Yah. Welcome to the Hidden Gin, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkey. Before we begin this week, a gentle word of warning. There are references to sexual assault in this episode, so please proceed with care. Decades ago, I knew a family that lived in my mother's town that had three young daughters.
The lady of the house was a close friend of my mother's, and so, in other words, she was kind of an auntie to us, and every so often Auntie would drop bif for a visit, bringing boxes of homemade sweets or a platter of rice or some little treat to share over a cup of hot gi and oftentimes whatever her daughters would come with her. The eldest was maybe around twenty and the youngest was an early teen. For years, though I never met the third daughter, the
middle one. Once in a while Auntie would mention her name, she would ask my mother for prayers, say something in passing about her doing better or worse. One day, after she left, my mother sat shaking her head, looking deeply sad about whatever Auntie had shared with her, and I asked, what's wrong. My mother took a deep sigh and responded
she thinks her daughter has a gin. That's when I finally learned that the third daughter, the one I never saw, had an entire host of what her parents understood to be symptoms of either the evil Eye or gin possession, or a combination of the two. But my mother explained to me it was just as possible that the daughter had mental health or medical issues if she did, though,
Auntie wasn't prepared to accept it and seek professional advice. Instead, she saw it help elsewhere, soliciting prayers and charms from spiritual healers, hoping something would drive away the demons that caused a young girl to lash out, that kept her tongue tied and frustrated, that kept her afflicted, suffering, and isolated from the rest of the world. But nothing worked. My mother tried to counsel her to take the girl to see a doctor, or a psychologist, or even a psychiatrist,
but the advice didn't land. Auntie was convinced that someone had put a curse on her daughter, a curse for a gin to torment her. At some point, maybe a few years after I first got to know Aunty, I finally met that third daughter. She was sweet and kind, shy and mostly quiet, But though when she did speak, her words were halting and repetitive. I didn't get a sense that she was haunted or tormented by anything. But one thing was painfully clear to me and to anyone
else who might be familiar with the condition. The young woman was tistic. So what happens when developmental or mental health issues, physical disabilities, disease, chronic illness, emotional disregulation, or any one of hundreds of physiological and psychological conditions that human beings experience is understood through the lens of the supernatural. How do you know whether you're suffering from a treatable condition or you've been struck by a gin? Is the
affliction in the psyche or in the soul? While the lines have been blurred throughout history, and today we'll explore what it looks like over the centuries when medicine, psychology, and the supernatural cross paths. I'm Robbia Audrey, and I'll be your guide into the ancient world of the hidden gin. Welcome stars are the celestial doubles of human beings. Jin milliars are their underground doubles, and the leaves of the
trees of paradise are their doubles in paradise. When human beings are sick, the jin double is sick with the same sickness. His star pales, and the leaf of the tree of Paradise yellows and curls. At the hour of death, the jin dies first, the star falls from the sky as a shooting star, and the leaf detaches from the
Tree of Paradise. That is from a collection of cosmology collected in Marrakesh, Morocco that documented, among other things, the belief that the human condition exists in several planes at once, and whatever it goes through, whatever it experiences, is experienced by corresponding entities linked intimately to each of us. For every person a leaf on the tree of Paradise, a star in the heavens, and a gin in the underworld. The gin will live, get sick, and die with us.
But what about the gin who actually make us sick? According to a book titled The Gin and Human Sickness, an entire host of conditions can and are attributed to Gin, including depression, anxiety, epilepsy, personality disorders, psychiatric breaks with reality. Now, the movements of the Gin in and upon the human body can't really be tracked. Because the dinner created as smokeless fire and energy that cannot be contained, they're able to move with our bloodstream itself. They say. There are
two ways in which gin physically afflict human beings. They can either strike a person or possess a person. Striking a person could mean sudden paralysis or blindness, or any other physical condition that just appears out of nowhere, or even a more literal strike, like suddenly you lost all your hearing in one ear. Maybe it was because the gin slapped you on that side of the head. But you must be asking yourself why would any gin be
bothered enough to strike a person. More often than not, it's because the gin was offended or disrespected, knowingly or unknowingly. Urinating the wrong spot, let's say, in a shadowy corner a gin called home could incurage. Wrath or wearing the wrong color and the wrong place the wrong time might anger a gin, and you might really peeve one off
if you disrespect it by rejecting the existence of gin altogether. Sometimes, though, the affliction is actually a way to connect a gin to a person, a means of establishing first contact, you could say, and shaking that contact isn't always easy, but for thousands of years there have been healers and magicians
to help take care of such bothersome attachments. It seems that the idea that illness stems from and therefore requires spiritual or supernatural interventions, is as old as history itself. Unto the side of the water, or have drawn nigh, casting a woeful fever upon his body. A bane of evil had settled on his body, and evil disease on his body. They have cast an evil plague had settled on his body, Evil venom on his body. They have cast an evil curse had settled on his body. Evil
and sin on his body. They have cast venom and wickedness have settled upon him. This priestly Assyrian chant, as thousands of years old, a litany of the many ways evil spirits attacked some poor soul. And the doctors of ancient times were in fact the healers and the magicians, and the priests, sometimes indistinguishable between any of them. They were the ones who were called upon to help heal
the sick. With little space between medicine, religion, and magic, these healer magicians were regarded by society as honored warriors waging war against un seen forces on the battlefield of the human body. They wielded an array of tools. Each instrument specialized to deal with whatever demon was causing the sickness, and also used chance, spells and rituals to drive away the forces of illness. But how did they know which demon it was and what tools to use, Well, it's
pretty simple. It all depended on which part of the body was ailing. The symptoms of whatever ailment a person was struck with themselves gave rise to the diagnosis. For example, a painful throat pointed to Utuku, the demon jin, who well lived to attack human throats fevers. You're dealing with a suku skin disease. The demon Rabisu was the culprit.
The ancient Greeks likewise, believed both that evil spirits could cause every matter of sickness, but also that there were gods you could turn to for healing, so it kind of balanced it out. And sometimes times the evil spirits themselves began to be worshiped as gods as a way to appease them through rituals of praise and even blood sacrifice. For example, there's the demigod al Maharik. He was a fierce, angry and ancient pre Islamic god that was worshiped in
parts of the Middle East. His name means the one who burns, and he lords over a crimson throne read as flames. Al Moharak was known to be a god of the underworld, and much like his Babylonian counterpart, the god Nergill, he was a deity of disease, but al Moharak didn't just attack one person. His wrath was more efficient. You could say Al Moharak sent plagues to sickened entire regions, and later his legend morphed into him being the Jin
of plagues and pestilence. According to Ottoman mystics, the Jin afflicted humans with the plague and other epidemics by piercing them with the tip of a disease ridden spear or arrow. Treatises written in the fifteenth and sixteenth century also share that sometimes these plagues are spread by the direct command of Satan himself, who directs his legions of Gin to
go rampaging against hapless humans. But according to the same treatises, there is a way to protect yourself if the plague is a war on man said by Satan, man can fight back by invoking a powerful name of God against the disease. A famous Turkish historian scholar by the name of Tasco Prosiati prescribed the following for protection against the plague carrying gin. Repeat Albaki, a name of God that means the everlasting a hundred and thirty six times a day,
and no such jin could touch you. Tesco Prosati wrote about a story in which a group of students living in Kaskar, a city on the Silk Road bordering Afghanistan, saw frightening shadows on a wall. The shadows were of figures carrying arrows, but was more frightening was that there was nothing in the room to actually cast the shadows, which could only mean one thing. The figures were gin and the tips of the arrows they carried were poisoned
with plague. The students were told to write down the powerful names of God on pieces of paper as a talisman to protect themselves. According to the story, those who followed instructions were saved and those who didn't perished. Hundreds of similar prayerful invocations are prescribed throughout Islamic Plague treatises from that time, and likewise Christian and Jewish writings reflect
the same ideas and even language. Take for example, Psalm nine, a prayer that reads, you who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God, and whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his opinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness
is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks and darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. While Muslims, Christians, and Jews have always had much in common to discuss and interfect gatherings, having a shared belief in dark, evil forces that shoot arrows of disease probably comes as a surprise to many
of us on the subject of physical ailments. If there's every convenient time to blame a gin, it's when the issue is well a deeply personal one. In two thousand and eighteen, a medical journal published a piece by a doctor from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Health Medical Center in Dubai entitled quote Infertility Caused by Gin. This same doctor, Dr Amira Bajirova, had previously written an article for the Archives of Sexual Reproductive and Health titled
quote infertility caused by decreased oxygen utilization and GIN. Now, I was as surprised as you define such pieces in recent medical journals, But such is the power of spiritual belief. Now that thesis of these pieces is that evil gin take no greater pleasure than they do in wrecking marriages through all kinds of means, like causing and medie between spouses over finances, disputes over family issues, lessening their attraction for each other, or just making them irritable and hateful
to each other. But if none of that works, they can take more direct action to like causing sexual disorders, miscarriages, impotence, premature ejaculation, early menopause, and yes, infertility. Sometimes the gin might do it on their own, but more often than not they cause these problems because someone, a rival or enemy, has summoned them with black magic to destroy the happy
life of a couple that they want to harm. The articles come complete with very official looking charts and lists dozens of sexual and reproductive disorders that might be inflicted by the gin or could be actual symptoms of being possessed by one. And there are a number of very interesting cases presented in these pieces, like the one in which a patient suffering from polycystic ovaries failed to follow the doctor's instructions and then disappeared for a couple of years.
She then returned to the doctor after a frightening experience. She was standing in front of a mirror one night applying lipstick when suddenly a bright red patch appeared in her clothing below her pelvis. She was bleeding heavily, and it wasn't clear whether it was menstrual blood or not. Whatever it was, it shocked her into returning for medical treatment. The case summary in the article concludes, and a quote
mirror attracts the gin. The gin is circulating in the body, settles in the womb and opens the uterine vessels, causing abnormal bleeding. The doctor also had a theory behind male impotence and other sexual dysfunction. This happens apparently when a female gin. Well, the doctor conceded that maybe a male gin too was sexually attracted to a human male and messed with his system so he could neither find satisfaction or give satisfaction to another human partner. Talk about being
possessive anyhow. If that caught your ear, don't worry. We'll be getting into the phenomena of human gen relationships in a later episode. But spoiler alert, the relationships aren't always voluntary. Getting back to the connection between evil forces and sexual and reproductive issues, we have to keep this in mind. One effective way to lessen the stigma of these conditions and lesson the personal blame some might ascribe themselves, maybe to find an external cause when it's black magic, the
evil eye, or a wicked gin. It affords a bit of protection to those who might otherwise be mistreated by their partners or families or society for failing to fulfill their obligation to go forth and multiply. It's ironic, actually, that such proscriptions might just be a compassionate way of letting people off the hook, including medical and health professionals. All faults and deficiencies get attributed to the gin, freeing
people of accountability, blame and shame. At the same time, though, it also keeps alive a thriving source of income for the people and institutions who claim to be able to heal the things that science cannot, and it opens the doors for criminals and predators who prey on the vulnerable.
A two thousand twelve article in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported the arrest of a faith healer promising to free a young girl of gin, but instead the girl's mother caught the man in the act of raping her daughter. Thankfully he was arrested, but catching such culprits isn't always so cut and dry in South Asia, and maybe it happens in other parts of the world, but at least
I can personally vouch for this region. While there are doctors and clinics, of course, that can treat infertility, what happens when a wife unable to produce any children gets repeatedly checked out and the medical professionals say she's just fine. Well, thanks to misologyny and the patriarchy getting the way of good judgment. Oftentimes no one thinks to check the husband's
reproductive health, because well, that would be unthinkable. So the only remaining explanation then is supernatural, a curse that woman is suffering from, or maybe a gin. And so there have been countless stories of women, once humiliated for being barren and unable to conceive, miraculously becoming pregnant after being left alone for treatment with some fraudulent holy man who claimed that he could drive out the gin preventing conception.
Imagine then the situation these women face finally pregnant to the great joy of their families, but not through some mysterious spiritual healing. Instead, because they're the victims of sexual assault by these fake religious healers, these women are left to hold this terrible secret, a secret they undoubtedly share with dozens of other victims, the secret that more often than not, you don't have to fear the supernatural, because
the worst monsters are usually human. A two thou five article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine presented the case of a twenty five year old Iraqi woman living in the UK with no history of any psychological or psychiatric disorders, who began to slowly but surely withdraw from life. Over time, you stopped being in the company of other people, stopped communicating and eventually even stopped eating.
Doctors diagnosed with severe depression and subjected her to electroshock therapy, which did nothing for the patient but further confirmed her family suspicion that they were dealing with something else here. They secretly believe that their daughter was under the influence or possessed by a jin. Without telling the medical professionals involved, They ferried the young woman off to see a faith healer, who assured them that he could cure her with prayer
and ritual. After all, faith is often the last resort of the desperate. The healer put his patient through a few sessions of spiritual therapy, and miraculously, her appetite returned, as did her previous emotional health. She reported that she wasn't sure what had happened to her, that she was fully aware of her condition, but she just couldn't bring herself to do anything to come out of it, even though of her own admission, she wasn't particularly feeling sad
or depressed about anything at all. According to the article, even five years later, she was still doing fine without any medications or any other treatment since the spiritual healing. But of course, not all such stories have happy endings. For some, the spiritual healing itself becomes a private hell. People have long both feared madness and been in awe of it. The ancient Greeks thought some madness to be sacred,
opening divine portals and the power of prophecy. And then there's a dark side of madness, the one that's not caused by gods or saints, but by demons, or sometimes by something in between, like Lyssa, known to the Greeks as both the goddess and demon of rage and frenzy. In the Greek tragedy The Madness of Heracles, Heracles, the son of Zeus, stands before his father's altar, ready to
purify himself, when suddenly Lissa strikes him with madness. Heracles spun around, his eyes, rolling in his head, mouth foaming, and mounted an imaginary chariot. He bellowed maniacal laughter as he drew his bow and took aim at his own children. He didn't know they were his children, though in his madness he believed they were the children of an enemy.
Heracules terrified children tried to save themselves. One child hid behind his mother, another behind a temple pillar, and the third one under an altar, but it didn't deter Heracles. He killed all three of his children and his own wife before finally being struck by a rock that put him in a deep slumber. Greek mythology is full of madness caused by demons or curses, leading to murder, suicide, infanticide, and other unthinkable acts such evil You see can madness be?
And the line between madness and evil forces is just as straight. In the Arabian tradition, both predating and after the seventh century, when Islam emerged as a religion in the region, a mad person is called much new and madness itself is called janine. Both of these words have the same three letter origin as jin, those letters in the English alphabet being j and and much noon januin jin.
They're not only related. Much noon literally means possessed by a jin, whether or not that person is actually possessed. So how do the jin drive a person mad? Well, they have a few tricks up their sleeves. First is the insiduous was swassa, the whisperings, am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Is my husband cheating on me? Are my friends talking about me? Did my brother steal from me? Is that woman following me? Are my children safe?
Will my parents die? Those doubts and negative thoughts that you can't get rid of, that continuous, persistent stream of anxious questions and insecurities that circulates in your mind constantly. It may well be a jin whispering to you in your very own voice. Maybe it's even your caree, that constant companion jin that's born with you and for you,
and dies with you too. The Gin know that if they're at it long enough, it can lead people, if not to shear madness, then to depression, panic attacks, resentment and anger, and even suicidal ideation. And if that doesn't work, they'll try to drive you mad with their music. It's not really music, though, it's more of a sound, not unlike a siren song, but a bit more creative. It can sound like a constant buzzing of flies or bees,
or the incessant shirp of a bird. It could be the sound of wind or a far off whale, or never ending murmurs, or maybe the faint beating of drums for hours and days, both when you wake and sleep. It could just be a sound repeated over and over, like it was reported by an ancient poet who described it as zizizema, zizimma, zizizimma. Before the advent of modern psychiatry and psychology, this was all understood to be symptoms
of external malevolent forces. But even in the modern era, it can be hard for many to draw lines between the natural and the supernatural, to know when to take a loved one to a psychiatrist and when to take them to a spiritual healer, and in some places there are almost no options but to choose the latter. In the small town of boya Umer in the heart of Morocco, there stands a mausoleum dedicated to a sixteenth century saint.
The town itself was named after this particular saint was known to cure those suffering and what we today understand to be psychiatric disorders, but before modern medicine was generally considered madness caused by gin, and this mausoleum, a shrine for that saint, became a place of hope for the loved ones of those who were thought to be touched by madness, but a place of despair for the afflicted themselves.
Families came from near and far to leave their sick children, siblings, elders at the shrine in the hopes that the healers working there and the power of the shrine itself would cure their loved ones. Whether the families were driven by love or fear, guilt or faith, their patronage brought a steady stream of revenue to the shrine, which charged a monthly housing fee for their patients and made nearly a
million dollars a year from their services. The healers there claimed they could heal through their own power derived from the deceased saint himself, that they had power over the gin that were either afflicting to patients, or by employing the gin that were already in their control to battle
the ones that were not in their control. People passing by would hear howling and screams, sobs and cries for mercy, all which was chalked up to the torment of the gin who were being exercised from their victims, except that's probably not what it was. Not too many years ago, reports began emerging of the torture these patients, treated more like animals. Faced Human rights activists raised allegations that patients at the shrine were often shackled and beaten, even starved,
and that place must be shut down. So serious and systematic was the situation that a report was even presented to the u N Working Group on arbitrary detention. One story detailed the horror faced by a young man from Tangiers who had a drug addiction and had been left at buyah Omer in two thousand and six by his brother. He was robbed and beaten, deprived of food and water, but was finally saved by the same brother came to see him a year lay here for a year, he
said he lived in hell. As these tales emerged, medical professionals and human rights groups demanded the government shut the shrine down, putting the authorities between a rock and a hard place. After all, the shrine was part and parcel of their cultural heritage, as were the beliefs around gin
and spiritual healing. Others counter protested, insisting the shrine remained open not only because of its historic importance, but also because they simply didn't know what to do with their loved ones, where to take them, how to help heal them. But the government conducted a review of the shrine operations and in two thousand and fifteen shut it down, much
to the relief of activists and health professionals. It didn't just shut down the shrine, though, The government allocated millions of dollars for the patients that would be escaping the shrine, recruited mental health professionals, and bought dozens of ambulances to transport the ill and the story itself prompted both national and international conversations about mental health, abuse of power, human rights, tradition,
and faith, but also about gin. After all, the government could shut down the shrine, but they couldn't shut down the healers who claimed powers derived from the saint, and they couldn't shut down the Gin themselves, because as long as they're a gin, there will always be people who
promise they can save you from them. They say, there's sometimes a fine line between a gift and a curse, and such is the case with madness too, because while it has often been thought to be a result of evil or dark forces, there's a place on the spectrum
that has long been considered a portal to enlightenment. In the Sufi tradition, you are lucky to be known as much hub, meaning an unruly friend of God, a person touched with madness that connected them to the divine, opened them up to secrets, gave them the ability to see and understand, and no things the rest of us aren't
capable of. These people would be forgiven in an otherwise orthodox society for exhibiting bizarre behavior and speech, like running around naked, babbling in tongues, dancing and frenetic ecstasy, and breaking all kinds of religious and social norms. And yes, the sacred madness was attributed to Gin good Gin, that is, pious Jin, who possessed the bodies of pious men and women and opened up the reality of God to them, connecting them through the madness to an unseen holy realm.
The awe that these unruly friends inspired in sufis may seem odd, but then behold the Western regard for genius. The German philosopher Arthur Scopenhauer once said genius lives only one story above madness, and well before that, Aristotle told us no great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness. Indeed, many of the celebrated geniuses of Western art, literature, science,
and philosophy suffered from some psychiatric or psychological disorder. Many many studies have been done correlating the two phenomena and making a strong case for the relationship between madness and art. One study found that of famous poets experienced psychopathology, and another study found quote a very high percentage of the writers and artists, thirty eight percent had been treated for a mood disorder. Of those treated, three forts have been
given antidepressants, lithium, or have been hospitalized. There are researchers who dismissed the idea that madness and genius are correlated, citing poorly designed studies and conflation and an entire host of undermining factors. But then the famous Lord Byron once said about himself, we of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gayety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched. Byron spoke from personal experience.
Both he and his contemporary Percy Shelley, were aflicted with wide ranging mood swings, from deep sadness and apathy to fits of uncontrollable rage, common signs of manic depressive disorder. Van Go suffered mental illness for many years of his life, leading him to both slice off his ear and shoot himself in the chest. Nicola, Tesla, Nietici, Isaac Newton, Edgar
Allan Poe, Virginia Wolf, Wolfgang Amadeus. The list of mad geniuses goes on and on, and just like the Sufis gave a pass to their unruly friends of God, so has the West not just tolerated, but celebrated its own unruly creatives, understanding on some level that these two forces go hand in hand. What, however, does any of this have to do with gin Well, you'd be surprised to know the etymology of the word genius, in case you
didn't make the connection from how the word sounds. Some scholars say and may have its roots in the Arabic word ginia and the Arabic word jin, which makes perfect sense when you learn that the entire concept of genius dates back to ancient Rome, because the Romans believed that we are all born with genius. Actually, to be more precise, they believe that we are all born with a genius, a genius that was originally thought to be a guiding spirit.
That each one of us was born with a supernatural entity that's separate from us, but lives with us, inside of us, inspiring us. I don't know sounds kind of like a Jin to me. Thanks for joining us this week. Next week we'll be back to take you another step into the world of the Hidden Gin. Until then, remember we are not alone. If you loved today's episode, I'm gonna ask you a big favor. Please stop my iTunes and leave me a rating and a review, even if
it's just one short sentence. Not only is that how other listeners discover the podcast, but it's also what keeps the podcast going. And for every thousand reviews that I get on iTunes, I'll release another Patreon episode absolutely free. That's right, We're on Patreon, so if you're a Jin enthusiast, check out the Companion Patreon series at patreon dot com
slash Hidden Jin. Again, that's patreon dot com slash Hidden Gin, and remember Jin is spelled d j I n N. That's where you're gonna find an amazing series of interviews between me, scholars, experts, artist, historians, and every day lay people who have had extraordinary experiences with Jin and everybody can check out the first episode absolutely free. It's me and my husband sharing our Jin stories and it was a lot of fun. And if you have any Gin stories,
well I'd love to hear from you. Email me at the Hidden Gin at gmail dot com. Once again, it's the Hidden Gin Gin with a D at gmail dot com and you might just hear back from me, or you might hear your story on this show. And finally, don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the handle the Hidden Gin. There you can tweet, post, insta, dm me. I'd love to hear from all of you, and believe me, I read every
single message. The Hidden Gin is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Robbia Chaudry and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Music for the show was provided by Smith Sony and Folkways Recordings. Our theme song was created by Patrick Cortez. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. H