A lone fisherman one day brought up a brass bottle, stoppered with lead, in his net. Though the appearance of the bottle was quite different from what he was used to finding in the sea, he thought it might contain something of value. Besides, he had not had a good catch, and at the worst he could sell the bottle to a brass-merchant.
The bottle was not very large. On the top was inscribed a strange symbol, the Seal of Solomon, King and Master. Inside had been imprisoned a fearsome genie: and the bottle had been cast into the sea by Solomon himself so that men should be protected from the spirit until such time as there came one who could control it, assigning it to its proper role of service to mankind.
But the fisherman knew nothing of this. All he knew was that here was something which he could investigate, which might be of profit to him. Its outside shone and it was a work of art. "Inside," he thought, "there may be diamonds."
Forgetting the adage, "Man can use only what he has learned to use," the fisherman pulled out the leaden stopper.
He inverted the bottle, but there seemed to be nothing in it, so he set it down and looked at it. Then noticed a faint wisp as of smoke, slowly becoming denser, which swirled and formed itself into the appearance of a huge and threatening being, which addressed him in a booming voice: "I am the Chief of the Jinns who know the secrets of miraculous happenings, imprisoned by order of Solomon against whom I rebelled, and I shall destroy you!"
The fisherman was terrified, and, casting himself upon the sand, cried out: "Will you destroy him who gave you your freedom?"
"Indeed I shall," said the genie, "for rebellion is my nature, and destruction is my capacity, although I may have been rendered immobile for several thousand years."
The fisherman now saw that, far from profit from this unwelcome catch, he was likely to be annihilated for no good reason that he could fathom. He looked at the seal upon the stopper, and suddenly an idea occurred to him.
"You could never have come out of that bottle," he said, "It is too small."
"What! Do you doubt the word of the Master of the Jinn?" roared the apparition. And he dissolved himself again into wispy smoke and went back into the bottle. The fisherman took up the stopper and plugged the bottle with it. Then he threw it back, as far as he could, into the depths of the sea.
Many years passed, until one day another fisherman, grandson of the first, cast his net in the same place, and brought up the self-same bottle. He placed the bottle upon the sand and was about to open it when a thought struck him. It was the piece of advice which had been passed down to him by his father, from his father. It was: "Man can use only what he has learned to use."
And so it was that when the genie, aroused from his slumbers by movement of his metal prison, called through the brass: "Son of Adam, whoever you may be, open the stopper of this bottle and release me: for I am the Chief of the Jinns who know the secrets or miraculous happenings."
The young fisherman, remembering his ancestral adage, placed the bottle carefully in a cave and scaled the heights of a near-by cliff, seeking the cell of a wise man who lived there. He told the story to the wise man, who said: "Your adage is perfectly true: and you have to do this thing yourself, though you must know how to do it."
"But what do I have to do?" asked the youth.
"There is something, surely, that you feel you want to do?" said the other.
"What I want to do is to release the jinn, so that he can give me miraculous knowledge: or perhaps mountains of gold, and seas made from emeralds, and all the other things which jinns can bestow."
"It has not, of course, occurred to you," said the sage, "that the jinn might not give you these things when released; or that he may give them to you and then take them away because you have no means to guard them; quite apart from what might befall you if and when you did have such things, since 'Man can use only what he has learned to use.'"
"Then what shall I do?"
"Seek from the jinn a sample of what he can offer. Seek a means of safeguarding that sample and testing it. Seek knowledge, not possessions, for possessions without knowledge are useless, and that is the cause of all our distractions. "
Now, because he was alert and reflective, the young man worked out his plan on the way back to the cave where he had left the jinn. He tapped on the bottle, and the jinn's voice answered, tinny through the metal, but still terrible: "In the name of Solomon the Mighty, upon whom be peace, release me, son of Adam!"
"I don't believe that you are who you say and that you have the powers which you claim," answered the youth.
"Don't believe me! Do you not know that I am incapable of telling a lie?" the jinn roared back.
"No, I do not," said the fisherman.
"Then how can I convince you?"
"By giving me a demonstration. Can you exercise any powers through the wall of the bottle?"
"Yes," admitted the jinn, "but I cannot release myself through these powers."
"Very well, then: give me the ability to know the truth of the problem which is on my mind."
Instantly, as the jinn exercised his strange craft, the fisherman became aware of the source of the adage handed down by his grandfather. He saw, too, the whole scene of the release of the jinn from the bottle; and he also saw how he could convey to others how to gain such capacities from the jinns. But he also realized that there was no more that he could do. And so the fisherman picked up the bottle and, like his grandfather, cast it into the ocean.
And he spent the rest of his life, not as a fisherman, but as a man who tried to explain to others the perils of "Man trying to use what he has not learned to use."
But, since few people ever came across jinns in bottles, and there was no wise man to prompt them in any case, the successors of the fisherman garbled what they called his "teachings," and mimed his descriptions. In due course they became a religion, with brazen bottles from which they sometimes drank housed in costly and well-adorned temples. And, because they respected the behavior of this fisherman, they strove to emulate his actions and his deportment in very way.
The bottle, now many centuries later, remains the holy symbol and mystery for these people. They try to love each other only because they love this fisherman; and in the place where he settled and built a humble shack they deck themselves with finery and move in elaborate rituals. The brass bottle lies at the bottom of the sea with a genie slumbering within.
as collected by Idries Shah
