The cleanest statement of the hidden-neighbour idea.
In Islamic tradition, a created order of beings made of smokeless fire, possessing free will and moral accountability, living in the world alongside humans while ordinarily unseen. This is a living belief held by very large numbers of people, not a folklore curiosity, and it deserves handling as such.
Approach this through Islamic scholarship rather than entity lore. The tradition is clear and long-established that deliberate engagement is discouraged, and possession is treated seriously within it, with its own recognised responses. It is not material for experimentation.
Earth-native, liminal · embodiment 3 of 5, comes and goes · source: living religion · key
Dates
Scriptural: Qur'anic
Related
Structurally identical to the fae in the features that matter, and arrived at entirely independently. The strongest evidence for archetype recurrence in this guide.
Sharing the world with us, ordinarily imperceptible, able to become briefly visible. The oldest and largest branch.
Degree of embodiment: 3, comes and goes
Scale, 1 to 5
5 is an ordinary biological body. 4 is physical but manifests oddly. 3 comes and goes. 2 is energetic or subtle. 1 is consciousness with no persistent form. Note that this tends to fall as a tradition ages.
R: living religion
Source code
An element of a religion currently practised by large numbers of people, not a folklore curiosity, and handled here accordingly.
Element of a living religion
Tradition-side
Held by very large numbers of people as religious truth rather than folklore. The appropriate approach is the tradition's own, through its own scholars and practitioners, not entity-collecting.
Tradition warns against contact
Tradition-side
The tradition's own practitioners advise against seeking this out deliberately. Worth weighing on its own terms: the people closest to the material are the ones counselling distance.
Protocol exists
Tradition-side
The tradition carries specific rules for approach: things not to accept, say, take or give. Long lists of do-nots usually mean a long history of people treating the encounter as consequential, whatever was actually being encountered.
Deliberate contact work
Read this first
The hazard in this subject attaches to the method, not to which name you aim it at. Ouija work, invocation, sustained channelling, induced hypnagogia, deliberate sleep deprivation and hypnotic regression are the practices associated with difficulty, and a session aimed at a benevolent civilisation is not safer than one aimed at something considered lower. What raises risk is doing it alone, doing it repeatedly, doing it while sleep-deprived, and doing it with an existing vulnerability to psychosis, mania or dissociation. People who get into trouble here overwhelmingly got there through practice, not through reading.
Who should be careful
Practice-side
Anyone with a personal or family history of psychosis, bipolar disorder or dissociative conditions, anyone in acute crisis, and anyone isolated from people who would notice a change in them. Intensive contact practice is destabilising by design (that is what it is for), and destabilisation lands hardest on people already close to an edge.