by Harvey Kraft
However, the two men shared a dream to restore the Kingdom of God on Earth.92 The Prophet Zoroaster foresaw a future when Persian forces, the “Immortal Companions,” would conquer the world. At that time the dark lord, he predicted, the Devil God Angra Manyu, would be no more, and Assura Mazda would purify the ground so that all his good believers waiting in Heaven will be able to return and live on Earth for an eternity.
In Zoroaster’s view the destination of the soul in the afterlife depended on which god the believer worshipped. In opposition to the traditional Arya view of repeated births, Zoroaster suggested that people lived only once. He declared that only those choosing to purify their soul by embracing moral allegiance to the true god would go to Heaven. But if people believed in following other paths their soul would be annihilated in death.
Under the leadership of Siddhartha Gautama during the Magi Order’s interfaith era, Magi scholars and stargazers explored a variety of ideas aimed at liberation from suffering and the pain of death. From the Watchtower observatory in Esagila, the stargazer Siddhartha Gautama had observed the cyclical motions of the celestial bodies. The cosmos, as he saw it, turned like a wheel that facilitated the continuity of time. Influenced in part by Vedic cosmology he sought to decipher the Universal Laws to explain the scope, nature, and essence of existence and its relationship to the human experience.
Gautama was a seer. Several years earlier he had studied in the Indus forests with Arya ascetics pursuing the “liberation of the soul” from the cycle of rebirth. There he developed divination skills for determining potential destinies and outcomes. In due course he had surpassed his foremost teachers.
In Babylon Chief Magus Gautama was one of the founders of Philosophical Naturalism whose controversial views drew a growing interest. He was honored, even in far away lands, for his Middle Path Doctrine that called for a balanced approach in dealing with life’s permutations.
Zoroaster stood in sharp opposition to Vedic, ascetic and philosophical teachings. As a prophet he spoke directly with God—the invisible, immortal, divine ruler of humanity—whom he identified as the God of Good. His Universal Truth (Per. Asha) called for a return to moral purity in order to reestablish God’s Divine Paradise on Earth. As a member of the Magi Order, Zoroaster became concerned about the organization’s direction under Gautama’s leadership. He may have felt an urgent need to prevent Gautama from introducing “dangerous ideas” that might lead to a new religion.
Once he purged the Magi Order of all but his Zoroastrian clerics they took charge of ritual duties in the Persian Empire. Through Zoroaster’s guidance the Persian ruler would act as the spearhead on behalf of the Supreme God, Assura Mazda. The victories Darius and Zoroaster achieved over the enemies of the Persian state inspired a missionary fervor among its military, aristocracy, and clergy. Convinced that their actions were all on behalf of Divine Good, believers viewed their successes as victories over the Devil God. The Persian nobles received lands and gold, and divine rewards were promised to people who converted to the faith.
Zoroaster’s religious view was simple to understand: ordinary human beings were caught up in a cosmic battle between Good and Evil, and they had to choose sides. They could either live a blessed life in alignment with good moral behavior, or, if they chose to follow only their instincts, they would suffer damnation. Those people who were enemies of the harmonious Asha, Universal Truth, would become possessed by demons without their knowledge of it. Zoroaster decreed that a Devil God, Angra Manyu,93 worked through other faiths to seduce people into sin, and thus doom them to fall into ultimate darkness.
As entry into a pure life could only be acquired through free will, adherents would need to choose to have faith in Assura Mazda, follow his righteous moral code, and live in purity as the religion required. The good would be rewarded in this life and in the afterlife. The sinful would be punished in this life and upon their death would fall into the pit of hell.
Mazda-worship started hundreds of years before Zoroaster. Initially the god was one among many Assyrian-Hittite deities in the Black Sea region. When the deity reached Assyrian-occupied Elam he held a relatively minor role in the Elamite pantheon of gods. He was named Maz-dakku by the Assyrians, Mazdak by the Elamites, and was also known as the Assyro-Elamite deity, Assara Mazas.94 Pronounced Ahuramazda by his Persian proponents, Assura Mazda’s name came to prominence only once he chose Zoroaster to be his messenger.
Zoroaster saw his religion as superior to all Vedic-based religions. He derided the gods of the Rig Veda as wild and immoral and of lesser divinity. Contesting the supremacy of Brahmanism’s Creator God, Brahma, Zoroaster said this god was merely a pupil of Assura Mazda, whom he called the Creator of all the Creators. He also derided the ascetic beliefs (Jaina, Orphics, Buddhism) that focused on sages attaining divinity.
Popular in Medes, Elam, the Indus lands, and other Arya cultures, the Vedic hymns featured thirty-three divine beings of light (Devas and Devis). Zoroaster redefined them as evil deities (Daeva), whom he accused of infecting the world with idolatry, intoxication, corruption, disease, and seducing people to engage in immoral and hedonistic activities.
The Assyrian word Assura referred to all gods tasked with upholding Universal Order. Persian culture recognized a number of them, but Zoroaster said three Assuras were the greatest: Mitra (the Sun), Varuna (the Moon), and Mazda (the Creator), with the latter by far the greatest Assura of all. However, in the Rig Veda, the term Assura was reversed to refer to demons.
In the Vedic conception the luminous Devas reflected the ancient view of celestial bodies as gods. The angry Assura were associated with the fallen deities of Akkad, which the Arya had associated with the hated Assyrian pantheon.
Echoing the older Akkadian mythology, the Assuras in Arya mythology were derived from the fallen Titans that were thrown out of Heaven and banished to the depths of the ocean. Symbolically, the Arya-Assura would take the form of giant whales or great storms that wreck havoc on humans who are the seafarers of life.
With Zoroaster’s anti-Vedic views, in the pantheon of Assura Mazda these roles were reversed. The Assura were the divine guardians of moral good, and the Devas were recast as Daevas, evil-minded demonic spirits bent on seducing people into immoral activities. Herein Vedism and Zoroastrianism defined competing divine cosmologies that degenerated into a religious conflict.
ZOROASTER SPEAKS
Politically Zarathustra Spitamas preferred to remain in the background, preaching that the focus needed to be on God, not his messenger. But behind the scenes Zoroaster the Prophet lamented to Assura Mazda about the elitist religious leaders in his home area of Kamboja, seat of a warrior clan on the eastern front of Medes and Elam (today these are parts of Iran, Azerbaijan, or Afghanistan).
In that region the notion of Light and Darkness had come to be interpreted as Beauty and Ugliness. It was a religious duty to kill ugly animals like snakes, worms, frogs, and insects95 and to revere the “pretty“ animals like cows and horses. Zoroaster had exhorted people in the area to reject both the mistreatment of cattle by farmers and the ritual sacrifices of animals. He saw depravity everywhere and decried the near absence of moral behavior, the ease with which people lied, and the worship of false gods. He placed blame for this state of affairs on the local Rishi who were the Vedic shamans. He accused them of the blasphemous attempt to achieve divine immortality by drinking the trance-inducing, hallucinatory elixir Soma,96 believed to be the Elixir of Eternal Life consumed by the Arya gods. However, if one drank it (Per. Haoma) to honor Assura Mazda, it would be for the sake of extending the length of his or her life in order to do more good on behalf of God.
In their youth Zarathustra Spitamas and Siddhartha Gautama may have known one another. They may have shared memories of each other as young pupils in a Magi school. At that time, Siddhartha, the Saka prodigy and prince, must have received a great deal of praise for his mastery of the Vedic scripture. Zarathustra, brilliant as he was, might have felt ignored
, fueling his competitive fervor. In his adult years, perhaps he carried within him a sense of being rejected by the traditional religious leaders of the Aryans.
In his conversations with Assura Mazda, Zoroaster implored his God to guide him toward his goal to convert a sinful world to embrace Goodness. He composed the “Sacred Songs” (Gathas), emulating the poetic style and hymnal form of the Rig Veda, but because of his indifference to the Vedic views of the divine, the content of his songs rejoiced in the moral themes of Assura Mazda. In its initial oral edition, Zoroaster, as the chosen messenger of Assura Mazda, heeded the call of the Supreme Being entrusting him with the mission to convert others to all that was good and pure.
Assura Mazda was the “Uncreated” Creator—the immortal God who always was and always will be. He was the protector of the Asha and creator of the Laws of Universal Truth and Order. His faithful were blessed with free will in order to live life in harmony with the Asha and through it embrace the practices of good deeds and cooperative behavior. Zoroaster warned that Angra Manyu, the Devil God, seduced people into chaos, selfishness, depravity, and lies (Per. druj). Working through evil-minded shamans, the personifications of Daevas, the Devil God sent his legions to fool people with fake magic, calling upon them to make sacrifices that had no real power, and deluding them by promoting ascetic practices.
Zoroaster emulated the role of Abraham, the Hebrew Bible’s personal messenger of God, and his transcendent Almighty God. In addition, following the example of the biblical Moses, Zoroaster also embodied the Law Receiver who would lead the faithful into God’s holy paradise on Earth.
Zoroaster used his considerable skills as a mythic writer to continuously update the Zoroastrian scripture, cleverly collecting, co-opting, modifying, recycling, deriding, or commenting on his extensive religious knowledge of other faiths. In opposition to the Magi Order’s exploration of an overarching Universal Truth that would encompass all religions, he advanced the Zoroastrian teachings by using his mastery of mythic language to compete with other religions and to declare the superiority of his Good God over all others.
Zoroaster may have initiated an oral record of the Word of God received in a vision, the “Guide to Exorcising Demons,” Vi-Daeva-datta (aka Vendidad). This major work contained an articulation of a Zoroastrian genesis story and cosmic mythology. It also featured prayers and rituals designed to instruct followers on how to defend against disease and evil spirits. In conversation with Zoroaster, Assura Mazda began by telling him the story of human creation:
In the beginning, there were twin gods, one good and one evil. The good god, Assura Mazda, and the evil god, Angra Manyu, each had their respective followers, the Assuras and Daevas. Assura Mazda then created the first man, Yima, and charged him to become the king of all righteous people and to promote the prosperity of those free of evil, which he did successfully. At that time good men and their families prospered, were bestowed with perpetual youth, and never fell sick. At the same time evil men in service of the Devil God, Angra Manyu, cultivated bad reputations and were deprived of wealth and growing herds.
Assura Mazda gave Yima supernatural powers and magical tools, including the Jam-e-Jam, a cup filled with “Haoma“ a pure version of the “elixir of immortality”97 so he may live long and do God’s bidding. Yima used his God-given powers to grow the human population for hundreds and thousands of years until Assura Mazda appeared to him with a warning of an impending catastrophe. Soon the Devil God intended to unleash a Great Freeze that would devastate the land. Assura Mazda called upon the Sage-King to save the Aryan people in his care. He instructed him to dig and build a Vara,98 a three-level underground city where Yima would assemble a society free of any evil and disease.
Assura Mazda told Yima to select the fittest of men and women, and gather two of every kind of animal, bird and plant seeds, and an ample supply of water and food.99 Yima then used his mystical powers to knead the earth as if forming clay to shape it into a Vara underworld with buildings and streets inside it. Then by powering this world below with light and air, more than two thousand people and their catde—a "pure Aryan race" free of quarrels, slanders, and impurities—entered die city from surface portals. They lived below ground to ride out the catastrophe above.
Zoroaster’s mythic subterranean habitat was based on a real account of ancient history. Although wrapped in the aura of a mythic story, it harkened back to the inception of Aryan shamanism at its roots in the area of the Black Sea and the Steppes. Underground structures in ancient Anatolia (Turkey) dating back to pre-historic millennia from 10000-6000 BCE were a well-known legacy of shamanic Spiritualism.
The Hittites, Assyrians, Medians, Lydians, Greeks, and Persians had all visited this land named Cappadocia,100 and were well aware of its secret subterranean cities and tunnels. These man-made cave-cities could have been the inspiration for Sumerian and Egyptian myths of an afterlife entombment where lost souls lived in subterranean communities.
Zoroaster claimed this ancient property for his God by linking Assura Mazda to the origins of the Arya culture in this area, which he described as the original divine paradise of Aryanem Vaejah. Earlier, in the Rig Veda, it had been designated as the Arya Varta, the original Arya homeland.
Zoroaster described this landscape by co-opting mythic Arya locations:
The Cosmic Mountain, herein named Hara Berezaiti (i.e., Watchtower), the heavenly home of the chariot-riding gods supporting Assura Mazda
The Tree of Life, the life giving and knowledge-bearing “Tree of All Seeds” that grew in the Great Sea of Vourukasha
The Sacred River (Prs Hara-vaiti) of Purity, Self-Realization and Prosperity that flows into the Great Sea, an echo of the Saraswati, home of the eastern Paradise
Further, Zoroaster also co-opted the antediluvian era prior to the Great Flood, designating it the era of human purity that had since been corrupted. Through this story he divided human beings at the inception of history into Good and Evil camps. His concept echoed the Vedic view of Cosmic Time wherein humans first appeared in the Age of Virtues in their purity, but over time they progressively degenerated into sinfulness.
In Zoroaster’s myth, Yima and those he saved would represent the inception of humanity as a pure Aryan race, blessed and protected by the Supreme God, Assura Mazda. This lineage would stand in sharp contrast to the “degenerate and decayed teachings” of the Arya sages, as Zoroaster saw them. He contrasted the purity of God’s first followers with the “perverse” humans worshipping the Devil God in his day. Zoroaster characterized them as descendents of unqualified Arya women those left above ground long ago where they were seduced by the Devil and his Daeva minions.
Yima was a composite hero assembled from Mesopotamian, Hebrew, and Vedic myths. He included Adam (first man), Gilgamesh (king-builder), and Atra-Hassis/Utnapishtim/Noah (builder of the Ark). Zoroaster borrowed these attributes to illustrate his Doctrine of Oppositional Dualism, the idea that the divine realm was divided into opposing camps. The hero’s name, Yima, an example of Zoroaster’s counter-usage of deity names, was derived from the Rig Veda. Yami and Yama were female-male twin deities representing night and day. In the Vedic myth, Yami, the light of day in love with her dark brother, attempted to seduce him and end their separation. But Yama rejected her, telling her that such an incestuous union would bring disaster as the “gods punish the sinful.” In the Rig Veda, Yama was the first being ever to die, and in so doing, became the overseer of the departed.
In death Yama became the deity embodying the fear of death, and like the Egyptian Anubis, he assumed the role of the guardian of the Underworld. Yama, like Anubis, weighed the departed soul to determine whether it was light enough to rise to the Heavens or doomed to the lower regions. He tested selfish souls and determined if they were good enough for Heaven or belonged in the Hells (Naraka). He would continue to follow the decree of the gods that the sinful must be punished.
Zoroaster designed his hero Yima to contrast with Yama upon whom he m
odeled Angra Manyu. Yima was the first living being. In Yima he offered the perfect first man as a follower of God’s original, pure teachings, before the time when God chose Zoroaster to be his messenger.
Yima had protected the pure-hearted as God asked, but he had humbly turned down Assura Mazda’s request that he receive and disseminate His Laws. That role would fall upon Zoroaster, when Mazda chose him. In the Vi-Daeva-datta, Zoroaster received the Laws from Assura Mazda. The laws included the rules of piousness, cleanliness, morality and abstinence required by the Good Religion; healing chants and practices to be used in combat with the demon Daevas, the carriers of misbehavior, disease, and putrification in death; and the afterlife sentences for punishing those who ignored or acted against the Laws.
According to the Laws thus received, failure to combat the influence of demons in life would result in an awful outcome in death.
Zarathustra had asked, “O Holy One, maker of the material world, what is it that brings the unseen power of death?” Assura Mazda answered:
It is the man that teaches a wrong religion; it is the man who continues for three springs without wearing the sacred girdle,101 without chanting the hymns (Gathas), and without worshipping the Good Waters (as washing was the divine practice of cleanliness and purification).
Zoroaster enumerated the four sins that caused death: teaching a wrong religion, unrestricted sex, failure to pray the proper hymns, and failure to stay clean. Cleanliness indicated an awareness of personal hygiene as a means to avoid illness caused by demonic spirits. This devotion to cleanliness had its origin among those living in close quarters underground. Ancient cave dwellers had learned that a corpse allowed to decompose in an enclosed environment would bring disease and more death.
