Foil Hat Ninja

Part 3: The Jinn

Iblis said: “I am better than him. You created me from fire, and him You created from clay.”—the Quran, Surah 7:11-12

 

Belief in the jinn in the Middle East predates Islam, just as belief in demons predates Judaism and Christianity. However, much like the Judeo-Christian tradition came to define Western concepts of demons, so too did Islam come to define the jinn. In fact, they are spoken of much more extensively in the Quran than demons are in Christian scriptures. However, like demons, most beliefs about the jinn seem to come from folklore and Islamic theologians rather than from the actual Quran, which has a lot to say about their origin but little to say about their alleged supernatural powers.

In the West, we took the Middle Eastern concept of jinn and turned them into genies, which is a very different creature. The jinn don’t live in lamps (or Rav4s), and they certainly don’t grant wishes and won’t help you record up to five shows at once. Even the good ones are reputed to be volatile and unpredictable. Muslims must consider the show I Dream of Jeannie to be in extremely bad taste. The equivalent for Christians would be an Iranian sitcom called Devil in the Details, where a hot, ditsy succubus flits around in a leather bikini and keeps inadvertently screwing up her master’s attempts to enrich uranium. Still, the jinn must have some kind of a sense of humor about themselves, otherwise Robin Williams* wouldn’t be alive today.

The jinn got on Allah’s bad side when Iblis, the jinn’s fearless leader, refused to bow down to Adam because he was made from clay. Being the alpha dog of the jinn and therefore almost on par with the angels, he was the only one of them allowed in Heaven. When all of the angels bowed before Adam as commanded, Iblis remained standing and stood out like a donkey at a Tupperware party. (See what happens when you let the dog sit on the couch? He starts to think you’re equals.) For his disobedience, Allah condemned him to Hell. Iblis asked that his punishment be deferred until Judgment Day, and Allah granted his request. Then Iblis announced that he would spend the intervening time corrupting as many humans as he possibly could so that we would all end up in Hell with him. Nice guy. Now he is known as Shaytan, and all of his followers in jinndom are shaytans.

So we were basically the new baby getting all of the attention that our older sibling resented and he’s never gotten over it, which is very psychologically unhealthy for him and why he still hates us.

Since jinn have free will, they don’t have to be evil, and so some of them aren’t. They are also expected to convert to Islam just like humans, but they may be converted to any religion they want or none at all. Ultimately, all the jinn who are not Muslim will burn in Hell alongside the rest of us human infidels. In fact, from the divine perspective, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between us and them. This is evident by the repeated use of phrases like “humankind and the jinn” in the Quran, especially in regard to what is expected of us by Allah.

All non-Muslim religious miracles, like statues of Mary crying or Shiva’s schlong drinking milk, are considered the work of the jinn designed to make us believe in other faiths and thereby lead us astray. That’s an easy way for some Muslims to explain away all non-Muslim religious miracles, but there are plenty of Christians who say the same things about demons and non-Christian miracles.

The jinn are said to be invisible, but can be seen by humans when they want to be. They are not immortal, but they do live much longer than us. They also eat and drink and sleep. They live in communities and get married and have children. Besides invisibility, their super powers also include the ability to travel great distances almost instantaneously, put evil thoughts in people’s heads, possess human beings, cause us to have visions, read minds (which allows them to impersonate the dead at séances, etc.), and change their shape to appear as anyone they want or any paranormal entity you can think of, including little gray aliens and their mysterious ships. The parts about their moving fast, being invisible and whispering bad thoughts in people’s ears are actually in the Quran. If any of their other super powers are, I couldn’t find any reference to them.

They use these abilities primarily to cause Muslims to commit shirk: worshiping or revering false gods or entities, which raises an interesting paradox. If the jinn want to mislead Muslims while simultaneously affirming the incorrect faiths of non-Muslims, then they must know that Islam is the one true faith, so why not just convert? Unlike Satan and his followers, they have that ability. The fallen angels made their choice when they rebelled against God, but the jinn still have a chance to get into Heaven. Some are said to have converted to Islam already. The only reasons not to do so would seem to be pride and spite. It would take an awful lot of pride and spite to know that you could spend eternity in Heaven but you’d rather go to Hell just to make a point. Single-minded devotion to a cause is one thing, but spending eternity on fire is another. I might even convert to Scientology if I knew for a fact that it would save me from that…but probably not.

One compelling aspect of the jinn as relates to modern paranormal phenomena is that they are said to live in a separate dimension that connects to ours, which is similar to speculations made by some of the better ufologists. However, the verse most often cited from the Quran to support this is Surah 7:27: “Lo! he seeth you, he and his tribe, from whence ye see him not.” To say that this means that the jinn live in another dimension is one interpretation of this passage, but that’s not what it actually says. The jinn are supposedly invisible, and that seems to me to be the more plausible explanation for this statement.

The jinn are also said to live in places like garbage dumps, marketplaces and bathrooms. Muslims even have certain phrases that they’re supposed to say before they pee to prevent a jinni (the singular form of jinn) from climbing up their urine stream to gain access to the pee-er’s body, thereby possessing him. (Man, you would really have to want to possess someone to do that.) Another source says that you should banish jinn from your bathroom because if you accidentally pee on one it will die, and then its family will want revenge on you.

You think I’m making this up, don’t you? Well how about this? One recommended blessing to say before you use the toilet is “Allahumma inni a`udhu bika min al-khubuthi wal-khaba’ith (O Allah, I seek Refuge with You from all offensive and wicked things.) In all fairness, I should add that every Muslim I’ve asked about this stuff looked at me like I just asked them if they sacrifice babies under the full moon, so I gather that this practice has fallen out of favor with all but the most devout – or clinically paranoid – Muslims.

My question is: How do jinn live in another dimension but also places in the physical world? Is it possible to do both simultaneously? Instead of being interdimensional, could they be bidimensional? I wonder what that would be like. Maybe garbage dumps are prime real estate on the other side.

The jinn are also said to be predisposed to appearing as certain types of animals, particularly black dogs. Mysterious black dogs, frequently reported as having glowing red eyes, are usually associated with the lore of the British Isles, but they have also been reported in various other parts of the world. They are generally considered to be demonic and are seen as a portent of death, but in his very compelling book Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur recounts several cases of mysterious black dogs acting as unexpected helpers and even protectors in some instances. Maybe these are the good jinn?

An even more interesting assertion from the Quran is that the jinn were made from “smokeless fire” (Surah 55:15). Another verse (Surah 15:27) says “essential fire.” Some have speculated that this could mean that they were made from plasma, and a plasma based life form could be capable of some of the things UFOs and their “occupants” are reported to do, like vanishing, changing shape, passing through walls, etc. For more on this possibility, check out http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=111062. 

I suppose that it was only a matter of time before some people in the West discovered the legends of the jinn and started wondering if maybe they were the ones behind UFOs, and they recently have. Now they’re pounding that drum loudly, and I must admit that the mythology of the jinn does more closely correspond to the nature of the UFO than the other usual supernatural suspects. I am not, however, ready to convert to Islam just yet. I’m sure that Iblis will be delighted to hear that.

In the end, you can call a cow a horse if you want to, but that doesn’t change what it is. Some people seem determined to wedge UFOs and paranormal entities into a particular religious or mythological context. I think that this is because it offers a kind of solution or psychological defense mechanism, much like the skeptics who simply deny the phenomenon and claim that no evidence for it exists. If we can label it, if we can convince ourselves that we know what it is, we kid ourselves into thinking that we have solved the mystery and possibly even have some kind of control over it. What we should be doing, and some are, is the exact opposite. By examining the various “mythological” beings of different times and cultures rather than looking for labels, we might learn something about this other intelligence, be it one or several, that we seem to be sharing a planet with. Whether you call them aliens, archons, demons, jinn, or any one of dozens of other supernatural beings is of no consequence. It doesn’t change what they are. A rose by any other name will still lie about being from Zeta Reticuli.

There are certainly fundamentalist Muslims honking on about the dangers of the jinn just like there are fundamentalist Christians who can’t kick a rock without finding the Devil hiding underneath it. In The Testament of Solomon, Solomon calls God by the name Sabaoth, which is another name for Yaltabaoth, the arch-fiend of the Gnostics. One religion’s god is another’s devil.†

Those who subscribe to any theory that “aliens” are really one of the three types of critters listed above also tend to insist that the nature of their chosen beings who masquerade as aliens is exactly what religious texts tell us it is. Should we really believe that most or all of these beings, if any of them exist, are truly evil just because the Christians, Muslims and Gnostics say so? Religious convictions, no matter how devoutly held, do not constitute proof. People of all religions used to blame droughts, floods and earthquakes on these beings, and some still do. Whatever this intelligence is, whether it is one or more, we cannot deduce its (their) character based solely on ancient superstition. I cringe at the thought of all of humanity being judged by the atrocities committed by a relative few, nor would I think it fair for all of us to be regarded as selfless, noble and courageous because of a handful of people like Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela. Is it possible that our “aliens” are not so different from us in that regard? Unfortunately, I also know that it’s easier to corrupt people than to lead them to nobility. How many participated in the atrocities in Darfur as opposed to the number who have moved to India to care for the poor? Hopefully, this less than stellar aspect of our character is why we are so often willing to ascribe a negative intent to our unknown cohabitants that they may not deserve, and that this is not a shortcoming that they share. Unfortunately, at least some of them do tend to lie a lot. That’s probably not a good sign, unless…

Nope. I got nothin’. That’s probably just a bad sign. When in doubt, hit ’em with your chicken.

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*Oops. Well he was alive when I posted this. In fact, looking back at this four years later, there are a lot of dated references in here. Oh well. Such is life. 

† And since I’ve always wanted to be the target of a fatwa, I have to point out that the story of Solomon enslaving demons to build his temple first appeared in The Testament of Solomon, written sometime between the 1st and 5th centuries, so obviously not by Solomon. Since almost the exact same story appears in the Quran, and Muhammad wasn’t even born until the late 6th century, it would seem that the early Muslims lifted this story from a fraudulent Christian document and just replaced demons with jinn. Since I can’t find anyone else who has pointed this out, I have to assume that either I’m the first one to have noticed this or, more likely, I’m the only one with a death wish.

 

 

 

Part 2: Archons

“It is I who am god. No other one exists apart from me…If anything has existed before me, let it appear, so that we may see its light.”—Yaltabaoth

 

Archon, like demon, can mean lots of different things. It means “ruler” in Greek and sometimes was a title given to certain leaders. To the Gnostics, an archon is a sinister being bent on steering us away from learning the truth about our divine aspect, sort of like a demon, but with a major twist: the chief archon is God…sort of.

The Gnostic writings about the archons come mostly from the collection of books referred to as The Nag Hammadi Library (NHL), almost certainly because they were discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt.  Most of the archon-alien connection theory comes from the texts entitled The Hypostasis of the Archons and The Apocryphon of John. It’s all very complicated and not exactly what I would call light reading, let alone a real page turner, so I’ll simplify it as best as I can.

According to the Gnostic Christians, the Apocryphon of John is what Jesus told John after his resurrection. What Jesus told him was that an entity called the Demiurge (the original archon), who was named Yaltabaoth, aka Samael (blind one), aka Saklas (stupid one),* was created by Sophia (Wisdom) without permission from the Monad (God), and so he didn’t turn out so well as a result. He is described as being “a lion-faced serpent.” Not a good lookin’ kid. So Sophia tried to hide him, which almost always just makes things worse, as was the case in this instance. Anyway, since the Demiurge was hidden away from everything, he was unaware that anything else existed, so he decided that he was the only thing that existed and so he created the universe. After that, he created another 365 archons, basically his version of angels. (Yes, I think that there must be some connection between that number and the number of days in a year, but it’s never mentioned in the text.) Now since the Demiurge is fundamentally flawed, so are his archons and the universe. None of these guys are actually evil per se, but they’re hardly the cream of the celestial crop. Mostly, they’re just delusional about how important and smart and holy they are. Also, they have the morals of a frat boy on meth. Maybe those last two sentences are redundant.

So one day the archons happen to see a reflection of the true God in the water and decide to make a creature based on that reflection, which of course is Adam. Once they’ve finished building him, some of the higher powers trick Yaltabaoth into breathing some of his spirit into Adam, which brings him to life. Then the archons get all pissed off because they can see that this guy is better than them and so they cast him down into matter. I’m not sure why any of this made Adam better than them, it just did. So God takes pity on Adam and sends the divine feminine principal (Epinoia) down into Adam and she teaches him the knowledge of good and evil. So Yaltabaoth decides to pull Epinoia out of Adam via a rib, but what he gets is only some aspect of her, which is where Eve came from.

Some of the information in that last paragraph may not be exactly right, but it’s pretty close. That whole section of the book is so confusing and poorly written that sometimes it’s hard to tell what the author was trying to say. Maybe it just doesn’t translate well. That’s also not the only version of the story in the NHL, but it’s the one the “aliens are archons” crowd seem to like the best. There is another version where the Demiurge becomes aware of his true nature and is a much kinder, more humble and sympathetic character. That’s the version I like best. Anyway…

So then there’s more stuff about Yaltabaoth trying to destroy humanity with a flood and archons having children with women (another variation on the whole “sons of God thought the daughters of men were hot” theme of the Nephilim in Genesis). The bottom line is that the archons are still around and they don’t like us and want to lead us astray because they are jealous that we have a divine aspect to us and so we’re better and smarter than they are.

The problem that I have with this – at least one of them, for there are many – is that if Yaltabaoth created the universe, then clearly we are not smarter than he is. I’m sure that the universe seemed like a much simpler place 2000 years ago, but the Gnostics didn’t know anything about modern physics or genetics or Gödel’s proof. Regardless of whoever or whatever processes created this place, we’re still trying to figure out how it all works.

Now here’s the part that rubs a lot of people the wrong way, just in case you haven’t figured it out for yourself yet: Since the Demiurge created our physical reality, he not only thinks that he’s God, he is the god of the Old Testament, at least as far as the Gnostics are concerned. (I didn’t make this stuff up, so don’t shoot the messenger.) He created the Earth and humans and everything else and then wanted to keep us living in ignorance, which was something that I never understood about the whole Garden of Eden story to begin with. Even as a kid, I wondered why God wouldn’t want us to know the difference between right and wrong. To the Gnostics, it was because he was a false god who was jealous of us, which does seem to me to make more sense.

Incidentally, not all Gnostics were/are Christians. The pagan Gnostics considered Jesus to be just another attempt by Yaltabaoth to lead them astray. So all Gnostic beliefs are horribly offensive to Jews and Muslims, and the pagan Gnostics were also arch-heretics to the early Christians as well. No wonder there aren’t many of them around anymore.

So what does this have to do with UFOs? This is where The Hypostasis of the Archons comes in. Same basic gist: Sophia tries to create something without permission from the Big Guy. According to the “aliens and archons are the same thing” guys, what she got was one of the now iconic little gray aliens that looks like a fetus with big black eyes, and also one of the reptilians of the borderline paranoid-schizophrenic conspiracy theorists. He is the now familiar Demiurge called Yaltabaoth. How did she get two creatures from her one creation? I was initially confused by that as well. Read on.

Imagine my disappointment when I couldn’t find any reference to little gray aliens anywhere in the Nag Hammadi books. Supposedly, it says somewhere that this type of archon had the appearance of a fetus with gray skin and dark, unmoving eyes. A word search of a pdf version of the NHL edited by James M. Robinson revealed that the words “gray” or “grey,” and “unmoving” do not appear in any part of the writings at all. The word “eyes” appears a number of times, but I looked at the text surrounding all of them and there is only one that has anything to do with archons, and that one only says that there was lighting coming from the eyes of Yaltabaoth. Furthermore, Yaltabaoth is described as being a serpent – a snake – with a lion’s head in The Apocryphon of John, and that is how he is generally depicted in Gnostic renderings. That hardly matches the very few descriptions of people who claim encounters with reptilian aliens. So where did this archon-alien connection come from? As near as I can tell, it comes from two sources: Jay Weidner and John Lash. Weidner is flashier and gets more press, most likely due to his “prophet of doom” shtick, but I’m guessing that he picked up this alleged connection from Lash, who is far more intellectual and interesting, although still something of a conspiracy nut, like most believers in reptilians. In case you want to read the passage from The Hypostasis of the Archons that convinces Mr. Lash that the grays are really archons for yourself, here it is.

And what she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from matter that it derived.

From this, Lash concludes that there are two types of archons: the fetal type grays, and the reptilians mentioned in the Apocryphon of John.

I don’t know about you, but what I take away from this is that what Sophia created started off having a form like a fetus and then became a creature resembling a lion. I don’t take this as indicating that there are two types of archons. Further, Lash and Weidner assert that the fetal type archons were overpowered by the reptilians and became subservient to them. Again, I can find no reference to there being two types of archons mentioned in The Nag Hammadi Library, let alone one of them resembling a fetus with big black eyes. It seems to me that these guys are playing fast and loose with their interpretations of the actual writings to make them fit their alien conspiracy theory, which is too bad because some of Lash’s thoughts about the nature of the archons are quite interesting. I just think he’s reaching when he posits a connection between what the Gnostic texts actually say and the physical descriptions of entities being reported by UFO contactees.

Lash also finds a connection between the archons and the fractal pattern of the Mandelbrot set. A fractal is basically a mathematical set that creates a self-replicating pattern, and the Mandelbrot set is possibly the most well known. However, Lash and I must have different translations of the NHL, because once again I can find nothing that appears to be a reference to anything like a fractal in the texts. Even if I’m wrong, what he sees in the above image as being a fetal alien head with a reptilian tail being attacked by another kind of reptilian is really reaching for it in my opinion. These segments are generally referred to as “the seahorses,” and that’s pretty much what they look like to me – at least more than any sort of reported alien. Once again, I think that Lash is overreaching and finding a connection where none exists, like how ice cream sales affect the homicide rate. It seems to me that he’s being needlessly esoteric to make the data fit his theory to the point that I’m not really sure what the hell he’s talking about or where he’s getting his information or interpretations from much of the time. Some of it seems to come from a story that I believe he wrote himself.

 

So what, according to the actual Gnostics, is the archon agenda? Basically, they are deceivers who want to lead us away from the will of God. Other than the very different Gnostic versions of the traditional stories of Genesis, there’s really not much information about them that I can find. There is no one final authority on Gnostic beliefs. Much like other collections of religious writings, the Gnostic texts are not in universal agreement and sometimes contradict each other. Mostly, archons are just the bad guys, and almost all religions have some of those in one form or another.

So how did the Gnostics know all of this anyway? Basically, remote viewing. Their seers would enter a trance state, possibly with the aid of hallucinogenic substances, and receive visions of these revelations. Now far be it from me to completely crap on remote viewing. If the CIA thought it was worth doing for a number of years, there just might be something to it. Those guys aren’t exactly known for their whimsical proclivities. My problem is that when people with all manner of accessing information through non-ordinary means start poking around in the esoteric realms, most of what they come up with is absurd and unverifiable at best and verifiably untrue much of the time. I can’t even remember how many times the world was supposed to have ended just in my lifetime because someone with access to higher knowledge (real or imagined) said so. When it comes to using these sorts of methods for trying to ascertain the nature of existence, it would seem that the whole matter gets transferred over to the jurisdiction of the Trickster, and we all know what a prick he can be.

So why bother bringing any of this up? Because there are people out there promoting an “aliens are archons” agenda and claiming a bunch of similarities between the two that I can find no evidence for in the Gnostic texts. I have no idea where these people are getting their information from or if they’re just making it all up. It all sounds very intriguing until you start looking at the actual writings and discover that these guys are just a bunch of serpent oil salesmen who make me wonder just who exactly is trying to lead us astray and why?

As for the people who practice Gnosticism today, they certainly acknowledge the existence of the Demiurge and archons, but they aren’t nearly as obsessed with them as the conspiracy theorists. They seem about as concerned with archons as most mainstream Christian denominations are with demons. Whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad one I leave up to the individual to decide. I’m just trying to find the truth.

Yeah, good luck with all that.

 

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*It’s interesting to note that in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, he describes  the creator of the universe as being the “blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things.” I think it’s interesting because Lovecraft come up with this concept of a blind idiot creator more than two decades before the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered.