Hollywood Djinn

wikia.com

Uncharted 3 started me thinking about Hollywood and the way djinn are portrayed in film. I've seen them ghostly, fiery, and without a specific corporeal shape most often. Must be tough to act when your character is a cloud though. Only Robin Williams does well with the blue puffy look.

Then Clash of the Titans, v2010, came up with some story of djinn who gave up their bodies for what looks like charcoal briquettes. Glowing blues eyes complete the cheesy effect. But this is Clash of the Titans - so cheesy is what it's all about. ;)

Actually, as characters, they are pretty decent. They help Perseus out and are instrumental in defeating Medusa. Most other movies give the djinn a nasty reputation for death and destruction. Maybe spelling it "djinn" versus "genie" has something to do with the creepy coefficient?


Then there's Wishmaster,1997. This guy just looks like Satan in a red cloak. What's up with the horns and claws? I suppose being evil entitles a djinn to whatever he wants, but... I'm not buying the look, even if it makes me wonder if my djinn need an image consulation. If I was an evil mastermind, I'd want to look pretty darn ordinary and let people think I was just like them, until I trapped them between a rock and a hard place. What do you think? What other djinn have you seen in the movies?

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

deathbyrobots

I was soooo happy when I got Uncharted 3 for $30 on Black Friday. I saved myself $30 on a new game which had just come out, you see. Plus, this game promised me an adventure in the Arabian desert to boot.

We headed to a medieval castle in France, which pointed to a Crusader castle in Syria reminiscent of one of my bucket list destinations -  Krak des Chevaliers, the stronghold of the Knights Hospitaller. A couple of ordinary puzzles later and we're off to the Rub' Al Khali - literally the 'empty quarter' of the Saudi Arabian peninsula. (NOT on my bucket list. I saw the edge of that desert when I lived in the UAE. Close enough for me, thank you very much.)

Sand, sand, more shifting sand, and, oh yeah, the forgotten city of Ubar/Iram of the Pillars/Lawrence of Arabia's Atlantis of the Sands. (Lots of names for this place, apparently.) Since interesting mythologies and creature creations usually come with every Uncharted, I was excited to see what they would do with the djinn.

The big reveal?

It was a brass jar, supposedly with a djinn in it, sealed away centuries before by King Solomon himself. A brass jar? Aren't we going to OPEN it? Nope. Not this time. No curse of somebody or other to mutate the Spaniards (Uncharted One), or blue dudes that inhaled too much resin (Uncharted Two).

This time, Drake merely hallucinates an attack by a few enemies who have been turned into fiery guys - and then Sully wakes him up. I was especially disappointed because, as you know, anything to do with djinn is of interest to me.

So I'm off to play the new Assassin's Creed. It's set in Istanbul, remember? I hope it's not as disappointing.

Šaddah & Sukūn

Image via WikipediaIn Arabic, the sign above or below a consonant indicates the required vowel pronunciation. Yeah - there are letters missing. Kind of like Hebrew. (All of a sudden, the puzzle of the Dead Sea Scrolls has new meaning to me.)

The technical term for the indicator is "diacritic", and it's probably the biggest reason I can't read Arabic. I can spot the letters sometimes, if the calligraphy is very basic, but there's too much going on for me to sit there and decipher. Speaking it is enough of a challenge.

And don't forget the many dialects and variations. See the map above? If you live in the blue zone over in Morocco, don't expect to understand the red zone of the Emirates on the other side of the map. Even relatively close countries can speak a special blend. For example, the word for Friday is Juma in many countries (including Turkey) but in Egypt, it sounds more like Goma. And chicken? Djaj. In the Emirates it's Deyay. In Jordan it's more like - I can't even figure it out in English letters. You get the idea. The middle ground is classical Arabic, which many people understand and no one speaks. That's the one that the teacher is writing on the whiteboard in Berlitz class or whichever course you're taking.

wikipedia




The Šaddah and Sukūn, Fatḥa, Kasra  and their various other diacritic friends are supposed to clue people in to what the words are sans an accent or dialect. These play a huge role in literature, especially when it comes to the Qur'an. Observe the chart at left showing the evolution of diacritics in Arabic.

This brings me to the word for genie.

Surah Al Jinn of the Qur'an refers to genies as Al Jinn, pronounced a'jinn because of a sukūn between the l and the j.  Folklore, which is more heavily influenced by variations of dialect, sometimes uses the Šaddah instead, which effectively doubles the j, producing a dj or dz sound.

Maybe it won't help at all, but since I want to stay as far away from religion as possible, I use the "djinn" version. So does Jonathan Stroud - and half my battle is getting people to realize a djinn is a genie, without conjuring images of Robin Williams in a billowy blue get-up.

Make sense?



Related articles

• J is for Jinn from Tower of the Archmage (towerofthearchmage.blogspot.com)

Book of the Djinn

Image via WikipediaI usually stay away from religious sources to be PC, but recently I was thinking of a specific Qur'anic verse: The sea became ink for the words of the Lord. (Paraphrasing Surah Al Khaf 18:109 here. Don't quote me.)

Sometimes the verse gets mixed up with this one: If the whole of mankind and Jinns were to gather together to produce the like of this Qur'an, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they backed up each other with help and support. (Surah Al Isra 17:88)


And it turns out like this: "If the whole of mankind and the djinn had a sea of ink, they couldn't produce the like of the Qur'an." (See how the memory plays with words?)

The mixed up version makes me think: Is it blasphemous to wonder if a sea of ink would be enough for my edits?

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a little glimpse behind my curtain, despite my inhibitions, and introduce you to one of my resources, the Book of the Djinn - Surah 72 of the Qur'an.

See - growing up, I'd always thought genies were mythological beasts, like fairies. I never realized they fell into mainstream monotheistic religion. And Islam is mainstream in many parts of the world. (Maybe not where I live now...) Of course, Zeus was pretty mainstream in his day and even Zoroaster and his offshoot, Mithras were popular guys. So take it all with a grain of salt and humor me.

My point of the day: There are many millions of people out there who believe in djinn, like people of the west believe in angels, and there's a world of lore besides. Don't we wonder what these people are thinking? Why they think it?

I guess I'm just grumbling because I feel like I'm fighting a tide of preconceived notions. When we say, for example, djinn are dangerous and live in bottles and lamps and such, we're actually mixing up the concept of djinn and shayatin. The Shaytan is the devil - and there's a verse specifically mentioning that you can find the devil in men and djinn alike (Surah Al An'am 6:112). I actually have a few words I'd like to say to that Scheherazade lady about her perpetuation of misinformation. Although, she probably didn't expect her tale to land in a Disney Studio and my djinn aren't innocent of all theological transgression. The folklore is just too tempting to ignore.

A Grandmother's Djinn Tale



Gezende Gorge
via Facebook.com/Mersinliyizbiz

So wishing I was still at Hogwarts. If you haven't been yet, you should go...

I'd like to say thanks for all your help last week with the parallel world/dimension dilemma. I was always leaning toward a "shadow world", but I just had that moment of self-doubt. You know - the one that knaws at you for a week until you work it out. Maybe I should re-definine "moment" in the context of self-doubt? ;)

Alesa mentioned Barzakh, so I thought I'd toss that idea around and compare the eschatology (death sequence) of the east and the west. They are actually very similar. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

1) You die and your soul separates from your body.
2) You examine your life. Probably some atonement here, or what is the point of examination. Yes?
3) Your soul enters a sleep state that lasts until the judgement day.

I suppose Barzakh is another word for Purgatory. Since this is a sort of soulful hang-out spot for the ages, the idea that djinn might exist in Barzakh makes some kind of sense, if you believe them to be purely spirit. Jonathan Stroud uses something like Barzakh for his djinn dimension. (I say dimension because it's not a fully developed world. TY Holly Ruggiero. :) ) From what lore I've heard though, the djinn don't exist in a half-state of being at all - and that is the root of my djinn world.

I'll just tell you a short story I heard:

In the middle of the night (of course) a strange woman comes banging at the village midwife's door, asking for help. The midwife rouses her daughter to let her know she'll be gone for a while and the obliges the waiting woman. They follow a path up into the hillside, going through ever more treacherous and narrow passageways of the rocky gorge (imagine the one in the picture - sans the kayak), until they reach a yurt where a woman is in labor. After a long night of wailing and misery, the child is born and the midwife is compensated for her excellent work with a bag of gold. Then she's led back to her home. In the morning, the midwife wakes and when she opens the bag of gold, she discovers onions instead.

This story was told to me by the daughter, who was herself a grandmother when she told it. She believed every word she said, or at least she convinced me that she did. She also told me that the djinn use your things when you're not. For example, (her example, actually) if you wash and fold your sheets and they're soiled when you open them up the next time, a djinn has used them in your stead.

So I came away with the idea that, in eastern lore, djinn are not just floating around in their own dimension. They are in fact sharing ours. Sometimes even drawing us into theirs. Also, whenever we interact with the djinn, there are glamours involved so that what we see isn't what we think. I'm not sure if it's done intentionally as a trick, if djinn sensibility is skewed based on their reality, or if we just can't bring gold from their world back into ours. The grandmother seemed to think it was a trick, even though she didn't blame the dinn. It's just the way they are.

Parallel World or Dimension?

Image via Wikipedia

My djinn world uses the same physical world we live in, on a different plane. Maybe I can explain it better with this example:  The djinn world shadows ours, and in someplaces it overlaps. They don't see us and we don't see them, except in the overlap.

Isn't a parallel world something separate entirely? With a copy of everything, including the people?

The other day I was editing and I hit a roadblock. (Sci-fi and Fantasy writers: Help me out here!) I keep writing about a parallel world, but do I really mean dimension?

Red Riding Boots



via Endless.com

Forgive my creative blogging slump for the day. I'm reworking a bit of my neo-byzantine world and I haven't any extra brain cells to spare! So I thought I'd ramble on about red...

Red boots in particular...not the Wonder Woman kind, or the patent leather ones that you might see on a woman of questionable repute. I'm thinking about a pair of oxblood riding boots- you know, the shade of reddish-brown that makes me think of a well-worn library chair, with tacking and turned legs. I've been wanting a pair of boots like that lately. Coveting the pair on the right, actually. Unfortunately, they cost $447.95 a pair. Sigh.

They're made by Frye and the company history makes me want them even more:

"The Frye Company is the oldest continuously operated shoe company in the United States. Founded in 1863 by John A. Frye, a well-to-do shoemaker from England, and family-run until 1945, Frye products have a long and illustrious history. Frye boots were worn by soldiers on both sides of America's Civil War, soldiers in the Spanish-American war, and by Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. When home-steading drew adventurous New England families to the West during the mid and late 1800's many of the pioneers wore Frye Boots for the long journey. Today Frye remains true to its roots with its line of heritage boots, but continues to innovate as it introduces chic new handbags, pumps, and sandals to its collection." via Endless.com

So...why do I want red boots? Well, there's a story behind that. To the Byzantines, red shoes meant royalty, but I wasn't about to put my hero in ruby slippers, now was I? So I gave him a pair of tall boots....and now I want them!!!

This is good. right? We're supposed to write about things we like, things we know and appreciate so that it comes through for the reader.

What have you written about that's on your wish list?

Related articles

• First Look: Adrianne Palicki As Wonder Woman in Action (tvsquad.com)

Quantum Crazed & Crusader Challenged

Image via Wikipedia

It's not just me who thinks we live in a warped universe. ;)

In honor of Rachael Harrie's First Crusader Challenge , I'm including the following about myself in today's post:

· one lie
· one interesting quirk
· one annoying habit
· one of my best character traits
· one of my favourite things in the whole world.

It's her fault for the bloviating/ fuliguline business, btw. :)

So, in 300 words or less, allow me to bloviate with my reasoning behind our hop into the rabbit hole of quantum physics:

I've been doing a bunch of reading lately about the multiverse, the many-worlds interpretation, M theory, and even dream analysis...because I'm linking it all to the fortunetelling aspect of my gipsy/djinn characters. However, reading the experts only gives me a headache, trying to unravel what they're explaining. I decided on reading some fiction instead.

To start, I picked up Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith and Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. Both books were enough to keep me puzzled for a couple of days, pondering time paradoxes and parallel universes. Equally engrossing plotlines kept things rolling through though, with bite sized bits of how the theories work laced into the chapters.

Here’s my sci-fi/fantasy secret: I find these books enjoyable because they help me think outside the box, instead of following the norm in fuliguline fashion. One of my favorite things in the world is a book with a premise that makes me think. I have a habit of analyzing things for days after I put them down. I examine the individual blade of grass, and how it fits into the grand scheme, instead of just looking at the big picture. Ask my kids – it’s annoying – and yet they’re right there with me, watching Stargate for the millionth time, postulating how other myths might work in the series. Perhaps I’ve stumbled onto my best character trait, infectious curiosity… Now if I could pass on the quirk of rolling a toothpast tube properly, I'd be a happy woman indeed. :)

Unrelated celebrating:

The Science Channel has purchased the rights to Firefly! Read what Nathan Fillion says about that here.

And the winner of a signed copy of Across the Universe by Beth Revis is...

K.O. - The Insect Collector

...with Harput castle! So Friday's post will be about her castle.

Congrats!

Related Articles:

• Sarah Fine - Marbury Lens: The Bounds of the Real
• Matthew Rush - Andrew Smith Interview
• Is Relativity Hard? (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• The Multiverse, Quantum Immortality and the Meaning of Life (scitechexplained.com)

Djinn Wishes & A Blogfest

via blog.dbast.com

With regard to your three wishes: get an attorney to word them- poorly articulated wishes can lead to undesirable results. And ixnay on the wishing for more wishes. :)

You might get a djinn to help you out with something if they think it's a good idea too. I wouldn't bank on that though, hence the binding. Djinn must do what you ask if you control the talisman they're bound to...so why the three wishes? Well, the long and short of the story is that the djinn don't grant wishes, except in tales that are teaching us a lesson.

First, lets look at the number three.

We need to rub the lamp/bottle/ring three times. We get three wishes. Both examples suggest the wishes can give us power over any of these three things:

The three worlds - human, djinn, heaven
Spirit, Mind, Body
Past, Present, Future
Creation, Destruction, Sustainance

In these stories, wishes are an enticement for us to release unsavory desires we've bottled up. A way to get us to cross over to the dark side, where the djinn/demon dwells. To have mastery over things that, free will aside, only God is supposed to control. This thinking is why the character who does the wishing ends up in a sorry state (dead/trapped/disfigured/insert horrible circumstance here).

Following that train of thought...it's probably better to stay away from djinn wishes and stick to the dandelion. :)

Now, if I won the lottery...

On to Nicole Duclerior's  Bernard Pivot Blogfest. Ten questions. Here goes:

1.What is your favorite word?

Zephyr (Been my favorite since High School - Dare I ask if anyone remembers the poem I wrote for English?- way before I actually discovered Mersin (my home in Turkey) was Zephyrium in the ancient world. Cool, huh? Is this supposed to be a one word answer? Sorry!)

2.What is your least favorite word?

Seriously 

3.What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Ruins (Sorry, I'm odd that way. History speaks to me...)

4.What turns you off?

Loud noises.
 5.What is your favorite curse word?

My new one is frexing. Thanks, Beth Revis!

6.What sound or noise do you love?

Birdsong

7.What sound or noise do you hate?

The sound my dog used to make when she was sleeping, licking her chops. Incessantly.

8.What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Is this a trick question? I'm attempting to be a writer.

9.What profession would you not like to do?

Anything Mike Rowe does. Except maybe the Ford commercials. Those are OK.

10.If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Welcome!

Stuffed in The Bottle

Image via WikipediaGenies are stuffed into bottles all the time...but I wonder why? Did Pandora use the last box? I guess the phrase "bottled up" is as close to the truth as I'm going to get.

What would a person stuff into a bottle and lock away? Not something with a great power they can use, that's for sure. It's something fearful. Things like forbidden desires and dark magic. Stuff you KNOW is wrong and yet you're tempted with anyway. (No wonder they stuffed Christina in there! She looks like jailbait in this video.)



So you put your former ally/scapegoat in a bottle and put a cork in it. It's not the genie's fault you can't control yourself, is it? I would be pretty pissed if I had to be stuck in a bottle. Hence, the bottled djinn vintage is usually....unhappy. How many stories are there about angry djinn and their masters? A bazillion? Hint: NO masters in my MS. 

Actually, djinn can be bound to any object. Like the Horcrux idea, the object is a vessel for the spirit, and the object can be a person, as Harry demonstrates. You might say Harry is ma-voldemort...lol! (As opposed to majnoon which means crazy and translates to "with the djinn".) 

So why would a djinn even get into such a bad situation? Curiosity. Our world is interesting to them and they get tangled up in it if they get too close to someone, or someplace. I have to stop here...or I'll get too far into my story. ;)

Who's In Your Head?



via entertainment.blogs.foxnews.com

 I was planning on a post about M Theory today, because I just read The Marbury Lens. But last week was kind of serious so this week I though I'd take a break and be more...entertaining!

Barbara Eden here is an example of what a djinn does not look like (anymore). And they don't live in bottles either, but that and what it represents is another post. A real djinn is someone who blends in with the rest of us, which is a scary thought, but...

What I want to say is, when I sat down to write my MS, I had physical features in mind for each character. But somewhere between there and here, specific other people crept into my head. Because I watch TV, go to the movies, surf the internet...you know what I mean. I found real LIVE people who could speak the words I've had floating around in my head. I thought I'd share who they look like to me now.

Main character, Sybil:Molly Quinn
(I watch CASTLE. All the time. It's Nathan's fault.)


via BuddyTV.com

Extroverted BFF known as Alexis: Teenaged Reese Witherspoon
(Yes, they have the same hairstyle. I did that on purpose. BFFs do crazy things...actually, the muse arranged a photo shoot.)

via GoneElsewhere.wordpress.com

Romantic Interest, Haydon:Tom Wellings

(OK, I need someone who looks like him, because Tom Wellings is almost my age and we're not YA, but that's my visual.)




via TVSquad.com


My favorite bad djinn, Gregor:Kivanç Tatlituğ
This photo is Tart-worthy, ne? Have to tell her about it...


via the-hottest-guys.blogspot.com



Trickster, Bertrand:Jeremy Irons
(He's Jeremy Irons. I don't need an explanation!)


via lahiguera.net

I guess you could say these actors are some of my muses, or maybe my it's my muse who has connections, because she sent me to them!

So....who's in your head? And isn't blogger annoying? I had to upload each of these pics separately!

See you Friday!

Lightning Slow

Image via WikipediaAn oxymoron: Two contradictory words put together, creating an entirely new meaning. Pretty ugly.

I feel like the extreme snail in my fish tank today. "Extreme snail?"...you ask. Yes, Turbanator, as we affectionately dubbed him, is lightning slow. I mean that in the most flattering way possible. He's ALL over that fish tank like white on rice. He slides up to the top and then throws himself off into the currents, skysurfing down onto the plants below. But he is a snail and no matter how fast he goes, he isn't going to be catching up to the fish anytime soon.

Why am I like him? Because no matter how fast I go, I'm not getting it all done in time. I was supposed to have the posts for this week written on Monday, which today isn't, etc...

Djinn are really fast. Like lightning fast (as opposed to the Turbanator). Some people even think they can fly. After all, how else could Genie possibly get all that stuff for Aladdin?

I wonder where I can get some of that "fast". Because short of replicating myself, I don't know how I'm going to:

1. get all the holiday gifts purchased and wrapped
2. arrange a birthday party for child number 1
3. attend a DAR meeting
4. visit my holiday parties
5. and polish a manuscript for querying by January 1st!

Abracadabra??

Auras



Pier.Bover via Flickr

 I was out celebrating the Beaujolais Nouveau release and started up a discussion with a friend of mine about auras. (Couple glasses of wine will bring out interesting conversation, you know...)

Over the years, I've noticed many of my closest friends love orange. They have orange rooms, orange candles, orange furniture.  Me? I love blue. All shades, but especially peacock. Do I give off a matching vibe? I don't know, but I do think favorite colors are indicative of personality. I also know I'm not the first one to come up with the idea.  

Auras are important to the concept of the third eye, Kundalini, chakras and Zoroastrianism. Halos behind saints, prophets and kings in Abrahamic religions are an example of the aura in the mainstream.

Guess what? My djinn have auras too. Remember my post on amber orbs?

As I was telling my friend, grey areas are the best place for my writerly mind to dwell.

Related articles

• World Beliefs in Aura Reading (brighthub.com)

Devil's Snare



via OfficialCypherFansite.com

You may wonder where I come up with this stuff, but it's all around us, you know. I needed a protective symbol, so djinn wouldn't be able to track down my heroine. So off I went into cyberspace to find an appropriate, and interesting talisman.

Clickity click....I remember something cool from The Alchemyst. Clickity click....some neat, but ordinary sounding Celtic stuff... save it for later. Clickity click...that looks interesting - devil's snare; originated in Assyria...I like the Middle Eastern connection. Evil spirits get trapped in the coil...hmm...maybe if I use a verse to make the swirl it would be even more interesting. Clickity click...oh, you're SUPPOSED to use verses...Clickity click...latin verses...bingo! CATALYST IN TRAINING.

So if you haven't already guessed, a version of the devil's snare is important in my book. :)

Ley Gates

via JiroOlcott.com

In 1921, amateur archeologist Alfred Watkins suggested the existence of ley lines. These networks of ancient paths had several things in common.  

• They were created with astronomical guides.
• They were always straight lines.
• They were marked by significant objects.

He never suggested  ley lines had any supernatural powers.



Fast forward a bit and today ley lines are known as paths of energy that crisscross the world.  Ley gates are found at the intersections of those lines. The most famous ley gate is probably Stonehenge.

Something else like ley lines lies sleeping on the Eurasian continent as well.  Like a dragon, Naga  follows the fold mountains where the tectonic plates of the earth meet. It's eye is located in the foothills of the Jura mountains at Alaise, France and paths radiate from Alaise, much like ley lines. The secret is in the area salt mines.

Druidic lore and ritual sites there gave me ideas...lots of ideas actually, but those will be for another post.


via JiroOlcott.com

Authors use ley gates in many ways. Diana Gabaldon used them for time travel, other writers (like me) use them to travel around the world. Sometimes they are sources of powerful strange magic. But whatever we write about ley lines, the one thing our stories share is an interesting link to the ancients.

Related articles

• Stonehenge Theories (time.com)
• Secrets of Alaise
• Mysteries of The World - Silbury Hill (scienceray.com)

Psychokinesis

I swear - researching these posts is so much fun! I've come across some interesting things out there!

For example, let's take a look at my last homework assignment, The Men Who Stare at Goats. It's a book, movie and TV series about the US military and psychic security measures, all based on an actual program at Fort Bragg, NC. (I knew there were some different people around here.) The spoof on the New Age black op began with a "story about a story of a hoax which is actually a story." Area 51 anyone?

Of course, I'll take any excuse to watch George Clooney... even if he is masquerading as part of a Jedi psychic security team who likes spoon bending parties.

The Psyops Unit uses the principle of psychokinesis, or mental manipulation, to harness the power of the universe. Each person has a biospherical magnetic field (Are they talking about an aura?) which allows a Jedi to use "The Force" for remote viewing (sometimes of the Loch Ness monster).  Invisibility is possible at the highest level (Clooney "eventually settled on finding a way of not being seen").

Some Jedi even practice phasing - turning physical matter to energy (for walking through stuff). In the middle east, they call phasing Tay Al-Ardh or Keramat. Spiritual people like Rumi are credited with the ability. Sounds like good djinn material to me!

The Evil Eye is supposedly a form of psychokinesis too. (I think Barney torture is more sinister.)  All of it ties back to the Third Eye and the chakras of Kundalini.

Think I'm making all this up? Watch this courtesy of the Science Channel:

NB. From now on, links back to my earlier posts will be bolditalic to differentiate between wikipedia, etc.
And thanks again to Tracy Marchini for letting me guest post on her site yesterday. Check it out, if you missed it. She's great and she's agreed to post a Q&A here sometime soon, once I get the Qs in a row!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Psychokinesis: Mind Power At It's Best (brighthub.com)
• Telekinesis: Mind Over Matter (socyberty.com)
• Blu-ray Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (blogcritics.org)

Thanks to Leigh over at That's Write for the Yo Gabba Gabba Award - which she created for bloggers who write Strangely Irresistible posts.

And thanks to Mara Nash over at Mara Writes for the One Lovely Blog award too!

I'll be passing these on this weekend...since I need a post on Sunday because it will be October and that means NaBloWriMo!

Lanterns

Announcement: I have crossed a new threshold. I'm guest blogging today for Tracy Marchini. (Formerly of Curtis Brown and Taconic Press - Check out her writing prompts on Mondays - sometimes with crit prizes!) So I say away with all those Dunning-Kruger moments dragging me down....Today I am a torchbearer for aspiring fantasy writers and my beloved Turkiye!

Speaking of torches, today is Tuesday and I have to write something about Turkish style.  I thought I'd go with lanterns. You know, those pretty ones you can't find a place for in your house (I've tried) and which don't actually hang in most Turkish homes either.  They're usually made of colorful glass or pierced metal. The best place to find one is at the Grand Bazaar (see pic). Somehow they seem to be a decor prerequisite for Middle Eastern ecclectic. 

Djinn tie-in *Ahem* Aladdin's genie may come out of a lamp. However, my djinn prefer lanterns. They don't live in them, but they can control the light within (think "the clapper" ). Fire and energy respond to their whim. As I work on my revision and start to collect my thoughts for the second installment (my NaNoWriMo project), I'm finding there really are no limits to what I can do with that power.

Suggestions, anyone?

I try keeping to things like cultural anomalies, especially ones which can be explained away scientifically, but sometimes I get the best ideas from off the wall things. For example, tomorrow I stare at goats... Psychokinesis, you know :)

Palais des Papes



Image via Wikipedia

Hayton remitting his report to the Pope.



I've mentioned previously that the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia was a crusader state along the road to Jerusalem. Hayton of Corycus (KizKalesi) was the Armenians' most famous historian. His work has even been compared to Marco Polo and Oderic of Pordenone.

Hayton (not my Haydon) was also a monk and spent time with the popes in Poitiers, pushing his agenda for Amalric of Tyre to be the rightful ruler of Cyprus. Which leads us to an important field trip to the museum of the Palais de Papes in Avignon France.

French Pope Clement V initially moved to Avignon to avoid fighting in Rome. Later popes stayed on, prompting the Papal Schism, complete with Popes and Antipopes.  It was essentially a period of the French and the Italians vying for power. (Check out my friend Teresa's travelpod post for more details.)

Successive popes made the Palais des Papes into the largest Gothic palace in Europe. Eventually they left, the French revolutonaries took it and Napoleon even used it as a barracks/prison. Then the palace finally became a museum. 

Know where djinn like to live?  Ruins, museums, underground cities. Bingo!  The seat of my djinn court is now in Avignon, France.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 48 Hours In: Avignon (independent.co.uk)

 

Kundalini Rising

Image via Wikipedia Tradition says djinn are created from smokeless fire. I've even read they are "the fire of a scorching wind" so I made fire and energy a big part of being a djinn. Then I needed to figure out how to tame that energy.

My solution stems from Kundalini Yoga. Yogis who practice Kundalini energy management strive to ultimately free their souls from their bodies. They use the The Third Eye  to reach the superconscious through spinal energy centers called the chakras.  

The philosophy is shared by world religions using different names. The strongest example is Plato's explanation of psyche in his work Timaeus, but its also found in Sufism, Kabbalah, and Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm.


Kundalini is represented by a coiled sleeping serpent or goddess at the base of the spine. Years of training are required to awaken it. If the energy is released improperly, the Kundalini Syndrome, may result. This negative experience reportedly results in uncontrollable physical and mental impulses which resemble psychosis. Kundalini Rising is the positive experience of uncoiling the serpent in the form of energy, either creative or sexual. The energy follows the spine, up through each Chakra, from the sacrum to the crown of the head. 

Sybil struggles with her energy while she is human and learns to use it as a djinn. Kundalini rises when she finds balance. Talk about character arc!

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Kundalini Energy (socyberty.com)
• Qigong and Energy Arts Forum - September 2010 (martialdevelopment.com)

 

Meditation and The Third Eye

Image via Wikipedia

Interrelation of world religions was integral to last week's Wednesday post about Goddess Culture.  Lots of you had thoughts on that, so this week I'll try to give you more of what you want. Some of you are going to think I'm way out there today.  But after all, I write fantasy and if I want to unlock a portal to another world, an open mind is a requirement. 

You might remember my post about the meditative whirling dervishes of the Mevlana Sufi? They belong to a mystic branch of Islam. The poet Rumi formed the order in Konya, Turkey, influenced by Persian and eastern theologians.  Meditation, eastern theologians in Islam...a light bulb went on in my head.

My head, by the way, functions in interesting ways.  It's like a cabinet with the most random form of filing. One word often links two things in the same folder. Remember how your teacher taught you to associate things in order to study them? My system uses the same scheme. Hey - it works for me!

So Sybil uses Yoga to deal with her predicament, but also for other reasons (no spoilers). The whole meditation idea set me thinking and led to further researching. Basically, as eastern philosophies like Yoga, Qigong and Aikido become mainstream in western culture, we (researchers) discover more and more shared principles in our own religions.

Take the third or inner eye, for example, a gateway to inner realms and higher consciousness. Mormonism calls it the spiritual eye, there is suggestion that the Book of Revelations references it many times, in Kabbalah, its the sphere of chokmah, the highest potential of thought.  Just think of all the places you can go with that... I can't tell you what I did with it, but lets just say Avatar wasn't necessarily a new idea.

Kundalini is another important and related topic but I think I'll save it for next week.

Unfortunately, the only eyes I have right now are red ones from staring at this computer screen all day.  I used to find time for yoga classes once. Life gets busy, though, and "me" time fell by the wayside.  My mind often wanders to solving plot holes or creating better twists. Maybe I should try a class to get some perspective, since I've been stuck in a parallel universe! Anyone else find something (besides spinning in circles) that you find especially therapeutic?

Thanks for reading!

Related articles by Zemanta

• There's a way to meditate for everyone (psychologytoday.com)
• Meditation Found to Help Teens as Well as Everyone Else (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)