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New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
Who or What Are the Jinn with Charles Upton
00:55:28
Who or What Are the Jinn with Charles Upton Charles Upton’s first books of poetry were published in 1968 and 1969 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Light Books in San Francisco. He was then considered the youngest member of the “beat generation” as he w...
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- [00:00]
Charles Upton
It's not my way to go in that direction. There was actually a book that won the National Book Award by James Merrill called the Changing Light at Sandover, which was pretty much written by the gin because it was written on a Ouija board, you know, or a lot of it was. And so, so this is, you know, this is not something that is just in the past, as you know, it's something that continues.
- [00:26]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Keep watching to learn more. For early access to our videos and livestream events, sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org New Thinking Allowed is presented.
- [00:45]
California Institute for Human Science Announcer
By the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spiritual. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu Book 4 in the.
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New Thinking Allowed Promotion Announcer
New Thinking Allowed Dialogue series is Charles T. Tart, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
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Charles Upton
Thinking Allowed Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
- [01:47]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we are going to explore the nature of the jinn in Arabic and Middle Eastern cultures, also popularly known in the west as a genie. My guest is Charles Upton, who is the author of many books including Folk Metaphysics, Mystical Meanings in Traditional Folk Songs and Spirituals, Knowings in the Arts of Metaphysics, Cosmology and the Spiritual Path.
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Charles Upton
The.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
Science of the Greater Jihad, Essays in Principle Psychology, the System of the Truth and Falsehood in Postmodernism and the New Age, the Alien Disclosure, Deception, the Metaphysics of Social Engineering, and most recently, an Autobiography, Giving Myself Away from Beat Generation Protege to Metaphysical Social Critic, A Cultural History of America through 50 years of spiritual Seeking.
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Charles has been a guest on New.
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Thinking Allowed many times and I highly recommend his previous interviews. He's based in Lexington, Kentucky and now switch over to the Internet video.
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Welcome Charles. It is a pleasure to be with you again.
- [03:28]
Charles Upton
Yes, glad to get back. Good.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
I hope you're well. I know that you've been addressing a serious health condition now for quite a while.
- [03:42]
Charles Upton
Yeah, well, it seems to be, you know, not flaring and. But as we said earlier, you know, it's costing me a lot to keep, you know, to buy those herbs that are supposedly keeping it down, which they seem to be, you know. Anyway, enough about me to begin with.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
Let'S talk about the jinn as it's understood in pre Islamic culture. I'm pretty sure it's something with many different names found in folklore throughout the world.
- [04:18]
Charles Upton
Yeah, it certainly is. And I would say, actually the understanding of the jinn in pre Islamic and Islamic culture is pretty much the same. The difference is the acceptable relationship of humanity to the jinn is what changed not the idea of who the jinn are, you know, so. Well, you know, the jinn are pretty much the Arab version of what the northern Europeans call the fairies, what the Greeks called the daimonis, who, you know, are beings somehow between human beings and the gods, you know, an intermediary place. And I think they're very similar to the Ashuras, Asuras of the Hindus. And, you know, there's a many different colors. I would say that they bear affinities to the Jotun of the Norse, who are the giants, because there's a distinction made between the gods and the giants. In Norse folklore, a giant who was admitted to the company of the gods was Loki, who was obviously a problematic character. And there's a similar thing in Islam, actually, in the Quran, which says that Iblis was a jinn who was admitted to the company of the angels and he was a problematic character. Very similar stuff. So that's what they are. And, you know, they're known to have certain powers. They're mostly invisible to us most of the time, yet they can appear, they can temporarily materialize, and they can affect material reality. According to the Quran, the king or prophet Solomon used them as architects and also used them as divers. They could dive to the bottom of the ocean and come up with pearls and things like this. So that's, you know, they're like that. One of their major functions in pre Islamic Arabia was that the poets of Arabia largely claimed to be inspired by the jinn. You know, they were the muses, if you will, of those poets, which is very interesting. This shows, once again, the very close relationship of poetry to magic traditionally. In fact, you know, I'm sometimes known as a poet, and once I had an experience where the jinn appeared to me in a dream. And they said, we will make you, you know, if you throw in your lot with us, we will make you, you know, the most famous poet in the world, and we will give you long, long epics that you can write. And they actually gave me a sample of their wares, which was this line. It said, there are great sapphire searchlights sweeping the giant dead. And they said, you want more of that? You could have whole epics full of that, you know. And I said, well, I don't think so, you know, it's not my way to go in that direction. There was actually a book that won the National Book Award by James Merrill called the Changing Light at Sandover, which was pretty much written by the gin because it was written on a Ouija board, you know, or a lot of it was. And so this is, you know, this is not something that is just in the past, you know, it's something that continues. But the change was. Well, the change is talked about in the Quran. The Quran tells the story before the Quran descended to humanity, which means the human race was now once again in direct contact with Allah directly through his words. He was not at a distance as he had seemed to be before. And so what the Jinn used to do is they would fly up to some higher plane and they would eavesdrop on the councils of Allah and his angels and they would get information from that. Then they would fly down to the human beings who were in touch with them and relate that information. Which reminds me very, very much reminds one very much of channeling and spirit mediumship today. Like, you know, pretty much the same phenomenon. But when the Quran came and says, well, now Allah is speaking directly. So, you know, Yujin are out of a job as intermediaries, used to be intermediaries. And that was acceptable for a while, but now, you know, we're getting it from the horse's mouth, so you will not be needed in this role. And then they would try to fly up, you know, and do what they did before, but they were driven away by meteors. So the idea in the Quran is meteors represent as if the spears of the angels being thrown down to drive the Jinn back so they can no longer listen in on what's going on in heaven.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
So you can speak about the Jinn both from personal experience and in terms of both the classical literature, the Quranic literature, and the folk literature of the Middle East.
- [10:13]
Charles Upton
Well, yeah, I mean, I've read some accounts of the folk literature, but basically the accounts are this is the role that the Jinn had in pre Islamic Arabia, which is. I know pretty much what that is in terms of personal experience. Yeah, I mean, I. Now personally, and this is something that some Islamic scholars will agree with and some will not. I have a very wide angle definition of a jinn. You know, there are a lot of invisible beings in this universe. You know, it's Sasquatch. He's even appearing as a paranormal cryptid who can dematerialize. You know, his tracks are moving in a certain direction across an open area of sand and then they just disappear, you know, where did he go? So there's a whole realm of beings who, they're not material like we are, but they're not strictly angelic, you know, and it's difficult for people nowadays to get an intuitive feeling of the difference between the angelic and the world of jinn, because I don't know why it is, perhaps because traditional religions are losing a certain amount of their influence. But all I can say is, take it from me, they're different, if you will. The angels sometimes will appear as if they are solid light, whereas the jinn will sometimes appear in a haze of pixie dust or little sparkly particles. You know, that's just one way of making a distinction. It's not a hard and fast way. But they're different. They're different. And so, yeah, in my own experience, I suppose, I mean, I remember a dream I had once where the jinn had appeared in these old fashioned Victorian airships. You know, it was like, you know, it's like that's kind of their. They like that style. They used to appear like that a lot. And now once in a while they still like to do it. Like people who like to drive classic cars, you know, they have this thing. So. But yeah, they're different. And probably my main experience with the powers of the jinn was with the psychic surgeons of the Philippines, which, you know, I have an account of my meetings with them in the Philippines and also in California in my autobiography, Giving Myself Away, which has recently been published. And the psychic surgeons, now, I know there have been problematic psychic surgeons. There have been fakes, you know, John of God was apparently pretty much a fake. And sometimes, as with a lot of spirit mediums, you will find people who have those powers once in a while, or sometimes they could do it, or once they could do it. But now, since they're known as that kind of, you know, white magician or whether, you know, that they have, they have to come up with some phenomenon on call. And so they learn to fake it. Half the time when their power isn't working, you know, this is one thing that happens. But the ones that I met in the Philippines, I don't know, they certainly convinced me. You know, they could reach right into your body and pull out God knows what foreign material and the incision immediately closes up. There may be a little pain, a few drops of blood, and then no problem and no clear after effect except on a psychic plane. And what they did when I was there, there was a little seminar that they gave to get you ready for what was going on. And it was basically on spiritualism and they were using as their authority Alan Kardec in his writings. But most of the psychic surgeons are Christians. They claim they're working with the power of the Holy Spirit, but obviously what they're doing is an ancient shamanic technique which became Christianized at one point. And they work with spirit helpers who give them the power to temporarily dematerialize the human body and remove problematic energies or substances. So it happened many times. I saw other people be worked on, I was worked on. It just happened so much. I couldn't. I couldn't deny it.
- [15:42]
Jeffrey Mishlove
But you seem to feel that the jinns are involved.
- [15:46]
Charles Upton
Well, yeah, that's what I would say, because it didn't give me the feeling of, for example, a miracle. Now, a miracle is not just a paranormal event. It's the dawning of a truth. From a higher plane, a truth comes. God sends a truth. God sends a teaching in very concrete terms. And the truth is so powerful that it has physical reverberations and various things happen, but it accomplishes many different things at the same time on different levels. This is what you feel when you're experiencing a miracle. Whereas the feeling of the psychic surgeons is, well, this is an ancient technology that was developed by people before they had our kind of mechanistic technology. So they had to do something. This is what they came up with, you know, and with, with the help of, you know, spirit, spirit physicians or spirit guides, whatever they are, who I would class as the jinn. Now, the jinn, this goes back to the Muslim doctrine of the jinn. The jinn are not, are not just demons, some of them are demons. But it's made very clear in the Quran that some of the jinn are faithful. You know, some of them actually follow the Quran. The Quran is described as a book sent to men and jinn. So some jinn follow or Muslim and follow the Quran. Others rejected it, or actually others are thought of as being Christian jinn or Jewish jinn, you know, who have their own revelations, you know, but those who do not follow any of the revelations of God are pretty much classed as demons or what Christians would call demons. Now, Christians have a very useful idea of demons in terms of what is learned through Catholic exorcism and things like this. And there's a lot of truth to them. I just think they would do well to have a little wider angle view of what the world of the invisible beings who are not angels are. And, you know, there's in the name of prudence. They will say, you know, angels are sent by God, but demons are something else because you don't want to go in that demonic direction. And I would say that most Sufis would say that it's not particularly healthy to deal with the Jinn, even the faithful Muslim jinn, because their world is very fascinating, it's very diverting. You know, it's, you know, you can get hooked to wanting to look into the world of the jinn and see what they know. And all of this and this interrupts your direct contemplation of God. Even if they're not evil, they're just, they're fascinating, you know, and we don't need that kind of fascination if we want to be have one pointed concentration on God.
- [19:03]
Jeffrey Mishlove
You could say the same thing, I imagine about other human beings as well. You can become fascinated by a person, let's say from a different culture.
- [19:14]
Charles Upton
Yeah, the jinn and movie stars have a lot of affinities, you know. I guess, yeah, you could. There are people who are entirely well intentioned and have a certain degree of wisdom and this and this. But if you give yourself over to them in the wrong way, you will turn something that could be a fruitful relationship into something that's ultimately toxic. There are a lot of spiritual teachers who have been turned into false gurus by their followers and you know, they got to watch out for that. But so, but it's interesting to talk about the Jinn now because I think there's so much in evidence. There is a reason to talk about them besides just fascination and curiosity, you know. You know, to. I think we need to accept the reality. We need to accept that even if all of them are not demons, because some of them certainly are. I mean, there's a whole Muslim spiritual science called ruqya, which is Muslim exorcism. And you know, in order to deal with the Jinn, it's very similar to the Catholic practice of exorcism dealing with demons. So it's pretty much, they're pretty much the same beings to the point where they obsess us or possess us, you know, yet there are other ones. You know, I would say that they're the nature spirits, you know, the beings that Peter and Eileen Caddy encountered at Findhorn. You know, they can't be called demons. I mean, these are beings who help the trees grow. You know, what's wrong with that? What is wrong though is we get too fascinated with them and what happens. I remember this is a story I Tell in my autobiography. So I was with a Sufi order, Nimatulahi order, that hails from Persia, from Iran, and they had a place, Hanukkah Lodge in San Francisco. And while I was, you know, doing my spiritual practices there twice a week, I had met with some of the psychic surgeons who, from the Philippines who traveled to California. And they worked on me. And then I told my spiritual advisor, oh, I had this dream is what it is. You know, I dreamt that out of somewhere like northern China came this huge black cube. You know, it was like the ship of the Borg from Star Trek the Next Generation. And it was like a, like an inverted Satanic Kaaba and this was the Antichrist and it had come. And I had this dream just after going to the psychic surgeons. I told this to my spiritual advisor and said, do you think, you think it's possible that you might be able to stop seeing these people? He was very nice. He says, maybe this isn't the best idea. And so I said, okay. And from that I got the feeling that the psychic plane is becoming so polluted nowadays that what might have been spiritually helpful in earlier ages or even in earlier decades is now getting a little dangerous, you know, and maybe, at least for me, I shouldn't mess with that anymore. So I didn't.
- [23:20]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, I know in one of our previous interviews you talked about the idea that we, we are living in an era in which the veil that separates us from the world of, say, the world of the Jinn, that veil is being opened and so all sorts of things are pouring in.
- [23:41]
Charles Upton
Yeah, that is true. And that's. I get a lot of that from Rene Guidon, who talks about the Great Wall. You know, there's a story in the Quran that a being called Dhul Qarnayn, which I think means the two horned One, and nobody knows who. Some identify that with Alexander the Great, some even with Moses, because Moses, if you'll remember, when he came down from Sinai, had two horns of light coming from his head, which, interestingly enough, is something I saw in one of those Tibetan Tonkas or Buddha paintings, exactly that same thing. So it has something to do with a very deep psychophysical something anyway. But, you know, Dhul Qarnayan went to the east and he built a huge wall out of iron and brass and stuff to keep, you know, the forces of Gog and Magog out. But then there's the story that somewhere, I forget where this is, this wall is going to break. It won't last forever, you know, it's going to break down and psychedelic drugs and the Internet and artificial intelligence. I mean, if there aren't things that are opening the door to the invisible world to directly interact with our world, this is everywhere. This is what. And you know, I mean, if we don't even know how artificial intelligence works, you know, it's doing something. We say, my God, you know, I almost felt that our computers, a lot of our technology, our computers, the Internet, were inspired in scientists by the jinn so that they could, with the help of human scientists, create, as it were, a body for themselves in this world so they could operate in this world. And I mean, I've seen weird. For example, there was a picture I saw created by AI and no one. This was not something was being remarked upon. Somebody said, look, here's a picture of the AI created of Jesus and the Virgin Mary and the this and this, you know, and I looked and the child Jesus had a distorted, weird, distorted looking eye. And it was either the Virgin Mary or some other figure had six fingers on his hand. And you just said, this is sinister. You know, this is like what you would do if you wanted to sacrilegiously parody a sacred image. Now, is that just accidental? Possibly, maybe not.
- [26:40]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, you have talked in previous interviews about how UFO phenomena, in your view, are largely associated with the jinn. And that from your point of view, the interactions reported between human beings and entities associated with UFOs is very often highly negative.
- [27:05]
Charles Upton
Well, it is. I mean, recently I've been listening to the many, many, many, many videos of Preston Dennett, who in each video will tell 10amazing stories of people encountering aliens. And he even had a series where he says, you know, send me the name of your hometown and I will find you UFO apparitions in your hometown that weren't even reported outside. And generally he could do it anywhere in the world. So first he's giving an idea of the incredible prevalence of this stuff. But secondly, he is showing that they assume so many different shapes that the idea that they're coming from other planets, they're coming from 370 different planets right to our planet. You know, and, you know, both their actual number of apparitions in the many thousands upon thousands upon thousands and the incredible range of forms that they appear in both argue against their being from other planets coming here in spaceship. These are the powers of the jinn. The jinn are shape shifters. They can appear in any number of forms. And it's so much easier and more elegant to say, well, as if the jinn are A part of nature. Like they are like the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom and the jinn kingdom, they're another kind of being that exists in our world. They're not always visible, usually not visible, but they can appear to us and temporarily materialize. And that's so much easier explanation than trying to come up with technological, far fetched technological explanations of how they would have anti gravity drives and how they would exceed the speed of light and use wormholes which we don't even know exist. And all these, all that, you know, that's an example of the epicycles of our time just trying to hold on to a particular paradigm by getting more and more arcane and complicated. Whereas if you just say, wait a minute, these are natural phenomena of a level that in the past few hundred years we have forgotten about, but all of the rest of human history is known about. Let's just leave it at that, you know, and you know, operate on that basis and we'll get a lot farther. Yeah, so I had some Muslim, young Muslims who were studying, you know, The Jinn and UFOs contact me and we had a communication and they were saying, well, you know, we won't say that it's impossible that these could be from other planets coming here in spaceships, but as far as we've seen so far, everything that is attributable to the Jinn has been attributed to the UFO aliens. You know, they have the same powers, you know, to appear, to disappear, to travel at vast speeds, to shape shift and they can affect matter. Now my question to them was, well now of course we've heard of the alien corpses and the crashed UFOs for decade after decade after decade and they have not been produced. I could phone my senator and say, you know, or write him an email and say, you know, you know, why don't you demand to see one of these things? And he'll go if he already knows what will happen if he tries. Well, I'm sorry, they wouldn't let me see him. Well, okay, you know, how long. All we've seen as far as I know, are pieces of material which seem to be not the kind of thing that would normally be produced on Earth, which have metal, which have a different balance of isotopes, magnesium, with different, they must be from somewhere else. No one has proved to me that those couldn't be produced in order to convince people that we have materially crashed spaceships anyway. But on the other hand, these Muslims I was talking to, I said, well look, what I want to know is if A jinn assumes a bodily form and then is killed, dies. Will that form remain as a corpse on earth or will it dematerialize again? And they say sometimes it will remain. Now, that's what they said. And exactly their credentials I do not know. But one of my Sufi brothers who used to travel a lot to Indonesia and Malaysia, where a lot of this kind of activity goes on working with the jinn. In fact, the Philippine psychic surgeons, I would consider that to be the same culture area where there's an awful lot of work with the jinn. And he had some friends there who showed him a Kris, you know, one of those really cruel dagger things that the Malays will use. And they would say, well, this was an object produced by the djinn. And, you know, it's been in our family for generations. And the gin produced it. And so what he would do, which I don't recommend, is once a year, he would do some kind of ritual around it, and he would sharpen it and do something and talk to the jinn, you know, and keep connection between him and the jinn. Because the idea is if you keep a jinn on your side, that you'll have good luck and this kind of thing, you know, which I don't know.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
I am under the impression that the Koran tries to prohibit people engaging in propitiation of the jinn.
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Charles Upton
Oh, certainly, yeah. Because that is shirk, that is treating them as if they are gods. And through there it says, you know, that, you know, the jinn have no power to benefit you or themselves unless Allah wills. So why not, you know, apply directly to Allah, you know, forget, you know. So, yeah, yeah, there's. I forget was it amid it might have been, there was an African Sufi who, you know, wrote something and said, well, if you're going to become a Muslim, you need to give up your protectors. And, you know, people are getting protectors like that now. I mean, people, you know, have spirit guides and, you know, that they feel can protect them and teach them and guide them. It seems to me if one is truly on the way, really loves truth, believes in God, is on the way to God, to coming closer to God. And at one point, one doesn't know any better than to do some kind of new age religion. It's not necessarily all evil because the beings that appear on your way to God, maybe you can't believe in God or feel you can contact him directly right now, but you can believe in something like a spirit guide or a guardian angel. And it's possible that the beings who appear at that point will be helpful if they say, look beyond me to my source, look beyond me to our Lord. Whereas if you've come into the field of direct relationship with God, and then you decide you want to go back and have some dealings with the spirit guides and the jinn, then you're in real trouble, because that is shirk and you're putting lesser beings in the place of God. And that is always very dangerous and very destructive.
- [35:51]
Jeffrey Mishlove
On the other hand, I'm sure you can appreciate that many people would say that what we're really talking about are figments of the subconscious mind.
- [36:04]
Charles Upton
Well, yeah, but the subconscious mind is enough of a mystery to who knows what the subconscious mind can do? I mean, apparently some people who are going through puberty, which is a psychophysical change, obviously can have a poltergeist manifestations around them because of the powerful energy they're putting out. Or the Tibetans will do something called a tulpu, where they will visualize a particular being, and they visualize it and visualize it to the point where it will materialize more or less and appear to other people. So this is the subconscious mind, or working with the powers of the mind. What is the mind?
- [36:52]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, would you say that a Tibetan tulpu, which is deliberately created by the human operator, is the same as a jinn?
- [37:04]
Charles Upton
I don't think so. No, I was just simply addressing, you know, what you said. Some people say these are figments of the subconscious. No, I mean, the jinn are there just like, you know, like geese and deer and gin. You know, they're really out there.
- [37:25]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, as a poet, you've talked about the jinn coming to you in a dream and offering poetic inspiration. How would you separate that instance out from something going on within your own subconscious mind?
- [37:43]
Charles Upton
Well, certainly they were operating. If they came into a dream, you could say the subconscious mind was involved. One could, you know, as it is with demons and Catholic exorcism. The exorcist has to make a distinction between something like schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder and actual possession. But there are criteria whereby to do that there are certain external, external manifestations or certain powers that the human being will develop, will manifest that are just not normal to the human being, which indicate the possession of the presence of a possessing demon. So you'd have to bring in another set of criteria and evidence before I could tell you that this was actually the Jinn, you know, proof positive, rather than my unconscious. But that's how they appeared. They announced themselves as. That is All I know.
- [39:01]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, it does seem as if you're suggesting that jinns have certain abilities, powers that humans have, like the use of language, but they also have powers that we don't have.
- [39:15]
Charles Upton
Yeah, or that we don't generally have. Maybe we can develop similar powers. You know, I mean, similar powers have been attributed to very advanced yogis and things like this. But talk about language. Language is their fort. They are the masters of language. I mean, I certainly understand why the pre Islamic poets would take the Jinn as their inspirers, because they have that power.
- [39:47]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Do you think we can relate the Jinn to some of the entities referred to in, for example, Greek mythology?
- [39:56]
Charles Upton
Yeah, well, like I said, the daimonis are the jinn and it's so hard to tell what the gods were to the Greeks. You know, my belief is that all religions start as a kind of monotheism or a sense of the unity of being. And then speaking in more Muslim terms, you would say, you know, there's Allah and his. Then his attributes and his names. And his names are not parts of Allah. As Ibn Al Arabi said, the names of Allah are his relationships to various parts of creation, various created beings. Those are his names, they're not parts of him. There is relationships to the multitude of the things he's created. But a point can come where.
- [40:53]
Jeffrey Mishlove
The.
- [40:54]
Charles Upton
Intuition, the sense of the reality of Allah or of absolute reality, reality becomes veiled progressively. And then the various attributes or names of absolute reality become at that point progressively personified and they become more plausible. I mean, Zeus is sort of what was left of absolute reality. But obviously by the time you get the Greek mind mythology that's come down to us, Zeus is just another one of the gods, another one of those beings. You know, he's probably bigger and tougher than all the rest of them, but still, you know, his, his wife can, can, you know, knock him for a loop or you know, somebody can do something, makes him mad behind his back and he gets even. And it's obviously this is not really the absolute qua absolute anymore. And then so the Neoplatonists came along and had to. Or the Platonists and Neoplatonists had to come along and talk about the one in abstract terms that some would identify with Zeus. But it was obviously they're trying to go back to a more absolute conception of the absolute. So we don't know what the gods were. I mean, the Christians say all the, all the pagan gods are really demons, which may have become true at a certain point. Like the Jinn after the Quran descended, the jinn became necessarily more evil when they, in order to maintain their earlier function with the human race, they had to rival the Quran. And so you don't need the Quran, you've got us now. They're standing more directly against God and so they're becoming more demonic. And so there's a tendency in religion for monotheism to slowly devolve into polytheism. So at what point, you know, I don't know if you would call, you know, the Greek gods the jinn. It's actually more accurate to where the Greeks thought of it. They are the higher beings. And you know, Neoplatonists like Iamblichus would consider them to be the, you know, the personifications of the Platonic intelligibles, the Platonic ideas. And he would do theurgy to invoke the gods on that level because. Because they are units of transcendental meaning. So that's, you know, so if the gods are considered that, then it's the daimonis who are on a lower echelon than the gods and at one point acts as intermediaries between human beings and the gods at the Delphic Oracle. Delphic oracle used to be basically the being that the Delphic priestesses were consulting was the Python. Whatever the python was, that's where they got their prophecies from. Then Apollo came and, you know, a God from the north, from Hyperborea, a sun God, and he, he conquered the Delphic oracle and says, I am now the lord of this oracle. But the python was still allowed to exist, but he was on a lower level. So you could say Apollo is the God, Python is the daimon. That's still an intermediary between the priestess and the God, something like that in very general terms. So it's a very ambiguous world. But certainly the Greeks understood that there was a realm of beings lesser than the gods but greater than humanity. That was the Timonis.
- [45:04]
Jeffrey Mishlove
There's certainly a sense that you've been describing, particularly in the tale of Solomon, that the jinn are capable of performing useful tasks for humans.
- [45:20]
Charles Upton
Yeah, well, actually though, the story of Solomon is he was the last prophet who was given the right and the commission to work with the jinn. You know, he was the last one, and after Solomon, no more. That's what the Quran says.
- [45:39]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I know in magical tradition there are many grimoires involving the keys of Solomon and the rituals associated with Solomon.
- [45:51]
Charles Upton
If only we could find Solomon's ring with the seal of Solomon on it, boy, that would you know, but I guess it was thrown into Mount Doom and we will not see it again.
- [46:02]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So the jinn are often associated with various magical practices.
- [46:08]
Charles Upton
Oh, yeah, yeah. Magicians will work with the jinn, and not every magician in all places and times will cop to that, but they do. You know, magicians like to think that the power is their own, or if they're working with the jinn or with the demons, that they have dominated the demons. I mean, Renaissance magic in the Christian, you know, in Christendom had a very funny rationale. Basically, they said, well, you know, Christ has conquered the kingdom of Satan and his demons, and we're Christians and we're followers of Christ, therefore we have a right to make the demons our slaves because they've been conquered. So what a Renaissance magician, according to certain systems, would do, even though some of what he was doing was probably descended from. From Neoplatonic theurgy and things like this, but it was Christianized. And so he would say, well, you know, I will fast and pray and purify myself, and then I will invoke angels, and the angels will give me the power to control the demons, and the demons will go and find treasure for me or bring me the woman I want or whatever. But it's all Christian. It's all good, you know. You know, what happens very often when a magician is working with some being who will be one of the darker jinn or one of the demons is that demon will say, you know, God, you're so powerful. You conquered me. You know, I'm. You know, your wish is my command, effendi, you know, and whatever you want, you know. And he says, well, okay, go do this for me and that for me. And this is all a deception because the jinn or the demon is trying to convince the magician of what he wants to believe anyways, as he's the one with the power. Whereas actually, every time the magician commands the demon, the demon is actually getting more power over the magician. So that's what happens, I suppose, in.
- [48:29]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Our era, especially here in the United States, people's notion of the djinn is largely conditioned by Disney's story of Aladdin and his magic lamp and this wonderful song and dance number where the genie says, I'm the best friend you ever had.
- [48:50]
Charles Upton
The same people that see problems with Harry Potter are seeing problems with that. This is conditioning, kids, to think that magic is fun and fun and games and it's all Disney. The worst you'll encounter is Walt Disney. You'll never have to encounter Aleister Crowley. But I'm increasingly thinking that it's not good to go in that direction.
- [49:17]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, you seem very concerned about what some people, people who are in the skeptical community, hardcore left wing rationalists would say. The danger that we're facing is the rising tide of superstition. And I think you're equating that with the rising tide of occultism.
- [49:43]
Charles Upton
Well, I mean, superstition is a very wide angle and vague term. I mean, is belief in God superstition? You know, the hardcore rational leftist would say so. You know, I mean, I accept the invisible world, the world of angels, jinn, demons and God knows what as a sober fact. So if so, I am absolutely superstitious in every conceivable way. But once I accept that, then there's certain distinctions have to be made.
- [50:17]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So what you're suggesting, if I understand it correctly, is that since monotheistic cultures have arisen, any spiritual focus that is forgetful about the one source that connects us all can be misleading and dangerous.
- [50:39]
Charles Upton
Yeah, forgetful. I mean, it's like, oh, these beings appear. I mean, you might be walking in the forest and see a beautiful. Which I used to do deliberately, you know, and to see a beautiful elemental or, you know, tree spirit or something. And if you immediately say, oh my God, it's a demon, I've got to go confess to the priest, I mean, that's going a little too far. But if the beautiful elemental says, come with me into my world, look more deeply into my world, I'm in love with you, that's where the problem begins. You can't just be so puritanical that any manifestation like that makes you feel like you've committed some crime. But you know, you have to understand the danger of the fascination for even the less toxic aspects of the invisible world. You know, you have to understand what the human mandate is, is what the Quran calls the trust or the amana. You know, the Quran says, allah is speaking. We offered the trust to the heavens, the earth and the hills, but they shrank from it and were afraid of it and man assumed it. Then it says, lo, he hath proved a tyrant and a fool. But in other words, we have a mandate. We have a responsibility as human beings which is to maintain the sense of the intuition of the absolute and communication with the absolute for the benefit of the entire terrestrial plane. That's our job. And something that diverts us from that is no good because, you know, our duty has been laid down, our work is cut out for us. And if we don't, don't follow it then too bad for us.
- [52:42]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Charles Upton Once again, a fascinating, insightful conversation. It's a pleasure to be with you and I'm looking forward to future interviews where we'll delve more deeply into your autobiography. Giving Myself Away.
- [53:02]
Charles Upton
Me, Me, Me. My favorite subject. Yes, actually it's not. It was hard to talk about me, but my Sufi brothers said, you got to do it and so I did it.
- [53:16]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So thank you so much once again for being with me and the New Thinking Allowed audience.
- [53:22]
Charles Upton
Glad to be here and for those.
- [53:24]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [53:57]
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Jeffrey Mishlove
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