts
of the world, then you probably have some very specific
ideas of what a jin or a genie is. Oh sure,
(04:34):
I mean a lot of my beliefs come from pop culture,
from movies, television, books, comics, things where it would be
a genie usually spelled with a G, sometimes spelled with
a J, as in the case of I had dream
of genie. Yes, yes, exactly, that's back from the sixties.
That's always the image I had of what it looked
like inside the lamp. She had cushions everywhere, and it
(04:54):
was like this built in like you know, it looked
like a really sweet RV or something, you know, like
with shag carpeting, you know, like it was nice. It
was super nice. Yeah. Well then you go you go
to you know, horror films that look at genie's Like
wish Master was one that I've watched when I was younger.
I probably shouldn't have watched it back then. Wasn't that
a West Craven movie? I think Wes Craven was part
(05:16):
of he produced it or something. Uh. Yeah, But then
we get to Aladdin, the Disney movie, which you know,
I don't know but you guys, but I was quoting
that movie for years. Yeah. Man, I had that soundtrack
on CD. It's a fantastic It's just a fantastic film.
We watched it recently, and that that holds up for
a film film? Yeah, well yeah it was film. Uh.
(05:38):
And then you you know, you move a little bit
forward and you get to video games, where there are
different types of jin's uh that I've encountered in many
a virtual world. You probably have too. So what do
we know about what these gins are? From these things?
I have to say, I think he passed over a
very important gen Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice. Oh sorry,
(05:58):
I also packed passed over Zam. You know, Oh we
forgot Kazam yeah, Shack, thank you narrowly avoided the email
on that from Shack himself. So what do we know
about genies from those pieces of pop culture. Well, here
are some of the main I guess we can call
them tropes that have been established about your standard run
of the mill genie jin who call it what you will. Uh. One,
(06:23):
Often they are imprisoned inside a material artifact, usually a
ring or you know, typically a lamp, and I guess
it could be really anything, could be perhaps a chest
of some kind, like a book, even you know, you
see different versions. Remember um, the care Bears movie where
there was this creepy green faced ghost thing trapped inside
(06:44):
of a book and made the magician's assistant like, do
weird stuff? I do not. I would argue that that
is a gin in a way, because it's sort of
imprisoned inside this artifact. Anyway, I digress. That always scare
the crap out of when I was a kid. That
felt like a very intense film when I was really intense. Yeah, anyway,
So that's that's that's a huge part of it. Number Two,
(07:07):
Typically they grant wishes with perilous outcomes and think of
even like in films you have like an evil like
apparition that can say I can make this happen for you,
you know, but then other things fall apart as a
result of it. You know. That's not really what we
think of when we think of a Laddin, you know,
but that usually those wishes were I want to be
the king or I want to be you know, Prince
(07:28):
Sali or whatever, and that all worked out. But there
are well, there are things that go wrong along the
way trying to get this wish, but doesn't necessarily have
this built in catastrophe like this one to one like
you wish that made something horrible has happened to somebody else,
so um, the perilous outcomes definitely different versions of that.
And finally, I mean, a really common perception of this
(07:49):
genie type of gin um is that they have magical powers,
you know, can shape shift. And to me, something that
it always sticks with it for me is that they
have a master that once they appear to them, they
are bound to that master until they have used up
some finite number of wishes. Interesting stuff, you know, because
(08:10):
what we're talking about now would be again these Western
conceptions we have baseballers on pop culture. Probably one of
the biggest popularizers of the of Jin folklore. The concept
of Jinn comes to us from uh Sharra's Odd and
the thousand and one Stories, right, or excuse me, a
(08:31):
thousand and one Arabian Nights. But before we go into
the actual world or belief system involving Gin, I have
to ask you, guys, because I can't let it go listeners.
You may have heard me accidentally humming part of this
song as as Nolan that we're talking. What's your favorite
song from the aladdined soundtrack? Oh? Man, do you have one? Musically,
(08:56):
I'm really fond of the Arabian Nights song. Um, it's
got a really cool melody, very evocative. I do think
that's interesting. When I watched rewatched Aladdin recently, the lyrics
changed a little bit, coup a couple of lines. No, No,
there was just I remember when it came out and
I have the soundtrack and there's a line in the
(09:17):
song where it says talking about you know what it's
like in this part of the world, And there's a
line that says where they cut off your hand if
they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey, it's home,
and they they changed that it's not that lyric anymore.
Do you think those do maybe to post nine eleven.
I'm not sure when it happened, but um, you know,
(09:39):
someone definitely in and somewhere along that process found that
line to be offensive. So do you think maybe it
was just a censorship thing where they said that line
is too too much for kids. That's what I was,
That's what I would think. I mean, because you know,
I think too that movie has been re issued probably
several times, so i'd also to see what point that happened.
(10:00):
But we digress, But we digress, So let's digress further.
Is let's digress all the way to the beginning, as
as the Mad Hatter said to Alice, started at the beginning,
go through the middle, and stop at the end. Jin
smelled j i in in in English, sometimes d j
(10:23):
i in in the root of genies. This concepts let's
look at the word first. Etymology. It's often said to
come from an Arabic root word meaning to hide, and
some interpretations take this a little bit further to mean
beings who are concealed from the senses. Uh Jin is
the plural. The singular would be genie j i n I,
(10:46):
and that's where genie comes from. But uh it when
it was anglicized in some places, people took it to
mean a guardian of a specific place. And while these
are popular theories there, there are also competing theories or interpretations,
(11:07):
one saying that one saying that Genie or the concept
originally came from what we're seen as demons or evil
spirits in early Christian or Judeo Christian beliefs. But unlike
some other supernatural beings, uh jin are actually mentioned in
(11:30):
the Koran. They have an origin story right um. In
the Koran, God actually makes three sapient forms of life, angels,
gen and humans. Men were made of clay, angels from light,
and Jin are described as being made of a smokeless
scorching fire, which is sort of sinisters sounding if you
(11:51):
ask me, crazy stuff. Like humans, Jin have free will,
some are Muslim and some are not. And like humans,
Jen being capable of good and bad will be judged
by God on the Day of Judgment and sent to
Hell or to paradise as their actions accord. But here's
the thing. Although Jin are mentioned in the Koran, they
(12:15):
were believed in before before Islam. They were they were
pre Islamic originally, and in some cases there's some evidence
that they were maybe gods or at least spirits that
were paid tribute to uh In in Palmira, for example. Yeah,
there's this Aramaic inscription in a place called Beth Fasil
(12:38):
which pays tribute to the genie spelled g I n
in a y e As the good and rewarding gods.
So until about the fourth century, as we rate time today,
uh many of the populations that were in the Middle
East practice a different polytheist stick religions. There were there
(13:02):
were significant Jewish and later Christian minorities that developed, but
Polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre Islamic Arabia
and Jin which started in some cases being worshiped as gods,
are thought to have later been downgraded to lesser status
as spirits as demons, especially after the religious waves of monotheism. Yeah,
(13:27):
I can see that you demonize the gods that came prior.
I understand that. Well, there's religious syncretism to write, uh
the idea that the idea that when a religion is
growing or spreading, it says, well, these other things that
exist do exist, and we're not. What what we're doing
is we're showing you why they exist. They're also part
(13:49):
of this belief system, which is the one true belief
system is typically how a lot of religions handle it.
So where do jin hang out? A lot of times
(14:09):
they're in dark places. That maybe why when the west
Owners came along to create stories out of this, they
put him in a lamp that's really dark, or in
a you know, a ring, or in a cave or
something like that. Lost as well, like sort of like
they're buried like like you know, totally shut away, as
if they were not ever meant to be discovered again
kind of thing. Yes, and again, because they're supposed to
(14:31):
be isolated, right right, And if we could talk just
a little bit about the idea of where the artifact
belief comes in. Solomon was King Solomon's thought to command
spirits that were a type of jin through the use
of a ring, right, the Ring of Solomon, which I
think also still shows up in pop culture. Right, Yeah, Oh,
(14:54):
the that ring is everywhere. I would say, and I
don't know if this is true because I haven't looked
too much into it, but the one ring to rule
them all, I think that might have like have some kickbacks.
And then also the also we should mention the Grimoires
or the books of magic known as the Key of
Solomon or the lesser Keys of Solomon also thought to
(15:17):
contain rituals which, when performed properly, allow one to communicate
with and or control these spirits. Uh, Matt Nolan, I
have not attempted to do this as far as I know.
Speak for yourself, sir, Yeah, okay, okay, Matt and Noel
have attempted to do this. I don't want to put
(15:39):
you guys on glass and ask too much about how
how it worked out. Let me, we're here right that
that doesn't change one way or the other. So the
the idea here, which I thought was fascinating, and I'm
speculating here. I wanted to ask you listeners, because I
couldn't find any solid proof of this, but we're there
(16:00):
Jin cults like what other than you know, other than
being a statue or shrine one would pay tribute to,
were they're actually religious systems that were large built on
worshiping maybe one or two creatures or gods that would
later become jin. I don't know, but it's interesting. Well, yeah,
and it wouldn't have to be It wouldn't have to
(16:21):
be that large to be a cult of a certain gin,
especially if it was worshiped, you know, for hundreds and
hundreds of years for a while there as a god.
Then everything broke off as the new religions came through,
and then they you know, maybe an isolated group somewhere.
I can totally imagine that. I can also see like
maybe there's like a rogue jin, you know, who wants
(16:43):
to like become more like a god and then command
his own followers. I could just see that in terms
of like folklore. Oh yeah, that happens, and we'll get
to it just a second. I think we'll really appreciate
this part. Before we get to that, let's talk about
the different types of gin, because not all are created
ep some have specialties, some are automatically evil, some could
go either way. But as we go into this, you
(17:07):
want to establish that the folklore gets kind of sticky
because there are creatures or beings in other and other
regions or and sometimes even in other belief systems that
are considered gin. And then there their arguments that people
will have over whether that whether one type of creature
should be considered a subclass of gin or its own thing. Well,
(17:32):
that being said, jen are smart, have social organizations, uh
in their community. They have kings, they have laws of marriages,
they have births, you know, all the normal days of
our lives. Stuff. They just But while humans cannot perceive jin,
(17:53):
apparently they can perceive the human world. So this it's
an interesting idea because it means that there is an
invisible world occurring all around us, and we are in
some sort of glass house of existence or some sort
of one way mirror. Yeah, there there are a few
planes of existence up than we are, and somehow they
(18:15):
can see down, but the mirror only goes one way.
That's cool. So one common belief in Muslim lord list. Again,
this list is not this list is not universally accepted.
But let's let's look at the various types of jenn.
The first would be uh the mariad or married m
(18:38):
A R I D and I do apologize for pronunciation
of Arabic here uh. In Lane's Arabic English lexicon, these
types of Jin are said to be the strongest, the
ones of great power in in the in the Lanes lexicon,
(18:59):
there actually said to be evil. But this isn't universally
agreed on. These are the ones we think. I've only
think of the genie in Aladdin. The ability to do
all these powerful things, even unto granting wishes, if you
flatter them enough, if they like you, if you do
something for them. Uh. And that's so, that's what people
(19:22):
in the West generally think about. But that's not all
of the gin in the world. Now you also have
an affret and this is one that I have heard
of before. You may have heard of this as well.
It's often described as this enormous winged creature of fire.
Think of Phoenix almost in my head, and that's what
I'm seeing. Can be either sex, male or female. It
(19:44):
lives ground, underground, and a lot of times it will
it will fly around ruins of someplace where tragedy has
occurred or war has been fought, or you know, where
something has where something has occurred where perhaps there was
f And then we get to it's called the sat
or the shy tan s h i t a n
(20:07):
s h a y t a n. This this goes
exactly to what you were talking about. And also, uh,
the concept is like this that during the creation of
the world. There is one jin that refuses to bow
to God, and its name is Iblis. Sounds familiar, sounds
(20:29):
a little like, Oh, I don't know, was that the
church lady Revercott, I don't know, was it? So this
is that this would be considered the devil in the Qoran,
and the devil had followers Jin who decided to side
with Iblis. Uh. And it's it's interesting because while there
(20:53):
are parallels, they are you know, there are differences as well.
The primary thing here is that these creatures, which sometimes
are not considered gin but simply demons. Depending upon which
scholar you're talking to or which book you're basing it on,
is it based on the Koran? Is it based on
(21:13):
earlier like folklore, right, academic studies, So there are going
to be differences in interpretation here, but the main thing
that always stays the same is that these are the
bad guys nice, they're not cool. Uh. And then speaking yeah,
speaking of not cool, there's something else the google. So
I guess that's where that word comes from. Yes, yeah,
(21:35):
just so. Yeah. Nowadays we think of gooules as the
m as similar to a vampire, right, These undead creatures
usually that eat flesh rather than drink blood for sustenance
is what I see. I see two d little pixelated things.
They tend to travel by shambling, yes, the primary form
(22:00):
of locomotion. I actually think I play the Fallout series
a lot to really enjoy those. And there is a
whole um, you know, group of characters called ghouls, and
they've basically been irradiated to the point where there they
look like you know, zombies, but they don't necessarily eat
flesh unless they've kind of passed a threshold and then
they get to a point where they will be exactly
(22:21):
they're called feral guals. Exactly do they have Do they
have any profound abilities or they just rotting people? Um?
It depends. Like there are some that are so irradiated
that they can actually shoot like radiation energy a you
and like vomit like you know, radiate radioactive goo. Um.
But you know, some of the ones that are that
are still more or less human, They you know, run
(22:42):
taverns things like that. You know, so that the ghouls
that we're talking about are a little different, I know,
but I love those guls. There are several that you
interact with in the third ones that make you very happy. Uh.
But these these a lot of times will inhabit a graveyard, right,
or other places that just there's no humans. And this
(23:04):
type of jin has been said to be sired by
it bliss so not siding with this uh, diabolical character
against God, but to have been created by this diabolical character.
And then there is the gen j a n n
uh thought of as the weakest type of jin. So
(23:27):
a few traditions divide gin into three classes, those who
have wings and fly in the air, those who resemble
snakes and dogs, and those who simply travel ceaselessly. But
they've also been described as creatures of different forms vultures, snakes,
others like humanoid. They might even be dragons or a
number of other animals. And and it said that some
(23:49):
of these can shape shift right, right, So that would
maybe another reason why we have so many different depictions
of animals and very widely varying animals. And let's talk
about gin and magic. Did you think I was gonna
say jen and juice? You were? I was hoping I
(24:09):
would to hope springs eternal. I guess that will be
for after work, right, Uh. In folklore, of course, these
beings are often associated with magic, its concept that exists
in the modern day still as the old rubb a
magic lamp, get some wishes bits. And we mentioned that
certain historical humans like King Solomon were said to control Jin.
(24:33):
And in some ways acts of magic entirely have been
described as a magician entering into some sort of contract
with one or more of these beings of Gin and
worshiping them, or I guess paying some sort of obeesience
in order to receive information. That's one of the big
(24:54):
ones about unknown things, so Claire sentience, clairvoyance, or to
received riches power. Well, you know, the whole standard, the usual,
the usual, uh supervillain starter package. And we've got some
lines from the Koran here I had mentioned Iblis, right,
We mentioned Iblis, who would be Satan in in this story.
(25:18):
Satan didn't follow or Iblis didn't follow God's command to
prostrate himself unto man. So he's still he still wouldn't
play ball. But he said, I'm not the one to
prostrate myself to a human being, because you know, you
made him out of clay. And then to which point
God said, get out. And the existence of Jin, as
(25:43):
mentioned in the Koran matters immensely, maybe more so than
you might think, because for many people they would say, well,
Matt Noel Ben, this is interesting, but this is folklore.
Why are you talking about it? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(26:14):
You see, belief in jin is not something restricted two
thousands of years ago. It is not something that exists
distant chronologically. There is a modern belief in jin. There
are like people across the world believe that jin are real,
(26:36):
and they want to prove that it's real through science.
Right though not all Muslims believe in Jin, many do,
and some universities published research and hold workshops seeking to
prove the existence of jin and argue how they exist
in the modern world or how science can help humanity
understand the nature of these beings. So an example would
(26:59):
be from jen an Invade Campus by Purvis Hood boy
Um a workshop quote. A workshop title Jin's and Black
Magic was organized in Islamabad by the Department of Humanities
at the Comsats Institute of Technology, which is the c
I I T, one of Pakistan's largest universities. We invited
speaker Razab Xil Hawk introduced as a spiritual cardiologist is
(27:21):
reputedly an expert on demonic possessions and evil spirits. So
this is an elite university in Pakistan, So this this
is an active area of studying, right, It's it's very
important to say, for instance, unlike um, unlike what would
another thing be fairies or you know, uh, imagine insert
(27:46):
supernatural being here. Uh, it's it's not as uh, it's
not as derided as those kinds of beliefs. Or it's
kind of like an an angels expert came to speak
at Harvard or something as yeah, that's not a bad comparison,
you know, or at M I T or something. So
while proposing theories about the nature of jen, these researchers
(28:09):
and academics have at times have the times said, well,
science can help us understand these were there, you'll see
references to maybe microorganisms or parallel universes, or forms of
imperceivable energy and higher frequencies. At this point, the concept
of gen is not scientifically accepted in the West or
(28:31):
many non Muslim parts of the world. And again we
want to emphasize we're not painting with a broad brush here.
We're saying nothing about all people of a specific religion,
where what we are establishing instead is that people in
the modern world today, as you listen to this, believe
that jin exists. And that's not just that they don't
(28:52):
just exist as some sort of passive, watchful entities, right
that you can maybe get some wishes out of if
you have the right ring or the right lamp. They
have agency, They have the ability to do things in
the human world to humans, and this is kind of
the disturbing part. I don't know, man, I feel like
there's plenty of Christians that would say the same thing
about angels. I think that's an excellent point. Yeah, no, absolutely.
(29:16):
But the creepy thing here is what if these things
do exist and they can possess humans to cause humans
to do things that they normally wouldn't, perhaps to influence
something politically, a movement or something like that. I that's
one of the beliefs, right right, Yeah, there's this belief
(29:37):
that jin are able to possess human beings. And this
this is a weird thing. So you can go right
now on YouTube and see footage of what what are
said to be exorcisms. And we we talked about this
a little bit in a previous episode when we cover
the differences between exorcisms around the world, you know, like
(30:00):
the Catholic Church has a very specific right and uh
and in Islam there are specific rights as well. You
can also find people who are you know, who are
describing the signs of possession by a jin or the
signs of someone trafficking and magic, the sign that you
(30:21):
have encountered somehow a jin, and the possession is typically
exorcised through uh the recitation of the Koran, seeking refuge,
remembrance and supplicators uh as. It's also a way that
other sicknesses or problems might be addressed. And I really
(30:42):
like people to check out our our previous episode on
exorcism because we had an interesting conversation that I guess
we won't get into too much here, but I want
to know what you folks think is possession real in
your experience because we know that historically signs of mental
illness were mistaken for possession. We know that signs of
(31:06):
grief or maybe psychotic breaks or maybe even mental disabilities
all mistaken for possession at some point in the past,
which is a horrific thing. But according to people who
believe this jim Jin possession is something that experts can
clearly discern through the use of these techniques drive drive
(31:27):
the Jin out, and unlike demons possessing people in Catholic
or Christian belief systems, Jin are not necessarily evil. Yeah,
that's a huge difference. Have free will. So I was
looking at in the course of research, I was looking at, uh,
some some scholars, some Islamic scholars talking about Jin possession,
(31:53):
and one of the big reasons for possession, according to
some of these sources was love, like a jin being
in love with a human, with the human that they're possessing,
or with another human that they're possessing a to get
to be What if we take it back a step
to our early description of kind of the preconceived ideas
(32:17):
of a genie or a gin, and as we've gotten
to where we are now in the podcast, I think
we've sort of taking that apart a little bit. And
I'm just wondering, is that do you consider that version
those points we made about you know, being chained to
a an artifact of sub sort and you know, granting
wishes and things like that, and ultimately being a force
(32:38):
for kind of chaos based on what happens when those
wishes are granted. Is all that just from kind of
like whitewashed like re tellings of you know, folk stories
and made to be more palatable for a wider audience,
sort of like in the same way that you know,
grim fairy tales were much much nastier and then they're
sort of retooled. You know, that's really question, what do
(33:01):
you think that. I would say, that's exactly what's happened,
because we've got one specific type of gin that are
being described by most of the popular culture that the myriad.
I don't know how to say it correctly. I think
it's the mariad uh. And you know, so you've got
that one particular story and then you kind of expand
out and say, well, this is what all genies are
(33:22):
like when you look at it through that lens. I
think that's what's happening. Yeah, I can see the religious
syncretism occurring there as well. And it's also important for
us to note that modern belief in jin is not
necessarily unique in in that um just in the process
(33:43):
of this sort of belief, for instance, there are other
persistent beliefs in things that you know, the rest of
the world will call supernatural rather than factual. Ghost of
ancestors are still commonly venerated in religions around the world.
And then invisible elves in Iceland. You guys heard about that,
right They they're real guys, I think they're real. The
(34:04):
who do folk? Uh? These elves in Icelandic folklore. The
belief is so commonplace, or purportedly so commonplace, that it
affects modern construction. Also, I one thing that fascinates me
is when when people look at beliefs in spirits, and
(34:31):
you know, there are some people who can put up
a very strong argument that jin are not spirits so
much as they are another type of living, thinking being.
You know, because they do live, they're not undead. So
this stuff astonishes and amazes me, both the growth of
(34:54):
the folklore to the modern day beliefs. And I know
for certain that it is easy for some people to
feel maybe condescending in some way and say, oh, look
at this outdated belief. And I live in the modern age.
And because I live in the modern age, I know
better than these people who believe differently. For me, but
(35:17):
especially if you live in the developed world, I would
ask you to examine some of the common beliefs we have.
Future historians are going to think that we were so
foolish when we explained the following situation. Yes, back in
the day, we used to hop into these machines the
weight thousands and thousands of pounds and we're we're powered
(35:38):
by explosions internally, and we would drive within feet of
each other because we called it driving. And they would say, well, hey, wait,
how did you do it safely? And we said, well,
we had this honor system. You see. We painted lines
on places where we would drive, and we just said
we wouldn't hit each other. And would say, oh, but
so is that how you avoided accidents? So we'd say, no, no,
(36:00):
accidents happened constantly, constantly. We we just we believed we
were safer but got hurt, right, right, So I what
I'm what I'm saying is that it is an error
for anyone me, Noel Matt you perhaps listener to assume
(36:22):
that we have the conclusive and final answer on what
we believe in the worth of what we believe, right,
So I would say, we have to be very careful
not to cast dispersions or stones. You know, if I'm
in Iceland and somebody tells me not to mess with
a rock because something lives there. Yeah, whether or not
(36:45):
I personally believe, I'm not gonna launch into some lecture
you know, about the nature of geology. Uh. And this,
this is where we leave it. We are a world
filled to the brim with people. They're billions of us.
And amongst those billions, depending on who you believe and
(37:07):
what you're reading, there exists billions more unseen things that
in terms of philosophy and mental ability, quite similar to us.
So just like our earlier, earlier work on coded languages,
you know, again, there's this invisible world and more and
(37:29):
more I think about it, we're running into these concepts
of invisible worlds. We talked about train hoppers and some
things as serial killer cults, when we talked about jinn.
So that's that's really what I see us going into.
More and more are these ideas of hidden worlds and
this concept of what we can and cannot prove. But
(37:52):
I have a question, uh for you guys listeners, do
you have any in your neck of the woods. Do
you have any um popular or folklore beliefs in unseen
or supernatural beings and If so, do you believe the stories?
What could you tell us some specifics? Yeah, do you
have any anecdotes where you maybe have had an encounter?
(38:14):
I don't want to hear those, Yeah, that you could
or could not explain. And I'd like to close on
a question for you guys. If if we each had
a wish and it was and you couldn't wish for
more wishes, what would your wish be? Oh? Man, this
is tough. I think I would probably. I mean, there's
(38:35):
two you can split it down the middle. You can
go for like a very self serving wish, or you
could go for a wish that helps others. But then
you get into that situation where it's all about the language.
It's all about the wording of the wish, really careful,
you know, because you might say I want world peace
and it means that everyone dies, right. Or you might
say you might say I want to live forever, and
(38:56):
you do, but you still age and everywhere somewhere yea,
all your loved ones die around you. Um, I guess
I would just I would wish I would do some uh,
some very carefully worded version of just you know, just
wanting to never you know, like be able to always
(39:18):
make sure I can take care of my family and
myself and just have maybe not absurd wealth, but just
be comfortable all the time and never have to worry
about paying bills and anything of that nature. Just have
some sort of like maybe maybe it's a magic platinum
card that you can just pay for everything with and
you never get a bill, you know, something like that.
(39:39):
I know that's very selfish and boring, but I just
feel like the world past one would you know, could
potentially be disastrous. I would ask for a single, let's say,
a single tomato plant that always has tomatoes on it. Always,
no matter how many ties you take from the plant,
(40:01):
there's always more tomatoes. I think you get sick of tomatoes.
I don't care, man, Yeah, and I will never and
yeah this caveat at the end, I will never never
get sick of I can always sell the tomatoes. What
I'm saying, have you been going through some tomato related shenanigans? Man?
Are you okay? I was trying to imagine something that
would be super manageable, that would be small. I was
(40:23):
trying to think of ways that it could hurt me.
And you don't think you have to tomatoes and you
you didn't mention the size of the planet, So what
if it's so huge it's over It's okay. We we
don't have a genie in the room. What about you, Ben,
I have no idea, and I'm not sure I want
(40:45):
to reveal that much about my personality, but pretend I would, Okay.
I would probably wish for in a very carefully worded way,
as Noel said, I would wish for, uh, some series
of superpowers and try to sneak them all in as
like the same thing. My one wish would be a
run on sentence obviously, just a c y A right,
(41:09):
And then I would try to use those powers to
make the world a better place, because it's all about
the journey, isn't it? And uh, And I also think
I'm also concerned, just in this fictional world of granted wishes,
I also wonder if there's some higher chance or likelihood
of things going wrong if the wish affects more people.
(41:30):
So maybe if you just wish for something for yourself
and then use that to affect a larger change, it's safer.
It's really good. Ben, Even something like invisibility. Let's think
about how often that comes into play as being the
ultimate power to get things done, you know what I mean.
So you could certainly affect some change with invisibility. You
could sneak into so many places in Bermuda, in Singapore
(41:53):
and you could do the next Panama papers. I would well,
you know that's the thing. Would you be invisible to
the human eye, visible to everything? Could you wear clothes
because I don't want to try to see you. If
you want to be invisible at will to all, you
just fall through the map listeners that listeners, Uh you know,
(42:16):
Matt and I wish you guys could see the way
that Nole's eyes lit up when they said through all
that was great. Uh yeah, I would go for invulnerability teleportation.
I would say, psiotic powers, just so I can get
all of them. Just say all the X men. That's
all you have to say. Oh no, man, there's some
X men. You aren't that great. But that that gen
(42:37):
is gonna call shenanigans on that wish though, dude, Like
I mean there, it's like, man, come on, yeah, they've
seen it all. They can't you can't do that. They
pick one be and immortal and then they would plush
you with their giant thumb. Yeah, or maybe it'll short
circuit and Ll'll say, you know, I've had a hard week.
Been the best thing you do is a cheese steak,
(42:58):
and I'll say, thanks, dude, cool man, I appreciate it.
Never ending cheese steak, whenever ending cheese steak. Oh dude,
that's crazy. You could feed the world with one cheese
cheese steak that never ends. I think, you know, I
think we're optimistic here and we're thinking of we're thinking
(43:20):
of the best possible outcomes. But I'm going to spend
some time. Uh, I'm gonna spend some time pondering what
a decent wish would be and how you would write it.
We hope that you enjoyed this episode. Ladies and gentlemen.
What kind of stuff would you wish for? And please
do remember to tell us about what kind of things
(43:40):
are beings you've heard about in your neck of the
global woods. We want to hear from you. And speaking
of hearing from you, it's time for shut out corners. Yes,
that's right, shout out corner the moment in every show
where we shout out listeners who request said shout out um.
(44:02):
First today we have one for east Bay, newt a
k A newty. He or she is interested in hearing
more about planet nine, and I fear I can't help
with that, can you? What's what's those nine? It's the
proposed ninth planet that we found in the Solar System
that's out over there by Pluto, way out there. I
(44:23):
missed that one, guys. I want to know more too.
It hasn't been confirmed yet, but it's we're pretty sure
there's something there from from the the way the other
planets move. Well, let's dig into it. That's an excellent suggestion,
Thank you, NUTI. Our next shout out is from Justin
for this quote, specifically, the best way to find a
(44:45):
needle in a haystack is to set the hay on fire.
This goes back to our earlier conversation about the Panama papers.
Uh and you can find Justin he is at math
math aug and that's m A T. H an you
g g if you want to follow them any here
more interesting quotes. If I remember correctly, though, I think
the analogy we used was a needle and a pile
(45:06):
of needles. Unfortunately, needles are not flammable. In that case,
it was needles on needles and finally today shout out
to Debbie's utant, I think of saying that correctly. She
wrote to us on Facebook. She said very nice things,
and she also said, if we are ever in the
Florida Keys, gentlemen, we are invited out to her bar
(45:27):
where she bartends, and she will, she said, we will
have an extra special time. I guess because she would
get as drunk. Game on. And that's the end of
this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions
about this episode, you can get into contact with us
in a number of different ways. One of the best
(45:48):
is to give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three st d w y t K. If
you don't want to do that, you can send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(46:08):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
So we're all big, big fans of folklore. Folklore is
a fascinating way to explore history, to explore a culture,
to explore the world around you. And it may surprise
some folks living in the West to learn that things
the West treats as folklore are treated very much as
(00:25):
reality in different parts of the world. In ancient North
African and Middle Eastern belief systems, there is another type
of sentient creature that exists invisible all around you, and
they have their own beliefs, they have their own motivations.
They're called Jin. Matt, you did you epd a wonderful
(00:49):
series on Jin that happened after we did this episode. Yeah,
there's a whole show right now that you can find
called The Hidden Jin. Check it out. It's it's really great,
hosted by Robbia Shaudry and uh an excellent show. It's
on the Grim and Mild slate of shows from Aaron Mankey.
But guys, we're talking about genies, right, Yes, I know
(01:12):
these things. They're blue, they shake, shift, they do great impressions. Right,
A particular type of gin made, but there are many
types of gin. You know, the coolest part of their
origin story is that they were created out of smokeless fire,
which I always thought was so cool. Sorry, guys, sorry,
(01:35):
I guess Emily I heard we're talking about Gin Uh
you got can I have my Well, there's uh. And
we're also not talking about Jin the Rapper formally with
DMX who it was pretty good, just a splash of
tonic for me. So let's learn about together, guys. That's
(01:58):
it rom you as too, psychic powers and government conspiracies.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(02:18):
welcome back to the show. My name is Max, my
name is Noel, I'm Ben. You are you? And that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We
hope this podcast finds you amid Grand Adventure. If so,
we'd love to hear about it. So I'll just get
this out of the way, because we talk about the
Twitter and the Facebook stuff usually at the end of
the show, right us, Well, we'll just we'll just mention
(02:40):
here that if you haven't found us yet, please do.
We are conspiracy stuff on both Facebook and Twitter, and
that's one of the most immediate ways to contact us.
We would like to thank the listeners out there who
wrote to us several times over the past months and
asked us to cover this topic because it just kept
popping up in conversation, right, yeah, would pop up in
(03:00):
conversation and on the fringes of a topic that we
were discussing. It came up I think in Alchemy. I
remember you guys mentioning it, and it came up in
a couple other places right before that too. I also
seem to recall it coming up one time. I was like,
all right, all Jin demons, and Ben schooled me real quick.
So hopefully we'll get some more of that schooling. Oh
I don't know. We might get schooled on this one, guys.
(03:21):
We might. We might be the ones going to school
because this is one of our This is an episode
that's somewhere between a folklore episode, a cryptic episode of
possession episode. Jin run into a lot of things, and
first first we have to do a disclaimer for this one.
As Ben said, this is an academic exploration of this
(03:45):
topic about the folklore behind the what a gin is,
what Jin are, and we're not we're not trying to
persuade anybody to look at anything in a certain way,
especially uh to ascribe to any certain set of beliefs
or anything like that. Right, and our goal is not
to confirm or deny anyone's religious beliefs. Right. Your spiritual convictions,
as always, are your own. So let's get into this exploration.
(04:10):
This is fascinated the three of us for a long time.
If you grew up in the West and are not
uh practitioner of Islam or not familiar with some of
the beliefs surrounding the Middle East and other related parts
of the world, then you probably have some very specific
ideas of what a jin or a genie is. Oh sure,
(04:34):
I mean a lot of my beliefs come from pop culture,
from movies, television, books, comics, things where it would be
a genie usually spelled with a G, sometimes spelled with
a J, as in the case of I had dream
of genie. Yes, yes, exactly, that's back from the sixties.
That's always the image I had of what it looked
like inside the lamp. She had cushions everywhere, and it
(04:54):
was like this built in like you know, it looked
like a really sweet RV or something, you know, like
with shag carpeting, you know, like it was nice. It
was super nice. Yeah. Well then you go you go
to you know, horror films that look at genie's Like
wish Master was one that I've watched when I was younger.
I probably shouldn't have watched it back then. Wasn't that
a West Craven movie? I think Wes Craven was part
(05:16):
of he produced it or something. Uh. Yeah, But then
we get to Aladdin, the Disney movie, which you know,
I don't know but you guys, but I was quoting
that movie for years. Yeah. Man, I had that soundtrack
on CD. It's a fantastic It's just a fantastic film.
We watched it recently, and that that holds up for
a film film? Yeah, well yeah it was film. Uh.
(05:38):
And then you you know, you move a little bit
forward and you get to video games, where there are
different types of jin's uh that I've encountered in many
a virtual world. You probably have too. So what do
we know about what these gins are? From these things?
I have to say, I think he passed over a
very important gen Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice. Oh sorry,
(05:58):
I also packed passed over Zam. You know, Oh we
forgot Kazam yeah, Shack, thank you narrowly avoided the email
on that from Shack himself. So what do we know
about genies from those pieces of pop culture. Well, here
are some of the main I guess we can call
them tropes that have been established about your standard run
of the mill genie jin who call it what you will. Uh. One,
(06:23):
Often they are imprisoned inside a material artifact, usually a
ring or you know, typically a lamp, and I guess
it could be really anything, could be perhaps a chest
of some kind, like a book, even you know, you
see different versions. Remember um, the care Bears movie where
there was this creepy green faced ghost thing trapped inside
(06:44):
of a book and made the magician's assistant like, do
weird stuff? I do not. I would argue that that
is a gin in a way, because it's sort of
imprisoned inside this artifact. Anyway, I digress. That always scare
the crap out of when I was a kid. That
felt like a very intense film when I was really intense. Yeah, anyway,
So that's that's that's a huge part of it. Number Two,
(07:07):
Typically they grant wishes with perilous outcomes and think of
even like in films you have like an evil like
apparition that can say I can make this happen for you,
you know, but then other things fall apart as a
result of it. You know. That's not really what we
think of when we think of a Laddin, you know,
but that usually those wishes were I want to be
the king or I want to be you know, Prince
(07:28):
Sali or whatever, and that all worked out. But there
are well, there are things that go wrong along the
way trying to get this wish, but doesn't necessarily have
this built in catastrophe like this one to one like
you wish that made something horrible has happened to somebody else,
so um, the perilous outcomes definitely different versions of that.
And finally, I mean, a really common perception of this
(07:49):
genie type of gin um is that they have magical powers,
you know, can shape shift. And to me, something that
it always sticks with it for me is that they
have a master that once they appear to them, they
are bound to that master until they have used up
some finite number of wishes. Interesting stuff, you know, because
(08:10):
what we're talking about now would be again these Western
conceptions we have baseballers on pop culture. Probably one of
the biggest popularizers of the of Jin folklore. The concept
of Jinn comes to us from uh Sharra's Odd and
the thousand and one Stories, right, or excuse me, a
(08:31):
thousand and one Arabian Nights. But before we go into
the actual world or belief system involving Gin, I have
to ask you, guys, because I can't let it go listeners.
You may have heard me accidentally humming part of this
song as as Nolan that we're talking. What's your favorite
song from the aladdined soundtrack? Oh? Man, do you have one? Musically,
(08:56):
I'm really fond of the Arabian Nights song. Um, it's
got a really cool melody, very evocative. I do think
that's interesting. When I watched rewatched Aladdin recently, the lyrics
changed a little bit, coup a couple of lines. No, No,
there was just I remember when it came out and
I have the soundtrack and there's a line in the
(09:17):
song where it says talking about you know what it's
like in this part of the world, And there's a
line that says where they cut off your hand if
they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey, it's home,
and they they changed that it's not that lyric anymore.
Do you think those do maybe to post nine eleven.
I'm not sure when it happened, but um, you know,
(09:39):
someone definitely in and somewhere along that process found that
line to be offensive. So do you think maybe it
was just a censorship thing where they said that line
is too too much for kids. That's what I was,
That's what I would think. I mean, because you know,
I think too that movie has been re issued probably
several times, so i'd also to see what point that happened.
(10:00):
But we digress, But we digress, So let's digress further.
Is let's digress all the way to the beginning, as
as the Mad Hatter said to Alice, started at the beginning,
go through the middle, and stop at the end. Jin
smelled j i in in in English, sometimes d j
(10:23):
i in in the root of genies. This concepts let's
look at the word first. Etymology. It's often said to
come from an Arabic root word meaning to hide, and
some interpretations take this a little bit further to mean
beings who are concealed from the senses. Uh Jin is
the plural. The singular would be genie j i n I,
(10:46):
and that's where genie comes from. But uh it when
it was anglicized in some places, people took it to
mean a guardian of a specific place. And while these
are popular theories there, there are also competing theories or interpretations,
(11:07):
one saying that one saying that Genie or the concept
originally came from what we're seen as demons or evil
spirits in early Christian or Judeo Christian beliefs. But unlike
some other supernatural beings, uh jin are actually mentioned in
(11:30):
the Koran. They have an origin story right um. In
the Koran, God actually makes three sapient forms of life, angels,
gen and humans. Men were made of clay, angels from light,
and Jin are described as being made of a smokeless
scorching fire, which is sort of sinisters sounding if you
(11:51):
ask me, crazy stuff. Like humans, Jin have free will,
some are Muslim and some are not. And like humans,
Jen being capable of good and bad will be judged
by God on the Day of Judgment and sent to
Hell or to paradise as their actions accord. But here's
the thing. Although Jin are mentioned in the Koran, they
(12:15):
were believed in before before Islam. They were they were
pre Islamic originally, and in some cases there's some evidence
that they were maybe gods or at least spirits that
were paid tribute to uh In in Palmira, for example. Yeah,
there's this Aramaic inscription in a place called Beth Fasil
(12:38):
which pays tribute to the genie spelled g I n
in a y e As the good and rewarding gods.
So until about the fourth century, as we rate time today,
uh many of the populations that were in the Middle
East practice a different polytheist stick religions. There were there
(13:02):
were significant Jewish and later Christian minorities that developed, but
Polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre Islamic Arabia
and Jin which started in some cases being worshiped as gods,
are thought to have later been downgraded to lesser status
as spirits as demons, especially after the religious waves of monotheism. Yeah,
(13:27):
I can see that you demonize the gods that came prior.
I understand that. Well, there's religious syncretism to write, uh
the idea that the idea that when a religion is
growing or spreading, it says, well, these other things that
exist do exist, and we're not. What what we're doing
is we're showing you why they exist. They're also part
(13:49):
of this belief system, which is the one true belief
system is typically how a lot of religions handle it.
So where do jin hang out? A lot of times
(14:09):
they're in dark places. That maybe why when the west
Owners came along to create stories out of this, they
put him in a lamp that's really dark, or in
a you know, a ring, or in a cave or
something like that. Lost as well, like sort of like
they're buried like like you know, totally shut away, as
if they were not ever meant to be discovered again
kind of thing. Yes, and again, because they're supposed to
(14:31):
be isolated, right right, And if we could talk just
a little bit about the idea of where the artifact
belief comes in. Solomon was King Solomon's thought to command
spirits that were a type of jin through the use
of a ring, right, the Ring of Solomon, which I
think also still shows up in pop culture. Right, Yeah, Oh,
(14:54):
the that ring is everywhere. I would say, and I
don't know if this is true because I haven't looked
too much into it, but the one ring to rule
them all, I think that might have like have some kickbacks.
And then also the also we should mention the Grimoires
or the books of magic known as the Key of
Solomon or the lesser Keys of Solomon also thought to
(15:17):
contain rituals which, when performed properly, allow one to communicate
with and or control these spirits. Uh, Matt Nolan, I
have not attempted to do this as far as I know.
Speak for yourself, sir, Yeah, okay, okay, Matt and Noel
have attempted to do this. I don't want to put
(15:39):
you guys on glass and ask too much about how
how it worked out. Let me, we're here right that
that doesn't change one way or the other. So the
the idea here, which I thought was fascinating, and I'm
speculating here. I wanted to ask you listeners, because I
couldn't find any solid proof of this, but we're there
(16:00):
Jin cults like what other than you know, other than
being a statue or shrine one would pay tribute to,
were they're actually religious systems that were large built on
worshiping maybe one or two creatures or gods that would
later become jin. I don't know, but it's interesting. Well, yeah,
and it wouldn't have to be It wouldn't have to
(16:21):
be that large to be a cult of a certain gin,
especially if it was worshiped, you know, for hundreds and
hundreds of years for a while there as a god.
Then everything broke off as the new religions came through,
and then they you know, maybe an isolated group somewhere.
I can totally imagine that. I can also see like
maybe there's like a rogue jin, you know, who wants
(16:43):
to like become more like a god and then command
his own followers. I could just see that in terms
of like folklore. Oh yeah, that happens, and we'll get
to it just a second. I think we'll really appreciate
this part. Before we get to that, let's talk about
the different types of gin, because not all are created
ep some have specialties, some are automatically evil, some could
go either way. But as we go into this, you
(17:07):
want to establish that the folklore gets kind of sticky
because there are creatures or beings in other and other
regions or and sometimes even in other belief systems that
are considered gin. And then there their arguments that people
will have over whether that whether one type of creature
should be considered a subclass of gin or its own thing. Well,
(17:32):
that being said, jen are smart, have social organizations, uh
in their community. They have kings, they have laws of marriages,
they have births, you know, all the normal days of
our lives. Stuff. They just But while humans cannot perceive jin,
(17:53):
apparently they can perceive the human world. So this it's
an interesting idea because it means that there is an
invisible world occurring all around us, and we are in
some sort of glass house of existence or some sort
of one way mirror. Yeah, there there are a few
planes of existence up than we are, and somehow they
(18:15):
can see down, but the mirror only goes one way.
That's cool. So one common belief in Muslim lord list. Again,
this list is not this list is not universally accepted.
But let's let's look at the various types of jenn.
The first would be uh the mariad or married m
(18:38):
A R I D and I do apologize for pronunciation
of Arabic here uh. In Lane's Arabic English lexicon, these
types of Jin are said to be the strongest, the
ones of great power in in the in the Lanes lexicon,
(18:59):
there actually said to be evil. But this isn't universally
agreed on. These are the ones we think. I've only
think of the genie in Aladdin. The ability to do
all these powerful things, even unto granting wishes, if you
flatter them enough, if they like you, if you do
something for them. Uh. And that's so, that's what people
(19:22):
in the West generally think about. But that's not all
of the gin in the world. Now you also have
an affret and this is one that I have heard
of before. You may have heard of this as well.
It's often described as this enormous winged creature of fire.
Think of Phoenix almost in my head, and that's what
I'm seeing. Can be either sex, male or female. It
(19:44):
lives ground, underground, and a lot of times it will
it will fly around ruins of someplace where tragedy has
occurred or war has been fought, or you know, where
something has where something has occurred where perhaps there was
f And then we get to it's called the sat
or the shy tan s h i t a n
(20:07):
s h a y t a n. This this goes
exactly to what you were talking about. And also, uh,
the concept is like this that during the creation of
the world. There is one jin that refuses to bow
to God, and its name is Iblis. Sounds familiar, sounds
(20:29):
a little like, Oh, I don't know, was that the
church lady Revercott, I don't know, was it? So this
is that this would be considered the devil in the Qoran,
and the devil had followers Jin who decided to side
with Iblis. Uh. And it's it's interesting because while there
(20:53):
are parallels, they are you know, there are differences as well.
The primary thing here is that these creatures, which sometimes
are not considered gin but simply demons. Depending upon which
scholar you're talking to or which book you're basing it on,
is it based on the Koran? Is it based on
(21:13):
earlier like folklore, right, academic studies, So there are going
to be differences in interpretation here, but the main thing
that always stays the same is that these are the
bad guys nice, they're not cool. Uh. And then speaking yeah,
speaking of not cool, there's something else the google. So
I guess that's where that word comes from. Yes, yeah,
(21:35):
just so. Yeah. Nowadays we think of gooules as the
m as similar to a vampire, right, These undead creatures
usually that eat flesh rather than drink blood for sustenance
is what I see. I see two d little pixelated things.
They tend to travel by shambling, yes, the primary form
(22:00):
of locomotion. I actually think I play the Fallout series
a lot to really enjoy those. And there is a
whole um, you know, group of characters called ghouls, and
they've basically been irradiated to the point where there they
look like you know, zombies, but they don't necessarily eat
flesh unless they've kind of passed a threshold and then
they get to a point where they will be exactly
(22:21):
they're called feral guals. Exactly do they have Do they
have any profound abilities or they just rotting people? Um?
It depends. Like there are some that are so irradiated
that they can actually shoot like radiation energy a you
and like vomit like you know, radiate radioactive goo. Um.
But you know, some of the ones that are that
are still more or less human, They you know, run
(22:42):
taverns things like that. You know, so that the ghouls
that we're talking about are a little different, I know,
but I love those guls. There are several that you
interact with in the third ones that make you very happy. Uh.
But these these a lot of times will inhabit a graveyard, right,
or other places that just there's no humans. And this
(23:04):
type of jin has been said to be sired by
it bliss so not siding with this uh, diabolical character
against God, but to have been created by this diabolical character.
And then there is the gen j a n n
uh thought of as the weakest type of jin. So
(23:27):
a few traditions divide gin into three classes, those who
have wings and fly in the air, those who resemble
snakes and dogs, and those who simply travel ceaselessly. But
they've also been described as creatures of different forms vultures, snakes,
others like humanoid. They might even be dragons or a
number of other animals. And and it said that some
(23:49):
of these can shape shift right, right, So that would
maybe another reason why we have so many different depictions
of animals and very widely varying animals. And let's talk
about gin and magic. Did you think I was gonna
say jen and juice? You were? I was hoping I
(24:09):
would to hope springs eternal. I guess that will be
for after work, right, Uh. In folklore, of course, these
beings are often associated with magic, its concept that exists
in the modern day still as the old rubb a
magic lamp, get some wishes bits. And we mentioned that
certain historical humans like King Solomon were said to control Jin.
(24:33):
And in some ways acts of magic entirely have been
described as a magician entering into some sort of contract
with one or more of these beings of Gin and
worshiping them, or I guess paying some sort of obeesience
in order to receive information. That's one of the big
(24:54):
ones about unknown things, so Claire sentience, clairvoyance, or to
received riches power. Well, you know, the whole standard, the usual,
the usual, uh supervillain starter package. And we've got some
lines from the Koran here I had mentioned Iblis, right,
We mentioned Iblis, who would be Satan in in this story.
(25:18):
Satan didn't follow or Iblis didn't follow God's command to
prostrate himself unto man. So he's still he still wouldn't
play ball. But he said, I'm not the one to
prostrate myself to a human being, because you know, you
made him out of clay. And then to which point
God said, get out. And the existence of Jin, as
(25:43):
mentioned in the Koran matters immensely, maybe more so than
you might think, because for many people they would say, well,
Matt Noel Ben, this is interesting, but this is folklore.
Why are you talking about it? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(26:14):
You see, belief in jin is not something restricted two
thousands of years ago. It is not something that exists
distant chronologically. There is a modern belief in jin. There
are like people across the world believe that jin are real,
(26:36):
and they want to prove that it's real through science.
Right though not all Muslims believe in Jin, many do,
and some universities published research and hold workshops seeking to
prove the existence of jin and argue how they exist
in the modern world or how science can help humanity
understand the nature of these beings. So an example would
(26:59):
be from jen an Invade Campus by Purvis Hood boy
Um a workshop quote. A workshop title Jin's and Black
Magic was organized in Islamabad by the Department of Humanities
at the Comsats Institute of Technology, which is the c
I I T, one of Pakistan's largest universities. We invited
speaker Razab Xil Hawk introduced as a spiritual cardiologist is
(27:21):
reputedly an expert on demonic possessions and evil spirits. So
this is an elite university in Pakistan, So this this
is an active area of studying, right, It's it's very
important to say, for instance, unlike um, unlike what would
another thing be fairies or you know, uh, imagine insert
(27:46):
supernatural being here. Uh, it's it's not as uh, it's
not as derided as those kinds of beliefs. Or it's
kind of like an an angels expert came to speak
at Harvard or something as yeah, that's not a bad comparison,
you know, or at M I T or something. So
while proposing theories about the nature of jen, these researchers
(28:09):
and academics have at times have the times said, well,
science can help us understand these were there, you'll see
references to maybe microorganisms or parallel universes, or forms of
imperceivable energy and higher frequencies. At this point, the concept
of gen is not scientifically accepted in the West or
(28:31):
many non Muslim parts of the world. And again we
want to emphasize we're not painting with a broad brush here.
We're saying nothing about all people of a specific religion,
where what we are establishing instead is that people in
the modern world today, as you listen to this, believe
that jin exists. And that's not just that they don't
(28:52):
just exist as some sort of passive, watchful entities, right
that you can maybe get some wishes out of if
you have the right ring or the right lamp. They
have agency, They have the ability to do things in
the human world to humans, and this is kind of
the disturbing part. I don't know, man, I feel like
there's plenty of Christians that would say the same thing
about angels. I think that's an excellent point. Yeah, no, absolutely.
(29:16):
But the creepy thing here is what if these things
do exist and they can possess humans to cause humans
to do things that they normally wouldn't, perhaps to influence
something politically, a movement or something like that. I that's
one of the beliefs, right right, Yeah, there's this belief
(29:37):
that jin are able to possess human beings. And this
this is a weird thing. So you can go right
now on YouTube and see footage of what what are
said to be exorcisms. And we we talked about this
a little bit in a previous episode when we cover
the differences between exorcisms around the world, you know, like
(30:00):
the Catholic Church has a very specific right and uh
and in Islam there are specific rights as well. You
can also find people who are you know, who are
describing the signs of possession by a jin or the
signs of someone trafficking and magic, the sign that you
(30:21):
have encountered somehow a jin, and the possession is typically
exorcised through uh the recitation of the Koran, seeking refuge,
remembrance and supplicators uh as. It's also a way that
other sicknesses or problems might be addressed. And I really
(30:42):
like people to check out our our previous episode on
exorcism because we had an interesting conversation that I guess
we won't get into too much here, but I want
to know what you folks think is possession real in
your experience because we know that historically signs of mental
illness were mistaken for possession. We know that signs of
(31:06):
grief or maybe psychotic breaks or maybe even mental disabilities
all mistaken for possession at some point in the past,
which is a horrific thing. But according to people who
believe this jim Jin possession is something that experts can
clearly discern through the use of these techniques drive drive
(31:27):
the Jin out, and unlike demons possessing people in Catholic
or Christian belief systems, Jin are not necessarily evil. Yeah,
that's a huge difference. Have free will. So I was
looking at in the course of research, I was looking at, uh,
some some scholars, some Islamic scholars talking about Jin possession,
(31:53):
and one of the big reasons for possession, according to
some of these sources was love, like a jin being
in love with a human, with the human that they're possessing,
or with another human that they're possessing a to get
to be What if we take it back a step
to our early description of kind of the preconceived ideas
(32:17):
of a genie or a gin, and as we've gotten
to where we are now in the podcast, I think
we've sort of taking that apart a little bit. And
I'm just wondering, is that do you consider that version
those points we made about you know, being chained to
a an artifact of sub sort and you know, granting
wishes and things like that, and ultimately being a force
(32:38):
for kind of chaos based on what happens when those
wishes are granted. Is all that just from kind of
like whitewashed like re tellings of you know, folk stories
and made to be more palatable for a wider audience,
sort of like in the same way that you know,
grim fairy tales were much much nastier and then they're
sort of retooled. You know, that's really question, what do
(33:01):
you think that. I would say, that's exactly what's happened,
because we've got one specific type of gin that are
being described by most of the popular culture that the myriad.
I don't know how to say it correctly. I think
it's the mariad uh. And you know, so you've got
that one particular story and then you kind of expand
out and say, well, this is what all genies are
(33:22):
like when you look at it through that lens. I
think that's what's happening. Yeah, I can see the religious
syncretism occurring there as well. And it's also important for
us to note that modern belief in jin is not
necessarily unique in in that um just in the process
(33:43):
of this sort of belief, for instance, there are other
persistent beliefs in things that you know, the rest of
the world will call supernatural rather than factual. Ghost of
ancestors are still commonly venerated in religions around the world.
And then invisible elves in Iceland. You guys heard about that,
right They they're real guys, I think they're real. The
(34:04):
who do folk? Uh? These elves in Icelandic folklore. The
belief is so commonplace, or purportedly so commonplace, that it
affects modern construction. Also, I one thing that fascinates me
is when when people look at beliefs in spirits, and
(34:31):
you know, there are some people who can put up
a very strong argument that jin are not spirits so
much as they are another type of living, thinking being.
You know, because they do live, they're not undead. So
this stuff astonishes and amazes me, both the growth of
(34:54):
the folklore to the modern day beliefs. And I know
for certain that it is easy for some people to
feel maybe condescending in some way and say, oh, look
at this outdated belief. And I live in the modern age.
And because I live in the modern age, I know
better than these people who believe differently. For me, but
(35:17):
especially if you live in the developed world, I would
ask you to examine some of the common beliefs we have.
Future historians are going to think that we were so
foolish when we explained the following situation. Yes, back in
the day, we used to hop into these machines the
weight thousands and thousands of pounds and we're we're powered
(35:38):
by explosions internally, and we would drive within feet of
each other because we called it driving. And they would say, well, hey, wait,
how did you do it safely? And we said, well,
we had this honor system. You see. We painted lines
on places where we would drive, and we just said
we wouldn't hit each other. And would say, oh, but
so is that how you avoided accidents? So we'd say, no, no,
(36:00):
accidents happened constantly, constantly. We we just we believed we
were safer but got hurt, right, right, So I what
I'm what I'm saying is that it is an error
for anyone me, Noel Matt you perhaps listener to assume
(36:22):
that we have the conclusive and final answer on what
we believe in the worth of what we believe, right,
So I would say, we have to be very careful
not to cast dispersions or stones. You know, if I'm
in Iceland and somebody tells me not to mess with
a rock because something lives there. Yeah, whether or not
(36:45):
I personally believe, I'm not gonna launch into some lecture
you know, about the nature of geology. Uh. And this,
this is where we leave it. We are a world
filled to the brim with people. They're billions of us.
And amongst those billions, depending on who you believe and
(37:07):
what you're reading, there exists billions more unseen things that
in terms of philosophy and mental ability, quite similar to us.
So just like our earlier, earlier work on coded languages,
you know, again, there's this invisible world and more and
(37:29):
more I think about it, we're running into these concepts
of invisible worlds. We talked about train hoppers and some
things as serial killer cults, when we talked about jinn.
So that's that's really what I see us going into.
More and more are these ideas of hidden worlds and
this concept of what we can and cannot prove. But
(37:52):
I have a question, uh for you guys listeners, do
you have any in your neck of the woods. Do
you have any um popular or folklore beliefs in unseen
or supernatural beings and If so, do you believe the stories?
What could you tell us some specifics? Yeah, do you
have any anecdotes where you maybe have had an encounter?
(38:14):
I don't want to hear those, Yeah, that you could
or could not explain. And I'd like to close on
a question for you guys. If if we each had
a wish and it was and you couldn't wish for
more wishes, what would your wish be? Oh? Man, this
is tough. I think I would probably. I mean, there's
(38:35):
two you can split it down the middle. You can
go for like a very self serving wish, or you
could go for a wish that helps others. But then
you get into that situation where it's all about the language.
It's all about the wording of the wish, really careful,
you know, because you might say I want world peace
and it means that everyone dies, right. Or you might
say you might say I want to live forever, and
(38:56):
you do, but you still age and everywhere somewhere yea,
all your loved ones die around you. Um, I guess
I would just I would wish I would do some uh,
some very carefully worded version of just you know, just
wanting to never you know, like be able to always
(39:18):
make sure I can take care of my family and
myself and just have maybe not absurd wealth, but just
be comfortable all the time and never have to worry
about paying bills and anything of that nature. Just have
some sort of like maybe maybe it's a magic platinum
card that you can just pay for everything with and
you never get a bill, you know, something like that.
(39:39):
I know that's very selfish and boring, but I just
feel like the world past one would you know, could
potentially be disastrous. I would ask for a single, let's say,
a single tomato plant that always has tomatoes on it. Always,
no matter how many ties you take from the plant,
(40:01):
there's always more tomatoes. I think you get sick of tomatoes.
I don't care, man, Yeah, and I will never and
yeah this caveat at the end, I will never never
get sick of I can always sell the tomatoes. What
I'm saying, have you been going through some tomato related shenanigans? Man?
Are you okay? I was trying to imagine something that
would be super manageable, that would be small. I was
(40:23):
trying to think of ways that it could hurt me.
And you don't think you have to tomatoes and you
you didn't mention the size of the planet, So what
if it's so huge it's over It's okay. We we
don't have a genie in the room. What about you, Ben,
I have no idea, and I'm not sure I want
(40:45):
to reveal that much about my personality, but pretend I would, Okay.
I would probably wish for in a very carefully worded way,
as Noel said, I would wish for, uh, some series
of superpowers and try to sneak them all in as
like the same thing. My one wish would be a
run on sentence obviously, just a c y A right,
(41:09):
And then I would try to use those powers to
make the world a better place, because it's all about
the journey, isn't it? And uh, And I also think
I'm also concerned, just in this fictional world of granted wishes,
I also wonder if there's some higher chance or likelihood
of things going wrong if the wish affects more people.
(41:30):
So maybe if you just wish for something for yourself
and then use that to affect a larger change, it's safer.
It's really good. Ben, Even something like invisibility. Let's think
about how often that comes into play as being the
ultimate power to get things done, you know what I mean.
So you could certainly affect some change with invisibility. You
could sneak into so many places in Bermuda, in Singapore
(41:53):
and you could do the next Panama papers. I would well,
you know that's the thing. Would you be invisible to
the human eye, visible to everything? Could you wear clothes
because I don't want to try to see you. If
you want to be invisible at will to all, you
just fall through the map listeners that listeners, Uh you know,
(42:16):
Matt and I wish you guys could see the way
that Nole's eyes lit up when they said through all
that was great. Uh yeah, I would go for invulnerability teleportation.
I would say, psiotic powers, just so I can get
all of them. Just say all the X men. That's
all you have to say. Oh no, man, there's some
X men. You aren't that great. But that that gen
(42:37):
is gonna call shenanigans on that wish though, dude, Like
I mean there, it's like, man, come on, yeah, they've
seen it all. They can't you can't do that. They
pick one be and immortal and then they would plush
you with their giant thumb. Yeah, or maybe it'll short
circuit and Ll'll say, you know, I've had a hard week.
Been the best thing you do is a cheese steak,
(42:58):
and I'll say, thanks, dude, cool man, I appreciate it.
Never ending cheese steak, whenever ending cheese steak. Oh dude,
that's crazy. You could feed the world with one cheese
cheese steak that never ends. I think, you know, I
think we're optimistic here and we're thinking of we're thinking
(43:20):
of the best possible outcomes. But I'm going to spend
some time. Uh, I'm gonna spend some time pondering what
a decent wish would be and how you would write it.
We hope that you enjoyed this episode. Ladies and gentlemen.
What kind of stuff would you wish for? And please
do remember to tell us about what kind of things
(43:40):
are beings you've heard about in your neck of the
global woods. We want to hear from you. And speaking
of hearing from you, it's time for shut out corners. Yes,
that's right, shout out corner the moment in every show
where we shout out listeners who request said shout out um.
(44:02):
First today we have one for east Bay, newt a
k A newty. He or she is interested in hearing
more about planet nine, and I fear I can't help
with that, can you? What's what's those nine? It's the
proposed ninth planet that we found in the Solar System
that's out over there by Pluto, way out there. I
(44:23):
missed that one, guys. I want to know more too.
It hasn't been confirmed yet, but it's we're pretty sure
there's something there from from the the way the other
planets move. Well, let's dig into it. That's an excellent suggestion,
Thank you, NUTI. Our next shout out is from Justin
for this quote, specifically, the best way to find a
(44:45):
needle in a haystack is to set the hay on fire.
This goes back to our earlier conversation about the Panama papers.
Uh and you can find Justin he is at math
math aug and that's m A T. H an you
g g if you want to follow them any here
more interesting quotes. If I remember correctly, though, I think
the analogy we used was a needle and a pile
(45:06):
of needles. Unfortunately, needles are not flammable. In that case,
it was needles on needles and finally today shout out
to Debbie's utant, I think of saying that correctly. She
wrote to us on Facebook. She said very nice things,
and she also said, if we are ever in the
Florida Keys, gentlemen, we are invited out to her bar
(45:27):
where she bartends, and she will, she said, we will
have an extra special time. I guess because she would
get as drunk. Game on. And that's the end of
this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions
about this episode, you can get into contact with us
in a number of different ways. One of the best
(45:48):
is to give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three st d w y t K. If
you don't want to do that, you can send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(46:08):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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