Supernatural creature of the week: Djinn

Djinns in Supernatural are monsters who put people in a dream-state while they’re drained of blood, but real Djinns are beings akin to angels and demons.

On Supernatural, Djinns are a race of cave dwelling creatures who have the power to induce powerful hallucinations inside the minds of their victims while they feed on them. Sam and Dean first encountered them in the episode, “What Is And What Should Never Be” when Dean was put in a dream world where his mom never died. Able to read a person’s mind, Djinns can therefore learn their deepest desires or greatest fears and can cause that dream or fear to become a hallucination so real the victim is unable to wake.

Unlike vampires and ghosts, Djinns or Jinns have a more direct origin. In ancient times, Jinns were mostly acknowledged in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and large portions of South East Asia in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and in Africa where slaves would call upon them.

In several ancient scriptures from the Middle East and Asia, Jinns were referred to as a spiritual entity or something to guide, help and teach humans. In other stories, they’re a source of torment and pain, and at times can inflict desire onto people. Not strictly an Islam concept, they were mentioned before the Quran was written and were most likely created by the first civilizations in the Middle East, including Mesopotamia.

Their presence among humans is perplexing for they have no real purpose. Basically, Jinns are spirits similar to humans who symbol the existence of angels and demons in Middle Eastern nations.

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The Quran and Islam

The Arabic word “Jinn” is from the verb “Janna” which means to hide or conceal. Mentioned in the holy Muslim text, the Quran, Jinns are beings born of fire and flame that can emerge in a variety of forms. Born from flame but created with freewill, they live on earth in a world parallel to ours but remain invisible.

Like an alternate dimension, they live within their own society and world. A concept that was expanded upon in the novel “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights” by Salman Rushdie.

According to the Quran, Jinns were created before humans and as is the fire that birthed them, are depicted as fiery in nature, willful as well as rebellious. Like humans, they too are required to follow Islam and be faithful to God and serve no purpose other than to worship Him.

"“Indeed We created man from dried clay of black smooth mud.  And We created the Jinn before that from the smokeless flame of fire” (Quran 15:26-27)"

They can be good, evil, or neutral. Jinns who don’t follow Islam become the soldiers of Satan and are referred to as devils. However, because of their willful nature, the majority of them happen to have no faith and end up becoming “devils”. Just as the Christians believed demons could possess people, the Muslims believed that Jinns could do the same and that an exorcism must take place.

It was in the Islam faith where Jinns lost all sense of being deities. They became spirits, angels and demons; all demons and angels are Jinn but not all Jinn are demons and angels. This belief was closely related to a pagan belief, but demons and angels came from more monotheistic concepts. Later Jinns were separated from all pagan ideals and in later revelations, the demons and the Jinn were practically considered two of the same, automatically naming them as a cause for trouble.

Pre-Islamic ancient societies

Many Arabs worshiped Jinns during the Pre-Islamic period (in the 630s). The term “jinn” applied to several supernatural forces within various religions and cults; Zoroastrian, Christian, and Jewish angels and demons were called “jinn”.

The exact origins of Jinns are not entirely clear. Some scholars believe that they originated as malevolent spirits residing in deserts and unclean places, who’d take the form of animals. Others believe that that they originally came from pagan deities that gradually transferred over to other cultures to form something new. Arabian belief claimed that Jinns inspired pre-Islamic philosophers and poets, but were responsible for diseases and mental illnesses all the same.

Julius Wellhausen observed that such spirits were thought to inhabit desolate, dingy, and dark places and that they were feared; were the modern cave dwelling habit came from.

An interesting segment of Jinn legend is their involvement with witchcraft in the Middle East. Magic was usually associated with Jinns or the Afarit, so an aspiring sorcerer would have to summon a Jinn. Upon being summoned, the Jinn may be tasked with crafting a demonic possession, breed diseases or bend fortune in their master’s favor. Such summonings were done by invocation with the aid of talismans or by writing up a contract with the Jinn.

There were many early versions of spirits and demons that would later influence the creation of Jinns. The ancient Sumerians believed in Pazuzu, a wind demon. The ancient Babylonians believed in Utukku, a type of demon who stalked remote wildernesses, graveyards, mountains, and the sea; all locations where Jinns would later inhabit. The Babylonians also believed in the Rabisu, a vampire-like demon that closely resembles the Islamic version of a ghoul, which is a specific type of jinn related to the Sumerian galla, a type of Underworld demon.

In the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, entities similar to Jinns were known as Ginnayê. They resembled humans, protected caravans, cattle, and villages in the desert.

Western influence

Jinn became Genie in English, a borrowing of the French Génie, a guardian spirit of people and places in the Roman religion. The first time the word “genie” was ever used, when referring to a Jinn, was in a 18th-century French translated version of “Thousand and One Nights.” Since then, Genies have slowly diverted away from their origins to become a wishing tool.

Typically trapped in lamps or bottles, Genies, like Jinns, are powerful entities formed out of smoke that gives their temporary savior three wishes. They’re portrayed as being mischievous and known for putting a trick into the wishes they grant, the “be careful what you wish for” trope. A major difference between Jinns and Genies is their will; Jinns have freewill while Genies are forced into handing out wishes to people.

The image most Americans have of genies probably comes from the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie or the animated Disney film, Aladdin. The Starz series, American Gods has a cab-driving Jinn who follows Islam origins but ends up granting a wish to a man he meets.

Supernatural‘s lore on Djinns appear to be a combination of a bunch of things, but it leans more towards the Western view of them than anything else. They’re power can only be exerted in the dream world, where they will either grant you a wish or show you something you fear. The blood draining is new, I’ve never heard of that from Jinn lore, or that they feed from humans at all.

Also I can’t help but point out that the Djinn in last night’s episode of “Nightmare Logic” was as white and blonde as Reese Witherspoon, clearly not from the Middle East. Either one of his parents was a Djinn who migrated over and bred with a white person or America has always had Djinns and no one noticed. But then again, Supernatural doesn’t exactly follow up on the heritage of their monsters, such as Sully the Zanna from the episode “Just My Imagination”. Zanna’s come from Romanian mythology which Sully clearly didn’t come from.

Don’t miss the next episode of Supernatural Thursday at 8:00 p.m. ET only on the CW.