Zoroastrian Is M

Zoroastrianism
One of the World’s Oldest

Monotheistic Religions
Founder - Zarathustra
 Zarathustra –Persian Prophet
 Unclear dating on his birth – Some
Zoroastrians claim 6000 BCE! Others think
600 BCE; modern historians date it to
between 1500-1000 BCE
 Belief that his birth was predicted and evil
forces tried to kill him as a child
 His message eventually won over the
Persian king and it became the official
religion of the Persian Empire until the 7th
century CE (Islam replaced it)
Zarathustra - Zoroaster
 In the west, he is known as Zoroaster
 In the east – Zarathustra or Zaroshte
Ptolemy and Zoroaster in Raphael’s School of
Athens – A collection of the greatest minds of
all times painted for a Christian pope’s library
Ptolemy &
Zoroaster
Persian Empire at its peak
 Modern-day Iran was once called Persia
Faravahar – Zoroastrian Symbol
 Ahura Mazda?
 God is supposed
to not have form;
transcendent
 Fravashi – The
good part of the
human soul given
by Ahura Mazda
at birth.
Faravahar – Zoroastrian Symbol
 One hand upwards – striving
for constant spiritual
improvement
 Ring in hand – loyalty and
faithfulness
 Circle – immortality of the soul;
repercussions of our actions
 Three rows of wing feathers –
good thoughts, words, and
deeds
 Three sections tail feathers –
the opposite
 Two streamers – Spenta
Mainyu and Angra Mainyu –
spirits of good and evil – Figure
faces one and turns from the
other
Holy Scriptures
 Avesta – Holy Book; includes the original
words of their founder Zarathushtra, preserved
in a series of five hymns, called the Gathas.
 The Gathas are the basic source of the
religion.
 The Gathas are abstract sacred poetry,
directed towards:
1. worship of the One God,
2. understanding of righteousness and cosmic
order,
3. promotion of social justice
4. and individual choice between good and evil.
Ahura Mazda – The Only God
 A single god Ahura Mazda who is supreme.
 Communication between Himself and humans is
by a number of Attributes, called Amesha Spentas
or Bounteous Immortals.
 Within the Gathas, the original Zoroastrian sacred
text, these Immortals are sometimes described as
concepts, and are sometimes personified.
Cosmic Dualism
 All powerful God Ahura Mazda who is the only deity
worthy of being worshipped, and
 An evil spirit of violence and death, Angra Mainyu, who
opposes Ahura Mazda.
 The resulting cosmic conflict involves the entire universe,

including humanity who is required to choose which to
follow.
 Evil, and the Spirit of Evil, will be completely destroyed at

the end of time. Dualism will come to an end and
Goodness will be all in all. Another school of thought
perceives the battle between Good and Evil as an ethical
dualism, set within the human consciousness.
Zoroastrian Creed
 I curse the Daevas.
 I declare myself a Mazda-worshipper, a supporter
of Zarathushtra, hostile to the Daevas, fond of
Ahura's teaching, a praiser of the Amesha
Spentas, a worshipper of the Amesha Spentas. I
ascribe all good to Ahura Mazda, 'and all the best,'
the Asha-owning one, splendid, xwarena-owning,
whose is the cow, whose is Asha, whose is the
light, 'may whose blissful areas be filled with light'.
Zoroastrian Creed
 I choose the good Spenta Armaiti (Holy
Spirit) for myself; let her be mine. I renounce
the theft and robbery of the cow, and the
damaging and plundering of the
Mazdayasnian settlements.
Zoroastrian Prayer Continued
 I reject the authority of the Daevas, the wicked,
no-good, lawless, evil-knowing, the most druj-like
of beings, the foulest of beings, the most
damaging of beings. I reject the Daevas and their
comrades, I reject the demons (yatu) and their
comrades; I reject any who harm beings. I reject
them with my thoughts, words, and deeds. I reject
them publicly. Even as I reject the head
(authorities), so too do I reject the hostile followers
of the druj.
 After death, a person's urvan (soul) is allowed three days to
meditate on his/her past life.
 The soul is then judged by a troika Mithra, Sraosha and
Rashnu.
If the good thoughts, words and deeds outweigh the bad, then
the soul is taken into Heaven. Otherwise, the soul is led to Hell.
The universe will go through a total of three eras:
1. Creation;
2. The present world where good and evil are mixed. People's
good works are seen as gradually transforming the world
towards its heavenly ideal;
3. A final state after this renovation when good and evil will be
separated.
 Eventually, everything will be purified. Even the occupants of
hell will be released.
Zoroastrian Savior
 A Saoshyant (savior) will be born of a
virgin, but of the lineage of the Prophet
Zoroaster who will raise the dead and judge
everyone in a final judgment.
 Sound familiar?
Laurie Goodstein in NYT Article
 "While Zoroastrians once dominated an area
stretching from what is now Rome and Greece to
India and Russia, their global population has
dwindled to 190,000 at most, and perhaps as few
as 124,000, according to a survey in 2004 by the
Fezana Journal The number is imprecise because
of wildly diverging counts in Iran, once known as
Persia -- the incubator of the faith."
Modern Zoroastrianism
 Less than 200,000
 Do not attempt to evangelize/convert
others but do try to keep their religion alive
 Parsis in India – Zoroastrians whose
ancestors fled Persia (Iran) when Islam
became official religion
 Modern Zoroastrians believe that all
religions converge on the same god and
as long as they are good and loyal to their
god, they will go to heaven
 "The Zoroastrians' mobility and adaptability
has contributed to their demographic crisis.
They assimilate and intermarry, virtually
disappearing into their adopted cultures.
And since the faith encourages opportunities
for women, many Zoroastrian women are
working professionals who, like many other
professional women, have few children or
none." 1
 '' 'Survival has become a community
obsession,' said Dina McIntyre, an Indian-
American lawyer in Chesapeake, Va., who
has written and lectured widely on her
religion."
Connections with Other Monotheistic
Religions
 Judaism
 Christianity
 Islam
 All with one god, good vs. evil, light vs. dark,
messiah of virgin birth, final judgment in
which good triumphs
 Zoroastrianism began with an ancient prophet called
Zarathustra. Hey, his name is Zoroaster in Greek, get?!
Zoroastrianism! He was an Iranian prophet who lived about
1500 B.C. The Jews have been around a long time, more
than three thousand years in fact. "The argument that
Judaism borrowed from Zoroastrianism is, as yet, unproven.
In fact, if any borrowing was done, it was quite possibly the
other way around. In the first place, the evidence actually
indicates that Zoroaster wasn't even born until about the
time of the Babylonian Captivity. Kenneth Boa states that
his dates are sometimes given as between 628 to 551 B.C.
If these dates are even relatively accurate then it is quite
possible that Judaism did not borrow from Zoroastrianism.
Rather, it may actually have been Zoroaster who borrowed
from the religion of the Jewish captives in Babylon. It is
certainly true that Zoroaster spoke of such things as the
coming of a savior and the resurrection of the body and so
on. But he may have borrowed these ideas from the Jewish
captives in Babylon. Indeed, it appears that all of these
ideas can be found in the Jewish Scriptures prior to the
Babylonian Captivity."

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Zoroastrianism

One of the World’s Oldest

 The resulting cosmic conflict involves the entire universe,

 Evil, and the Spirit of Evil, will be completely destroyed at

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