Possession

Not everything we know about djinn is thrown out in Burnt Amber. Lots of the Disney business is, ixnay with the three wishes and all, but I hold true to some of Scheherazade's basic principles. Who is she? She's the narrator of the 1001 Arabian Nights...the woman who the king is planning to kill when she finishes the story, so she stretches it out to last longer...kind of the original cliff hanger at the end of the chapter, if you will... (Tangent: If I could have a cat, I would name her Scheherazade. Just love to say the name!) Anyway, back to....

Important principle number one: Djinn live in a parallel universe and can possess animals in this one. They are also bound to the capabilities of whatever animal they choose. So say they choose a bird, that means they can fly, but they can't open doors or talk (unless it's a parrot).

Variation: They don't have to be black. Why? Because black is associated with evil and I already mentioned djinn can be either good or evil.

Variation number two: There are different levels of djinn (remember Marid and Ifrit) and each one has different abilities as to the creature it can possess. Some don't do it at all. Some don't need a host at all. The arabic word for crazy is majnoon (using the english alphabet here of course). Literally it means "with a djinn" or "having a djinn", i.e. there is a belief floating out there that some djinn can even possess people.

These actually aren't my own variations btw because Scheherazade isn't the only source for djinn lore out there. There are myths and legends all over the place in the Middle East which, as an American, I did not grow up knowing. But I'm having the best time explaining it to you now :)

If you've got the time, here's a short story about water djinn from the New Yorker.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Téa Obreht: "Blue Water Djinn." (newyorker.com)

The Dark Djinn

I got the inspiration to use djinn in Burnt Amber from a couple different places. One was Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy and the other (took a couple times to figure out it was coming up for a reason) was a report my son had to do for Language Arts. On both occasions I was surprised by how little I actually knew about djinn and was forced to change my perspective. And when you start to look at stuff from a different angle than you're used to, all kinds of things happen, like 74,000 word manuscripts.

Last week I discussed the strongest djinn, the Marid. The next level down is the Ifrit. Like all djinn, Ifrit may be good or evil, but most of the time they're the bad guys. It was a convenient way to add dimension to my villain too. Strength and cunning are good traits for that. They like to live underground and frequent ruins...especially ruins that are underground...like cisterns... and for some reason, their skin is usually a shade of green. Could it be they're jealous of the Marid?

Ifrit are probably the most well know type of djinn. The Final Fantasy RPG uses Ifrit and associates them with - surprise! - the fire element. (oops.., think I forgot to tell you djinn are all made of smokeless fire). There are historic sites associated with them, such as the djinn blocks of Petra and the Majlis al-jinn (above pic), IFrIT software named after them? and even Jeannie's evil Ifrit sister on TV. In fact, the more I look, the more I keep seeing djinn everywhere... in literature and popular culture.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Vengeful Djinn (visionaryliving.com)

Marid Mavi

Image by 'PixelPlacebo' via Flickr

You all know Mavi means blue from my post about the evil eye...but did you know blue is an important color in Burnt Amber?

One of the reasons is the association with the most powerful djinn, the Marid. They are creatures of the sea, associated with a sapphire talisman and often portrayed with blue skin or in the form of a porpoise. Much like Neptune or Poseidon, they are also masters of the weather, wrecking ships and causing chaos when they are unhappy about something.

…the sudden squall descended on us like a tornado, tossing the 34 foot boat around like a bath toy. Burnt Amber, Chapter Six

Marid are arrogant, proud and difficult to bind because they are so strong. Their enemies are the dark djinn, or Ifrit, which I’ll discuss next week. Marids of Cilicia control the Ifrit and keep them from crossing into the human world…for the moment anyway.

I use this information as a base for djinn abilities, but not djinn appearance. There are no blue-skinned people running around in my book. I think we had enough of those this year in Avatar :)

Marid can also be found in video games, the Japanese manga YuGiOh and the Ars Magica roleplaying game.