Were you puzzled by a lot of the words in Tuesday’s post? I was, and I just can’t stand not knowing the meaning of a word. I absolutely have to look up the ones that I didn’t recognize and even the ones I recognized but don’t know much about.
Let’s go backward through the list and start with deevs, peris, ghouls, jinns, marids, and afrits. To make a long story short, they are all demons, fallen angels or descendants of fallen angels, and they are all of Arabian or Persian origin. To make a short story long, read on.
My research began with “deev,” which I found to mean the same as “daeva.” Both words sound a lot like “devil,” don’t they? You betcha. My 1948 edition of The Reader’s Encyclopedia says that a daeva is “one of certain malignant demons of Persian mythology, ferocious and gigantic spirits under the sovereignty of Eblis.”
So who’s Eblis? Here’s a story you’ve heard before. God wanted the angels to worship Adam. Eblis (a.k.a. Iblis), who was a jinn, refused, saying, “Me thou hast created of smokeless fire, and shall I reverence a creature made of dust?” Needless to say, God didn’t care for that attitude. He turned Eblis into a Sheytan (or Shaitan) who then became the big bad daddy of all devils. In other words, Eblis is Satan and the deevs are his minions. If you are a fan of the original “Battlestar Galactica,” you may recall a character called Count Iblis who turned out to be the Devil.
Jinns are demons of Arabian mythology. There are several types of jinn, the most powerful of which are the marids, followed by the afrits. Ghouls are jinns that rob graves and feed on corpses.
Last but not least, peris are beautiful, winged descendants of fallen angels. They are not allowed into Paradise until they do penance. In “Paradise and the Peri,” by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), a peri was told that she would be allowed into Heaven if she brought the “gift most dear to the Almighty.” She tried several gifts that didn’t work. Finally, she brought a guilty old man to Heaven’s Gates, and when the man wept in repentance, she offered the man’s tear and the gates opened.
That’s six words we now know more about, proving that it sometimes pays to have dusty old tomes kicking around the house. I think The Reader’s Encyclopedia has just earned a permanent home on my bookshelf.