by Harvey Kraft
In addition to the ascetic Lion-Sun seers seeking eternal liberation, the wide spectrum of the Magi Order also encompassed a philosophical movement called Naturalism. Philosophical Naturalism, a view that began with the Magi stargazer-philosophers in Babylon, explored the underlying properties, elements, and behaviors of bodies in motion. It premised that whatever has been set in motion no longer required the attention of deities because it became governed by Natural Laws. This approach served as the foundation for the development of observational reasoning.
Thales and other Greek philosophers who had traveled to Mesopotamia to study Naturalism also subscribed to ancient creation myths. Their rational approach did not preclude their belief that hidden Truths could be accessed by intuitive inspiration. Consistent with mythic views, Thales regarded the original state of the World, the Arche, to be the primordial “ocean,” the dark-liquid-space-mud from which all Life arose. He deduced from this pre-existing state of Existence that water was the first of the five basic elements.76
CYRUS
Disagreements among the Greek gods became an essential theme for explaining conflict. Their competitions reflected a new era of militaristic Greek city-states that evolved in response to the constant threats posed by their neighbors. The first historical recount of battles in Greek mythology, the Trojan Wars, described the attack of the Mycenaean Greeks (1500 BCE) from the west coast of the Aegean Sea on the Hittite city of Troy (aka Assuwan Wilusa), a port city in Anatolia (Turkey), located on the sea’s eastern coast.
War had become a means for achieving wealth and power. Politically, however, it was wiser for kings to propose that they were proxies in a battle between the gods. Peace between conquerors was always a precarious state at best.
The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE) and King Cyaxares of the Median Empire had brought peaceful co-existence to a region bedeviled by the brutality of the Assyrians for hundreds of years. But their relatively weak successors and the spoiled noble classes of the Babylonian and Median Empires had left them vulnerable. They had made it fairly easy for a shrewd, military-minded Persian king to gain control.
The Parsa tribe came into the area during the Arya-led migrations. They settled in the ancient southeastern Elamite city of Anshan (approx. 600 BCE), located between the western Elamite capital of Susa, the Saka kingdom to the east, and the Medes capital at Ecbatana to its south. The third city-king of Anshan, Kurash, also known as Cyrus II (550 BCE), was the grandson of Achaemenes, founder of the Persian dynasty that would grow into a world power. The ambitious Cyrus the Achaemenid leveraged his considerable political skills to rise to the head of the Median Empire’s military, a position that led to his marriage to a daughter of King Cyaxares. Now a member of the Median royal family who also had the allegiance of the military, Cyrus maneuvered to dethrone Astyages, son of Cyaxares. His saw to it that his ascension to Emperor of the Median Empire would benefit the wealth and prominence of Persian nobles, who were delighted to emerge from under taxation and regulations imposed by the Median nobles.
Resistance to his dominance came only from the farthest western border of the Medes Empire. King Croesus of Lydia (560–547 BCE), said to be the wealthiest monarch since Solomon, and the admirer of philosophical wisdom, was renown in Greece for his opulent gifts to the Oracle at Delphi. Croesus feared that the Persians would attack and enslave Lydia, whose border with the Medes Empire had been fixed at the Halys (Kizil) River in a treaty with Cyaxares (585 BCE). He sought the divine advice of the Delphic Oracle to learn if he should attack first. Receiving the message that “a war would destroy a great empire,” he assumed that the prophecy referred to the defeat of the Persian enemy.
Learning that Croesus negotiated an alliance with Babylonia, Sparta, and Egypt, Cyrus became perturbed that the Babylonian Empire would breach the peace treaty between Medes and Babylon. He moved his army toward Anatolia where an overconfident Croesus planned to meet him on the battlefield. But Lydia’s allies failed to show up.
After the battles ended in a draw Croesus disbanded his armies, as was customary during winter months, but Cyrus did not. He attacked the Lydian capital at Sardis and took Croesus as a prisoner. Cyrus allowed Croesus to continue his rule, but only as a vassal with diminished power, stripping Lydia of its economic holdings and leadership role among Aegean city-states. Cyrus had sent a clear message to his neighbors. The Persians should be taken seriously. He then went on to capture some of the other vassal states pledged to Babylonia.
His next step was to developed strong personal alliances in Babylon through the diplomacy of marriages, rewards to nobles, and his backing of the Magi Order. Cyrus understood that to sustain his rule over a vast empire would require good management and adaptation to local customs and beliefs. He embraced the Magi Order because of their inclusive regard for all religions. Personally, he did not hold strong views on any particular belief. For him religion was primarily a diplomatic tool useful for fostering his “live and let live” approach.
King Cyrus II saw the opportunity to absorb the entire Babylonian Empire by taking its capital of Babylon. Having acquired the Median Empire through political maneuvering, he aimed to do the same with Babylon, by pkanning to take the city without damaging it.
The city was in the hands of an Arabian, Nabonidus (556–539 BCE), who took over after the death of the last Chaldean in Nebuchadnezzar’s line of weak successors. Nabonidus did not care to keep peace with the Median-Persian Empire, even showing contempt for Cyrus by making alliances against him, like the one he had with Croesus of Lydia. But Nabonidus had a weakness that Cyrus planned to exploit, his neglect of Babylon. He had spent more than ten years away from the city preferring to live in Tayma, Arabia, where he built an alternate capital of his own. During his absence his incompetent son Belshazzar ruled as governor of Babylon.
Nabonidus must have received word that Cyrus planned to take Babylon. He rushed back to the city and immediately dismissed his son and other administrators. Panicked, Nabonidus, a devout worshipper of the ancient Moon God, Sin, ordered high priests from city-states across the Babylonian Empire to immediately bring their idols to Babylon. He would provide the old gods of Sumer/Akkad protection behind the high and wide fortress walls of the great city. As he, himself, was a devout patron of the old ziggurats and temples at Kish, Nippur, and Ur, he feared that Cyrus could undermine his divine support by destroying the sacred images of the Babylonian Gods.
Cyrus labeled Nabonidus a “backward, absent and incompetent” ruler, “low-born oppressor” and “unfit to lead” and charged him with “stealing” the “idols,” an insult to the gods. Although he supported the upkeep of Babylon’s Ziggurat at Esagila, for years Nabonidus had ignored the Magi advisors, perhaps because of their non-denominational approach. Hearing the arguments Cyrus was making against him, Nabonidus, and his supporters suspected the Magi Order in Babylon to be a fifth column allied with the Medians and Persians.
Cyrus proclaimed77 that were he the King of Babylon instead of Nabonidus, he would never do harm to its people, culture or institutions, like “Nabonidus, the oppressor of Babylonians.” On the heels of his campaign of accusations and blame, Cyrus, now positioned as a liberator, sent his military to lay siege to the city. As his troops surrounded it, he negotiated directly with Babylon’s military leaders who were facing substantial casualties in defense of Nabonidus and wisely decided to demure. A month after the siege his successful diplomatic effort resulted in surrender. Cyrus the Great marched into Babylon (539 BCE) and seized the throne of the entire Babylonian Empire.
Showing his skills at the art of propaganda Cyrus declared that he had taken the action to overthrow Nabonidus at the behest of Babylon’s God, Marduk. The Lord God, he claimed, had anointed his invasion after personally appealing to Cyrus to restore peace and improve the lives of Babylon’s citizens. Cyrus met no resistance from the people of Babylon. They opened the city gates and cheered his arrival. Careful to stand behind his pledge to do no damage
, he quickly repaired an area of the city wall where his army had broken through.
Making a show of his religious tolerance, Cyrus immediately ordered the return of the venerated idols and their priests to their original residences— accusing the deposed king of having taken them against their will.
Combining the Median and Babylonian Empires into one Persian Empire, Cyrus began his Achaemenid Dynasty by establishing a reputation as a benevolent benefactor. He allowed for the repatriation of peoples removed from lands and displaced by hundreds of years of Assyrian and Chaldean policies. Showing respect for all religions under his rule, he encouraged the rebuilding of temples previously destroyed throughout the empire.
Cyrus the Great decreed (538 BCE) that the tens of thousands of Judeans whom Nebuchadnezzar II had forcibly removed from Judea nearly seventy years earlier were free to return home. He encouraged the Judeans to return to their ancestral land and rebuild their God’s Temple in Jerusalem.
The Levite priests calling for the reunification of their people and purification of their faith in Elohim rounded up a group of 42,360 who were determined to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and ready to embark on their return home to the Kingdom of Judah.78 But many Israelite expatriates chose to remain behind. Among them were several generations born in Medes and Babylon. Many had intermarried with locals, or immigrated to other lands to the east, or drifted away from their original beliefs.
During their captivity the Magi Order in Babylon and Medes supported the effort of the Judean scribes to make a record of their heritage. Their “Gate to God,” the Bible, was enhanced in exile with stories of Creation, genealogical histories, and migratory journeys to the Promised Land.
With his advocacy of religious tolerance Cyrus made it possible for the Magi of Babylon to regain their relevance and confidence. But having endured the decade-long absence of the former king, the Magi Council immediately reasserted an old rule mandating that once a year during the annual New Year Harvest Festival (Akitu) the King of Babylon, or his chosen successor, must come to Esagila to be anointed by the Chief Priest. Failure to do so would result in his throne being vacated.
Since the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Magi of Babylon had earned the respect of the city’s citizens for their roles as temple caretakers, astronomers, masters of divination, and purveyors of tolerance. Babylon had grown to a population of two hundred thousand, but their diverse cultures widely held Babylon’s Magi Order in high esteem. The Persian nobles, on the other hand, regarded the original Magi Order based in Ecbatana with some suspicion. They worried about the ethnic origin of the Magi in Medes and their relationship with the Median nobles, whom the Persians suspected of harboring a plan to restore the old Median Empire to its former glory.
Zoroaster, a Persian sage and advisor to its nobles, may also have been a member of the Magi Order. His religion was growing in popularity in Persia. He introduced the eschatology of “Good versus Evil,” which he associated with good and evil religions. He proposed that his religion was that of the God of Good, whom he identified as Assura Mazda (Per. Ahura Mazda), the Creator God who instructed him to reveal the Universal Truth (Per. Asha). Although heralded by his followers as the prophe-sized One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth, most of the Magi found his new religion to be an attack on the Deva beliefs of the Rig Veda.
The inception of Zoroastrianism may have started some years earlier with the composition of hymns dedicated to the supremacy of God. By the time Cyrus came to power (539 BCE), the current leader of this religion, Zarathustra Spitamas, had become the champion messenger of Assura Mazda. Emulating the Prophet Abraham’s personal relationship with Elohim, this Zoroaster similarly made claim to being the chosen prophet and sole recipient of God’s word.
While Zoroaster defined Assura Mazda as pure Goodness, he also warned that he had an evil twin, a Devil God, a trickster who seduced people into wickedness. He equated the Vedic Gods as emanations of this satanic deity and regarded all non-believers as people possessed by his demonic spell. Assura Mazda, the Supreme God of Good, had instructed him to save the world from fundamental Evil.
In their original oral form, the Gathas (seventeen devotional hymns), the earliest compositions of Zoroaster, emulated the hymnal meter of the Rig Veda. The Zoroastrian hymns expounded the Asha, the divine essence of Universal Truth, and celebrated the aspiration of the believer to achieve Goodness by living the righteous path as God directed. However, those who would oppose Assura Mazda’s path were exposed as evil in his “Treatise Against Demons,” the Vi-Daeva-datta (aka Vendidad). In it he portrayed the Devas, the light-emitting spirits and deities of the Rig Veda as Daevas, evil spirits spreading sin. Since Creation, he charged, the Daevas worked under the direction of the Devil God, Angra Manyu. They tempted and seduced humans, causing them to become primitive and sinful. These demon-spirits, in possession of the souls and bodies of infidels, could be exorcised only when their victims accepted faith in Assura Mazda and adopted his strict moral prescriptions. The primary sinners in Zoroaster’s mind belonged to believers in the Lion-Sun traditions, the Vedists, Brahmanists, and Sramanists.
He painted his religious competitors as evil ones. But his views did not distract the Magi Order from their tolerant focus or derail their conviction that perhaps one among them might break the code of Cosmic Laws, attain boundless awareness, and lead them all to salvation through universal wisdom.
THE RELUCTANT EMPEROR
In the Saka region, the Magi Order’s Sanctuary at Babil had educated new generations to understand visionary cosmologies from various perspectives and to cultivate a passion for finding the elusive meanings of existence. As a young student Siddhartha Gautama had shown a remarkable appetite for consuming wisdom-enhancing practices. He had been exposed to debates on the relative influences of deities and universal laws in determining the circumstances of existence. He learned about the legacies of the shamanic Cosmic Mountain and Sacred Tree, the fellowships of the Lion-Sun and the Bull-Moon, the primordial powers of creation, the Supreme Gods named Mitra, Marduk, Assur, Rae, Elohim, Zeus or Brahma; and the scriptures of Egypt and Sumer/ Akkad, the Vedic hymns, and Hebrew Bible; and, the studies of Babylonian cosmology, philosophy, and trance-visions.
During his childhood, his father may have taken him to witness the Akitu festival at Esagila, where visitors had to disarm, as the wearing of weapons was sacrilegious in the holy temple. He might have been a young intern prodigy in Babylon’s Magi Conservatory. He could have returned to Babylon at the age of twenty-three to embark on a career in the Magi headquarters in Esagila. He may have been there when Cyrus came to power.
His ability to honor anyone offering even a single word of wisdom and his compassion for all he met made him very popular among the Magi sages. Given his talent for astronomy, they gave him the opportunity to develop his observation skills at the astral Watchtower of Ete-menanki. As he accepted greater responsibilities, the people of Babylon grew to know and admire him. In due course Siddhartha’s colleagues selected Gautama to be their Chief Magus, a role that also included the position of viceroy of Babylon (Bhagapa).
Cyrus was killed during a campaign against a Scythian tribe (530 BCE). But the Achaemenid Dynasty continued for the next eight years under the reign of his son Kambujiya (aka Cambyses II). Following his father’s death, Emperor Kambujiya invaded Egypt and declared himself pharaoh, basking in his role as a living god. But his failure to return to Babylon to attend the Akitu Festival for three years could have forced the Magi Council to vacate his throne. To assure the population that they had their interests in hand, the Magi Order would appeal to Gautama to govern on behalf of the throne—at least temporarily until the emperor realized his error and returned and apologized for his absence.
Reluctant to accept the position, Siddhartha Gautama agreed after an understanding was reached that he could use the post to declare edicts that would bring the citizenry some peace from oppressive taxation and stop the bullying of minority religions or people
from foreign cultures. His prompt actions to engender hope among the poor, the aged, and infirm, may have generated deep concerns among the Persian nobles.
But Emperor Kambujiya failed to return. He died on the way back. Rumors of his sudden death surprised the Magi. At that time kingdoms throughout the relatively new Persian Empire were still recovering from the interminable string of bloody wars as Assyrians, Babylonians, Medians, and Persians fought to dominate. Only fifteen years after Cyrus had taken Babylon, the Persian nobles worried that their land holdings outside of Persia could be at jeopardy.
One evening while standing alone at the top of the Esagila tower, the Chief Magus, having become a reluctant King of Babylon, looked up at the starry sky and decided that he must abdicate his position as temporary ruler. There had been rumors that the Persian military might attempt to take back the throne. Readings of the stars indicated that Gautama’s life might be in danger. Just in case, the Magi sent an imposter to sit on the throne in the royal palace, a traditional precautionary maneuver to protect the king.
From childhood Gautama was motivated to alleviate the suffering of people by solving the mystery of life and death. Earlier he had joined the ascetics in the forest and made the effort to become enlightened, but failing to do so he went to Babylon. There his responsibilities had drawn him away from his destiny. He must resign, he thought, wishing to return to the forest and be among the shamans where he could continue to probe the secret of Universal Truth.
At that moment two of his Magi lieutenants excused their interruption and introduced a third man wearing a rider outfit.
“Your highness, a Budii messenger has arrived with urgent news.“
Gautama’s Magi allies in Ecbatana had sent the messenger from the Budii tribe of Medes, admired for their silence and trustworthiness. “They have confirmed that the Emperor Kambujiya had been killed by foul play on his way back to Babylon,” he said. “The Achaemenid General Darius, with Zoroaster’s blessings, and the support of the Persian nobles now intend to take the throne. Their coup attempt is imminent.”
