The Curse of Zoroaster

Disturbing Roots of Monotheism in the Modern World

Evidence abounds that we live in an insane world, not just messy and chaotic on a human scale, but colossally outrageous with ritualized executions in high-definition video and ethnic-religious wars forcing more than 100 million refugees to live lives of hopelessness and desperation.  It's as though we are in a Laurel and Hardy absurd comedy: "Another fine mess you've gotten us into... "

Albert Einstein is credited with defining insanity as doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. Maybe if we look back into our history we can discover where we went insane and why today it is so appealing. A good place to begin is the Holocaust, an act that is so undeniably insane except to those insane folks claiming it never happened.

Fascism with its deep, sinister roots in racism and purity can be traced back to a very disturbed Persian in the 5th century BCE.  Later, in 1896, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" evoking the words of the ancient prophet Zoroaster to confirm the evolution of mankind from our messy humanity to purity, an Übermensch or "overman" - a superhuman. The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race.  A form of Nietzsche's Übermensch became a philosophical foundation for the fascist or National Socialist ideas. The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans", Üntermenschen, which could be dominated, enslaved, and even exterminated.

Aryan Roots

So, who was Zoroaster and how did he foster not only the Holocaust but much of the current maladies of the modern world?  What were his motivations and how do they echo into our lives today? To find the thread, we have to unravel the phrase "Aryan" from the current fascist meaning as a "Germanic race".  Aryans, before Germany even existed, were a tribe from central Asia that split into two groups migrating south into what is now Afghanistan and India and into Persia or what we know as Iran or "Ayran".

From central Asia, these Alpine and Proto-Nordic people had domesticated the horse and developed bows and arrows as weapons. Beyond their technology, they also brought ideas and philosophies far different from the animistic, equalitarianism that prevailed during prehistory. The name came to mean “noble people.”

To India, they brought the Vedas, stories of men and gods fighting side by side to oppose the forces of threat and evil.  It was the beginning of the concept of duality – good and evil and of supernatural gods/goddesses that had the power to influence forces flowing into Nature and human culture.  To Persia, they brought the Magi, priests dedicated to investigating the “logic” of creation and the forces of Nature. 

Both the early Persians and Indians developed a caste system, primarily structured to support a priestly caste whose sole function was to study and understand the “music of the spheres” – how the celestial (godly) and the human (earthly) interacted.  This is a profound shift from passive hunter-gatherer dependence on Nature to a more aggressive struggle to understand the mechanisms behind it all and that mankind was capable of comprehension of such magnitude. This is, of course, our “fall from grace” and the spark of the flames of dualistic thinking.

Caste System

Along with technology and religion, the Aryans brought a code of “laws” which were more religious than legal. It is a variation of this same “primal” code of laws that were the basis of laws for many of the Western and Middle Eastern civilizations – Persian, Babylonian, Samarian, Egyptian, and Aegean/Roman.  Again, because few people were literate, the codes were primarily guidelines for societal norms and were flexible and used as a curriculum for educating the elite priests or Magi/Brahmins.

The ensuing caste system was a practical means to direct human energies during rough times.  As mentioned, it was designed to support an educated elite class of priests, but this says more about how important this function was in the formation of these proto-modern civilizations.  The Brahmin/Magi shamans were literally the soul of the tribe, performing magic-religious rituals, healing, storytelling, divination or fortune telling, and moral adjudicator – determining societal “right actions” to align with the magical forces or energies that linked all worldly things. Brahmans or Magi were links between mankind and the gods – a highly valued commodity in a brutal and capricious time.

The treatment and fate of women during this period were practical and linked to reproduction and caring for children, who were a precious and scarce commodity, necessary for the survival of any civilization. During this time of polytheism, as is evident still today in Vedic cultures, both female and male deities were worshiped and esteemed. While early cultures were largely equalitarian, survival demanded a concentration of energies largely determined by biology.

Conquest of the Western World

Both Aryan cultures thrived with the ancient Persians dominating the Mesopotamian regions and, in India, climatic changes forced the Vedic people to move toward the Ganges valley, but the core Vedic traditions survived and are still practiced as Hinduism today. Sharing a common language, the ancient Persians and Vedic Indians comingled extensively sharing commerce, heritage, and knowledge.

The rise of Zoroastrianism became the most dominant religion in the vast Persian Empire, ranging from Egypt in the west to Turkey in the north and east through Mesopotamia to the Indus River from 559 BCE-651 CE (1210 years). Zoroaster was the first to teach doctrines of individual judgment, heaven/hell, the future resurrection of the body, last judgment, and life everlasting. He defied the prevailing myth that conflict of order/chaos was immutable. He taught that the world was not static, while always troubled, it was moving toward a harmonious state to be realized after a prodigious "Final Battle" where the Supreme God, Azura Mazda, would eliminate the forces of chaos, Angra Minu, and his loathsome human allies. The "righteous" are destined to live evermore on a "perfected" earth and "sinners" to be annihilated.

Zoroaster made his obsessive-compulsive disorder a religion. He was highly concerned with purity and Arta - righteous law - that God’s creation is an orderly process set up in time and space in a meaningful and manageable hierarchy and that life was a battle between good and evil also order vs. chaos. He imagined God's creation as an orderly process, bringing forth various worlds and beings in sequential order and setting them up logically in space and time in a meaningful and manageable hierarchy.

Zoroastrian scripture suggests women are prone to temptations of evil (chaos) and should be kept under regular watch. Menstruation and childbirth are viewed as major sources of "pollution" and women should maintain seclusion and avoid contact with anything. Fire was revered as the most holy of elements, used to cleanse and purify, and to determine innocence and guilt. A menstruating woman was forbidden to even look toward the family hearth. Not only was the divide between good and evil enhanced but between male and female, heaven and earth, as well.

Zoroastrian Priest With Headress and Mask

Zoroaster's maniacal fastidiousness, of course, extended to all aspects of human existence - food choice/preparation, bathing/purification rituals, religious rites, sexual relations, and death.  Because the human body was considered "impure", it could contaminate the purity of either fire or earth, and corpses were placed on high towers to be consumed by vultures and the elements. Even today Zoroastrian priests wear surgical facemask-type veils, so their breath doesn't contaminate the sacred fire. It is this extreme asceticism, a revulsion of humanity that inspired the predominate religions of the West - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and echoes today, often subconsciously, throughout modern culture.

Rise of Totalitarian Monotheism

In the West we like to think of the development of monotheism as a civilizing process: turning wanton pagans into pious parishioners, but there were sinister consequences as well. The problem of the inherent dualism of human existence is resolved in an apocalyptic "Final Judgment" where the struggle of "us" against "them" is ended by a thorough annihilation of anyone/anything deemed as "them".

In Zoroaster's buttoned-down mind, the concept of duality was too messy and chaotic to fit into his perfectly ordered world. He resolves the cognitive dissonance by framing our current existence as a trial or test to establish those with the purity and fortitude to ascend to the Übermensch-hood that Nietzsche imagined in his name.  What develops is a maniacal "carrot and the stick" stimulus to keep the human race striving toward a promised land, a "paradise", which comes from the Persian word for exceptional gardens, pairi-daeza, which in later years was shortened to paridiz - a celestial garden, a tantalizing glimpse of the earth's heavenly future. The Taj Mahal is a prime example of attempting to create paradise on earth.

The concept of monotheism also clears up the untidy question of which god or goddess is the "true" God.  Zoroaster pioneered the concept of divine revelation to a worthy prophet, which has been copied by Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. It also helps that the God so revealed is of another realm or dimension than our mortal lives so there is no chance of verification or ambiguity.  There is only one God and any competition then by definition is not God, but some illusion or manifestation of evil.  Such focused clarity is very powerful to stay functional and motivated in very hostile and capricious times sanctioning actions almost reflexively without the need for personal reflection and soul searching. 

Zoroastrian Priests Tending the Sacred Fire

God is not personal, but universal and speaks through written laws rather than human intuition and contemplation.  This de-personalization and de-humanization of God allowed the Deity to become a commodity to be packaged and distributed by priests and royalty.  Persian kings, Cyrus and Darius, used war as a means of enlightenment developing the first form of internationalism - religious unity. This also is the seed for the roots of genocide - believing a group has a "divine imperative" as people chosen by God to implement His "intention" on the world.

Domination of the Western World

Greco-Roman culture, which laid the foundations for Western civilization, was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism and its spawn - Judaism and Christianity, while the Middle East and North Africa primarily were consumed by Islam.  Ironically much of the current world woes are echoes of Zoroaster's curse.  Persia, now Iran, was invaded by Islamic Arabs in 642-651CE. Islam is a direct offshoot of Zoroaster's teachings and, because of its similarities to Islam and harsh persecution by the Arabs, Zoroastrianism was wiped out in native Iran with many escaping to India forming the Parsi community.

Zoroastrianism and Persian culture were absorbed into Islam. It is important to realize that Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. The Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor.

Iranian Islam is often considered a second advent of Islam itself, a new Islam sometimes referred to as Islam-i Ajam. It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and to India under the reign of the Mughal - Mongols who invaded Turkey and converted to Islam. The official court and academic language in Mughal India for over 300 years was Persian changing only when the English colonized it in the early 1800's.

Ironically, India is now the last bastion of Zoroastrianism, gasping its last breath, choking on its obsession with purity, not allowing converts, but only those directly born into the race/religion. While the original source of Zoroaster's curse is waning, the ripple effects of his mad theology continue to urge mankind to even greater feats of war and genocide, all justified as a prelude of ethnic cleansing in preparation for the "Final Judgment".

"I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day." ~ Albert Camus