In 1977, the Moscow publishing house "Science" published in a tiny print run in a series devoted to ethnographic research, G. Saedi's thin book "Obsessed by the Winds". The book was published in Russian and translated from Persian. The author of this essay is a professional ethnographer, professor from Iran.
In the scientific commentary accompanying the essay, it is reported that the book is actually called "Possessed by the Winds-Spirits." Clarification about "spirits" was removed from the cover of the book, it must be understood, by the Soviet censorship.
Residents of the southern coast of Iran, living on the shores of the Persian Gulf, regularly communicate with some local spirits, says G. Saedi. Contacts with mysterious invisible creatures occur only in this area! Nowhere else in Iran itself, as well as in neighboring countries, nothing of the kind is observed.
"Akhl-e hava", that is, "possessed by the wind-spirit" - this is how people on the Persian Gulf are called among the common people, who was captured by one of the wind-spirits. And winds-spirits are called here all the mysterious, powerful, witchcraft forces that exist everywhere and rule, according to local residents, over the entire human race.
Not one person, not one force is able to resist them.
Compared to the winds-spirits, a person is so insignificant and helpless that he has to please the spirits, make sacrifices to them and surrender to their mercy.
Spirit-winds are cruel - and everyone tries to get rid of such winds. But there are also good ones - and there are people who voluntarily agree to submit to them. Winds are everywhere: at sea and on land. They always demand the human body as a sacrifice. Disadvantaged and tired souls become their victims. There are many spirit winds where fear and anxiety are strong! In places where poverty and unemployment are widespread, the power of the spirits is especially great.
It is believed that all the possessed carry winds-spirits, and therefore they are called "saddled".
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The spirit winds come from distant lands, from foreign shores and most often from the distant shores of Black Africa, local residents say. In their opinion, the Indian and Persian spirits, although scary, cannot be compared with the huge black-black winds-spirits of the African coast … Many types of wind-spirits “live” in the south of Iran.
For several centuries, the aborigines of the southern coast of Iran believe in these winds and suffer from them, and use various witchcraft rituals to get rid of them.
Here is the quintessence of local beliefs, recorded by G. Saedi from the words of the local professional sorcerers:
“The winds-spirits are the forces that rule the whole world. If a person who has been captured by one of the winds breaks free from his power alive and well, he becomes a member of the ahl-e hava clan, that is, those possessed by the wind-spirits who defeated these spirits.
The spirit winds do not look like anything. They are just winds, obsession, air, "pieces" of living thinking air … A spirit named Zar is just such a special air, and a spirit named Noban is also nothing more than a special air, a "wisp of thinking wind." If it enters the human body, it takes health away from it. And no one, except for local sorcerers, called "baba" and "mother", will be able to cure the patient."
Thus, the spirit winds are ailments against which conventional medicine is powerless. The only type of their treatment is special rituals that have existed for many centuries among the inhabitants of the coast, fishermen.
Most of all, spirit winds love young people, since they are physically stronger and can carry spirits on them. At the same time, young people, despite their strength and energy of youth, find themselves weaker in front of the spirits than children and old people.
All "thinking winds" are contagious and can pass from person to person. If one person loves another very much, then he can give him his wind or take his wind for himself.
For the so-called "descent" and pacification of this or that spirit, "baba" and "mama" hold special gatherings and rituals called "games". Only with the help of "games" it is possible to expel a certain wind-spirit from the patient's body, and the person is completely freed from the power of the "thinking wind". During the "game" only those rituals are performed that the wind personally demands from the organizers of the gathering "in exchange for a human body, which he will have to leave."
Before the start of the "game", the patient is immersed in hypnosis by local sorcerers. He is not aware of his condition, and soon a strange voice begins to sound from his throat, completely unlike the voice of the patient. It is the wind-spirit that "saddled" a person is taken to speak. The sorcerers immediately enter into negotiations with the spirit. They ask him what he wants, how to appease him.
In the presence of numerous witnesses, the spirit answers questions. However, he never answers in the native language of the person “saddled” by him! He answers in Arabic, Hindi or Swahili, although the "saddled" himself categorically does not know, as a rule, these languages.
So professional sorcerers willy-nilly have to be polyglots, otherwise they will not understand anything from the speeches of the spirits.
I will now give you a fairly typical example of the expulsion of the evil spirit Zara from a person.
One evening a certain young man Muhammad suddenly felt that someone had climbed into his body and wanted to cut off his head. Terrified, he began to emit shrill screams. The next day, this sensation intensified. Muhammad ran away from home, climbed onto the roof of the ruins of an ancient fortress and began to scream and howl there. I had to tie him tightly hand and foot with a rope.
No one doubted that the wind-spirit had infiltrated the young man.
Baba Ahmad, a professional sorcerer, undertook to cure Muhammad. Acting no worse than modern hypnotists, he vividly hypnotized the "saddled" one. A few minutes later, a strange voice came from the patient's throat, speaking in Swahili, a language that the uneducated young fisherman Muhammad did not know. Wind Spirit introduced himself as Zar.
The sorcerer asked:
- Why did you attack this young man? What do you want?
Zar replied:
- I want what is due to me.
- What do you owe? - asked the "woman".
“I want a bamboo stick, I want a bracelet, a gold ring,” Zar began to list.
- What more do you want?
- Silk shirt.
- And what else do you want?
“I want to feast for three days and three nights,” was the answer.
- Anything else you want? - the sorcerer continued to ask.
- Fifteen days of fun.
- Well, what else do you want?
- I want food and blood. I don't want anything else.
The sorcerer said:
“If you don’t torture this young man anymore, we are ready to give you whatever you ask for.
On the same day, Zar had ordered a "play with refreshments". The Spirit was presented with the items he demanded. People beat drums for fifteen days.
On the fifteenth day, the sorcerer-"baba" asked:
- Enough with you games? Zar replied:
- I'm happy.
After the end of the procedure for exorcising the spirit, Baba-Ahmad said that the wind-spirit would no longer torment Muhammad, but only exactly a year later it was necessary at the same time to take Muhammad to another mighty sorcerer named Baba-Saleh so that he would have another game - so say "for prevention."
The expulsion procedure has borne fruit. The young man fully recovered. He began to live and work like everyone else.
Exactly one year later, Muhammad did not even think about fulfilling the wish of the local sorcerer - to go to a "preventive hypnosis session" in another area to another mighty sorcerer … Soon he began to feel heaviness in his entire body, and then his left side was paralyzed and he lost the ability to move.
Baba-Salekh, to whom the suddenly paralyzed young man was hastily delivered, hypnotized him at a high pace - "made the spirit descend." When he “descended,” the sorcerer asked:
- Why are you torturing this young man again? Zar replied:
- He forgot us, he did not please us. We want to destroy it!
The sorcerer objected:
- He is still almost a child, foolish … It will be a pity if he dies young …
Baba-Salekh spent three days “playing games”.
The sorcerer discovered that two evil spirits were sitting in the body of the young man. They both spoke to the sorcerer in Arabic. And this language, like Swahili, the uneducated Muhammad did not know. But the Arabic language was well known by the winds-spirits, "riding" it.
The second procedure for the expulsion of the spirits, carried out this time not by Babbi-Ahmad, but by Babbi-Salekh, ended as successfully as the first. The young man recovered: the paralysis vanished as if by hand.
From that day on, Muhammad felt great.