The Spirit of Zoroastrianism (The Spirit of ...)

The Spirit of Zoroastrianism

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Unfortunately, for a couple reasons, this is a problematic text for a lay person, and I'm giving up my effort to read it straight through. Professor Skjaervo includes an introduction that provides some explanation of his interpretive approach, but I suspect you'd have to already be familiar with the academic debates to get much out of it. Second, rather than reproducing full texts a great help to a lay reader who doesn't already have a sense of what a sacred text looks like in this tradition , this book is more of a digest -- it excerpts short selections from diverse texts from different eras that share a common theme -- 'creation', or 'eschatology', or 'ethics' - and groups those together.

Unfortunately, the publisher's description of the book doesn't explain the structure - the closest it comes is to say, "this volume That's not false, but it's rather less than complete - it's not the texts that have been chosen, but excerpts from various texts. Again, for the right audience, this could be very illuminating, but without knowing how these excerpts fit into their original sources, a beginning reader can't get nearly as much out of this approach.

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This is going on the shelf as a book that I hope to come back to at intervals in the future - first I have to find a good, solid introduction. Michael rated it really liked it Nov 27, Farmehr rated it liked it Dec 16, William John Meegan rated it liked it Jul 10, Chad Johns rated it it was ok May 22, Ray rated it liked it Apr 08, Clint Dalrymple rated it did not like it Jan 16, Adil Minocherhomjee rated it really liked it Jun 28, Tommy Puleo rated it liked it Dec 26, Tanner rated it really liked it Oct 20, Sol Framson rated it it was amazing Jan 05, Justine rated it liked it Jan 03, Tanya Sieiro van der Beek rated it liked it Sep 13, Nick rated it it was amazing Nov 26, Brian Anthony rated it it was amazing Jan 11, Kurosh marked it as to-read Jan 25, Philip marked it as to-read Aug 06, John Fentiman marked it as to-read Dec 09, Ana marked it as to-read Apr 21, Pushtigban marked it as to-read Sep 06, Kate marked it as to-read Oct 04, Maryam marked it as to-read Oct 21, Scot marked it as to-read Nov 12, Chad marked it as to-read Dec 30, Frank Bosman added it Nov 07, James Doto marked it as to-read Feb 09, Yi Zhou marked it as to-read Feb 22, Chrysovalantis Anastasiades added it Apr 20, Christopher York marked it as to-read May 24, Corey is currently reading it Aug 14, Zoroastrians usually pray in the presence of some form of fire which can be considered evident in any source of light , and the culminating rite of the principle act of worship constitutes a "strengthening of the waters".

Fire is considered a medium through which spiritual insight and wisdom is gained, and water is considered the source of that wisdom. A corpse is considered a host for decay, i. Consequently, scripture enjoins the safe disposal of the dead in a manner such that a corpse does not pollute the good creation.

These injunctions are the doctrinal basis of the fast-fading traditional practice of ritual exposure, most commonly identified with the so-called Towers of Silence for which there is no standard technical term in either scripture or tradition. Ritual exposure is only practiced by Zoroastrian communities of the Indian subcontinent , in locations where it is not illegal and diclofenac poisoning has not led to the virtual extinction of scavenger birds. Other Zoroastrian communities either cremate their dead, or bury them in graves that are cased with lime mortar.

While the Parsees in India have traditionally been opposed to proselytizing , and even considered it a crime for which the culprit may face expulsion, [35] Iranian Zoroastrians have never been opposed to conversion, and the practice has been endorsed by the Council of Mobeds of Tehran. While the Iranian authorities do not permit proselytizing within Iran, Iranian Zoroastrians in exile have actively encouraged missionary activities, with The Zarathushtrian Assembly in Los Angeles and the International Zoroastrian Centre in Paris as two prominent centres. As in many other faiths, Zoroastrians are encouraged to marry others of the same faith, but this is not a requirement.

The roots of Zoroastrianism are thought to have emerged from a common prehistoric Indo-Iranian religious system dating back to the early 2nd millennium BCE. Zoroastrianism enters recorded history in the mid-5th century BCE. Herodotus ' The Histories completed c. According to Herodotus i. Following the unification of the Median and Persian empires in BCE, Cyrus the Great and, later, his son Cambyses II curtailed the powers of the Magi after they had attempted to sow dissent following their loss of influence.

In BCE, the Magi revolted and set up a rival claimant to the throne. The usurper, pretending to be Cyrus' younger son Smerdis , took power shortly thereafter. Darius I and later Achaemenid emperors acknowledged their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions, as attested to several times in the Behistun inscription, and appear to have continued the model of coexistence with other religions. Whether Darius was a follower of Zoroaster has not been conclusively established, since devotion to Ahura Mazda was at the time not necessarily an indication of an adherence to Zoroaster's teaching.

A number of the Zoroastrian texts that today are part of the greater compendium of the Avesta have been attributed to that period. This calendar attributed to the Achaemenid period is still in use today. Additionally, the divinities, or yazatas , are present-day Zoroastrian angels Dhalla, According to later Zoroastrian legend Denkard and the Book of Arda Viraf , many sacred texts were lost when Alexander the Great 's troops invaded Persepolis and subsequently destroyed the royal library there.

According to one archaeological examination, the ruins of the palace of Xerxes bear traces of having been burned Stolze, Whether a vast collection of semi- religious texts "written on parchment in gold ink", as suggested by the Denkard , actually existed remains a matter of speculation, but is unlikely. Given that many of the Denkard s statements-as-fact have since been refuted by scholars, the tale of the library is widely accepted to be fictional Kellens, Alexander's conquests largely displaced Zoroastrianism with Hellenistic beliefs , [37] though the religion continued to be practiced many centuries following the demise of the Achaemenids in mainland Persia and the core regions of the former Achaemenid Empire, most notably Anatolia , Mesopotamia , and the Caucasus.

In the Cappadocian kingdom , whose territory was formerly an Achaemenid possession, Persian colonists, cut off from their co-religionists in Iran proper, continued to practice the faith [Zoroastrianism] of their forefathers; and there Strabo , observing in the first century B. As late as the Parthian period, a form of Zoroastrianism was without a doubt the dominant religion in the Armenian lands.

During the period of their centuries long suzerainty over the Caucasus , the Sassanids made attempts to promote Zoroastrianism there with considerable successes, and it was prominent in the pre-Christian Caucasus especially modern-day Azerbaijan.

Due to its ties to the Christian Roman Empire , Persia's arch-rival since Parthian times, the Sassanids were suspicious of Roman Christianity , and, after the reign of Constantine the Great , sometimes persecuted it. But the Sassanids tolerated or even sometimes favored the Christianity of the Church of the East. The acceptance of Christianity in Georgia Caucasian Iberia saw the Zoroastrian religion there slowly but surely decline, [42] but as late the 5th century a. Most of the Sassanid Empire was overthrown by the Arabs over the course of 16 years in the 7th century.

Although the administration of the state was rapidly Islamicized and subsumed under the Umayyad Caliphate , in the beginning "there was little serious pressure" exerted on newly subjected people to adopt Islam. Islamic jurists took the stance that only Muslims could be perfectly moral, but "unbelievers might as well be left to their iniquities, so long as these did not vex their overlords.

The Arabs adopted the Sassanid tax-system, both the land-tax levied on land owners and the poll-tax levied on individuals, [46] called jizya , a tax levied on non-Muslims i. In time, this poll-tax came to be used as a means to humble the non-Muslims, and a number of laws and restrictions evolved to emphasize their inferior status. Under the early orthodox caliphs , as long as the non-Muslims paid their taxes and adhered to the dhimmi laws, administrators were enjoined to leave non-Muslims "in their religion and their land. Under Abbasid rule, Muslim Iranians who by then were in the majority increasingly found ways to taunt Zoroastrians, and distressing them became a popular sport.

In the 10th century, on the day that a Tower of Silence had been completed at much trouble and expense, a Muslim official contrived to get up onto it, and to call the adhan the Muslim call to prayer from its walls. This was made a pretext to annex the building. Such baiting, which was to continue down the centuries, was indulged in by all; not only by high officials, but by the general uneducated population as well. Though subject to a new leadership and harassment, the Zoroastrians were able to continue in their former ways.

But there was a slow but steady social and economic pressure to convert. Two decrees in particular encouraged the transition to a preponderantly Islamic society. Thus, a bonded individual owned by a Zoroastrian could automatically become a freeman by converting to Islam. The other edict was that if one male member of a Zoroastrian family converted to Islam, he instantly inherited all its property.

In time, a tradition evolved by which Islam was made to appear as a partly Iranian religion. One example of this was a legend that Husayn , son of the fourth caliph Ali and grandson of Islam's prophet Muhammad , had married a captive Sassanid princess named Shahrbanu. This "wholly fictitious figure" [52] was said to have borne Husayn a son , the historical fourth Shi'a imam , who claimed that the caliphate rightly belonged to him and his descendants, and that the Umayyads had wrongfully wrested it from him.

The alleged descent from the Sassanid house counterbalanced the Arab nationalism of the Umayyads, and the Iranian national association with a Zoroastrian past was disarmed. Thus, according to scholar Mary Boyce, "it was no longer the Zoroastrians alone who stood for patriotism and loyalty to the past. With Iranian especially Persian support, the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in , and in the subsequent caliphate government—that nominally lasted until —Muslim Iranians received marked favor in the new government, both in Iran and at the capital in Baghdad.

This mitigated the antagonism between Arabs and Iranians, but sharpened the distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Abbasids zealously persecuted heretics , and although this was directed mainly at Muslim sectarians , it also created a harsher climate for non-Muslims. Despite economic and social incentives to convert, Zoroastrianism remained strong in some regions, particularly in those furthest away from the Caliphate capital at Baghdad.

In Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan , resistance to Islam required the 9th-century Arab commander Qutaiba to convert his province four times. The first three times the citizens reverted to their old religion. Finally, the governor made their religion "difficult for them in every way", turned the local fire temple into a mosque, and encouraged the local population to attend Friday prayers by paying each attendee two dirhams.

The 9th century came to define the great number of Zoroastrian texts that were composed or re-written during the 8th to 10th centuries excluding copying and lesser amendments, which continue for some time thereafter. All of these works are in the Middle Persian dialect of that period free of Arabic words , and written in the difficult Pahlavi script hence the adoption of the term "Pahlavi" as the name of the variant of the language, and of the genre, of those Zoroastrian books.

If read aloud, these books would still have been intelligible to the laity. Many of these texts are responses to the tribulations of the time, and all of them include exhortations to stand fast in their religious beliefs. Some, such as the " Denkard ", are doctrinal defenses of the religion, while others are explanations of theological aspects such as the Bundahishn 's or practical aspects e. About sixty such works are known to have existed, of which some are known only from references to them in other works.

In Khorasan in the northeastern Iran, a 10th-century Iranian nobleman brought together four Zoroastrian priests to transcribe a Sassanid-era Middle Persian work titled Book of the Lord Khwaday Namag from Pahlavi script into Arabic script. This transcription, which remained in Middle Persian prose an Arabic version, by al-Muqaffa , also exists , was completed in and subsequently became the basis for Firdausi 's Book of Kings. It became enormously popular among both Zoroastrians and Muslims, and also served to propagate the Sassanid justification for overthrowing the Arsacids i.

Among migrations were those to cities in or on the margins of the great salt deserts, in particular to Yazd and Kerman , which remain centers of Iranian Zoroastrianism to this day. Yazd became the seat of the Iranian high priests during Mongol Il-Khanate rule, when the "best hope for survival [for a non-Muslim] was to be inconspicuous.

The descendants of that group are today known as the Parsis —"as the Gujaratis , from long tradition, called anyone from Iran" [55] —who today represent the larger of the two groups of Zoroastrians. The struggle between Zoroastrianism and Islam declined in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Local Iranian dynasties, "all vigorously Muslim," [55] had emerged as largely independent vassals of the Caliphs. In the 16th century, in one of the early letters between Iranian Zoroastrians and their co-religionists in India, the priests of Yazd lamented that "no period [in human history], not even that of Alexander , had been more grievous or troublesome for the faithful than 'this millennium of the demon of Wrath '. Zoroastrianism has survived into the modern period, particularly in India, where it has been present since about the 9th century.

Today Zoroastrianism can be divided in three different sects or dominions: Traditionalists or isolationists are almost solely Parsis and accept, beside the Gathas and Avesta, also the Middle Persian works called 'Nasks of the Sassanians'. They generally do not allow conversion to the faith. Therefore, for someone to be a Zoroastrian, they must be born of Zoroastrian parents. Some traditionalists recognize the children of mixed marriages as Zoroastrians. From the 19th century onward, the Parsis gained a reputation for their education and widespread influence in all aspects of society.

They played an instrumental role in the economic development of the region over many decades; several of the best-known business conglomerates of India are run by Parsi-Zoroastrians, including Tata , Godrej , Wadia families, and others. Though the Armenians share a rich history affiliated with Zoroastrianism that eventually declined with the advent of Christianity , reports indicate that there were Zoroastrian Armenians in Armenia until the s. A comparatively minor population persisted in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Persia, and an expatriate community has formed in the United States some from India , and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Many of these are titled restorationists, progressives or "reformists". Progressives generally accept the Yashts and the Visperad texts of the Avesta as obligatory, along with the Gathas. Restorationists refer only to the compositions of Zoroaster, and thus only consider the Gathas , the other texts only having value as far as they elaborate on some Gathic point and do not contradict the Gathic teaching.

At the request of the government of Tajikistan , UNESCO declared a year to celebrate the "th anniversary of Zoroastrian culture", with special events throughout the world. In the Tehran Mobeds Anjuman announced that for the first time in the history of Iran and of the Zoroastrian communities worldwide, women had been ordained in Iran and North America as mobedyars, meaning women mobeds Zoroastrian priests.

Some scholars believe [64] that key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions. The religion of Zoroastrianism is closest to Vedic religion. Some historians believe that Zoroastrianism, along with similar philosophical revolutions in South Asia were interconnected strings of reformation against a common Indo-Aryan thread. Many traits of Zoroastrianism can be traced back to the culture and beliefs of the prehistorical Indo-Iranian period, that is, to the time before the migrations that led to the Indo-Aryans and Iranics becoming distinct peoples.

Zoroastrianism consequently shares elements with the historical Vedic religion that also has its origins in that era. They are descended from a common Proto-Indo-Iranian religion. Vedic religious texts are replete with people from far flung countries practising or leaving Aryan teachings. Zoroastrianism is often compared with Manichaeism. Nominally an Iranian religion, it has its origins in Middle-Eastern Gnosticism. Superficially such a comparison seems apt, as both are dualistic and Manichaeism adopted many of the Yazatas for its own pantheon. Gherardo Gnoli, in The Encyclopaedia of Religion , [71] says that "we can assert that Manichaeism has its roots in the Iranian religious tradition and that its relationship to Mazdaism, or Zoroastrianism, is more or less like that of Christianity to Judaism".

They are however quite different. Zoroastrianism, on the other hand, rejects every form of asceticism, has no dualism of matter and spirit only of good and evil , and sees the spiritual world as not very different from the natural one the word "paradise", or pairi.

Manichaeism's basic doctrine was that the world and all corporeal bodies were constructed from the substance of Satan, an idea that is fundamentally at odds with the Zoroastrian notion of a world that was created by God and that is all good, and any corruption of it is an effect of the bad. From what may be inferred from many Manichean texts and a few Zoroastrian sources [ citation needed ] , the adherents of the two religions or at least their respective priesthoods despised each other intensely.

Many aspects of Zoroastrianism are present in the culture and mythologies of the peoples of the Greater Iran , not least because Zoroastrianism was a dominant influence on the people of the cultural continent for a thousand years. The Avesta is the religious book of Zoroastrians that contains a collection of sacred texts. The history of the Avesta is found in many Pahlavi texts. According to tradition, Ahura Mazda created the twenty-one nasks which Zoroaster brought to Vishtaspa. Here, two copies were created, one which was put in the house of archives, and the other put in the Imperial treasury.

During Alexander's conquest of Persia, the Avesta was burned, and the scientific sections that the Greeks could use were dispersed among themselves. During the Sassanid Empire , Ardeshir ordered Tansar, his high priest , to finish the work that King Valax had started.

Shapur I sent priests to locate the scientific text portions of the Avesta that were in the possession of the Greeks.

Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia

The compilation of these ancient texts was successfully established underneath the Mazdean priesthood and the Sassanian emperors. Only a fraction of the texts survive today. The later manuscripts all date from this millennium, the latest being from , years after the fall of the Sassanian Empire. The texts that remain today are the Gathas , Yasna , Visperad and the Vendidad. Along with these texts is the communal household prayer book called the Khordeh Avesta , which contains the Yashts and the Siroza. The rest of the materials from the Avesta are called "Avestan fragments".

Middle Persian and Pahlavi works created in the 9th and 10th century contain many religious Zoroastrian books, as most of the writers and copyists were part of the Zoroastrian clergy. All Middle Persian texts written on Zoroastrianism during this time period are considered secondary works on the religion, and not scripture. Nonetheless, these texts have a strong influence on the religion.

Zoroastrianism was founded by Zoroaster or Zarathustra , later deemed a prophet, in ancient Iran. The precise date of the founding of Zoroastrianism is uncertain. Zoroaster was born in either Northeast Iran or Southwest Afghanistan. He was born into a culture with a polytheistic religion, which included animal sacrifice [75] and the ritual use of intoxicants, quite similar to early forms of Hinduism in India.

Zoroaster's birth and early life are little documented. What is known is recorded in the Gathas —the core of the Avesta, which contains hymns thought to be composed by Zoroaster himself. Born into the Spitama clan, he worked as a priest. He had a wife, three sons, and three daughters. Zoroaster rejected the religion of the Bronze Age Iranians, with their many gods and oppressive class structure , in which the Karvis and Karapans princes and priests controlled the ordinary people.

He also opposed animal sacrifices and the use of the hallucinogenic Haoma plant possibly a species of ephedra in rituals, but held the rooster as a "symbol of light" [76] and associated it with "good against evil" [77] because of his heraldic actions. According to Zoroastrian belief, when Zoroaster was 30 years old, he went into the Daiti river to draw water for a Haoma ceremony; when he emerged, he received a vision of Vohu Manah. After this, Vohu Manah took him to the other six Amesha Spentas, where he received the completion of his vision. Zoroaster believed in one creator God, teaching that only one God was worthy of worship.

Some of the deities of the old religion, the Daevas Devas in Sanskrit , appeared to delight in war and strife. Zoroaster said these were evil spirits, workers of Angra Mainyu. Zoroaster's ideas were not taken up quickly; he originally only had one convert: Many did not like Zoroaster's downgrading of the Daevas to evil spirits. After 12 years of little success, Zoroaster left his home. In the country of King Vishtaspa in Bactria , the king and queen heard Zoroaster debating with the religious leaders of the land and decided to accept Zoroaster's ideas as the official religion of their kingdom.

Zoroaster died in his late 70s. Very little is known of the time between Zoroaster and the Achaemenian period, except that Zoroastrianism spread to Western Iran. By the time of the founding of the Achaemenid Empire, Zoroastrianism was already a well-established religion. In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything that can and cannot be seen, the Eternal, the Pure and the only Truth. In the Gathas , the most sacred texts of Zoroastrianism thought to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, the prophet acknowledged devotion to no other divinity besides Ahura Mazda.

Daena din in modern Persian is the eternal Law, whose order was revealed to humanity through the Mathra-Spenta "Holy Words". Daena has been used to mean religion, faith, law, and even as a translation for the Hindu and Buddhist term Dharma , to which it is related. Daena should not be confused with the fundamental principle asha Vedic rta , the equitable law of the universe, which governed the life of the ancient Indo-Iranians.

For these, asha was the course of everything observable—the motion of the planets and astral bodies; the progression of the seasons; and the pattern of daily nomadic herdsman life, governed by regular metronomic events such as sunrise and sunset. All physical creation geti was thus determined to run according to a master plan—inherent to Ahura Mazda—and violations of the order druj were violations against creation, and thus violations against Ahura Mazda.

This concept of asha versus the druj should not be confused with the good-versus-evil battle evident in western religions, for although both forms of opposition express moral conflict, the asha versus druj concept is more systemic and less personal, representing, for instance, chaos that opposes order ; or "uncreation", evident as natural decay that opposes creation ; or more simply "the lie" that opposes truth and righteousness. Moreover, in his role as the one uncreated creator of all, Ahura Mazda is not the creator of druj , which is "nothing", anti-creation, and thus likewise uncreated.

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Thus, in Zoroaster's revelation, Ahura Mazda was perceived to be the creator of only the good Yasna In this schema of asha versus druj , mortal beings both humans and animals play a critical role, for they too are created. Here, in their lives, they are active participants in the conflict, and it is their duty to defend order, which would decay without counter action.

Throughout the Gathas , Zoroaster emphasizes deeds and actions, and accordingly asceticism is frowned upon in Zoroastrianism. In later Zoroastrianism, this was explained as fleeing from the experiences of life, which was the very purpose that the urvan most commonly translated as the "soul" was sent into the mortal world to collect. The avoidance of any aspect of life, which includes the avoidance of the pleasures of life, is a shirking of the responsibility and duty to oneself, one's urvan , and one's family and social obligations.

Central to Zoroastrianism is the emphasis on moral choice, to choose the responsibility and duty for which one is in the mortal world, or to give up this duty and so facilitate the work of druj. Similarly, predestination is rejected in Zoroastrian teaching. Humans bear responsibility for all situations they are in, and in the way they act toward one another. Reward, punishment, happiness, and grief all depend on how individuals live their lives.

The Spirit Of Zoroastrianism

In Zoroastrianism, good transpires for those who do righteous deeds. Those who do evil have themselves to blame for their ruin. Zoroastrian morality is then to be summed up in the simple phrase, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" Humata , Hukhta , Hvarshta in Avestan , for it is through these that asha is maintained and druj is kept in check. Through accumulation, several other beliefs were introduced to the religion that, in some instances, supersede those expressed in the Gathas.

In the late 19th century, the moral and immoral forces came to be represented by Spenta Mainyu and its antithesis Angra Mainyu , the "good spirit" and "evil spirit" emanations of Ahura Mazda, respectively. Although the names are old, this opposition is a modern Western-influenced development popularized by Martin Haug in the s, and was, in effect, a realignment of the precepts of Zurvanism Zurvanite Zoroastrianism , which had postulated a third deity, Zurvan , to explain a mention of twinship Yasna Although Zurvanism had died out by the 10th century, the critical question of the "twin brothers" mentioned in Yasna Haug's concept was subsequently disseminated as a Parsi interpretation, thus corroborating Haug's theory, and the idea became so popular that it is now almost universally accepted as doctrine.

Zoroastrianism developed the abstract concepts of heaven and hell, as well as personal and final judgment, all of which are only alluded to in the Gathas.

However, the Zoroastrian personal judgment is not final.

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