Comprehending Zarathustrianism Through Jason Jorjani's Work.

Learning something new takes steps. And so, these colours that go with the words are helper steps in which to guide the mind to understanding what is what. This is an excerpt from Jason Reza Jorjani's book, "Novel Folklore: On Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl." Sadegh Hedayat was a brilliant Iranian writer and his book The Blind Owl is said to be a masterpiece. I read it. It is. Extraordinary. But in this post I'm not going to go into the translations of the symbolism of his book by Jason Reza Jorjani. I just want to understand some principles of life, and the words that some beings have used, in which to put those principles before us. That is, what the Persian's "thought-feeling" was way back then, and brought back here, cleaned up and clarified by Jason, for us to comprehend.

From "Novel Folklore: On Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl," by Jason Reza Jorjani:

      "Towards the end of promoting a convergence of Greek and Persian popular religion, the Hellenized Seleucid and Parthian princes anthropomorphized the theosophical principles of Ahura Mazda and Angra Maynu into the antagonistic figures of Ohrmazd and Ahriman.

     In the original teachings of the sage Zarathustra, as we find it in his Gathas when read apart from later accretions of the Avesta, the divinity Ahura Mazda was the "Great Living Spirit of Wisdom." This makes Ahura Mazda somewhat analogous to how the Greek Nous came to be understood by Hermeticists of the Hellenistic era. With respect to Ahura Mazda, there were two coequal mentalities: Spenta Maynu, or the generous, broadminded renovating spirit of bounteous "progression," and Angra Maynu or the petty, narrow-minded conservative spirit of "constraint" and consequent stagnation. The Great Living Spirit of Wisdom could be sought through the progressive mentality, but it was nothing like a being with agency that would in any way impinge on one's choice to act out of the constrictive mentality. The whole thrust of Zarathustra's message is that human beings have the free will to choose between the two mentalities.

     It must also be said that these two mentalities were respectively associated with Asha, or "truth," and Drough, or "deceit." Asha literally means "Righteousness" in the sense of the Right Order of the Cosmos (something like Natural Law in its scholastic connotation), so that Drough, or "the Lie," is deceit in the sense of disharmony with Nature. Zarathustra viewed the daeva (later div), the gods of the Indo-European pantheon, as promulgators of Deceit and the followers of the priesthood as partisans of the Lie. The Gathas begin with "the soul of Mother Earth" (Gaya) calling forth the partisans of Truth (ashavan) to become her good stewards by defeating great deceivers (droughvan) and liberating her from their violent oppression. Zarathustra refers to the "Living Earth" as "our True dwelling, rather our endurance and strength" and as "the joy-bringing World." One of the most life-affirming and down-to-earth passages of the Gathas reads: "Indeed, he destroys the doctrine who considers it wrong to look at the world and the sun with plain eyes..."

      Although Zoroastrianism was established as the state religion of Iran by the Sassanid descendants of the priest Papak at the founding of the third Persian Empire (224 AD), centuries of Hellenization had turned it into something radically different from the sagacious wisdom of Zarathustra as we find it in the Gathas and as it may still have been understood by spiritual and intellectual elites during the first Persian Empire of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. The Greco-Persian Seleucids (312 BC--63 BC) and Parthians (247 BC--224 AD) had lowered Ahura Mazda to the level of an anthropomorphic deity, namely Ohrmazd, and moreover, one modeled on the Heavenly Lord Zeus rather than the embattled rebel Prometheus--who would certainly have been a more appropriate analogue from the Greek pantheon. Meanwhile, Angra Maynu was raised to the level of Ahura Mazda as his eternal adversary, Ahriman. What was Spenta Maynu, simply became an attribute of Ohrmazd, although its "progressive" spirit was perverted, if not lost, since Sassanid Zoroastrian orthodoxy was very litigious, ritualistic, and conservative.

      Ohrmazd became the Lord of Light and Truth, and Ahriman the Lord of Darkness and Deceit. Moreover, the purely ethical dualism of Zarathustra was transformed into a metaphysical dualism wherein the earthly realm of material existence was Evil, the product of an attack by Ahriman and his demons on the purely luminous celestial abode of Ohrmazd and his angels. 

It has long been acknowledged that orthodox Zoroastrianism was the only major world religion not confronted with the problem of evil, because Ohrmazd, although omniscient, is not omnipotent. There was however, a problem of how to reconcile this fact with a faith in the ultimate triumph of Good on Judgment Day (a Zoroastrian idea introduced into Judaism during the Babylonian exile). 

The Zurvanite heresy evolved out of an attempt to resolve this theological problem with recourse to Time. Some Zoroastrian theologians thought that the triumph of Ohrmazd could be construed in terms of an agreed-upon partition of Time and world sovereignty in the following manner:

The first epoch of the world was an epoch of pre-existence, of the timeless archetypes of all good things. The second epoch was the creation of the physical world by Ohrmazd, based on the celestial archetypes. The third epoch was one wherein Ohrmazd agrees to a deliverance of this creation over to the Lordship and Bondage of Ahriman. The fourth and final epoch is that wherein the forces of Light triumph over the forces of Darkness, who are cleansed from the world through a great purifying fire (tan pasin), and the dominion of Ohrmazd is reestablished over a refreshed creation (frashgard)."

Let me say something. So what those stupid priests are doing is putting everyone in bondage. They're in fact trying to take free will away from people by making the teachings of good and evil into personages that are above and beyond human beings, and putting them UNDER their rulership so that the being appears to have no right to their own life, to see for themself what they are doing, whether good or evil, but are now puppets to some otherworld Lords of Light and Dark! Fucking priests. So what they mean to do is to take sovereignty away from the individual and to have the people, not individuals but a mass being puppeted in fact, by them! The beginning of mind manipulation right there. Twisting and turning the being's own thoughts to what they want them to think. Anyway, let's continue:

"Each of the epochs spans three thousand years, so that the cosmic epic unfolds over a total of twelve thousand years. The twelve days of Nowruz, the Persian New Year ceremony, commemorate this cosmic cycle. There is also a thirteenth day of Nowruz, whose symbolic reference to the collapse of the cosmos into Chaos after a full cycle survives in the fold tradition, of literally heading for the hills, to camp in the countryside, lest misfortunes befall one within the house or the city on that day. To stay at home on the Sizdeh ("the thirteenth") at the conclusion of Nowruz is considered an invitation to very bad luck, the kind of accursed jinxes that are associated with the owl in Persian culture."

Look at how badly those nutcases have brainwashed and manipulated all the individuals who are suppose to be thinking for themselves, who are suppose "to look at the world and the sun with plain eyes..."

So, because of the priests, the people's minds have been duped with stupid superstitions that they don't even look at to wonder what is that all about? And therefore, pursuing stupid mindless priest-invented superstitions, they end up hurting people who will not listen to those superstitions, who will stay at home on that day, and so they, stupidly, end up cursing and hurting a person who is listening to their own mind, and thus making their life miserable because they are so duped, because they so believe in that one idiotic superstition that they cannot fathom anything else, and like knee-jerk reactionary insects, they jump on that person blindly because they are different from their ingrained beliefs that they have swallowed hook line and sinker from the priests.

The Gathas of Zarathustra by Insler, 1975

This phrase says all that Michael Tsarion has been telling us since his book "Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation."

9. But thereupon the soul of the cow wept: "I who have recognized that my caretaker is powerless, (merely) the voice of a man without might, although I wish him to be one who possesses the rule through power---when, during my lifetime, shall that person appear who shall give help and hand to him?" --Yasna 29 (pg39)









Actually, this book is fucking hilarious! Jason is a brilliant writer. I've been laughing so much throughout some of the things he brings up, hahahahaa....so funny.