Transcript for:
Zoroastrianism Overview

all right here we go we're going to be talking about zostrianism in this lecture and so estronism is a small enough religion it's only got about 200 000 people in it making it not even one of the top five it's one of the fastest dying religions in the world today but it's had huge ramifications for a lot of uh western history as i think you'll see today so i want to spend this lecture and we'll only spend one lecture on this to talk about this religion to see how it participates in the story of western history so this is a nice segue from the eastern religions we were looking at in the first half of the semester to the western religions because as you think i think you'll notice that zostrianism has elements of both east and west in in it and so as we make our way into the western religions i think you'll see that sort of bridge as we get to it so without further ado let's start with the founder of zoroastrianism the founder is named zarathustra at least that's his persian name or parsi name parsi just means persian therefore we're going to be using his persian name given that that's actually how the zooestrians refer to him themselves you know him by his greek name and the reason why you know him by his greek name is because of alexander the great you may remember when i talked in the last lecture about how alexander the great taught everyone the same language greek well he actually went around destroying all of the persian temples and burning their scriptures tearing down their their fire temples and those were zoestrians he was destroying so therefore all of the information we get about zoestreanism comes from either the greeks who wrote about them as they were going around conquering them or the few zoestrians who survived that so there are some remnants of historical artifacts and a few scriptures fragments that we have left by and of course the oral tradition that has been passed down from zoroastrian generation after generation so we have to kind of piece all this together to make sense of of what zestrianism really taught in fact if you want to read a really good book about zarathustra i encourage you to pick up paul kriswak's book called in search of zerathustra that book has pretty much all of the archaeological evidence that we have for trying to place who and what and where why zoastery lived all of the stuff that we need to know about him are included in that book and it's not that big of a book so there isn't that much archaeological evidence to go by here but you know him by his greek name zoester because in in the greek language zoro esther means the undiluted star that is he is the pure and shining star you could probably guess that given that you probably know that astronomy is based on the study of the stars so astro in stars and zorro means pure or undiluted the bright and shining star so he's the center character the the founder of the religion of zoroastrianism and notice that i've placed his dates here at around 1737 to 1660 as if that's actually the dates in which he he lived we don't know when he lived i've heard all sorts of different dates in fact i think even your textbook gives a variety of dates some people think he lived in the 4th century bce other people placed him around the 10th century bce others around the 15th century notice here i'm placing him in the 18th century and there was a group of people that we went to on a field trip we went to their temple and they said that zoester lived ten thousand years ago and when i heard that i was struck by it because i had already been doing research on the archaeolog archaeology here so i went up to the zoestrean presenter afterwards and i asked her i said how did you get that number ten thousand years and she said it's just the tradition that we've taught you know we've heard passed down throughout the generations and when i made my argument for why i thought it was incorrect i must have been convincing because the next year when we went back to that pseudony temple she gave her same presentation and she actually used my dates so apparently i might be right but here's my argument all right there are several different calendar systems that are used in the middle east and even buys westerns themselves but the most popular calendar system within zostrianism actually says that the current year is around 37.57 or something like that and it's supposedly based on the birth of xerathustra so that calendar system would indicate that if the current year is 37 57 then perhaps zoester was born some 3 700 years ago so i'm using that as the dating method for his life and there are other references on the on the internet and other books that have tried to use that as their dates claiming it was around the 18th century but we're not certain about this so don't hold me to that i would never test you on the specific dates of his life because we just don't know the reason why i'm going for it is because of their calendar system so obviously they must have been counting you know from something about about something that happened some 3 700 years ago so i'm just going to go with that as the official date for his life even though we don't know that for sure what we do know is that he came from persia and that that's a vague word that describes a very large swath of land you know can include anything from turkey all the way to india and in between you know lots of places in between so you know some people think he may have been born in russia something some people think he may have been born closer to saudi arabia some people in turkey some people actually in india but in the midst of that right we just know that he was persian so i think a lot of people want to play some around iraq and iran that era where this heart of persia was and i think you can see some evidence of that when those westerns show pictures of zarathustra this is the picture that they usually show in fact if you go to this western temple in chicago you'll see this painting on the back wall of their temple to indicate that this is what they think zoester looks like now when students see that they often then look at it and say oh my gosh that looks just like yeah jesus that's what a lot of people think right and the fact that he looks like jesus is probably a happy coincidence we have no idea what jesus looked like and we have no idea what zoaster looked like but the fact that they look alike is probably correct and here's why i say that so jesus was a jew and the jews traced their lineage back to what one person abraham well abraham traces his lineage back to what city you may remember this from our first lecture or if you've ever studied judaism you may know this in the jewish scriptures it says that abraham was born and raised from the city of orr well orr is located right in the heart of persia right in the middle of iraq and iran right on the border there but near the persian gulf so therefore if abraham was from the city of orr and then traveled across the middle east to go to israel or canaan land that would make the descendants of the zostrians very similar to the descendants of the jews and therefore they probably did in fact look alike now it is worth noting that uh abraham probably lived around the same time as zarathustra and therefore there's no record that either of them met one another but that they were teaching something that was very similar is probably um influence of the two religions interacting with each other we're going to talk more about that in the next chapter but the symbol for zoestreanism is called the ferrovar and the ferrovar is the symbol of people thought was the picture of zobaster it's not it's actually a picture of the human soul and the reason why it's depicted as having wings is because zoestreans believe that when you die your soul ascends into the heavenly realm and therefore how else do you ascend but to have wings to fly to get up into the air to to go into the heavens so therefore this human soul is depicted as having wings and that is the symbol for zostrianism so we actually find this symbol all over the middle east which kind of shows you how pervasive zoestreanism was in its peak era that is we've actually traced zoostionism around the middle east even to the place like britain england so when world war ii took place and the germans bombed the city of london the bombs broke open the foundations of london so that actually they had to bring in teams of excavators and they were actually doing some archaeology down there because they could actually see what was underneath the foundations of london and they could actually date back to the roman empire that predates the british rule and uh below that they see pictures of the zoestrean symbol which would indicate that the uh zostrian people were there in in britain before the the romans ever were so that just shows you how pervasive that the western empire must have been it was pervasive in that time so that's the symbol of zostrianism of course a lot of these are being destroyed right now as there's a lot of warfare going on in the middle east there's been stories and records of people blowing up monuments to other religions because they disagree with them and that's become a huge problem with uh historians and archaeologists alike trying to gather this information but the story actually says that zarathustra when he was about 20 years old became a mystical seeker he was actually surrounded as everyone else was a polytheist you know they're all worshiping different gods and he's kind of concerned about this because right how does he know which god he's supposed to follow what if he's worshiping the wrong god everyone thinks that their god is the correct one and so that's why they're going around conquering one another because they're like saying you know no your god is is evil we're gonna kill you and then they would just fight each other he's like well how are we supposed to actually solve that debate i mean how do you know which one's the good god so he spent 10 years trying to become a seeker of visions he said i'm going to worship the god that presents himself to me as the one true god and that will be the god that i worship and so you know he he actually is asking for this vision as proof for which god he should follow well when he turns 30 years old he receives his wish he actually receives a vision from an angelic being one of those yazadas named vohumana now vahumana is not a god but he says i will introduce you to the one true god if you follow me so he takes them up into the heavens he learns about the one true god he learns about the true religion the religion of zoroastrianism and then he comes back down and the first words out of zerathustra's mouth are i shall teach men to seek the right kind of indicating that other people are believing the wrong religions and he's going to put them on the right path so he's trying to say look you know all these other religions are incorrect i'm going to teach people the true religion the the source of what was supposed to be the correct religion all along so he starts trying to spread zooestrianism to this polytheistic community of the middle east now obviously he is not very successful people were not quick to convert to his religion and therefore he was heavily persecuted many people were reluctant to change because i mean think about it how many of you if somebody just walked into the room and said i've found the one true god would you just believe them and follow them no many people would be like what are you talking about especially given that he's denouncing a lot of their polytheistic religions and so one of the reasons that people were so reluctant is because in polytheism there is this belief that if you stop sacrificing to your god your god will invoke wrath against you so you have to keep the gods happy by giving them sacrifices on a yearly basis maybe even a weekly basis or a daily basis perhaps and therefore your devotion to the gods prevents them from becoming angry with you so most polytheists were like no i if we abandon our tribal god then we're just going to suffer the wrath of those gods and if we start following your god so no most people were like no and they would just throw rocks at him and try to scare him away until one day he was able to convert the king of persia king vishtapa by healing the man's horse now zarathustra was just traveling throughout the kingdom trying to make converts when he had heard that the king's horse was sick and so he goes to the palace where the king lived and you know horses are a big deal back then because this is your mode of transportation it's like having your best car and kings used to ride out to war with their their soldiers back then so king vestava probably went to war on this horse and that horse probably saved his life on many occasions he probably had great adventures and you know great perils that he evaded with the help of this horse the fact the horse is ill or injured i don't know what's wrong with it but something's wrong with it probably means that this type of cannot be successful in warfare i mean he loves this horse so zarathustra hears about this he asks to be allowed to go into the stables to see the horse and he simply places his hands on the horse and heals it of whatever sickness or injury it had and the people are so astounded by that that they immediately tell the king and when the king finds out about this he invites sarathustra into the palace so he goes into the palace he says how are you able to do this and sarah thuster says only by the power of the one true god vishtapa asks to hear about this religion converts to zeros that zoroastrian zerathuster's religion zoestreanism and then he makes zooestrianism the state religion of the persian empire and that's where zostrianism really started to take root in the persian empire now everyone's starting to convert to it because you know if your king is following this particular religion and you're supposed to follow the king then you should follow his religion so therefore many people were converting to zostrianism now not everyone did obviously there were still people who were like wait a minute this is disrupting everything that we knew about our life and religion and politics and so there were still some politicians that were very angry by this and when zoester was about 77 years old he was praying in a fire temple where this western's prey when a polytheist snuck into the temple stabbed zerathustra in the back killing him thinking that if you take out the founder you take out the religion right you know a lot of people believe that if you just take out the leader then you take out the whole movement does that ever work no you'd think we'd learn this in history we have this you know propensity to make the same mistakes throughout history and there is this repeated theme throughout history where people think that if you just simply take out the leader that will simply put an end to the movement and it doesn't it doesn't right in fact it actually generates more sympathy for the movement because now the leader is a martyr right they didn't do anything wrong they were stabbed in the back how treacherous right and therefore now the polytheists looked like the bad guys and they were like oh i'm so sorry and therefore people start abandoning polytheism and then going to the westernism because he seems like a pretty good guy in comparison so therefore zoostionism started to spread like wildfire in the years that followed after his assassination thus becoming the major religion of the persian empire when the persian empire finally takes over the entire middle east so what did he teach right notice we don't know much about his life those are the few stories that we can kind of piece together from scriptures and oral testimonies that have been passed down through the ages but it's the religion that that's important here right so what was this new religion that he taught for those 40-some years of his ministry well he has a very unique theistic view devotionally speaking he was a monotheist right he says you should only worship one god and so devotionally speaking should only have one god but doctrinally he is teaching that there are two gods and so we had to come up with a term for this duotheism it's a very unique view no other major religion has that view that there's two gods that exist one good and one evil and therefore we had to come up with a word that kind of describes that theology duo theism and that's zostrianism in a nutshell he says that there are two gods one good and one evil and therefore let me introduce you to who those gods are you are only dedicated to the good gods the evil god is to be shunned the good god is to be followed and let's talk about who those gods are the good god is called ahura mazda and his name in persian means the wise lord now you might notice that the word mazda is hidden in his name and if you're wondering if that has any connection to the car company it does actually the founder of mazda automobiles um tetsuo matsura i think was his name he actually was trying to come up with a name for his automobile company that would be catchy he wanted something that would kind of attract europeans as well as people from japan and so um he heard that there was this religion that was kind of having a renaissance in europe when people were starting archaeologists were starting to find all sorts of evidence of this western people they were writing stories about zerathuster in fact ricard strauss actually wrote the famous story or famous uh symphony thus spake zerathustra the song that you know as the scene the soundtrack to 2001 space odyssey right that's what everyone associates it with but that symphony was actually written in praise of zarathustra and so yatsura matsuras matsura says i want to name it after something that will really catch on so he names the automobile company after ahora mazda the the wise lord which he says on the mazda automobile website that he is the god of wisdom the god of light the god of truth and the god of automobile manufacturing i don't know how he came up with that but you know we'll just let him go with that so haramaz is the good god he is the god of wisdom the god of truth the god of light and then there is this evil god called angra manu which translates in persian as the liar so he's the deceiver right the destroyer the trickster god you might notice that in his name there's an english cognate hidden in there we get the word angry from the persian word angra and if you're wondering what is angra or anger have to do with lying it's because in a lot of languages especially persian the word for truth is oftentimes associated with the word for good and the word for lying is associated with the word for evil those two words are kind of interchangeable in these languages so when you're when you're doing something good it's the truth and when you're saying something false you're doing you're you're it's it's a lie it's it's evil so therefore this connotation that he is the liar represents he is the evil deity he's the deceiver he's trying to take people away from the truth of ahura mazda so that they will follow him into into immorality destruction and chaos and and disorder so those are the two main gods both of them are uncreated that is they have always existed they they were not created by each other or by another power they're just eternal beings and they're very very powerful but they're not all powerful there's one thing that these two gods cannot do can anyone guess what that is they cannot destroy each other they're equally matched so you've got the good god and you've got the evil god and they're they're perfect sort of like replicas or opposites of one another if you will and and therefore they've been fighting for all eternity and that is what the western's all about now do you understand why this is not taoism a lot of people think that the tai chi schwann the yin yang symbol is the forces of good and evil always attacking each other always kind of swirling around engaged in eternal combat that is not taoism at all the taoists believe that both yin and yang are both good in their own rights and that the balance between those two is where you should live that's a completely different religion than this this religion is saying there is one god who is holy good and there is one god who is holy evil and you are to completely shun this god and you are to completely embrace this deity do you see how that's not taoism at all whatsoever okay so therefore this is the religion that teaches that forces of light versus dark the you know the truth versus the lie goodness versus evil and and those two things have been locked in cosmic warfare for all eternity and if some of you are saying yeah but wait a minute right what about satan or shatan or or iblis all of those evil deities are talked about in christianity or islam those are not gods and i think that many people have exaggerated the role of that character in in those religions but that they're not deities they were actually created by god as either an angel or a genie depending on which religion you you refer to christianity or islam and therefore they are not powerful deities they have no power over god and therefore cannot harm people without god's permission but this is a different story this is two gods who are fighting each other for combat and that's where you come in humans were created to tip the balance in this war because they can't defeat each other they created humans to choose sides and therefore that will determine who's going to win in the end and so they're they're kind of vying for your souls to help paint the the outcome of this picture so you can see that hora mazda is high elevated in the scriptures as the creator of the universe he creates this universe he is the one who laid down the past for the sun and the stars he keeps the waters and the plants in their place he's kind of in control of all things that happens in the world he guides the winds he fashioned the realm of light and dark so notice that that duality of light versus dark that created the dawn the day and the night yesterday chapter 44 verse two through six so this is ahora mazda the creator of the universe who created the world so that humans would join him in this battle to help him defeat angra manu and that's zoestreanism in a nutshell now hora mazda is considered to be the one true god but it's not really clear whether or not this wasn't referring to one of the many gods that is when you look at the ancient religions it may very well be that some of the other yazadas that are talked about in zoestrianism the seven spirits known as the heptad or the amisha spentas that they may have been gods in the polytheistic religion of that time and i i think there is some evidence that supports that claim that maybe at some point they were kind of demoted from godhood to just heavenly angels and therefore mazda became the highest god and therefore zoester's kind of elevating him to say he's the most important god because he's the guardian of humans and humans are the most important part of the earth because we are the ones that choose which side we're going to fight him in this cosmic war so therefore ahura mazda is the guardian of humankind the creator god but the other angelic beings the yazadas are protectors of of the realms so vahumana protects the cattle and all other animals cattle were most important because as settler communities they need the cattle to help get milk and provide food for the people for plowing and whatnot ashvahish is the guardian of fire the sacred symbol of zostrianism zastrovaria is the guardian of metals spent to almighty the guardian of earth harvat the guardian of water and emerit the guardian of plants so that each one of these pieces of the earth was supposed to be protected by one of these angels so therefore they become part of a septet or heptad of religion seven beings that are meant to protect the earth against evil against corruption against pollution as you'll see later on so notice what zoster seems to be doing here he's actually setting everything up into two categories right good versus evil and there is no in between here i mean this is again why it's not taoism because daoism kind of looks for this balance between the yin and yang and zoester's saying no you're either for the good or you're for the evil but there is no in between there's no gray area here you're either it's either black or white so he kind of exaggerates the the powers on all of those cases the two gods there is angra manu on the one side who is the embodiment of evil and deceitfulness he also goes by the names aishma or ariman and i'm just simply telling you that because when we read some of the scriptures later on you're going to see those names being used for him so if you're wondering why does he have so many names ask yourself that of any religion right you know when you look at christianity or islam why is he referred to as satan or iblis or shaitan or the morning star or lucifer or tom cruise all of those are just different names for the same being but they have different words to kind of describe it so that's also true in persian probably because a lot of the cultures that conquered other people picked up names from those cultures and so they use those names as part of the same deity they're they're just different cultures way of referring to the same entity so anger manu is like 100 evil there is no good in him whatsoever and then ahura mazda is like 100 goodness there's no evil in him whatsoever so he is the embodiment of of good now if you compare this to some of the eastern religions like hinduism or even the polytheistic religions from the greeks to the romans the gods sometimes had good and bad qualities even zeus wasn't perfect you know he had flaws right he tried to kill his father and uh and his father tried to kill his father so you know they're they're not completely good deities that you're supposed to follow they're they're more like humans and that they have good qualities and bad qualities but zoester's doing something very unique here for his time he's saying there is the embodiment of good and the embodiment of evil and that those two are in cosmic war and there's no gray area in between that it's it's a divided line of which you cannot uh cannot cross so these two gods are referred to in yasana chapter 30 verse two through six in a doctrine called the two spirits doctrine one of the most famous passages in this western scripture so let me read that to you to kind of set up the stage for what was going on in this time period he says now these are the two original spirits who as twins notice they're twins of each other kind of like brothers uh at war with each other have been perceived by me zarathustra through a vision the vision of o humana in both thought and speech and indeed these two are what is good and evil between the two the pious not the empious will choose rightly furthermore the two spirits confronted each other in the beginning each created for himself life and non-life so in the end there would be the worst kind of existence for the drew johns remember those are the followers of disorder and chaos but the best mind will be reserved for the righteous he goes on to say of these two spirits the deceitful chose the worst course of action while the most beneficent spirit who is clothed in the heart of stone chose truth as also do those who perpetuate ahura mazda the god of wisdom the god of truth between these two spirits the devas did not choose wisely remember those are the evil deities while they were taking counsel among themselves delusion came upon them so that they chose the worst course of mind then altogether they ran to wrath to with which they infect the life of man so do you kind of understand what he's getting at here he's saying that the world is full of polytheists who are going around destroying one another because they've been deceived by angra manu and that's what this religion is trying to prevent they're trying to uh bring an end to that warfare and and to show people the truth so that they stop fighting each other and so he's trying to explain here the question that was probably on many people's minds if there are only two gods that have always existed then where did all these other gods come from his answer on gramanu angramanyu has been deceiving people and are you kind of picking up on the religious problem here he's been teaching people these delusions so they fault follow these distorted views of god and then claimed that their god is the true god thus causing them to want to fight and kill and rape and pillage and therefore that explains all of the polytheistic religions that existed during that time period in terms of beliefs then zostrians believe that life is a battleground between good and evil so notice that there's this war motif kind of lurking in the theology of the religions in the west where you start to see this sort of battlefield it's not like taoists which are trying to achieve balance in nature or the buddhists who are trying to achieve you know a peace with earth and the people around them or confucius who's trying to achieve social harmony there's a war going on between good and evil and that's the western tradition that's the the religions that we're going to be seeing in the next few chapters so life is a battleground between hora mazda and anger manu and therefore humans were created to choose whose side they want to fight on thus to tip the balance because these gods can't defeat each other so they're kind of relying on humans to kind of like outnumber the others and once they outnumber them they can totally defeat the other one and in the end they believe that good will ultimately triumph so that's the prophecy that's made throughout their scriptures in fact if i were to describe zoestreanism in a single word it would be this zostrianism is one of the most prophetic religions that we're going to see in this semester why because all of their scriptures are kind of prophesying about what's to come they're all directed toward this end state this end goal when hora mazda does finally defeat angra monu and all people will be saved and and liberated and then the earth will be remade as a paradise in fact that's actually where we get the word paradise from paradiso is the persian word that means the pure garden and so they could be referring to the you know middle east uh fertile crescent that we were talking about but the idea here is that all of earth will just be a paradise where there'll be an abundance of food and water so that everyone will have everything that they need and there won't be any hardship or warfare or or famine and this type of thing so that's when they think the world will be recreated as a paradise and then the time of refreshing will occur where those who are have been placed in hell and i'll talk about that in just a minute those who have been placed in hell will be given a second chance to go to heaven and when every last person has left hell then hell will be destroyed angramani will be killed and everyone will live eternally with peace with ahura mazda so the universe is consistent of two different worlds okay this is a very dualistic religion there's two gods there's good and evil and there's two worlds two planar existences the first world is the world of jura mazda and they call that monog you could call it heaven but they just use the word monog and that means the perfect absolute divine world it's beyond defilement it cannot be tarnished it's perfect it's not something that corrupts or corrodes over time like you know metal does or or the world does the world that we live in is called getig gaitig is the temporal world it is full of corruption it has been corrupted by the undesirable choices of man as they become delusional from the influence of anger manu they then start uh destroying the earth they start polluting the earth they start killing and raping and burning crops and tearing up the landscape such that now the middle east looks like a desert wasteland and so he's trying to explain why this is happening it's because people are making the wrong choices so there's a little quality here of environmental ethics that's embedded into westernism and we'll talk about that in in the meantime the problem is that gateage and minogue are separated they're not actually connected to each other and in between them is this great chasm that i suppose you could call hell although they don't they don't call it that and so therefore how do you cross from gate where we live to manage which is the heavenly realm well you have to build a bridge and that's really what the theology of zoostionism is all about in order to be saved from this corrupt world you have to build a bridge with your good deeds so if you build a bridge to heaven then you can cross this chasm and not fall into hell so the more good deeds you do the more bricks you lay in the bridge thus the bigger the bridge is the more sure your salvation will be i don't think they're talking about a literal bridge here it's a metaphor but you know you understand the idea the message behind it so therefore the more uh good deeds you do now the more likely it is you're going to make it to heaven but if you don't have enough good deeds the bridge will either be too small or it'll be incomplete and when you're trying to get out of this world to go to heaven when you die you'll fall into the chasm of hell and that's basically their theology doing good deeds gets you to heaven not doing enough good deeds causes you to land in hell no matter what your religion so in a certain sense zostrians are pluralists because they believe that anyone who does good deeds whether they are zoestrian or not they will go to heaven because they've built this bridge this metaphoric bridge across the chasm but anyone who does what is bad if they if you continue to do good bad deeds even if you're a zostrian you will still go into hell so the ultimate test of salvation in this religion is whether or not you are a good person it doesn't matter what rituals you follow doesn't matter what religion you follow if you are doing what or a mazda teaches as the good path and we'll get to that later then you are going to make it to heaven so that's their salvation message now i want to go through their timeline because in zoestreanism they believe that history kind of spans 12 000 years and i'm just going to breeze through this because it's not information that you really are need to know to understand westernism but it does say a lot about how those westerns view how we came into existence so this is their creation story if you will so history spans some twelve thousand years which they break up into four eras each consisting of about three thousand years of course these numbers are not meant to be taken literally they're just metaphoric right so just estimates if you will so for the first three thousand years hora mazda is separated from angra monu and everything is in a state of perfect spiritual balance right there's you know a good and evil uh have not come into contact and so therefore everything is is just fine the way it is but during those 3000 years they meet one another and it's like uh you know oil and water they just don't mix you know once truth meets falsehood they just can't stand each other and so they instantly go to war it's like instant conflict between the two so one of the tactics that hora mazda uses is to chant the ahunavar prayer which many zooastreans recite to scare away evil spirits or to scare away anger manu and this reciting this prayer actually causes the evil spirit anger manu to retreat into the abode of darkness so he learns that by saying this prayer it actually causes evil to kind of like hide in the darkness so that's how anger man you kind of like is sent is cast away through this recitation of the hoon of our prayer and therefore good and evil have been locked in conflict ever since this encounter now the second three thousand years horror mazda creates the physical world called gaetig along with the seven creations and those creations include sky fire water earth trees and other plants cows and other animals and the first mortal being called gayamard now galemard is not a male or a female gamma arts both right so game art has like both male and female qualities and therefore gammard can produce offspring but doesn't need to mate to do so so gay mart gives birth then to the first two human beings uh who are maisha and maishani the first human couple first male and female and then all descendants are just our descendants from maisha and maishani and populate the earth starting in persia and spreading across the world and so these this is sort of their creation story about humans well as humans begin to spread across the world they're you know eating off the food that he he created for them allowing them to have animals as companions until the year 6000 and in the year 6000 ariman attacks again right from his his cave of darkness he comes out and he starts trying to uh get at ahura mazda by polluting the creation he wants to distort things on earth so that he can prevent oro mazda from winning this war so the world falls into a state of chaos for the next three thousand years where greed and poverty pain and hunger disease lust and lethargy all prevail during this time period because anger manu is teaching people about evil teaching them a false narrative that causes them to fall away from the truth and thus the seven creations are all polluted the sky the water the earth uh the fires are all polluted and so the earth is starting to become decrepit right this is this is the problem that we now live in and so calamity distress and death all abound during this era now in the year 9000 hura mazda sends zerathustra to teach the people the good religion to all of humanity so this is the year in which zerathustra is about 30 years old and he receives this vision from vahumana he meets ahura mazda face to face up in the heavens and then he comes back down and starts spreading the religion that we now know of as zoroastrianism so that's the world he was living in is this world of chaos and fighting where everyone's being distorted or delusioned by the evil deity anger manu and then every thousand years after zerathustra there would be a celtiant or a savior who would be born with the strength and the strength of ariman would be gradually weakened so this westerns believe that every thousand years and again that's not meant to be like a literal number but roughly a thousand years would pass when another person would come teaching people the good religion trying to do away with evil trying to get more and more people onto a horror mazda side and that's right those are called celcions so austrians believe that people like buddha moses jesus muhammad baha'u'llah are all examples of these sausians so they believe that all of the other religions are kind of like offshoots of zostrianism as they then start their traditions based on their savior their associate whereas the zoestrians still follow the teachings of zerathustra now in the year twelve thousand a year also known as the wizarition one of my favorite words to say wizardressian means the separation evil will be vanquished and the world will be restored to a perfect immortal state of bliss that the year 12 000 is sort of like the end of time in which there will be a final judgment and a resurrection will take place everyone will be judged for their deeds that will determine whether or not they go to heaven or to hell and um the they'll have a second chance to get out of hell during what's called the fresher karetti that literally means the making wonderful or the times of refreshing and so fresher credit will occur where the people who have served their sentence in in hell will be given a second chance now this is important the reason why the zooestrians believe that hell is not permanent is because they believe that nothing that you do deserves or warrants eternal punishment right let's just say you know it's really bad like you let's say you kill like 10 people or something like that well sure you're gonna have to pay for each person that you kill and i don't know let's just say a hundred years per person so you spend a hundred years in health that's gonna suck right then ten years or ten times that would be like a thousand years in in hell eventually you're gonna get tired of it and once you've served your punishment once you've kind of learned from the example of what you did you're suffering for that for that thousand years you will then be given the chance to choose what is good and if the in that moment you say no i'm going to continue to do evil you'll continue to be in hell and serve the punishment for whatever wrongdoing you do from that day forward so all of these punishments kind of collect and you have to serve them but as soon as you've served your time right you're you're given the chance to choose what is good so if you choose what is good and you imagine probably everyone's eventually going to get tired of the suffering and the pain in hell they're going to say i want out and so they say i want to be as good and that's where you get these people are like i want to choose a horror mazda please let me out and so they are given the freedom to leave and once every last person has made that decision once every last person has woken up to that reality that the evil is terrible and it's full of pain and suffering they eventually will want to leave so hell is not a closed place where you're stuck for all eternity this is very similar to dante's inferno i know if you guys ever read dante's trilogy of heaven uh hell and purgatory but in the hell story where dante descends into hell they get to the gates of hell and he he's with his tour guide virgil or whoever that was and um he asked virgil he's like if the gates are open why don't all these people leave and virgil says to dante because these people are here by their own will they've chosen this hell for themselves and that's kind of how these westerns see it is that you're free to leave hell at any time you just have to stop choosing evil to get out and that's that's kind of their salvation message so that's important for you to know therefore humans are the most important beings in the universe because humans are the most highly evolved creatures on earth they are given the following powers they're endowed with bodies with souls which can perceive so notice that we can see around us just like animals can too but you know i don't think plants can or rocks can and and we're also given the power to think like i suppose like animals as well but you know we have the ability to do philosophy and to to question things we also have the strength to act and they're talking about the willpower we can direct our behaviors words to guide so therefore we can actually tell other people words that influence their behavior so that we can freely choose the path to tread think about how remarkable that is i don't know if you guys are aware of this that all i'm doing is making vibrations with my vocal cords they come out in the form that sounds like words to you and so the ideas that are in my brain are being transmitted through these sound waves into your ears you're hearing those those vibrations and interpreting them as concepts that puts that idea that was in my head into your head that's amazing you know think about that that our ability to ask questions and to ask why are we here and to you know ask what is good and what is evil that is what makes humans unique so in the western tradition humans are like the pinnacle of the creation compared to say the eastern religions which see most of humans being equal to like in taoism or indigenous religions the western religions wants to say that humans are like the pinnacle of creation and that it is up to us to decide who's going to win in the end good or evil so what does constitute as good well as westerns don't have like a series of commandments that they have to follow the basic formula that they use for good and evil is simply this mantra that they they recite all the time good thoughts good words and good deeds if any of you saw the movie bohemian rhapsody you may know that freddie mercury was a zostrian and they quoted that i think in the movie because they were trying to teach zoostionism in the movie to freddie mercury so good thoughts good words and good deeds it doesn't tell you exactly what to do but in general you could say it's simply doing no harm so if you're doing anything that causes harm that's wrong if you're saying anything that leads to harm whether it's just a lie that causes people harm or if you say something that's so disparaging it causes someone to become depressed or to commit suicide then you're saying something evil you're doing evil by that and even if you think bad thoughts that having those thoughts is a form of harm especially if it harms you so go back to the buddha there so that's their tripartite ethics the good thoughts good words and good deeds because your thoughts purify your mind your words purify your heart for out of the heart the mouth speaks and your body then is purified by your deeds so you purify your heart mind and body by doing good thoughts good words and good deeds so that's their basic ethics they're not as legalistic as say jains are to say never do harm you know they do believe in killing and warfare because well you may know the persian empire took over the middle east and they understand that sometimes you have to fight people to make peace in the land so they don't have like a rule that says don't ever go to war don't kill but they understand that if you're if you're going to war to stop harm then you're doing it right but if you're just going to war to cause harm then you're doing it wrong i think you get the it's common sense morality in this sense they also take a no tolerance policy on hypocrisy that is they say look if you're being a hypocrite you can't be as a western anymore and they actually will take away for those of you who read the book uh there's a white cord that they actually tie around your waist they kind of represent that you're now fighting on the side of goodness and that white cord kind of represents your girding yourself with the weapons to fight against evil and uh it's the induction ceremony to become a zostrianism well uh if you are found out to be a hypocrite they may take your white belt away and say you cannot call yourself uh pedestrian anymore why would they be so strict about this i mean think about this the hindus are not so strict if you know some hindus are good some hindus are bad uh they they don't have this sort of like tolerance where they shun people buddhists practice compassion on each person giving them a second chance you get the idea right that there's not this sort of like strict line that you you draw in the eastern religions why would these westerns be so strict on this point because hypocrisy is a form of lying and lying is part of which god angerman you so if you are being a hypocrite you say you're being as a western but you're not doing what these westerners are teaching then you are living a lie your hypocrisy is deceitful and therefore you are automatically serving anger on you that's why there's no gray area here you're either doing what is right or you are not and if you're not you're fighting you are on the side of um on you therefore you're not zomestrian right and that's again how the salvation works those people who don't do good will not go to heaven so they will not tolerate hypocrisy for this reason because you're serving the wrong deity hypocrisy itself is a lie they also believe in the equality of all people so we've seen this again with the buddha and mahavira we even saw it with guru nanak and sikhism but as far as the first people to actually declare the equality of all people i think zoestreans actually win that contest is that a contest i don't know but they actually have the first declaration of human rights that was uh to say that all people are equal no matter what their race or nationality or religion is they want to treat everyone as equals and that was very key in the persian empire so key in fact that certain other religions were highly affected by this as you're going to see in the next chapter on judaism the jews were actually enslaved by the babylonians for 70 years we'll talk about this in the next chapter but it was during a 70-year period that the persians rerouted the euphrates river and walked underneath the walls of babylon killed everyone in their sleep well the jews were enslaved in babylon at that time so when the persian king cyrus took over and said i'm now your king and he looks around and he sees all these jews in the kingdom he's like what are you guys doing here and they're like i don't know i guess we're your slaves now and he says i don't believe in slavery you're free to go so he allowed the jews to go back home to build their second temple we'll talk about that in the next chapter but hang on to that because this is why that happened the persians do not believe in slavery they do not believe in you know superiority or inferiority of races so therefore they are the first religion that we know of there may have been cultures before this that had something like it but we just don't have any documentation of it they're the first people that we know of who taught this equality of all people now they also teach a purity code kind of like environmental ethics to protect the earth fire and water from pollution or contamination the earth fire and water are the three purities representing the three gifts that god gave to people to have food and water and to cook so you need the earth to grow your crops you need water to fertilize the food or to drink and you need the fire to either burn the food for for cooking or you know just as a symbol for god there these are the three purities you are not to pollute these things and so they have this very strong environmental stance to say you're not to pollute the earth you're not to pollute the water or the fire as the symbols of god the symbols of purity now i didn't realize just how far they were taking that until about 2012 when they actually sent an email out to all of their followers and again i happen to be on this email list so i got one of the the emails and that what it was was a declaration saying that if you claim to be a zoo austrian and you are not protecting the earth against pollution climate change or what whatever then you are doing it wrong in other words stop calling yourself as a western no no hypocrisy right so they actually sent it was like a three-page email that i printed out that day and i was teaching zostrianism that very morning and i went into the class and i actually showed them that whole email and talked about it and said look they're serious about this they're like if you are not you know getting uh getting off of oil based cars or trying to you know recycle or you know just stop polluting the environment with all of these contaminants then you're doing it wrong so they're very serious about this it's part of the religion i wasn't sure if if that was a major part of this religion but apparently it is they also reject asceticism which we notice was taught in hinduism and jainism as a way of renouncing some of your worldly pleasures like food sleep drink or or sex and the pedestrians are like no those by preventing yourself from doing those things you're not making yourself holier because you know if you're just denying yourself pleasures then nothing good comes from that they think that you need money to pay your bills you need money to have security and to have food and and therefore you shouldn't deny yourself food because that makes you sick you shouldn't deny yourself sleep because that makes you unhealthy and a little bit crazy in in your mind uh some of you may know that already from college but um the the asceticism he says look there's it's okay to be wealthy in fact zostrianism teaches that if you are a good person ahura mazda will reward you with wealth one of the things that's actually prophesied in the scriptures of zoestrianism is that if you're a good zostrian you will be rewarded by god with seven horses now if you're like okay what am i gonna do with seven horses understand that that's a big deal in the ancient era seven horses means you're rich it'd be the equivalent of today say a person owned seven ford mustangs right no pun intended pun intended but the you know the idea is if you have seven automobiles you're probably well off you know like you've got more than enough that's the idea behind this and so therefore they don't shun uh wealth they say that wealth is a sign of of status and growth it's a sign of maturity and goodness and that horamaza will will bless you that way so many zostrians are actually pretty rich some of the most famous people in both america and abroad who are westerns are are very wealthy people the largest automobile cup uh corporation in india today is owned by zoestrean the tapas corporation that's a zoostery who owns that well freddie mercury the hit uh lead singer of the band queen very wealthy one of our supreme court justices in california was a selection and when he was sworn in he was sworn in on the those western scriptures so speaking of the scriptures let's talk about those the ancient scriptures of the westernism are called the gothas and those may have been written by zwaster we don't really know because we don't have many of them left we only have 17 fragments of the god that's left over and so we have to kind of piece together what the ancient scriptures really taught but uh and they were all destroyed by alexander the great who went around burning all their temples and and burning all their scriptures so since then the past two thousand years zweasters have been writing a new set of scriptures known as the avestas and those are the modern day scriptures but the avestas are the modern day scriptures and they are allegedly contain the same teachings as the gothas but in modern day language whether or not it's the same religion i don't know so we just can't really compare the ancient forms of westernism to modern forms of westernism but we just have to trust that the zostrians know that the traditions have been passed down from generation to generation even as they ran from place to place when they've been chased out of countries their priests are called the magi and they they serve as both temple priests for the prayer worship and also as astrologers so those westerns believe that something about the motions of the the planets in this star field indicates future events that are going to happen so therefore they are astrologers they're also priests and you can see here that they are praying at the fire altar where they believe that that is the symbol for god so there is this mistaken belief uh in the middle east particularly that zoroastrians are fire worshipers that is not true and if you ever hear anyone say that or if you yourself believe it please erase that from your mind it is a misconception about zoostreamism that you need to understand they're not fire worshipers they're simply using fire as the symbol for god therefore fire represents the as they're burning incense the fire goes up into the sky and it carries their prayers up to ahura mazda who then grants them their the answered prayers so fire is the symbol for truth and light and goodness and therefore the symbol for ahura mazda but they're not worshiping the fire itself please correct that there are actually people dying to this day because of this misconception in fact last semester in fact i just had or two semesters ago i had a student in my class who said um no i'm from the middle east and i know that they're fire worshipers and i said no they're not and he says no everyone says it there and i say i know they say it there that's the problem right that there are a lot of westerns who are being killed because they're being labeled as fire worshipers but that's not what they believe i say you need to go talk to them so we actually went to this western temple and showed them you know what what was going on he eventually caved and said all right he he actually talked to his electrician and he realized this was a conception that was created by his culture of that time so please correct that now the word magi of course is probably familiar to you for for a couple different reasons number one this is the where we get the word magic from so some of you may recognize that magi is the name for the priest and the fire temples and when alexander the great was going around conquering all the persian temples what he thought he saw them doing was conjuring fire out of stone so he labeled that mystical practice conjuring fire out of stone he called it magic and the word magic has perpetuated through all the western hemisphere right that that term is as if you're conjuring things out of nowhere so that word stuck and it refers to the magi based on their names the other reason why this is significant obviously they weren't pulling fire out of stone i hope you know that there's actual sandalwood on the on the altar and they're burning incense that's what they're really doing the other reason why it's significant is because the word magi appears in another world religion christianity in the four gospels or at least in the in the first gospel of matthew it actually talks about these wise men who come from the east well what's east of jerusalem or east of bethlehem persia right and they're following a star astrologers and they're coming to see a new savior a sausaant right and they're bearing gifts for him so why are these zoa it's very clearly the western right they they come from the land they're following the star they're they're doing the things that the westerns teach and and the question is why are those westerns present at the birth of jesus it's not clear the new testament doesn't explain why they're there there's no explanation given before that or after that but i think the answer to that question it has to do with judaism that both christianity and zostrianism have connections with judaism because christianity emerges out of judaism and zoestreans encounter the jews during the captivity in babylon 500 years before jesus is born so therefore the jews already know about zoestreanism and vice versa so therefore there is this connection i think that they both have we'll get to that in the next chapter so more on that later and then their practices are pretty basic right they're worship horror mazda but the way they do that is through prayer five times a day they pray you know from morning noon and uh evening five times a day to worship ahoramaza and that's their their primary practice now that may sound familiar to you because you may know that another world religion does that very practice islam and zoestrians believe that muslims got that practice from the zostrians and there is some credibility to that given that muhammad himself actually knew zowestrians living in the city of medina during his life so therefore this could be a practice that was picked up by them but muslims have a different reason why they say that they pray five times a day and we'll talk about that in chapter 13. but the practice is very similar they also pray at fire altars as i indicated they're not worshiping the fire they're praying at a fire altar to kind of represent that this is the symbol for god so therefore uh this is their place of worship fire is sacred and so you're not to pollute fire with anything it's one of the three impurities and water is one of the three periods so you you can't cremate the dead because dead bodies are considered to be impure uh unclean so you can't burn the dead because you'd be corrupting the fire with an unclean body and you can't bury the dead because earth is one of the three bearies so you can't bury them underground without polluting the earth and you can't ship them off to sea like the vikings used to do because water is one of the three purities so instead they do this one of the most unique funeral practices in all of world religions is to leave these corpses out in open-air towers called towers of silence where the vultures will simply pick the meat off the bones and then they dump the bones inside the pit inside the tower now there are two religions that do this there is an indigenous religion in tibet that does the same thing and i don't know if that indigenous religion has any connections to zostrianism but it is pretty old and could have been influenced by the persians long ago uh before the persian empire faded away but the the the zostrians still practice this to this day we're looking at a tower of silence here in iran but most westerns have been kind of kicked out of countries like iran and have had to move to india where they are known as the parsis parsi is just the word for persian and so they speak parsi they are called the parsys and it's just their their name in india so therefore they have these towers of silence in india as well but it's creating a bit of a problem because in india the pollution is so bad that the vulture population is starting to go extinct and now the bodies are starting to pile up and they're asking the questions like what do we do about this should we practice something different or do we continue doing this and just let the bodies pile up what do you do when there's no birds to pick the meat off the bones so zoasters are in the middle of a decision and they're actually about to split there are some zoestrians who are conservatives that want to say hey we've been doing this for 4 000 years we're going to keep doing it because that's what you do and there are others westerns that want to take a more liberal approach to say look it doesn't matter how you dispose of the dead it's not really the symbol of god that you're burning or burying them in with the three purities so therefore it's okay to cremate the dead or to do something else they have options that you know you can do in america for example because it's illegal to do this in america so the westerns who live here in america will creamy the dead or uh perhaps they will bury the dead or a mausoleum you know there's there's options they can try to avoid this uh issue with but these westerns are trying to make that choice so that's the zostrian religion in a nutshell if you have any questions about this chapter please let me know otherwise you're ready to take the next quiz and we'll move on in the next chapter to talk about judaism i'll see you guys then