In the Semitic East it is an old belief that a successful fast in the wilderness of forty days and nights gives power over the Djinns.
2
It was essential in the old Greek rites of averting the Keres or djinns, the ill regulated ghosts who return to earth and molest the living, to abstain from flesh.
3
It was rather of the nature of the savagetaboo, the outcome of totemistic beliefs or a mode of averting the contaminating presence of djinns and demons.