The Indo-European, Indo-Iranic Legacy of the Zoroastrian Magi
#zarathustra, #mithra, #religion, #buddhism, #gnostic, #magi, #legend #history #diffusion #occult #mythos
Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, (زرتشت Zartosht to modern Iranians) was a very real teacher who lived in ancient eastern Iran where he wrote poems and taught about life and love. His writings are full of references to people he knew, including his friends and his children. He was considered a reformer of paganic philosophical cultures as well as what was most likely the Vedic divine pantheon and the Greek/Roman divine pantheons.
The legend, as told in the Gathas and Avesta, holy books of Zorastrians, is that by age thirty, Zarathustra experienced a revelation during spring festival; on a river bank, he saw a shining being who revealed himself to be Vohu Manah (Good Purpose). This being taught Zarathustra about Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord) & five other radiant figures. Soon, he became aware of the existence of a second primal spirit Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit) with opposing concepts Asha (order) and Druj (deception). He decided spend his life teaching people to seek Asha.
According to one telling, Zarathustra died when he was 77 years and 40 days old. Later sources, like Shahnameh, instead claim that an obscure conflict with the Tuiryas people led to his death. He was murdered by a karapan (a priest of the old religion) named Brādrēs.
He had a profound impact on later teachers, like Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Conventionally, Zarathustra is dated to around 1,500 BC, based on a linguistic analysis of the Gathas. But Greek historians of the 6th to 5th century BC (e.g., Xanthus, Eudoxus, Aristotle, etc.) wrote that he lived 6,000 years before Xerxes crossed the Hellespont, or that he lived 6,000 years before Plato died. Supposedly, this is what the Magi who attended Plato's funeral said at that ceremony. Aristotle agreed with that date. And Plutarch tells us he lived 5,500 years before the Trojan War, or 8,000 years before the present time! That’s the Stone Age, ya’ll!1
So, the classical dating puts Zarathustra as a teacher in the context of a united Indo-European, Indo-Iranic community that had yet to fracture into the Indians, the Greek, the Latins, and the Persians, each of whom developed their own separate historical tradition. He wanted to invert the classical pantheons of the Hindu and the Greeks because he argued that the Titans and Olympians of those mythos and the Devas (gods of the Hindus) were demonic, bloodthirsty, forces of war and destruction.
In the Gathas, we learn that Zarathustra preached against religious, ritualistic systems and against warlords whose allies are the priests of the religions Zarathustra preached against. These warlords would carry out cattle raids and sacrifice bulls or slaughter animals to appease the spirits of the dead. The dwellings of the Late Neolithic period in modern Kurdistan were full of bowls and bull horns dating to 8,000-10,000 BC. Moreover, not many traces of agricultural activity were found. Instead, there were a lot of weapons and hunting equipment.
Suddenly, around the same time the classical authors provide us with for Zarathustra’s life, we see a shift to an agricultural society, where the bull’s horns disappear. The warlike implements disappear. And we also see the rise of pottery craftwork involving new firing techniques. Mary Settegast, in her text When Zarathustra Spoke, suggests that perhaps, this pivot to agriculture vs. hunting/gathering may’ve been due to Zarathustra’s moral inversion campaign, the revolutionary religious and philosophical message he gave to the Indo-European, Indo-Iranic pagan communities. Essentially, those who migrated north into India and became the Hindus, and those who went west into Europe and became the Greeks and the Latin, split off of this original Indo-European, Indo-Iranic community because they refused to accept Zarathustra’s teachings.
In the end, because Zoroastrianism became the religion of three successive Iranian empires which spread across Europe and the west as well as into northern India and eastwards, his reforms were able to catch up with the Indo-Europeans who attempted to flee.
The Order of the Magi
Zarathustra founded The Order of Magi—ancestors to the modern day Hermeticists2. Althought they are often considered Zorastraian priests, priest, in this context, encompassed a different context than the one it does today. The Magi were reverent scholars, proto-scientists, that, akin to the later Egyptian priests, carried out experiments of physical natures (e.g. generation of sound, ritualistic ecstasy, conjuring of various chemical or botanical admixtures, the ability to read and write, etc.). These men preserved the philosophies and teachings of Zarathustra in an unaltered form for thousands of years until they were rediscovered by other philosophers and scientists during different historical periods throughout human history.
The Magi were also astrologers. They cultivated the modern practice of astronomy.
The Magi and the Buddah
When northern India was under the dominion of the Persian Parthian Empire (247 BC - 224 AD), Mahayana Buddhism was taking shape. There are two forms of Buddhism—the Mahayana and the Theravada. The Mahayana is comprised of traditions, texts, philosophies and practices which, unlike it counterpart, emphasize of the bodhisattva path—striving to become a fully awakened Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings (but not plants, boo@!!)3.
Coincidetnly, an Indo-Iranian tribe known as the Kushan migrated down from central Asia into northern India where they established a dynastic kingdom. The Kushan were Zoroastrians. The Kushan King, Kanishka’s conquests and patronage of Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Silk Road, and in the transmission of Mahayana Buddhism from Gandhara across the Karakoram range and out to China. Therefore, the evidence shows that a Zoroastrian King played a heavy role in assembling the Mahayana doctrine!
This is how Tibetan Buddhism evolved--out of this tradition. All the missionaries who carried Buddhism into Asia through the Silk Road were predominantly Iranians, ethnically. They came from present day Afghanistan. For example, Padmasambhava, a tantric Buddhist master who was the central figure in the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet was originally from an area in present day Afghanistan, which would have been Eastern Iran circa the 8th and 9th centuries BC.
So, the teachings of Zarathustra have survived in Mahayana Buddhism. In the Tripitaka, the ancient collection of Buddhist sacred scriptures, the traditional authoer, Gautama Buddha himself, teaches us that our work, while on Earth, is to deconstruct our psyche using sound and the direction of attention (not to mention escstaic uses of language and other entheogens) to see the construct that we represent over our many lifetimes—the core of the thing known as self. It’s only then that Buddhists believe we can pull ourselves out from the illusion of life and the suffering therein.
Here, we see a direct connection to the Hermetic religio-philosophy and Buddhist thought. The Hermeticsts heristiacal position is that through careful study and experimentation, humans can be akin to gods. This appears to be the same position of the Mayahana Buddhists. Through the path of the bodhisatva, humans can become the Buddha themselves.
When Mahayana Buddhism took shape (a three to four hundred years after the passing of the Buddha), the emphasis from individual salvation transformed into the quest for Bodhisattva—one that generates a spontaneous wish and compassionate mind to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all, not just the self. This is the eschatology of Zoroastrianism, wherein the culmination of our evolution isn't the ultimate state of soteriological release or the liberation from dunkha and saṃsāra, but rather some kind of alchemical transmutation which turns humans…into something akin to light itself.
The Diffusion
Mithra is the savior figure of Zoroastrianism. Mithra was a solar deity. Mithra is the world's savior figure in Zoroastrianism. Mithra (more commonly known around the world as Mehr) is an Iranian deity of covenant, light, oath, justice, and…wait for it…the sun. To make the case that the legacy Zarathustra and the Magi seeded what we refer to today as the Egyptian, Hellenic tradition of Hermeticism, and that this seeding spread across the planet like wildfire during the pre-Socratic era, I present some fascinating aspects about the myth of Mithra.
Mithra was born of a virgin mother in the middle of the night between December 24 and December 25 which is to this day celebrated in Iran as the holiday Yalda. Etymologically, Yalda is connected to “yule day” in the Norse tradition. So there’s a morsel of a thread of a line of inquiry into the idea that the Norse religion may also be of Indo-Iranic origin (or at least, have been directly influenced by it).
The Scythians were an Iranian people who refused to submit themselves the authority of Iranian rule. And so they rode together with Germanic tribes into Europe, where their fame as savages and warriors became legend throughout all three continents! But their migration allows for a conduit of philosphical diffusion from the Order of the Magi into northern Europe.
Then, there’s the strange matter of Mithraism being the religion that rose to prominence in the Roman Empire. That’s right. Most of us are brought up to think that the ancient Romans worshipped Jupiter or Mars, or Juno, etc. And, although they did, during the reign of Antoninus Pius (circa 150 AD) and Marcus Aurelius, it was Mithraism that reached an apogee of popularity, spreading throughout the Roman Empire into the third century AD.
Why? Well, in the early 20th century, it was posited that the ancient Iranian state religion was disseminated from the east and the Aryan (Iranian) peoples. But in the early 1970s, this thinking was challenged because there was simply very little evidence to support it.
But, just for fun, let’s say that the Roman mystery cult of Mithras WAS in fact a diffusion emanating from the Iranian Zorastrian system of thinking. How would that diffusion occur. The obvious answer would be by the Order of the Magi4. But another plausible suggestion for the diffusion could be…pirates. Or rather, privateers.
These Mediterranean Sea privateers/pirates answered only to the Mithraic King Mithradates (the first Persian emperor). They became so powerful that the Roman Navy was rendered feckless in the region for a while. They even took Julius Caesar prisoner at one point and freed him for a large ransom. It was these Mithraic pirates/privateers that contacted various aristocratic houses throughout the port cities of the Roman Empire and began the spread of Mithras into Rome.
Mithraism and Christianity
Mithra was an ancient Iranian diety. It was known as Mitra in the Vedic tradition. But there are several clues, similarities between Mithraism and Christianity that bear the mark of the ancient Iranian Magi. For example, there's the Phrygian cap of the Magi--a soft, conical cap with the apex bent over. This later becomes the Mitre of the Catholic bishops, and their red robe. The practice of Christian communion, consisting of drinking of wine and the breaking of bread inscribed with an equilateral cross inside of a circle (a symbol of the sun) is nearly identical to the practices of the ancient Mithraists.
But most glaringly, the influence of the Magi onto Christian philosophy can best be eivnced by the teachings of Christ about love and compassion—teachings that can’t be reconciled with the god of the Old Testament.
Zorastrainism and the Norse Tradition
It's likely that Zarathustra also sought to reform the ancient Norse traditions with their pantheon of warlike figures like Thor or Odin. There are multiple philological clues that allow for this hypothesis. For example, the Northern European tradition of Thor may be yet another transformation of the older Iranian god, Tir. Tir, in Farsi, means arrow or bullet. In Persian mythology, Arash, a legendary bowman, looses an arrow which defines the realm of the Aryans in distinction from the non-Aryan world. Arash was turned into Aries among the Greeks, who softened all the “sh” sounds (e.g., they turned Kurosh into Cyrus). So Arash, for the Romans, becomes Mars and the Roman legionaries who had adopted Mithraism said that Mithras was Mars. So Tir, who becomes Thor, is Mars or Mithra.
Though Zoroastrianism, in an explicit form has largely survived through the Parsees of India, they represent only a certain narrow state orthodoxy established at a particular historical period within Iran. The practices that can be deduced from history and sociological evidence show how the Zoroastrians and the Magi lived their lives without any designated priests to control them--they had more freedom than most religions allow for during this time period but still adhered strongly towards spiritual beliefs based on the good of the many.
The Magi were indistinguishable from the Gnostics. Their emphasis on individual search for the truth and pursuit of wisdom, the love of Sophia, is a hallmark of the ancient Magi and Zorastrians. So, you could very well call Zarathustra, the first Gnostic.
Hypothesis
There is a direct, esoteric, occult, and mysterious heritage tying the ancient Iranian Order of the Magi, developed by the Avestan heirophant Zarathustra, to modern-day occult philosophy/practices5 and the evolution of modern sciences like chemistry, physics, astronomy, botany, pharmacology, and biology.
The classical dating seems improbable to me. However, I am curious why this dating happens to coincide with the transition out of the Stone Age for much of humanity in Eurasia as well as Africa. If Zarathustra lived sometime around 6,000 BC, he would have lived when we find the first evidence of human metalurgy and the innovation of techniques for smelting ore—both, practices of the ancient Hermetists, turned alchemists.
Hermeticists believe in a prisca theologia, the doctrine that a single, true theology exists, that it exists in all religions, and that it was given by God to man in antiquity. In order to demonstrate the truth of the prisca theologia doctrine, Christians appropriated the Hermetic teachings for their own purposes.
In my opinion, the worst shortcoming of the Buddhist tradition. Plants have souls, dude.
Perhaps this is why “wise men from the east” just happen to be traveling through Bethlehem. This could represent the purpose of the Order of the Magi as those that carried forward and disseminated wisdom to other world cultures.
Examples include the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, Freemasons, Wicca, the mystical interpretation of the Torah known as the Kabbala, etc.