Mazdaism (Zoroastrianism and its heresies)

OrthodoxWanderer

OrthodoxWanderer

Monke sees no thread, monke posts. This might be better suited to anonymous message boards, but 4chan is botted to high heaven and slowboards are even slower than this forum.

Let's discuss world's oldest extant religion and its' relationship with Christianity. Latter is, of course, known through the cryptic story of the Adoration of the Magi. Magi - the priests of Zoroastrian religion - are never actually identified as such in the Bible, only as "Wise men of the East", which could be anything - Chinese or Indian sages, or perhaps Buddhists. But the tradition firmly links these wise men with Persian cult because of Avestan prophecy of a Saviour born of a virgin. This, of course, poses an interesting question why God chose to reveal the truth to some pagan occultists and obscure it from "chosen people".

As far as I know, Mary Boyce's work is still the ultimate scholarship regarding Mazdean religion, without trying to fit into a kind of a "Persian Old Testament" or denigrate as degenerate demon-worship (as Hindoos and some Muslims do). Can any of my brothers in Christ suggest other, perhaps more recent, works? Although I suspect a lot of Mazdean scholarship is done in Farsi and doesn't get translated into English or other European languages.
 
I don't know much about Zoroastrianism, but I did meet a Zoroastrian once in real life. Felt kind of like meeting a real American Indian, just even more rare.

Those ancient esoteric religions that still exist as small remnants are pretty interesting. I recently learned that supposedly there are still a few hold out Manicheans in China.
 
scary_robot_music said:
I don't know much about Zoroastrianism, but I did meet a Zoroastrian once in real life. Felt kind of like meeting a real American Indian, just even more rare.

Those ancient esoteric religions that still exist as small remnants are pretty interesting. I recently learned that supposedly there are still a few hold out Manicheans in China.
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Interesting. Was (s)he a recent Iranian immigrant, or from Parsi community in India? Did you try to understand what they think of the current state of Western civilization and different branches of Christianity?
 
OrthodoxWanderer said:
Interesting. Was (s)he a recent Iranian immigrant, or from Parsi community in India? Did you try to understand what they think of the current state of Western civilization and different branches of Christianity?
Click to expand...
A kid my brother went to middle school with. Came over to play video games sometimes. I remember my dad explaining to me that "Mike's family are Zoroastrians." I had no idea what it meant at the time, just picked up on the fact that my dad, a high educated man, found it fascinating to meet Zoroastrians in real life.
 
scary_robot_music said:
A kid my brother went to middle school with. Came over to play video games sometimes. I remember my dad explaining to me that "Mike's family are Zoroastrians." I had no idea what it meant at the time, just picked up on the fact that my dad, a high educated man, found it fascinating to meet Zoroastrians in real life.
Click to expand...

Zorastrians were utterly genocided by the rise of Islam in 700AD. To be honest I had no idea some still existed. Amazing story, almost feels like a bigfoot sighting.
 
It's still a religion I would be interested in understanding more about. Their belief in a single, benevolent god responsible for all of creation and emphasis on personal moral choice mean I can't rule out that in some way they did glimpse the truth, albeit with a flawed and incomplete understanding of the deity's true nature.

In many ways it's closer to Christianity than are the other two religions most closely associated with it.
 
Putting Zoroastrians into monotheist/polytheist box is tricky. They indeed recognize Highest Wisdom as the supreme God, the only one properly so called, but also have cults associated with old Indo-European deities, often associated with fire (Mithra, whose cult got some popularity in Rome) and water, as well as gods of cattle, gods of horses, and other elements one would expect to find in Indo-European paganism.

Modern day Islamic Republic of Iran recognizes Zoroastrian belief as a legitimate non-Islamic religion, alongside with Christianity and (((Judaism))). But their numbers are small and dwindling, that's why finding what Zoroastrians say about themselves to the world is rather hard.
 
I just learned that the Japanese carmaker Mazda is named after the deity of the Zoroastrians. Does this make anyone who buys their cars an unwitting idolater?

I only met Zoroastrians in real life once. As a kid, our neighbors invited my family to a party and, the husband being Persian, there were a lot of Persians there. One couple happened to be Zoroastrian, which was a funny coincidence since I had to research Iran for a school project and just learned of their existence a few weeks prior. Never met any since then, they are like finding needles in a haystack.
 
OrthodoxWanderer said:
This, of course, poses an interesting question why God chose to reveal the truth to some pagan occultists and obscure it from "chosen people".
Click to expand...
As you know, it wasn't obscured (by God).

Interestingly, Zoroastrianism is a dualistic religion (both good and evil are the beginning, opposing forces). It's eschatology is very similar to the Christian one in that in the end, everything is tested by fire. You can check it out here, where a river of molten metal tests all people and the eschatological savior (Saoshyant) resurrects everyone and then judges them (presumably through this testing by fire).
 
Another interesting fact is that modern word for Wisdom in Russian and especially Polish still sounds similar enough to "Mazda" to recognize the shared root. And, of course, translating that name into Greek would render Sophia, which can open a very interesting thread for theological speculation, but probably stray too far from the thread.
 
I’m not going to lie - this Zoroastrian thread was like the thing that clicked everything together. I still believe in what I said - Judaism comes from 200-500. However old temple and 2nd temple Judaism was actually a form of Mazdism. Zarathustra was a contemporary of Abraham and if you read the Gathas, he had a very similar experience. God appeared to him when he was fetching water and told him all his rituals and gods were empty - Zarathustra was an indo-European pagan priest.

Would the “I am” only appear to Abraham or could he appear to others? Nothing happens in a vacuum. If you read the Old Testament you learn Abraham is from Ur. Hes a Chaldean. Zarathustra is from modern day Azerbaijan. Hmmm
 
Ahura means lord and Mazda means wisdom. Hence Ahura Mazda is the "wise lord". The symbol/depiction commonly used to represent Zoroastrianism is meant to depict an angel "Fravashi" and it looks similar to Ashur the Assyrian god. Although its claimed Zoroastrianism did not originally have a symbolic/pictogrpahic depiction and that came much later which could be a possible explanation for that.

If you go to the c ity of Yazd in Iran that is a Zoroastrian stronghold in Iran and contains the fire temple with the "Behram" fire which has been allegedly burning continuously since 470 AD.

Zoroastrianism was originally meant to be a monotheistic religion but at some people it got corrupted and people started sneaking in some of the traditional local Iranian (and other) deities such as Mithra, Anahita, Haoma, etc. These were seen to be lesser gods. In some contexts people treated these were as how angels such as arch angel Michael were seen in Chrisitianity and in other times places they were treated as gods in their own right.

The pillars of Zoroastrianism are good words, good thoughts, and good deeds. And many traditional Persian names are based on these concepts. For example Dariush which was originally in its long form Daryavaush or Daryavahumana depending on which dialect of Persian which means "he who sustains good thought".

Also Zoroastrianism had a concept similar to the holy spirit called Spenta Mainyu "beneficient spirit" with the opposing spirit of evil being Angra Mainyu.

Many years ago I read an interesting book "thus spake Zarathustra" which explored the culutral impact Zoraoastrianism left top this day on Iran's culture and people's mentaility.

In Iran there are some Zoroastrians still with Yazd having the largest number. Outside of Iran the "Parsees" who live mostly in india (100,000+ of them) fled Iran to India during the time of the Arab invasions. Today they are a very wealthy minority group and to only marry their own kind.
 
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