Zoroastrianism

Perhaps the first faith of one wise creator and a moral battle at the heart of the cosmos.

c. 1200 BCE → · Greater Iran · Iranian & Dualist

Founded by the Iranian prophet Zarathustra, Zoroastrianism worships Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and casts existence as a struggle between truth (asha) and the lie, in which each person's choices matter. Its ideas — a supreme good creator, an adversarial spirit, angels and demons, a final judgment, resurrection, and a coming renovation of the world — are widely held to have influenced Second Temple Judaism and, through it, Christianity and Islam.

Key figures

• Zarathustra (the prophet)
• Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord
• Angra Mainyu, the hostile spirit

Texts

• The Avesta
• The Gathas of Zarathustra

Beliefs

• A cosmic struggle of truth against the lie
• Free moral choice between good and evil
• Final judgment, resurrection, and renewal

Rituals

• Tending the sacred fire
• Purity observances
• Recitation of the Gathas

Grew from

• Proto-Indo-European Religion

Connections in the atlas

• The Behistun Inscription
• Yazd fire temple and Chak Chak
• Div (daēva)
• Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi
• ? Was the "Baghdad battery" an ancient battery?
• The eternal fires of Absheron
• Ahura Mazda
• Exile to Babylon and return
• Faravahar
• Parallel texts: The forbidden fruit and the lost chance of immortality
• The word mantra
• The Kurds