Zoroastrianism, also called Mazdaism or the worship of Ahura Mazda, “Wise Lord”, is attributed to a prophet and devotional poet named Zarathushtra who probably preached in Central Asia during the second millennium BCE. Zarathushtra’s doctrines as laid out in his Gathas, “Religious Songs”, were assimilated by an Iranian priesthood, the magi, who spread the faith across Central Asia and Iran between the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE. Contact between classical Greeks and ancient Iranians produced the westernized form of the prophet’s name: Zoroaster. Contact with Jews, and later Christians and Muslims, transferred from Zoroastrianism to those monotheisms fundamental ideas of good versus evil, god fighting the devil, humans as created by god to counter evil in the material world, judgment at death, afterlife in heaven, limbo, or hell, and resurrection followed by final judgment and restoration of a perfect world. Once the most prevalent religion in Iran and western Central Asia, most Zoroastrians were gradually converted to Islam after Arab Muslims conquered the Middle East during the seventh century CE. Zoroastrians now number under 200.000, with the largest communities in India (where some sought refuge and religious freedom between the seventh and tenth centuries CE and are called Parsis, “Persians”), in Iran, and through immigration to the West from the nineteenth century CE onward, in the United States of America and Britain.
Gender and Transcendence
In Zoroastrianism, the male supreme deity or creator Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd) upholds asha, “order”,adoctrinal concept that is grammatically neuter and regarded as good. God and his order are opposed by the male devil or destroyer Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), “Angry Spirit”, who is believed to have chosen drug, “confusion”, a doctrinal concept which is grammatically feminine and regarded as evil (Gathas 30:3–6, 45:2; Choksy 1989, 2–7). Ahura Mazda is believed to have generated Amesha Spentas, “holy immortals”, a heptad of archangels, to assist is safeguarding the material world, including Spenta Armaiti (Spandarmad), “holy devotion”, or the earth spirit, mother of life, and granter of fertility. Consequently, Spenta Armaiti has remained especially important to Zoroastrian women who seek her blessings to ensure happy and healthy families (Choksy 1989, 11; 121; Choksy 2002, 34 f.; 44 f.). Ahura Mazda is said to have created yazatas, “worship-worthy spirits,” the equivalent of angles to assist him as well. Each yazata is either masculine or feminine in grammatical gender and male or female in biological gender. Eighteen yazatas are praised in the Yashts “Devotional Poems”, and in the Niyayishns, “Invocations of Praise”, within the Avesta scriptures; eleven are male and seven are female.
Angra Mainyu is believed to have cast daevas (dews), “demons”, into the spiritual and material realms to contest and corrupt god’s creations. The devil’s chief assistant is thought to be Azi (Az), “Concupiscence” (Choksy 2002, 42–44). Sex is deemed essential for procreation of new generations of humans but viewed as leading to lust, which was believed to be generated by Azi.
- Gender-Shaped Myths
The myth of an initial human couple, Mashya or man and Mashyana or woman, who were created from Gayo Maretan, reflects gender-shaped friction. The couple undergoes a fall from perfection, paralleling and perhaps mutually influenced by the Judeo-Christian and Islamic creation myth (Choksy 2002, 51–54). The fall is a result of paying homage to the devil, an impious act initiated by the first woman: “Mashyana sprang forth, milked a cow, and offered the milk toward the direction of hell.” (Bundahishn 14:11–30). The couple is then depicted as spiraling into evil-fueled depravity culminating in cannibalism of their offspring and triggering rebuke from god: “If only I had found another vessel from which to produce man, I would never have created woman.” (Bundahishn 14 A:1; Choksy 1989, 96 f.). In the myth of the afterlife, souls of good men are guided by their religious daena (din), “conscience” (Abb. 3), – which eventually became the general word for religion – manifesting itself as “a beautiful girl, splendid, well-shaped, statuesque, with prominent breasts” into paradise (Hadokht Nask, “Extracted Section”, 2:9). More women than men end up in hell according to medieval Zoroastrian writers. Their hellish punishment involves desolation, cold, suffering, and pain inflicted by the devil’s pandemonium (Abb. 4). Zoroastrian theologians and moralists cautioned women to be “chaste, of solid faith, and modest” (Pahlavi Texts 117) and thereby avoid an impious life followed by torment in the afterlife.
Zoroastrian theologians explained the origin of menstruation using diabology – attributing its origin to when the demoness Jahika (Jeh), “Lust”, kissed Angra Mainyu in hell and “the pollution called menstruation appeared on her” (Bundahishn 4:5). Consequently, menstrual blood came to be viewed as a periodic sign of women’s affiliation with evil (Choksy 2002, 63). Likewise, afterbirth tissue was thought to come under the Drukhsh Nasush’s control and becoming a pollutant. So, women would be isolated during menses and after childbirth, followed by purification rites, before returning to their family and community.
