Zoroaster

The ancient religion of Zoroastrianism is still a practiced faith today, and its influence on the cosmologies and beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam has long been noted by religious scholars. However a topic less discussed are ancient Zoroastrian references to the shamanic use of potent cannabis infusions. Was the Zoroastrian religion a cannabis revelation?

An illustrated version of this article can be accessed at - https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2019/10/01/the-herb-of-the-magi-zoroasters-good-narcotic/

Although by its title, this book seems to be about a specialized topic, the spread of Mithraic societies and its avatars, in time and geographical expanse, much enhances its relevancy. From Roman legionaries to chivalry orders, from dervish circles to guild organizations, and from Freemasons to French revolutionaries, the hierarchy of Mithraic societies, their initiation rites, and their oaths of secrecy, provided a model for brotherhood organization that was efficient, but also flexible. They could adapt their philosophy to the prevailing politico-religion conditions of the day, because they did not worship any particular god. Mithra was the initial guarantor of their oath, and if need be it could be replaced by Jesus, Allah, or any other divinity. Their “religion” was their brotherhood, and as such they usually provided a counter-balance to the power elite, and had the potential to become politically active. Occasionally, they would even make a bid for power, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. By the same token, they could be comrades in arms with nascent religious movements, as with Christianity, or be an adversary when their paths diverged. In this book, its author traces back the appearance of these societies to the early days of the Achaemenid Empire and to the religious cataclysm that Herodotus has dubbed as Magophonia. The Mithraic magi were pursued and massacred, and to avoid persecution, they went underground, often literally. That’s how—secret—brotherhood societies were born.

There is no evidence that the character of Zarathustra is modeled upon the life and
reforming religious activities of the historical Zoroaster/Zarathustra. Religious history
casts no interpretative light on the identity of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra; likewise, it is
apparent that Zarathustra and the Zoroaster of history are incompatible in their
metaphysical visions of the world. It would therefore seem that the reader of Also sprach
Zarathustra is at liberty to understand that Zarathustra is a new, anhistorical, and entirely
literary dramatis personae, which brings up a new question altogether. What, precisely,
does the name Zarathustra mean in Nietzsche’s mouth?

Disgusted with ISIS, some Kurds turned away from Islam following the fall of Mosul in 2014. Many became atheists, while others sought comfort in Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, according to converts, was the “original” religion of the Kurds before they embraced Islam. In 2015, two Zoroastrian centers opened in Sulaimani, both of which are recognized by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Notably, neither has tried to recreate Zoroastrianism the way it is currently and has been historically practiced in Iran and South Asia. Instead, they have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal. Kurdish Zoroastrians argue that the reason Kurds are “backward” is Islam. They seek to rectify the present situation through a Kurdish “authenticated” and “original” form of Zoroastrianism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at these two centers, the present article examines this new religious movement in Sulaimani, an important city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It analyses the rise and distinctiveness of Kurdish Zoroastrianism looking at how Zoroastrian Kurds articulate their views on Islam, women’s rights, human rights, and Kurdish independence.

The article provides a literary analysis of three Middle Persian tales: the Story of Jōišt ī Friyān, the Memorial of Zarēr, and the Explanation of Chess and the Invention of Backgammon. Similar to most works of Zoroastrian narrative literature, composed in the late Sasanian and early Islamic era, they are based on oral traditions and contain numerous references to personalities and events also familiar from other Iranian sources. But, different from comparable stories belonging to the same context and time, they are thematically closely interwoven with the Zoroastrian cosmological myth. The reason for this striking intertextual connection is sought in their authors' intent to provide didactic narratives for religious instruction to an audience hoping for eschatological deliverance from social oppression and spiritual evil.

The ancient religion of Zoroastrianism is still a practiced faith today, and its influence on the cosmologies and beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Islam has long been noted by religious scholars. However a topic less discussed are ancient Zoroastrian references to the shamanic use of potent cannabis infusions. Was the Zoroastrian religion a cannabis revelation?

An illustrated version of this article can be accessed at - https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2019/10/01/the-herb-of-the-magi-zoroasters-good-narcotic/

This is a description and synopsis of Alan E. Johnson's book "Reason and Human Ethics," which is currently available in paperback and Kindle ebook at https://www.amazon.com/dp/097010555X/ref=cm_sw_s_fa_dp_77X0FWPYP3288GDWZDMF#_=_. A PDF replica of the paperback is also accessible, at no charge, at https://www.academia.edu/107899091/Reason_and_Human_Ethics_Pittsburgh_Philosophia_2022_. One disadvantage of the PDF is that it does not allow toggling back and forth between the endnote references in the text and the endnotes themselves. All endnotes are hyperlinked in the Kindle edition.

In this article I shall set forth my most recent discoveries
concerning the principles of Gathic composition.
After summarizing the observations I
had made in earlier publications1 as concerns (I.1)
ring-composition, (I.2) proto-poems, and final poems,
I shall (I.2) update the latter exposition as
to both principles and examples. Then (II) I shall
briefly explain the principles of cross-textual recursive
composition whereby Zarathushtra generated
the sequence of his poems. This will be
followed (III.1 and 2) by illustration of these principles
with instances involving the etymology of
Gathic personal names.

BAHA’U’LLAH AS ZOROASTRIAN SAVIOUR (1998)

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33. 

https://www.academia.edu/4332699/_Baha_u_llah_as_Zoroastrian_Saviour_1998_

ABSTRACT

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276).

Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). 

These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

Theological philosophers—including pagans—have observed the “special” nature of humans but have been vague as to the reasons or justification for this human specialty. Our hypothesis is that “Only human transformation of cosmic EM patterns creates new cosmic forms.” Part of the reason for this is that the growth of consciousness consists in discrimination of the “quality” of energies and discernment of “First Cause Intention”  (self-created choice) derived by asking the question “why?” (Aristotle, Four Causes) Intention (cosmic creativity) or so-called “free will” first becomes possible at the stage of human “embodied” consciousness. In other words, human “embodiment” (Schafer, 2020q) serves as a “transducer” (filter, transformer, and generator) for cosmic energy, so the creative potentials of “embodied human incarnation” are unique.  Therefore, in both a metaphorical and authentic sense, collective humanity is the womb of the Goddess from which the embryo of future “population/civilization” will finally be birthed on Earth. Birthing is a very intimate and alien mother/child relationship which is beyond the ken of most earthly fathers.  It may be stipulated that the “Mystery of Motherhood” is generally abjured, appreciated, but essentially incomprehensible from the patriarchal purview.
Extending the birth metaphor (Lakoff, 2008 & 2002; Jung, 1933) from physical to spiritual birth casts light on the hypothesis of this treatise. The metaphor (which incorporates pre-birth fetal development and the embodiment of spirit in-flesh at birth) becomes infinitely important for understanding authentic human purpose and responsibility as well as the meaning of the birth pains of Armageddon which feel like a crisis of extinction. In other words, searching for the meaning of the metaphor (the why?) changes one’s moral-ontological perspective completely.

I devote this article, which aims systematically to prove that Y(asna) 33.2c 1 contains an oral acrostic, to the commemoration of our dear late colleague Hanns-Peter Schmidt, a great Indo-Iranist whose close studies of the Gathas were both innovative and highly reliable. I'll begin with Schmidt's (1985: 53) insightful summary of 33.2 (seq.): " If man treats his fellow-men according to their allegiance to truth or deceit, if he follows the rules of hospitality and if he overcomes the strife existing in society…, he then pleases God and reaps the benefits of the restoration of the original paradisical life, a state in which man totally communes with God and His entities. " Schmidt's overview will be borne out by the independent analysis to be given in the course of the present article. It was under the stimulus of Schmidt 1966 and 1985, with their attention to various lexical-semantic linkages between stanzas of Gathic poems, that I produced an account of the systematically concentric ring composition which governs each of the completed Gathic poems, 1 The two-digit numbering of the seventeen Gathic poems refers to to the traditional numerations of the seventeen Gathic poems, whereby eachGathic poem has a Yasna-number in accord wth placement in the post-Gathic sequence of Yasna-s, i.e. heterogeneous compositions (most more recent than the Gathas and not authored by Zarathushtra) which were to be recited in the course of the Yasna liturgy. The seventeen Gathic poems are thereby numbered as This numbering is based chiefly on a pentadic grouping of the seventeen poems according to metrical and stanzaic criteria. The numbers have nothing tio do with the original order of composition. Thus for example, the Gathic poem Yasna (= Y) 32 need not at all have been composed before (Yasna) 46, and indeed my SCRIM charting shows that the reverse is true. The Yasna number followed by period and one-or two-digit numbers indicate the stanzas of that poem, and the letters sa to e the lines in that stanza, and single or double quotation mark after those letters specify whether the citation is respectively from the first part or the second part of a line with regard to the obligatory metrically-based breakage (caesura) in each line. Thus 33.2c means '(the Gathic poem) Yasna 33, second stanza, third line; 33.2c' refers to the first part of that line, and 33.2c" to the second part of that same line. In the SCRIM charts in this article, the first (leftmost) columns of Gathic words represent words from poems whose composition is theorized as earlier than that of poems from which are given the related words in the second columns. The most important discussions of the SCRIM principle are given in

This essay by Peter Sloterdijk (translated by Robert Hughes, 2021) is taken from his book Weltfremdheit (1993). It opens with a phenomenological rumination on awakening: the dawning of thought and perception pulls the resisting subject out of its morass of sleep, “bringing me back to me.”
    Sloterdijk posits a communal wakeful watchfulness as the founding condition of civilization’s support for thinking beyond mere survival. When culture metaphysicalized this sentinel function in a new conception of divine surveillance, the entirety of the world became conceivable as thoroughly penetrable by vision and subject to knowledge.
    Sloterdijk discusses three civilizations that posited the world as thoroughgoingly susceptible to vision and requiring wakeful watchfulness for its defense: Heraclitus’s Greek polis called upon a coalition of human perception and judgment to defend against the idiocy of night and dream; Zoroaster’s Iranian empire posited the world as cosmic struggle requiring bright, sober thinkers to join their lord against furious confusion; and Isaiah’s Hebrew civilization raised the stakes of theological surveillance in the precarious context of God’s election of the saved.
    Metaphysics and modernity have come to functionalize the dark within a positivist frame, refusing the rhythm of coming and going, asserting an everlasting assembly of the whole, positing an absence of absence. In truth, the world itself and we ourselves come forth through rhythms of waking and sleeping. The appearance of the world is conditioned upon these hiatuses and we impoverish it when we foreclose the discrete nothings of its nocturnal aspect.
    The age of planetary co-existence calls for a new evolution in the wakeful watchfulness of a world undergoing inexorable devastation.

Regarding the History of Mentalities, the western perception and depiction of the Orient have been studied since Edward Said. However, not Saeed nor other scholars have had much to do with ancient Iran and its image in the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Following the Meme theory, it would be plausible that the stereotypes and literary topoi existing about Iran and Iranians in forthcoming periods (Roman, Byzantine, Middle Ages, and Modern Era) have referred to the Classical Athens. From Aeschylus (the author of the "Persians") and Herodotus in the fifth century BC to the last Greek classical historian of the Antiquity Theophylact Simokata, in the 7th Century CE, there are one thousand years to name "the first millennium of Western Iranology"; where concepts such as Oriental despotism and Western freedom were coined. Thus, it can be suggested that in western Iranology all roads lead to Classical Athens. A deeper survey indicates that the Greek perception of the East and Iran was quite mythical and sometimes based on the Clichés of men's viewpoint toward women. Hence, the East (and Iran) was portrayed as feminine in the eyes of Greeks. This study looks forward to a better understanding of the Greek perception of the Achaemenian Persia, providing a better background for what is called History of mentalities.
در زمینۀ ذهنیت، تصوُر و تصویرسازی غرب از شرق از زمان ادوارد سعید تا کنون پژوهش‌هایی شده است. با این‌حال هم سعید و هم دیگر مولفان کمتر به موضوعِ ایران باستان و تصویر و تصور آن در ادبیات کلاسیک غرب (یونان و روم) پرداخته‌اند. این درحالی است که اگر به نظریۀ میم یا ژنتیکِ فرهنگی معتقد باشیم، به نظر می‌رسد کلیشه‌ها و الگوهای ادبی موجود در سیمای ایران و ایرانیان در ذهنیت غربی دوره‌های بعدی (روم، بیزانس، قرون وسطی و عصر جدید) به دورانِ باستانیِ ایران برگردد. از آیسخولوس (مولف نمایشنامۀ پارسیان) و هرودت در سدۀ پنجم پیش از میلاد تا واپسین تاریخنگار کلاسیک یونانی عصر باستان یعنی تئوفیلاکت سیموکاتا در سدۀ هفتم میلادی، یک هزاره فاصله است که باید آن‌را نخستین هزارۀ ایرانشناسی غربی نامید. در این میان، خاستگاه ذهنیتِ غربی را می‌توان در نخستین برخوردِ جدیِ دو تمدن یعنی دورۀ هخامنشی جست؛ جایی که مفاهیمی چون استبداد شرقی و آزادی غربی در ادبیات یونانی سکه‌زده شد. بدین ترتیب می‌توان گفت در ایرانشناسی غربی همۀ راه‌ها به آتن عصرِ کلاسیک(سده ششم تا چهارم پ.م) ختم می‌‌شوند. بررسی عمیق‌تر نشان می‌دهد فهمِ یونانی به شرق و ایران کاملا اسطوره‌زده و گاه شبیه‌سازی‌شده بر پایۀ انگارۀ کلیشه‌ای و سنتیِ مردان نسبت به زنان بود. پس شرق و ایران، زنانه و غرب و یونان مردانه تصویر شدند. این پژوهش امیدوار است به شناختِ بهترِ فهمِ یونانی از ایرانیان دورۀ هخامنشی کمک کند تا بستری بهتر برای آنچه تاریخِ ذهنیت گفته می‌شود، فراهم آید.

Abstract: Generally, what ancient Iranian scholars knew since the Zoroaster life era (the ages of Kay Luhrasp and Kay Vishtasp) and also those additional knowledge of the Successors of them, gave rise to Magicians knowledge. The present research has made effort, in a systematic and documental way, to answer these questions that what has been the sketch of this knowledge, when it has been started and who have transferred that. In present research, it was observed that there is a considerable temporal relationship between the formation of roots of Greek and Iranian knowledge and cosmology.
Key words: Magi, Zoroaster, Otsanes, Zaratras, Greek Philosophy, Pythagoras.

This chapter shall adduce and address striking poetic aspects of the seventeen Old
Avestan religious hymns comprising the five poems called the Gathas, whose authorship
is here accepted as that of the historical Zarathustra (for his historicity, see Schwartz
2007: 54–56).

Abstract Casting Darius as a descendant of the Achaemenid main line of kings, and Cyrus as one belonging to a secondary branch, Franpois Vallat has argued that Darius's contempt for his paternal cousin stemmed from the perception that Cyrus usurped his forefather's title and position. As it happens, it parallels my own theory by which I had explained that Darius’ kingly ideology reflected his antagonism toward the Median ideology. Whereas Vallat sees Cyrus as the one who banished Zoroaster from his land, I propose instead that the real culprit was Astyages, and that in revenge, Zoroastrian priests eventually turned him into a Ḍaḥḥāk portrayed with two serpents on his shoulders. They also modified Iran's ancient history to include “friends” and to banish “enemies”. The antagonism between the followers of Zoroaster and their enemies, however, was exacerbated by an ongoing feud between the caste of the Median magi and that of the Persian fire priests, the pārsās, to which belonged Darius and his ancestors.

Review (in German) on Brodersen's annotated bilingual edition of Damigeron's book about healing stones.
In: Museum Helveticum 75.2 (2018), 240.
Follow this link to read online or to download:
<https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=mhl-001:2018:75::262>

Eighteen binary polymorphisms and 16 multiallelic, short-tandem-repeat (STR) loci from the nonrecombining portion of the human Y chromosome were typed in 718 male subjects belonging to 12 ethnic groups of Pakistan. These identified 11 stable haplogroups and 503 combination binary marker/STR haplotypes. Haplogroup frequencies were generally similar to those in neighboring geographical areas, and the Pakistani populations speaking a language isolate (the Burushos), a Dravidian language (the Brahui), or a Sino-Tibetan language (the Balti) resembled the Indo-European–speaking majority. Nevertheless, median-joining networks of haplotypes revealed considerable substructuring of Y variation within Pakistan, with many populations showing distinct clusters of haplotypes. These patterns can be accounted for by a common pool of Y lineages, with substantial isolation between populations and drift in the smaller ones. Few comparative genetic or historical data are available for most populations, but the results can be compared with oral traditions about origins. The Y data support the well-established origin of the Parsis in Iran, the suggested descent of the Hazaras from Genghis Khan’s army, and the origin of the Negroid Makrani in Africa, but do not support traditions of Tibetan, Syrian, Greek, or Jewish origins for other populations.