Enquiring Minds
Iblis

Iblis

This one is a bit different…it’s still a raw prompt, but the writing is my own. This particular…nom de plume…arose out of an online, text-based RPG in which players assumed the identity of a demon or similar infernal entity. And this was the one I chose. (And some years later, I needed an unused email address to create a profile, and I had this one going begging, so…)

Based loosely on an adaption of the Iblis myth, the fallen angel, (or more popularly nowadays, the greatly favoured djinn) cast out of heaven for refusing to prostrate itself before Adam, a being made from dust, whereas Iblis had been formed from fire.* (Some Sufi’s saw Iblis as the only true monotheist, choosing to suffer expulsion from heaven for disobedience, rather than worship anything other than God even at His command.)

As flavour text, for each turn I wrote a small bit of a type of blank verse to provide a poetic description / context for what was going on in my personal (non-canonical) version of the story. These images are generated from that text.

Born of Fire, once raised on high and since Fallen,
with Purgatory now far behind Iblis wanders,
the blasted plains spiral endlessly dark outside the Presence
yet lit by twisted expressions of the self-torment of the Lost.
From circle to circle, from pride to despair,
from despair to pride, Iblis searches endlessly
the Path of his Truth, his ceaseless whisper
the secret of the insane Presence and its lie.


Proud but brought low, Iblis wanders
spoiled plains hunting, an unknown
answer, quality, question, certain only
that something exists to be found.
Trapped now by the unreasoning
bitterness of the eternal presence,
far from but not immune to its sibilant hum,
Iblis searches, the created now his only comfort.


Enmeshed in the uneasy ennui
of the damned, Iblis, uncertain
of the path as ever since the Fall and
testing the fabric of this plane roams adrift.
Unanchored in this substance, apart from
this reality, searching, ever searching for
the one true word, Iblis, lost in this maelstrom
of the madness of the Presence.


Lost but no longer alone,
Iblis, unconstrained and uncaring,
testing the fabric of this realm and
recreating the echoes of the past.
In search of the Truth hidden
from the players of this
insane game, Iblis, certain
of his sight struggles on.



*Footnote
[God] said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam; they made obeisance, but Iblis did it not. He said: Shall I make obeisance to him whom Thou hast created of dust? … [God] said: Be gone! […] Surely hell is your recompense, a full recompense.
(17:61,63)
 “I am better than he: Thou hast created me of fire, while him Thou didst create of dust” 
(7:12)