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Are The "Arabian Nights" All Fiction?
By
William Q. Judge
William Quan Judge
For many years
it has been customary to regard that collection of interesting stories called
"The Arabian Nights," as pure fiction arising out of Oriental brains
at a time when every ruler had his story-teller to amuse him or put him to
sleep. But many a man who has down in his heart believed in the stories he
heard in his youth about fairies and ghosts, has felt a revival of his young
fancies upon perusing these tales of prodigies and magic. Others, however, have
laughed at them as pure fables, and the entire scientific world does nothing
but preserve contemptuous silence.
The question
here to be answered by men of science is how did such ideas arise? Taking them
on their own ground, one must believe that with so much smoke there must at one
time have been some fire. Just as the prevalence of a myth - such as the Devil
or Serpent myth - over large numbers of
people or vast periods of time points to the fact that
there must have been something, whatever it was, that gave rise to the idea.
In this enquiry
our minds range over that portion of the world which is near the Red Sea,
Arabia and Persia, and we are brought very close to places, now covered with
water, that once formed part of ancient Lemuria.
The name
These men were
many of them magicians, and they learned their lore either from the Lemurian
adepts, or from the Black Magicians of the other famous
We may safely
conclude that the Arabian Nights stories are not all pure fiction, but are the
faint reverberations of a louder echo which reached their authors from the
times of Lemuria and Atlantis.
Solomon is now
and then mentioned in them, and Solomon, wherever he was, has always been
reckoned as a great adept. The Jewish Cabala and Talmud speak of Solomon with
great reverence. His power and the power of his seal
- the interlaced triangles - constantly crop up among the
other magical processes adverted to in these tales. And in nearly all cases
where is represented as dealing with wicked genii, he buried them in the
Now if Solomon
was a Jewish King far away in Palestine, how did he get down to the Red Sea,
and where is there any mention made of his travelling at all? These genii were
elemental spirits, and Solomon is merely a name standing for the vast knowledge
of magic arts possessed by adepts at a time buried in the darkness of the past.
In one tale, a fisherman hauls up a heavy load, which turns out to be a large
iron pot, with a metal cover, on which was engraved Solomon's Seal. The unlucky
man opened the pot, when at once a vapour rose out of
it that spread itself over the whole heavens at first, and then condensed again
into a monstrous form who addressed the fisherman saying, that ages before he
had been confined there by Solomon; that after two hundred years he swore he
would make rich the man lucky enough to let him out; after five hundred years
that he would reward his liberator with power; but after one thousand years of
captivity he would kill the one who should free him. Then he ordered the man to
prepare for death. The fisherman, however, said he doubted that the genii had
really been in the pot as he was too large. To prove that he had been, the
spirit immediately assumed the vaporous condition and slowly with spiral motion
sank into the iron pot again, when at once the fisherman clapped on the cover
and was about to cast him back into the sea. The djin
then begged for mercy and agreed to serve the man and not to kill him,
whereupon he was released.
Many persons
will laugh at this story. But no one who has seen the wonders of sțiritualism, or who knows that at this day there are many
persons in India, as well as elsewhere who have dealings with elemental spirits
that bring them objects instantaneously, &c., will laugh before reflecting
on the circumstances.
Observe that
the pot in which he was confined was made of metal, and that the talismanic
seal was on the cover. The metal prevented him from making magnetic connection
for the purpose of escaping, and the seal on the cover barred that way, There were no marks on the sides of the pot. His spreading
himself into a vast vapour shows that he was one of
the elementals of the airy kingdom - the most powerful and malignant; and his
malignancy is show in the mean, ungrateful oath he took to destroy whomsoever
should be his liberator.
His spreading
into vapour, instead of at once springing out of the
pot, refers to his invisibility, for we see that in order to enter it he was
compelled to assume his vaporous state, in which he again put himself into the
pot.
In another
story we see a young man visiting an elemental of the nature of a Succubus, who
permits him now and then to go out and perform wonders.
But the
entrance to her retreat is unseen and kept invisible to others. In
spiritualism in
In other
stories various people have power over men and animals and the forces of
nature. They change men into animals and do other wonders.
When they wish
to cause the metamorphosis, they dash a handful of water into the unfortunate's
face, crying; "Quit that form of man and assume the form of a dog."
The terrible Maugraby is a Black Magician, such as
can now be found in Bhootan, who had changed many
persons, and the story of his destruction shows that his life and power as well
as his death lay in the nasty practices of Black Magic.
When the figure
and the talisman were
destroyed he was also. The white magician has no talisman
but his Atman, and as that cannot be destroyed, he is beyond all fear.
But this paper
is already too long. We are not forcing a conclusion when we say that these
admirable and amusing tales are not all fiction.
There is much
nonsense in them, but they have come to us from the very land - now bleak and
desolate - where at one time the fourth race men held sway and dabbled in both
White and Black Magic.
Theosophist,
October, 1884
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