THE PHILANTHROPIC SIDE OF RAFI SAHAAB - AN INCIDENT.

THE PHILANTHROPIC SIDE OF RAFI SAHAAB – AN INCIDENT. By Nasir Ali. 

This evening I had a chance visitor. After we had exchanged greetings and taken our respective seat, he blurted out: “Rafi Sahaab was indeed a saint.” He repeated: “Yes, he was a saint despite the fact that he made a living in the Bollywood film industry.” 

I was caught unawares and also pleasantly surprised. This was not because of his statement, but because such conversation was not expected in the least. I asked him, “Why do you say that?” It was then he narrated to me what he had heard from his friend who was a poor guy from the Bandra vicinity – Behrampada (in Mumbai City) to name it precisely. Here is what he told me about an incident that pertained to the early Sixties: 

 This man from Behrampada had four daughters. One of them had reached the age of marriage. He was much worried. He had no money or means to get his daughter married. He had heard from his neighbours about Mohammed Rafi Sahaab and that he was a good man. They told him to approach Rafi Sahaab for help. He had his own doubts initially because he himself was a nobody whereas Rafi Sahaab’s was a great name. Will he help him – a total stranger that he was to Rafi Sahaab? 

Gathering Rafi Sahaab’s address, he finally came to his Bungalow. The security guard told him that Rafi Sahaab was not present. Not losing hope, he visited it again the next day and then the next day only to be told the same thing. He finally requested the security guard to inform Rafi Sahaab about his visit. The security guard accordingly did so. So on his next visit, the security guard let him inside the gate, when he was astounded to see Rafi Sahaab beckoning him. 

Now when our man entered the living room, Rafi Sahaab politely told him to sit down. Snacks and tea were offered to him. After he had had his fill, Rafi Sahaab asked him the purpose of his visit. That man explained his plight and misery and informed Rafi Sahaab that he had a daughter of marriageable age but could not get her married since he had no money. Rafi Sahaab asked him how much money he needed. He quoted an X amount. Hearing this, Rafi Sahaab requested him to come back the next day without fail. 

So the next day, this man went to see Rafi Sahaab at his bungalow again. Rafi Sahaab was waiting for him. He offered him snacks and tea again. After he had finished with his victuals, Rafi Sahaab handed over the required X amount that the man needed for his daughter’s marriage. Moreover, he also gave him the same X amount three times over, saying that these were for his remaining three daughters’ marriages too. He was very happy. Too happy in fact. He had got more than he had asked for. But there was one condition attached: Rafi Sahaab asked him not to divulge this incident to anyone, nor to say anything about the money he had got from him. This much he promised. 

In due course, he got all his daughters married decently and was relieved of his duties thanks to the generosity and altruism of Rafi Sahaab.  It was only after Rafi Sahaab passed away that he felt he could now tell the world how Rafi Sahaab had helped him. 

When I heard the above story from my friend, naturally I choked with emotions. Then I recollected all those stories that I had sometimes read in the magazines about how Rafi Sahaab time and again rescued even Bollywood industry people, including music directors, from financial straits.  Yes, not only was Rafi Sahaab a man with a Golden Voice, but he was also a man with Golden Heart.

NASIR ALI

PART 10 - JINN OF THE UNSEEN WORLD, EXPLORING SOME BASICS...

From the Desk of a Layman, Nasir Ali:

Part 10: Jinn of the Unseen World, exploring some basics...

After having discussed Ghouls, we now turn to another sub-set of Jinn known as Si’lat/ Si’lah/ Sila,(pl.Sa’aali) adj: su'luwwa).  The silah is a variant of the Ghul. This djinn is often referred to in the feminine. These smartest of the Jinn are excellent shapeshifters who are easily able to mimic the appearance of a human.  Being open-minded, they are able to mix in human society with comparative ease though they prefer to live near rivers, desolate parts of deserts, oases, jungles and thickets.  They tend to shapeshift into men or women and lure them into bed. However, most are merely lovers looking to find mates.  Owing to their propensity to bed humans, Si’lats are sometimes mistaken for Succubi or Incubi which they are not.  Their nature is built in such a way that sexual activity and the need to reproduce supersedes any other need they may have.  Indeed, they are the most salacious of the Jinn who appear as beautiful women ready to go to the extent of wedding, bedding and producing babies by interbreeding with humans.  The offspring born of Si’lats are known as Bonoo.  However, some of the male counterparts can be manipulative, and often trick women by impregnating them with Bonoo against their will. 

The Si’lats can be found by their half-breed appearances as creatures, despite their shape-shifting capacities.  They are also known as Jinn of the Lightning.  Some describe their overall appearance as resembling grey-hounds, who possess very long forelegs and hind feet and have a mane of ash-grey colour, being the Bedouins' favourite canine who enjoy frightening camels away from their grazing areas. Something that both forms have in common, though, is the ability to appear as an animal and have malicious intent.  Ancient traditions describe this jinni as sudden in appearance and disappearance, with a cat-like face, canine teeth, and a forked tongue.   In Middle Eastern legends they are shown as pernicious creatures who tend to mislead the desert or forest travellers.  After overcoming them they play a cat-and-mouse game, making them dance to their tune before eating them.  Those humans who display refined manners are rarely eaten.  More often, they are helped on a quest or journey.  It is said that the good Si’lats dine only on animal meat, while evil Si’lats prefer human meat.  It is also known that they hide the location of oases from those humans they don’t like. 

The si’luwa is a water demon from Iraq and is a variant of the s’ilah. She is described as a woman having a fishtail in place of legs, with pendulous breasts hanging down to her knees, while her body is covered in long hair.  Being the product of river demons and humans, she seeks human lovers.  Nevertheless, she too hunts humans for meals. 

Ancient Arabic geographers have shown in their maps an island known as the “Island of the Sealah” off the coast of China, where these demons resided and ate humans who fell to their lot.

In the Middle East, it is common knowledge that Jinn are scared of wolves as the wolves can see them. In fact, the sorcerers are known to use wolves to devour the Jinn.   When the wolves chase them, they go and hide in stones as they can live/hide in stones.  Si’lats are the most vulnerable.  The Wolf is their nemesis who devours them with relish.  It is alleged that even the images of wolves will repel the Si’lats.  

Al-Qazwini mentions that the wolf hunts the si’lah at night. When a si’lah is caught by a wolf, she cries out as it tears into her and begs to be saved offering a thousand dinars to her rescuer. The author states that the people ignore these pleas because they know it is the si’lah.  In fact, Robert Lebling states that wolves are the only animals that the djinn fear. He says that the djinn cannot escape the wolves by sinking into the ground, thus falling prey to the teeth and claws of the wolves.  In Iraq and other parts of the Muslim world, wolf teeth are worn as protective talismans.

INCUBUS AND SUCCUBUS:

According to the Jewish folklore or texts, Lilith who was Adam’s first wife (a non-Islamic

concept) later became a succubus after leaving the Garden of Eden.  The most powerful Succubus to have lived is believed to be Lilith, the queen of Hell. She’s also the mother of all Succubi. Her counterpart – the first and most powerful Incubus – was Lilu.  Benjamin Adamah notes in his The incubus or succubus – nightmare or astral sex date?  “Legend has it that the incubi and succubi came from the community that rose from Lilith and Samael. They were responsible for erotic fantasies, drives and desires and were particularly fond of lonely travellers and men, who had been away from their wives for a longer period of time.  They caused wet dreams and thus the loss of precious life energy and from this wasted seed new incubi or succubi were born.”    In medieval Europe, union with an incubus was supposed by some to result in the birth of witches, demons, and deformed human offspring.

Incubus and his female counterpart, the Succubus, visit women and men in their sleep, lie and press heavily upon them, and seduce them.   Incubus and succubus can be relentless in pursuit of their sexual desire so much so that they grow violent when resisted.  However, they are considered less dangerous than possessing demons.  Incubi are especially attracted to women with beautiful hair, young virgins, chaste widows, and all “devout” females.  Therefore, tales of Incubi and Succubi were originally linked more with monks and nuns – two groups of individuals who have sworn celibacy.  Consequently, there have been cases where many nuns became pregnant and killed their children at birth and then buried them outside their nunneries.    

In medieval Europe, witches were said to copulate willingly with incubi, especially at a Witches' Sabbat when witches and sorcerers gathered at a secret place for worshipping the Devil and indulging in orgiastic rites, dances, feasting, etc.  The inquisitors’ handbook the Malleus Maleficarum (1487), stated that “in times long past the Incubus devils used to infest women against their wills,” but “modern witches . . . willingly embrace this most foul and miserable servitude.” Some incubi served as Familiars to witches, who sent them to torment specific individuals.  

FRANCESCO-MARIA GUAZZO related a story in Compendium Maleficarum (Book of Witches, 1608) about a beautiful noble girl who refused to marry men of her station but instead fell into an affair with an Incubus. She freely told her parents of the marvellous sex they had at night and sometimes during the day. One night, the parents, a priest, and others bolted the house doors and went into their daughter’s bedroom with lit torches. There they found her in the embrace of a hideous Demon, “a horrible monster whose appearance was terrible beyond human imagination.” It was only after the priest began his prayers and rituals that the Incubus released the girl, but not before setting fire to the furniture in the room and taking with him the roof of the bedroom.  The girl immediately gave birth to a monstrous baby which was burnt by the midwives.

In modern representations, a succubus is often depicted as a beautiful seductress or enchantress, rather than as a demonic or scary entity, in a female form, that appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. The succubus can cause an erection directly.  When a human has intercourse with a succubus or an incubus for fairly long periods, a need for more sex keeps on rising.  The impacts related to the succubus range from sexual stimulation to increased heart rate to preventing sleep, as well as many others too numerous to mention. Repeated sexual activity with a succubus or an incubus can cause poor physical or mental health, and as they suck out life energy it may even cause death.

 

According to the Malleus Malefic Arum, or Witches' Hammer, written by Heinrich Kramer (Henricus Institor) in 1486, both entities need a human to procreate. As a Succubus has sex with a man, she steals seeds from the male human. Then the demon shifts into a male form, Incubus, and has sexual intercourse with a woman in an attempt to impregnate her.  They do not possess their own semen; they collect it from men in nocturnal emissions, masturbation or, while the Demons are masquerading as succubi, from coitus.  An incubus may pursue sexual relations with a woman in order to father a child, as in the legend of Merlin.  The hybrid of human and incubi/succubi is called a Cambion.  

Coming to their genuine shapes, they look nothing like the beautiful masterpieces depicted in movies.  They are demons and sizeable and serpentine evil animals with skeletal ghost limbs that have qualities of a fowl. Their underbellies are continually washed with the blood of their victims down the ages.  Their backs bear stripes of hair.   Some Incubus penises were described as scaly, like the skin of a reptile. Incubi are not interested in procreation, only in degrading sex. Incubi have enormous phalluses that are so stiff they cause women great pain.  A woman accused as a witch in Haraucourt in 1586 described her Demon’s penis as long as a kitchen tool and without testicles or scrotum. Another accused witch, a woman named Didatia of Miremont, said at her trial in 1588 that she was “always so stretched by the huge, swollen member of her Demon that the sheets were drenched with blood.”  On the other hand, a succubus's private area feels like a cavern of ice, and their purpose is supposedly to take the seed of young men and return it to incubi, their demonic male analogues.

It may be stated here that Abrahel, called the Queen of the Succubi, is especially devoted to seducing men of doubtful asceticism, more punctually to peasants and men of little formal instruction.  It takes the form of a beautiful woman who captivates them immediately. It then disposes of them at will, causing them to commit real follies to satisfy their whims. Abrahel is also known to be especially cruel and perverted, even by Demons' standards, enjoying psychologically torturing and manipulating her victims. 

The French Demonologist, Nicholas Remy notes in Demonolatry, a succubus case that

happened in 1581.  A shepherd named Pierron Armenterious of Dalheim was persuaded by a succubus, Abrahel, to murder his son. After the murder, Pierron was so overcome with grief and guilt that he contemplated suicide.  Abrahel told him that if he worshipped her, she would restore the boy back to life.  He complied, and his son returned to the living.  However, the boy wasn't as intelligent as before; he was also skinnier and slower.  A mere year later the young boy died again, and a nauseating smell started to emanate from the corpse. The father buried the cadaver without holding a funeral.  In the words of Remy, "The child's body, which gave off an insufferable stench, was pulled out of his father's house with a hook and buried in a field."  The story does not make further mention of the succubus demon or the shepherd.

Francesco-Maria Guazzo wrote of one alleged succubus incident in Compendium Maleficarum (1608), in which a succubus forced herself on a young man near Aberdeen, Scotland. The succubus visited him in bed every night and stayed until dawn. The young man claimed that he tried to get rid of the succubus, but to no avail. Finally, the local bishop ordered him to go away to another place and devote himself to prayer and fasting.  After several days, the young man said the succubus left him.  

However, both entities are not bound by form or gender.   They can shapeshift into whatever the human most desires.  In other words, whatever the sleeping person desires, that will come forward. Incubi and Succubi are said to be mortals like us, so they basically can be killed either through decapitation or by ripping their hearts from their chests.

It cannot be said that all succubi were malevolent.  As a young priest, Gerbert of Aurillac (946-1003 C.E.) fell madly in love with the daughter of the Provost of Rheims who cruelly rejected him.  He fell into a deep melancholy.  According to Walter Mapes in De Nugis Curialium (Trifles of Courtiers), after being jilted in love, he got involved with a succubus named 

Meridiana.  Meridiana offered him all of the sins of the flesh and lust-filled sex that he could ever want beyond his wildest dreams, as well as wealth, good fortune, and knowledge of the mystical arts if he would only stay faithful to her and her alone.  Gerbert of Aurillac agreed and his career rose very fast. From the monk, he rose to be the Bishop of Rome, became Archbishop of Rheims, then Cardinal, Archbishop of Ravenna, and finally Pope Sylvester II.  All the while, quite against his vows, he secretly indulged in satisfying his every carnal desire with Meridiana.  In fact, he also had flings with his early rejector who now suddenly found him worthy of her love.  This went on until one day Meridiana predicted that Gerbert would die as he celebrated mass in Jerusalem, which actually turned out to be Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross of Jerusalem) in Rome.  

Before his death, Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) confessed his sins and died repentant. Of course, there are some gory details here; but we need not go into them.  According to Lore, his tomb sweats prior to the death of a prominent person. If a pope is going to die, the sweat is so heavy that it turns into a stream and creates a large puddle, and Sylvester’s bones shake and rattle.

For the sake of brevity, we shall not discuss how these spirit demons can be conjured by witches, sorcerers, and shamans. During the witch hysteria in Europe, incubi were believed to be instruments of the Devil, tormenting people for the sole purpose of degrading their souls and perverting them to more vices. During the witch hunts, Demonologists wrote handbooks on witches, the Devil, and Demons. They described the appearances, behaviour, and characteristics of incubi and remedies against them.    The 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, is a notorious, much-maligned text on how to identify, capture, and kill witches. Thousands of women of whom many were innocent were burnt at stake in Europe.  Just because some women had a crooked nose, or were living singly with a cat, or dressed somewhat differently, or were assertive and intelligent, and so on was good enough to be branded a witch,

Women who “tried to seduce” men were accused of being Succubi in disguise, while women who became pregnant outside of wedlock were accused of consorting with Incubi.  It may be stated here that the famous late-fifteenth century German handbook for the prosecution of witches, put forth “the Devil, a witch, and the permission of Almighty God”, as “the three necessary concomitants of witchcraft”

The men accused of witchcraft were tortured until they confessed to having sex with Demons, among other Demonic crimes.  In a grave travesty of justice, we have the classic case of Father Urbain Grandier who during the Witch Trials of 1634 in France was falsely accused of casting spells and inflicting mass demonic possession on the Ursuline nuns of Loudon. Despite the very gruesome tortures that included the smashing of both his legs till the marrow oozed out of the bones, Grandier did not confess as he laboured under the belief that he would be exonerated.  Grandier was convicted of practising witchcraft,  summoning evil spirits, and causing demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of Loudun. Of course, later on, it was found that the entire case had been concocted by his rivals including a Bishop, a Cardinal and a Baron as well as Mother Superior who produced a forged Devil Pact to get even with Grandier for having spurned her offer of a Confessor at the Convent and thus shattering her dreams of having sex with him.  But the damage had been done! Grandier was burnt alive at the stake for the alleged offences. Ironically, even after this,  the 12 Ursuline nuns who had given depositions at the trial continued to show signs of demonic possession by contorting their bodies, lifting their skirts and begging for sexual relief in a language that “would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothel in the country.” 

 Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (d.1701 C.E.) in Demonioality: Incubi-Succubi is not dismissive of their salvation. He advances the theological argument that these minor demons have souls, and can be saved from damnation. He distinguishes them from the more vulgar type that tends to possess humans in terrifying displays.  Here he cites the views of saints, scholars and churchmen and their descriptions of a world filled with beings able to assume human shapes in order to haunt and taunt their mortal victims.  Repeated intercourse with these demons theoretically causes insanity and extraordinarily ill-health.

Down the centuries many such encounters have been recorded involving various individuals.  Even in the modern world, there have been encounters between these demons and humans.  Some Hollywood actresses have gone on record to state their experiences, their encounters with these spirits.  The truth is, Lucy Liu, Anna Nicole Smith, Natasha Blasick, Kesha, and even porn stars have all publicly admitted to ongoing sexual relations with amorous spirits though they term it Spectrophilia.

When asked why, the answer is always the same: sex with these spirits is ridiculously pleasurable, as they have the ability to manipulate our bodies in ways that a human may not be able to.  

To Continue...

NASIR ALI