Zoroastrians and Parsis in Science Fiction

A calm that would have been beyond him had come upon Bronya. "Yes," she murmured, "you have a Manichaean kind of religion. Ormuzd and Ahriman, Law and Chaos, Light and Dark, forever at war. A very natural faith, here. . . . But that's all incomprehensible to you, isn't it? Never mind."

While they numbered under a score, they were of many sorts, not only soldiers but workmen, serfs, slaves. Rank on earth counted for nothing before Ahura-Mazda.

As it did not before the Lord of the Christians . . . but they welcomed women to their services, passed fleetingly through Gratillonius. His father, his brother, himself followed Mithras...

He didn't think Ahriman would deign to employ mere spooks, and in any event they must flee from the light of Ahura-Mazda which Mithras bore. He could not understand why otherwise rational people had all those vague superstitions about Ys.

"Above all Gods," Gratillonius said, "is Ahura-Mazda. He's also called Ormazd, Jupiter, Zeus, many names. Those don't mean much; He Is, the High, the Ever-Good." He found himself slipping into the words of the Lion from whom he had received instruction. Well, they were doubtless better than any he could put together. "Below all Gods is Ahriman, Evil, Chaos, maker of hell and devils and misery. The story of the world is the story of the war between Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. So is the story of your soul, lad. They war for it the same as they do for the whole of Creation. But you don't have to stand by helpless. You can be a soldier yourself."

The source religion of Western Asia is unknown, but certain similar themes run through Buddhism, Brahmanism and Hinduism of India, and Mithraism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism of Asia Minor, suggesting that there was once a common body of information.

"To me, God is All; He favors no particular sect. The Holy Order of Vision is not a sect in that sense; we seek only for the truth that is God, and feel that the form is irrelevant. While we honor Jesus Christ as the Son of God, we also honor the Buddha, Zoroaster, and the other great religious figure; indeed, we are all children of God..."

...while some sport papers from places so little known that even experienced customs and immigration officers have been known to have to refer to their reference books to find them: places like Dasah, a trucial state on a small island in the Persian Gulf, or Thulahn, a mountainous principality between Sikkim and Bhutan, or the Zoroastrian People's Republic of Inner Magadan, between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Arctic Ocean, or San Borodin, the only independent Canary Isle.

I had dipped into records of past prophets during my Earth research. Zarathustra. Jesus. Mohammed. Shabbetai Tzevi... Al Mahdi, who had defeated the British at Khartoum. Joseph Smith... and Brigham Young... And all the little ones since, the pretenders whose religions had eventually foundered, the charlatans of small talent, of skewed messages...

"Dieter?"

"Ja. Who's this?"

"Tattoo Alpha Zoroaster."

"Taz?"

The Marakoi Pops [in Kenya] broke into an up-tempo version of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and applause again filled the hall.

"...Neither would a Taoist. Neither would a Zoroastrian, presuming that there were still such..."

"You said his big crotchet was Persian magic?"

"Yeah, he's really into esoteric stuff. Zoroastrianism."

I scooped up some sand. "Another subject I don't know much about, and what I've read is mostly forgotten."

"I don't know much either. I know he spent time in Iran on an archaeological dig, before that country got to be a dangerous place for Westerners. Must have been in his undergraduate days."

I let the sand run through my fingers. "Then the magic that Merlin works is Zoroastrian?"

Jill thought about it. "I think he's combined some systems. Grant would know, since Grant works in the same system."

"Ragnarok" isn't a name from Persian mythology. Scandinavian."

"As I said, you can combine mythologies."

"...It's not Grant. I think . . . this may sound crazy. I think it's a god."

"Any particular god?"

I asked.

Merlin returned his gaze to the screen. "Yes. Ahura Mazda, the Persian supreme deity."

Jill said, "I've always wondered why Persian mythology attracts you so much."

Merlin rotated in his chair and crossed his legs. "Well, I spent time in Iran in the seventies, before they booted the shah out, digging up in the mountains. Couple of sites, one an ancient Zoroastrian fire-temple and monastery."

What did we make up? he asked himself blearily. The entire theology, he realized. They had fed into the ship's computer all the data they had in their possession concerning advanced religions. Into T.E.N.C.H. 889B had gone elaborate information dealing with Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Zoroastrianism, Tibetan Buddhism . . . a complex mass, out of which T.E.N.C.H. 889B was to distill a composite religion, a synthesis of every factor involved.

"What's C.E.?"

"Common Era. The designation replaces A.D. Valentinus's Gnosticism is the more subtle branch as opposed to the Iranian, which of course was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism dualism..."

Being eclectic in terms of his theology, Fat listed a number of saviors: the Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus and Abu Al-Qasim Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah Abd Al-Muttalib Ibn Hashim (i.e. Muhammad). Sometimes he also listed Mani... The sifting bridge of Zoroastrianism had been set up, by means of which good souls (those of light) became separated from bad souls (those of darkness).

Pg. 124:

We are all wounded and we all need a physician--Elijah for the Jews, Asklepios for the Greeks, Christ for the Christians, Zoroaster for the Gnostic, the followers of Mani, and so forth.

QUMRAN SCROLL "THE WAR OF THE SONS OF LIGHT AND THE SONS OF DARKNESS." SOURCE: JEWISH ASCETIC SECT ESSENES.

Strange, Harms thought. He knew of the Essenes... The sect had anticipated an early end to the world, with the Battle of Armageddon taking place within the first century, C.E. The sect had shown strong Zoroastrian influences.

"After that," Zina said, "the idea of the judgment of human souls passed over into Persia." In the ancient Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, a sifting bridge had to be crossed by the newly dead person. If he was evil the bridge got narrower and narrower until it toppled off and plunged into the fiery pit of hell. Judaism in its later stages and Christianity had gotten their ideas of the Final Days from this.

The good person, who managed to cross the sifting bridge, was met by the spirit of his religion: a beautiful young woman with superb, large breasts. However, if the person was evil the spirit of his religion consisted of a dried-up old hag with sagging paps. You could tell at a glance, therefore, which category you belonged to... In those judgments of the dead, stemming from Egypt and Persia, the scrutiny was pitiless and the sinful soul was de facto doomed...

Zarathustra descended alone from the mountains, encountering no one. But when he came into the forest, all at once there stood before him an old man who had left his holy cottage to look for roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra.

"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago he passed this way. Zarathustra he was called, but he has changed. At that time you carried your ashes to the mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to be punished as an arsonist?

"Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one; what do you now want among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, would you now climb ashore? Alas, would you again drag your own body?"

Zarathustra answered: "I love man."

"Why," asked the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved man all-too-much? Now I love God; man I love not. Man is for me too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me."

"And what is the saint doing in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.

The saint answered: "I will make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming, I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?"

When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: "What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!" And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.

For a terrible, weak-kneed instant Dimi thought he would not be able to speak, but the strength came. "You are Mithras, and you must slay the bull."

The hand held him. "Who says this? Are you a messenger of Ahriman, who would have the bull destroyed?"

"I bring orders form the Sun," Dimitrios said. "He says the bull must die."

"Then it is done," said the voice of Mithras, and though Dimi had been taught the legend well...

Then Father Tom Zurvan strode into the room as if the Red Sea was parting before him. His waist-long auburn hair waved wildly like a nest of angry vipers. Painted on his forehead was a big orange S, which stood for "Symbol." Bright blue was daubed on the end of his nose... His ID disc bore a flattened figure eight lying on its side and slightly open at one end. The symbol for a broken eternity...

"...I have... sat at the feet of all the prophets, trying to learn from them. Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, Zoroaster and Confucius: all of them."

"Have you?" was all she could say.

"They like to get together and argue. Sometimes they get excited, but they never fight. That would be unbecoming to prophets."

"He wants no honor from us," I said. I pointed to the frieze of the last emperor of Persia surrendering to Alexander. "Mihradarius is a Zoroastrian fanatic. He is trying single-handedly to defeat the invaders who conquered his people and assimilated his religion a thousand years ago."

"...But I see you are troubled. May I ask if you are of the faith?"

"Which faith is that?"

"That's what I'm asking you!" the chaplain snapped... "How can I help you if I do not know what your religion is?"

"Fundamentalist Zoroastrian."

The chaplain took a plastic-covered sheet from a drawer and ran his finger down it. "Z . . . Z . . . Zen . . . Zodomite . . . Zoroastrian, Reformed Fundamentalist, is that the one?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, should be no trouble with this, my son . . . 21-52-05 . . ." He quickly dialed the number on a control plate set into the desk; then, with a grand gesture and an evangelistic gleam in his eye, he swept all the laundry papers to the floor. Hidden machinery hummed briefly, a portion of the desk top dropped away and reappred a moment later bearing a black plastic box decorated with golden bulls, rampant. "Be with you in a second," the chaplain said, opening the box.

First he unrolled a length of white cloth sewn with more golden bulls, and draped this around his neck. He placed a thick, leather-bound book next to the box, then on the closed lid set two metal bulls with hollowed-out backs. Into one of them he poured distilled water from a plastic flak and into the other sweet oil, which he ignited. Bill watched these familiar arrangements with growing happiness.

"It's very lucky," Bill said, "that you are a Zoroastrian. It makes it easier to talk to you."

"No luck involved, my son, just intelligent planning." The chaplain dropped some powdered Haoma into the flame, and Bill's nose twitched as the drugged incense filled the room. "By the grace of Ahura Mazdah I am an anointed priest of Zoroaster. By Allah's will a faithful muezzin of Islam, through Yahweh's intercession a circumcised rabbi, and so forth... But now, you must tell me your problem . . ."

Think I prefer a place as openly racist as India, where if you aren't Hindu, you're nobody--except that Parsees look down on Hindus and vice versa.

For instance, a century later the priests of Ahriman were chanting, although they were too intelligent to believe it themselves, the miracle of Ahriman's snatching of his own hallowed shroud. One night the twelve accursed swordsmen saw the blackly scribbled shroud rise like a pillar of cobwebs from the altar, rise higher than mortal man, although the form within seemed anthropoid. Then Ahriman spoke from the shroud, and they worshiped him, and he replied with obscure parables and finally strode giantlike from the secret shrine.

The shrewdest of the century-later priests remarked, "I'd say a man on stilts, or else-" (happy surmise!) "--one man on the shoulders of another."

On the sunbeaten mesa in Arizona, as if it were a Parsi Tower of Silence, vultures tore away the last shreds of the flesh of Asa Holcomb's face, laying wholly bare the beautiful grinning red bone.

But White was certainly Cal's adjective; all right, no Lady of Darkness, but a Lady of Light and in eternal opposition to the other, yang to its yin, Ormadz to its Ahriman--yes, by Robert Ingersoll!

The Music Center. Stunning place. Went there a week or so ago... Mahler's Second Symphony. Mehta did a brilliant job. When the chorus came in softly in the final movement, I began to tingle.

"You're right. The stars aren't out anymore. They never were. Something got there before us, before we ever existed."

"I suppose we could hold hands and whistle Thus Spake Zarathustra?" Gaby suggested.

I guess I'm licked, and I guess I was wrong all along to be so unyielding, but amn it all anyhow. For the first time in my life I can sympathize with all those hateful, heavy fathers cracking down on a son who had decided he was gay or a daughter in love with a black/Jew/Parsee/whatever. Unfortunately, being able to see the resemblance doesn't help me break free of it.

She pushed PLAY. Instantly the bombastic opening of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra erupted from the speakers, a fanfare popularized by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddysey...

They couldn't get away from Nietzsche today: Zarathustra on the tape deck, Die Frohliche Wissenschaft on their tongues.

"What's it like to die?"

"Cold."

"Cold?"

"Persian hell is cold," said Chris.

Ollie piped up. "That would be Zoroastrian. Early Persian."

And he had added a dozen more items to the lengthening list of what Zarathustra could not produce in adequate quantities and no longer needed to import... The Company didn't need to carry Zarathustra any more; Zarathustra could carry the Company, and itself. Fifteen years ago, when the Zarathustra Company had sent him here...

Kootie's parents had told him all about Rama and Koot Hoomie and Zorro-Aster and Jiddu Krishnamurti...

"No wonder Marxism is dead."

"Well, sir actually a lot of people on Mars call themselves Marxists."

'Sh--! They might as well call themselves Zoroastrians, or Jansenists, or Hegelians."

"Marxists are Hegalian, sir."

[On Mars.] "There is a group of Sufis in Elysium," Dhu told them, "who are exploring backwards to our roots in Mithraism an Zoroastrianism..."

"...In Persia there were asuras also, but in Persia the asuras were the gods of good. Eventually religions sprang up, of which the chief god, the god of light, the Sun god, was called Ahura-Mazda. The Zoroastrians, for example, and the Mithraists. Ahura, Asura, it's the same name. There are still Zoroastrians today, and the Mithraists gave the early Christians a good fright..."

"You know how it is with writers. One of the Illuminati Magi scanned Yerby and he thought..."

"You dragged me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey five times the year it was at the Cinerama theater in Houston." It was not an exaggeration... Dave had contented himself with having Mission Control awaken them at the end of each sleep period by playing the opening chords of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Baedecker had thought it mildly amusing the first few times.

...a similar-looking gent--sort of Indian looking but sort of Arab too. "The Parsis welcome you to Peacock Bank," he said.

"What's a Parsi?" Bud said to the banker, who merely lowered his eyelids one click and jutted his goatee at the piece of paper, which had picked up on his question and already branched into an explanation. Bud ended up regretting having asked, because the answer turned out to be a great deal of general hoo-ha about these Parsis, who evidently wanted to make very sure no one mistook them for dotheads or Pakis or Arabs--not that they had any problem with those very fine ethnic groups, mind you. As hard as he tried not to pay attention, Bud absorbed more than he wanted to know about the Parsis, their oddball religion, their tendency to wander around, even their [expletive] cuisine, which looked weird but made his mouth water anyway. Then the brochure got back to the business at hand, which was lines of credit.

He opened a desk drawer and took out a roll of thick, glossy mediatronic paper bearing animated Christmas scenes: Santa sliding down the chimney... the three Zoroastrian sovereigns dismounting from their dromedaries in front of the stable...

She looked at her colleagues. "There's a certain balance of denominational forces here that's pretty well unique. And we're in a world where, say, Islam or Buddhism is completely absent, even Zoroastrianism. No other what you might call competing higher religions."

"Yeah, tell us about the monastery, Unca Russ,"...

"It's very old," Russ said. "Before the Sufis, before Mohammed, even before the Zoroastrians crossed the gulf, the native mystics would renounce the world and..."

...while the Danaans introduced the more wholesome Aryan pantheon. With the Romans came Mithraism, Christianity, Parsh, the worship of Zoroaster, and a dozen other similar sects.

Randy was telling him to 'fly like Superman.' The soundtrack went suddenly silent, and the rumbling music of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra began.

Have I not looked upon the holy fire, which is the face of Ahura Mazdah, the Wise Lord? I have also seen Persia and India and fathest Cathay. No other man alive has travled in as many lands as I.

I am digressing... My grandfather in his seventy-fifth year used to talk for hours... he was Zoroaster, the prophet of Truth; and just as the One God that he served is obliged to entertain, simultaneously, every aspect of all creation, so did His prophet Zoraster. The result was inspiring if you could ever make sense of what he was saying.