The spirit of Zoroastrianism

PAMPHLETS
No. 23

LO

The Spirit of Zoroastrianism

15 Y

COLONEL 'II. S. OLCOTT

. 4

O63

1913

i . 1
ROBA

Theosophical Publishing House
Adyar,' Madras, India

Presented to the

LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by
Willard G. Oxtoby

ADYAR PAMPHLETS
No. 23

The Spirit of Zoroastriaiiism

BY

COLONEL H. S. OLCOTT

A Lecture delivered at the Town Hall, Bombay,
on Uth February, 1882.

January 1913

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
ADYAR, MADBAS, IND.A

1913

•f

WITH great diffidence I have accepted your invitation
to address the Parsis upon the theme of the present
discourse. The subject is so noble, its literature so
rich, its ramifications so numerous, that no living man
could possibly do it full justice in a single lecture.
Happy indeeM, will I Ife, if I succeed In communicat
ing to one or two of the learned Pars! scholars, who
honour me with their presence, some of the deep in-
ter.est which I have had for years in the esoteric
meaning of the Mazdean faith. My hope is to
attract your attention to the only line of research
which can lead you towards the truth. That line was
traced by Zoroaster and followed by the Magi, the
Mobeds, and the Dasturs of old. Those gr^at men have
transmitted their thoughts to posterity under the safe
cover of an external ritual. They have masked them
under a symbolism and ceremonies th#t guard their
mighty secrets from the prying curiosity of the vulgar

crowd, but hide nothing from those who desire to
know all. Do not misunderstand me. I am not pre
tending that I know all, or a fraction of all ; at best I
have had but a glimpse of the reality. But even that
little is quite enough to convince me that, within the
husk of your modern religion, there is the shining
soul of the old faith that came to Zardusht in his
Persian name, and once illuminated the whole trans-
Himalayan world. You — children of Iran, heirs of
the Chaldean lore ! you — who so loved your religion
that neither the sword of Omar, nor the delights of
home, nor the yearning of our common humanity to
live among the memories of our ancestors, could make
you deny that religion; you — who, for the sake of con
science, fled from your native land and erected an
altar for the symbolical Sacred Fire in foreign countries,
more hospitable than yours Viad become; you — men
of intelligence, of an ancient character for probity,
of enterprise in all good works — you alone can
lift the dark veil of this modern Parsiism, and .let
the 'hidden splendour ' again blaze forth. Mine is
but the office of the friendly wayfarer who points
you to the mouth of the private road that leads
through your own domain. I am not, if you please,
a man — only a VOICE. I need not even appeal to
you to strip away the foreign excrescences that, during
twelve centuries, of residence among strangers, have
fastened themselves 'upon primitive Zoroastrianism ;
nor recite to you its simple yet all-sufficient code of

morality, and ask you to live up to ifc more closely. This
work has already been undertaken by the intelligent
and public-spirited members of your own community.
But I am to show you that your religion is in agree
ment with the most recent discoveries of modern
science, and that the freshost graduate from
Elphinstone College has no cause to blush for the
1 ignorance ' of Zoroaster ! And I am to prove to
you that your faith rests upon the rock of truth, the
living rock of occult science, upon which the initiated
progenitors of mankind built every one of the re
ligions that have since swayed the thoughts and
stimulated the aspirations of a hundred generations
of worshippers. Let others trace back the history
of Zoroastrianism to and beyond the time of the
Bactrian King, Vistasp ; and reconcile the quarrels of
Aristotle, Hfirmippus, (Element, Alexander Polyhistor
and other ancient as well as modern critics, as
to when Zoroaster lived and where was his birth
place : these are non-essentials. It is of far less
moment to know where and of what parentage a
religious reformer was born, than to be sure of
what he taught and whether his teaching is cal
culated to bless mankind or not. Plotinus, the
philosopher, so well knew this that he would not tell,
even to Porphyry his pupil and literary biographer,
what was his native country, what his real name, or
his parentage. As regards Zoroaster .two things a,re
affirmed, viz,f that about six centuries B. C. one man

6

of that name lived — whether or not several others
preceded him, as several highly respectable author
ities affirm is the fact; and that the religion he
preached, whether old or new, was of so noble a
character that it indelibly stamped its impress upon
the then chief school of western philosophy, that of
Greece.1

1 In the oldest Iranian book called the Desatir—a, collection of the
teachings of the oldest Iranian prophets (to make the number
fifteen and include among them Simkendesh, or ' Secander ' is a
grave error, as may be proved on the authority of Zoroaster him
self in that book) — Zoroaster stands thirteenth in that list. The
fact is significant. Respecting the period of Zoroaster the first, or
his personality, there is no trustworthy information given by any of
the western scholars ; their authorities conflict in the most per
plexing manner. Indeed among many discordant notices, I find the
earliest Greek classic writers who tell us that Zoroaster lived from
600 to 5,000 years before the Trojan war, or 6,000 years before Plato.
Again, it is declared by Berosus, the Chaldean priest, that Zoroaster
was a founder of an Indian dynasty in Babylon, 2,200 B.C.: while the
later native traditions inform us that he was the son of Purushaspa,
and a contemporary of Gustaspa, hthe father of Darius, which
would bring him within 600 B. C. Lastly it is mentioned by Bunsen
£hat he was born at Bactria before the emigration of the
Bactrians to the Indus, which took place, as the learned Egypto
logist tells us, 3,784 B. C. Among this host of contradictions, what
conclusion can one come to ? Evidently, there is but one hypothesis
left ; and that is that they are all wrong, the reason for it being tie
one I find in the secret traditions of the esoteric doctrine — namely,
that there were several teachers of that name. Neither Plato nor
Aristotle, so accurate in their statements, is likely to have trans
formed 200 years into 6,000. As to the generally accepted native
tradition, which makes the great prophet a contemporary of Darius'
father it is absurd and wrong on the very face of it. Though the
error is too palpable to need anr- elaborate confutation, I may say
a few words in regard to it. The latest researches show that the
Persian inscriptions point to Vistasp as the last of the line of
Kaianian princes who ruled in Bactria, while the Assyrian conquest
of1 that country took place in 1,200 B. C. Now this alone would
prove that Zoroaster 'lived twelve or thirteen hundred years B. C.,
instead of the six hundred assigned to him : and thus that he could
not hare been a ' contemporary of Darius Hystaspes, whose father
was BO carelessly, and for such a length of time, confounded in this

It is also, as I believe, certain that this man was an
Initiate in the sacred mysteries, or — to pat it differently

connection with Vistasp who flourished six centuries earlier. If we
add to this the historical discrepancy between the statement
of Ommianus Marcellinus, which makes Darius crush the
Magi and introduce the worship of Ahuramazda, and the inscrip
tion on the tomb of that king which state* that he was ' teacher and
heirophant of Magianism ' : and that other no less significant and
very important fact that the Zoroastrian Avesta shows no signs of
the knowledge of its writer or writers of either the Medes, the
Persians or the Assyrians — the ancient books of the Parsis remain
ing silent upon, and showing no acquaintance with, any of the
nations that have been known to have dwelt in or near the western
parts of Iran, — the accepted figure 600 B. C. as the period in which
the prophet is alleged to have flourished becomes absolutely
improbable.

It is therefore safe to come to the following conclusions : — (1)
That there were several, in all seven, say the Secret Records,
Ohuru-asters or spiritual teachers of Ahuramazda, an office corrupted
later into Guru-asters and Zuru-asters from Zera-Ishtar, the title of
the Chaldean or Magian priests ; and (2) that the last of them was
Zoroaster of the Desatir, the thirteenth of the prophets, and the
seventh of that name. It was he who was the contemporary of
Vistasp, the last of the Kaianian princes, and the Compiler of
Vendidad, the. Commentary upon which are V>st, there remaining
now but the dead letter. Some of the facts given in the Secret
Records, though to the exact scholar merely traditional, are very
interesting. They are to the effect that there exists a certain hollow
rock full of tablets in a gigantic cave bearing the name of the first
Zoroaster under his Magian appellation, and that the tablets n*ay
yet be rescued some day. This cave, with its rocks and tablets and
its many inscriptions on the walls, is situated at the summit of one
of tlje peaks of the Thian Shan Mountains, far beyond their junction
with the Belor Tagh, somewhere along their eastern course. One
of the half -pictorial and half-written prophecies and teachings at
tributed to Zoroaster himself relates to that deluge which has
transformed an inland sea into the dreary desert called Shamo or
Gobi Desert. The esoteric key to the mysterious creeds, flippantly
called at one time the Sabian or Planetary Religion, at another, the
Solar or Fire-Worship, " hangs in that cave," says the legend. In
it the great Prophet is represented with a golden star on his heart
and as belonging to that race of antediluvian giants mentioned
in the sacred books of the Chaldeans and'of the Jews. It matters
little whether this information is accepted or rejected. Since the
rejection of it would not make the other hyp*othesis more trust
worthy, it may just as well be mentioned here.

— that he had, by a certain course of mystical
study, penetrated all the hidden mysteries of man's
nature and of the world about him. Zoroaster is by
the Greek writers often called the Assyrian f Nazaret '.
This term comes from the word Nazar, or Nazir — set
apart, separated. Ihe Nazars were a sect of Adepts,
very ancient, existing ages before Christ. They are
described as " physicians, healers of the sick by the
imposition of the hands/' and as initiated into the
Mysteries (see treatise Nazir in the Talmud). The
Jews, returning from the Babylonian captivity, were
thoroughly imbued with Zoroastrian and Magian ideas ;
their forefathers had agreed with the Sabians in the
Bactric worship, the adoration of the Sun, Moon, and
five Planets, the SABBAOTB and Realm of Light. In
Babylon they had learned to worship the Seven-Rayed
God. And so * we find miming throughout the
Christian as well as the Jewish Scriptures, the
septenary system, which culminates in the Book of
Revelation, the final pamphlet of the Bible, in the
Heptaktis ; and a prophecy of the corning of the
Persian Sosiosh under the symbol of the Christian
Messiah, riding, like the former, upon a white horse.
By the Jewish sect of the Pharisees, whose great
teacher was 'Hillel, the whole angelology and sym
bolism of the Zoroastrians were accepted, and infused
into Jewish thought : and their Hebrew Kabalah
or secret bool^ of occult wisdom, was the offspring
of the Chaldean Kabalah. This deathless work is the

9

receptacle of all the ancient lore of Chaldea, Persia,
Media, Bactria, and of the pre-Iranian period. The
name by which its students in the secret lodges of
the Jewish Pharisees, or Pharsis, were known was
Kabirim — from Kabiri, the Mystery Gods of Assyria.
Zoroastrianism and Magianisrn proper were, then,
the chief source of both esoteric Judaism and esoteric
Christianity. But not only has this subtle spirit left
the latter religion, under the pressure of worldliness
and sceptical enquiry : it also long ago left Judaism.
The modern Hebrews are not Kabalists but Talmudists,
holding to the latter interpretations of the Mosaic
canon ; only here and there can we now find a real
Kabalist, who knows the true religion of his people
and whence it was derived.

The real history of Zoroaster and his religion has
never been written. The Parsis have lost the key,
as the Jews and Christians have lost that of their
respective faiths, and as I find the Southern .
Buddhists have also. Not to the living pandits or
priests of either of those religions can the laity look
for light. They can only quote the opinions
of ancient Greek and Roman, or modern German,
French or English writers. .To-day nearly all that
your most enlightened scholars know afiout your
religion is what they have collated from European t
sources, and that is almost exclusively about its
literature and external forms. And see what ridicul
ous mistakes some of those authorities make at times !

10

The Rev. Dr. Prideaux, treating of the Sad-dar, says
that Zoroaster preached incest ! — that " nothing of
this nature is unlawful, a man may not only marry
his sister or daughter, but even his mother !m He
quotes no Zend authority, nothing written by a Parsi,
but only Jewis'h and Christian authorities, such
as Philo, Tertullian, and Clement Alexandrinus.
Eutychius, a priest and archimandrite at Constanti
nople, writes, in the fifth century, on Zoroastrianism
as follows: "Nimrod beheld a fire rising out of the
earth and he worshipped it, and from that time the
Magi worshipped fire. And he appointed a man named
Andeshan to be the priest and servant of the Fire.
The Devil, shortly after that, spoke out of the midst of
the fire, as did Jehovah to Moses, saying : f No man
can serve the Fire or learn Truth in my Religion, un
less first he shall commit incest with his mother,
sister and daughter ! He did as he was commanded,
and from that time the priests of the Magians prac
tised incest : but Andeshan was the first inventor of
that doctrine." I quote this as a sample of the
wretched stuff that has been written against the
Zoroastrian religion by its enemies. The above words
are simply the dead-letter mistranslation of the secret
doctrine, *of which portions are to be found in certain
old rare MSS. possessed by the Armenians at Btchmi-
adzine, the oldest monastery in the Russian Caucasus.
They are known as the Mesrobian MSS. Should the

1 Ancient Universal History, iv, 206.

11

Bombay Parsis show any real general interest in
the rehabilitation of their religion, I think I may
promise them the unpaid but, all the same,
friendly assistance of Madame Blavatsky, whose
friend of thirty-seven years standing, the Prince
Dondoukoff Korsakoff, has just notified her of his
appointment by His Majesty the Czar, as Viceroy of
the Caucasus.

In one of such old MSS., then, it is said of the
Initiate, or Magus: "He who would penetrate the
secrets of (sacred) Fire and unite with it, as the
Yogi ' unites himself with the Universal Soul ', must
first unite himself, soul and body, to the Earth his
mother, to Humanity his sister, and to Science his-
daughter." Quite a different thing, you perceive,
from the abhorrent precept ascribed to the Founder
of your Mazdean faith. And this example should
serve as a warning to your so-called educated youth
against turning up his classical nose at his ancestral
religign as ( unscientific ' and nonsensical.

A curious and sad thing, indeed, it is to see how
completely the old life has gone out of Zoroastrianisnu
Originally a highly spiritual faith — I know of none
more so — and represented by . Sages and Adepts of
the highest rank among Initiates, it has shrunk into-
a purely exoteric creed full of ritualistic practices not
understood, taught by a numerous bod^ of priests a&
a rule ignorant of the first elements of* spiritual
philosophy, and represented in prayers of which not

12

one has a meaning to those who recite them daily — the
shrivelled shell that once held a radiant soul. Yet
all that Zoroastrianisrn ever was it might be made
again. The light still shines, though in darkness,
enclosed in the clay vessel of materialism. Whose shall
be the holy hand11 to break the jar of clay and let the
hidden glory be seen ? Where is the Mobed who shall
in our day and generation rise to the ancient dignity
of his profession, and redeem it from degradation /
a degradation so great as to oblige even a Parsi author*
to say that they recite parrot-like all the chapters re
quiring to be repeated on occasions of religious cere
monies? . . "Ignorant and unlearned as these priests are,
they do not and cannot command the respect of the
laity . . . the position of the l so-called ' spiritual
guides has fallen into contempt " he adds, also,
some priests " have given*1 up a profession which has
-ceased to be honourable and . . . become contractors
for constructing railroads in the Bombay Presidency."
Some of the present Dasturs " are intelligent and well-
informed men, possessing a considerable knowledge of

1 Not before he learns the true meaning of his own name, and strives
once more to become worthy of it, can he be found. How many
among the modern priests kaow that their title of Mobed or Mogbed
comes front Mag, a word used by the prophet Jeremiah to designate
a Babylonian Initiate, which, in its turn, is an abbreviation of
Maginsiah — the great and wise ? ' Maghistom ' was once the title
of Zoroaster's highest disciples, and the synonym of wisdom. Speak-
ing of them Cicero says : Sapientium et doctor um genus majorum
habebatur in Persis (The wise and learned class of the Magians live
among the Persians).

2 The Parsis, p. 277. Mr. Dosabhai Framji.

13

their religion ; but the mass of the priesthood are pro
foundly ignorant of its first principles."

I ask you, men of practical sense, what is the
certain fate of a religion that has descended so low, that
its priests are regarded by the Behedin (laity) as fit
only to be employed in menial services, such as bring
ing things to you from the bazaar, and doing house
hold tasks ? What is it ? I put it to you. Do
you suppose that such a dried corpse will be left
long above ground by the fresh and critical minds
you are educating at college ? Nay, do you not see-
how they are already treating it : how they abstain
from visiting your temples : how sullenly they ' make
kusti/ and go through their other daily ceremonies :
how they avoid, as much as possible, every attention
to the prescribed ordinances : how they are gathering
in clubs to driife pegs anfl play cards : how they are
defiling themselves by evil associations, smoking in
secret, some even openly, and prating glibly the
most ^ceptical sophistries they have read in European
books, written by deluded modern theorists ? Yes,
— the c*loud gathers over the fire-altar, the once fra
grant wood of truth is wet with the deadly dews of
doubt, a pestilential vapour fills the Atash-Behram,
and unless some Regenerator is raised up among you,
the name of Zoroaster may, before many generations,,
be known only as that of the Founde* of an extinct
Faith.

1 Ibid, p. 279.

14

In his preface to the translation of the Vendidad,
the learned Dr. Darmesteter says : " The Key to the
Avesta is not the Pahlavi, but the Veda. The Avesta
and the Veda are two echoes of one and the same
voice, the reflex of one and the same thought : the
Vedas, therefore, are both the best lexicon and the
best commentary to the Avesta ".* This he defines
as the extreme view of the Vedic scholars, and while,
personally, he does not subscribe to them entirely,
he yet holds that we cannot perfectly comprehend
the Avesta without utilising the discoveries of the
Vedic pandits. But neither Darmesteter, nor Anquetil
Duperron, nor Haug, nor Spiegel, nor Sir William
Jones, nor Rapp (whose work has been so perfectly
translated into English by your eminent Pars! scholar
Mr. K. R. Kama), nor Koth, nor any philological
critic whose works I haVe read, ha^ named the true
key to Zoroaster's doctrine. For it, we must not
search among the dry bones of words. No, it hangs
within the door of the Kabalah — the Chaldean secret
volume, where, under the mask of symbols and mis
leading phrases, it is kept for the use of the true
searcher after arcane knowledge. The entire system
of ceremonial purifications, which in itself is so perfect
that a modern Parsi, a friend of mine, has remarked
that Zoroaster was the best of Health Officers, is,
it seems to oie, typical of the moral purification

1 The Sacred Books of the East, edited by Professor F. Max Muller,
Vol. IV, p. 26.

15

required of him who would either, while living, attain
the Magian's knowledge of hidden laws of nature and
his power to wield them for good purposes, or, after
a well ordered life, attain by degrees to the stage
of spiritual beatitude, called Moksha by the
Hindus and Nirvana by the Bu<idhists. The de
filements by touch of various objects that you
are warned against, are not visible defilements,
like that of the person by contact with filth,
but psychic defilements, through the influence of
their bad magnetic aura — a subtle influence proceeding
from certain living organisms and inert substances —
which is antipathetic to development as an adept.
If you will compare your books with the Toga Sutras
of the Hindus, and the Tripitikas of the Buddhists,
you will see that each exact for the student and
practitioner of • occult science, a place, an at
mosphere,* and surroundings that are perfectly
pure. Thus the Magus, or Yozdathraigar, the Yogi,
and the Arhat all retire, either to the innermost or
topmost chambers of a temple, where no stranger is
permitted to enter, bringing his impure magnetism
with him, or to the heart of a forest, a secluded cave, or
a mountain height. In the tower of Belus at Babylon,
virgin seeresses gazed into magical mirrors a*nd aero
lites, to see their prophetic visions : the yogi retires
to his subterranean gupha, or to jungle fastnesses :
and the Chinese books tell us that the f greajb Nachus'
of their sacred doctrine dwell in the snowy range of

16

the Himavat. The books alleged to have been in
spired by God, or delivered by His angels to man,
have always, I believe, been delivered on mountains.
Zoroaster got the Avesta on Ushidarina, a mountain
by the river Daraga;1 Moses received the tables of the
Law on MounttSinai ; a Muhammmed was given the
Koran on Mount Hara ;3 and the Hindu Rshis lived in
the Himalayas. Sakya Muni left no inspired books, but,
although he received the illumination of the Buddha-
hood in the plains, under a Bo-tree, he had prepared
himself by years of austerities in the mountains near
Rajagriha. The obstructive power of foul human,
animal, vegetable, and even mineral auras, or magnet
isms, has always been understood by occult students,
from the remotest times. This is the true reason why
none but initiated and consecrated priests have ever
been allowed to step within the precircts of the holiest
places. The custom is not at all the offspring of a.ny
feeling of selfish exclusiveness, but is based upon
known psycho-physiological laws. Even the modern
Mesmerists and Spiritualists know this : and the
latter, at least, carefully avoid ' mixing magnetisms, '
which always hurt a sensitive subject. All nature is a
compound of conflicting, hence counterbalancing and
equilibrating forces. Without this there could be no
such thing as stability. Is it not the contest of

1 Vendidad, xlix.

2 Exodu8,f xxxiv.

3 Am. Oyc., Vol. xi, 612.

17

centrifugal and centripetal attractions that keeps our
earth and every other orb of heaven revolving in its
orbit ? The law of the universe is a distinct dualism
while the creative energy is at work, and of a com
pound unism when at rest. And the personification
of these opposing powers by Zoroaster was but the
perfectly scientific and philosophical statement of a
profound truth. The secret laws of this war of forces
are taught in the Chaldean Kabalah. Every neophyte
who sets himself to study for Initiation is taught these
secrets, and he is made to prove them by his own
experiments, step by step, as his powers and know
ledge increase. Zoroastrianism has two sides — the
open, or patent, and the concealed, or secret. Born
of the mind of a Bactriaa seer, it partakes of the
nature of the primitive Iranian national religion
and of the new spirituality that was ppured into it,
from the, Source of all Truth, through the superb lens
of Zoroaster's mind.

The Parsis have been charged with being worship
pers* of the visible fire. This is wholly false. They
face the fire, as they also face the sun and the sea,
because in them they picture to themselves the hidden
Light of Lights, Source of all Life, to which they give
the name of Orrnazd. How well and how beautifully
is this expressed in the writings of Robert Fludd,
the English Mystic of the seventeenth century1 :

1 See Hargrave Jennings. The Rosicrucians, p. 69.*
2

18

Regard Fire, then with other eyes than with
those soulless incurious ones with which thou hast
looked upon it as the most ordinary thing. Thou
hast forgotten what it is — or rather thou hast never known.
Chemists are silent about it ... Philosophers talk of it
as anatomists discourse of the constitution, or the parts,
of the human body. ... It is made for man and this
world, and it is greatly like him — that is mean, they
would add . . . Bift is this all ? Is this the sum of that
casketed lamp of the human body ? — thine own body, thou
unthinking world's machine — thou man ? Or, in the
fabric of this clay lamp (What a beautiful simile) burneth
there not a Light ? Describe that, ye doctors of physics ! .
. . Note the goings of the Fire. . . Think that this thing
is bound up in matter chains. Think that He is outside
of all things : and that thou and thy world are only the
thing -between : and that outside and inside are both iden
tical, couldst thou understand the supernatural truths !
Reverence Fire, for its meaning, and tremble at it . . .
Avert the face from it, as the Magi turned, dreading, and,
as the symbol, bowed askance . . . Wonder no longer
then, if, rejected so long as an idolatry, the ancient Per
sians, and their Masters, the Magi — concluding that they
saw 'All' in this supernaturaUy magnificent element — fell
down and worshipped it : making of it the^ physical
representation of the very truest, yet, in man's specula
tion, and in his philosophies — nay, in his commonest
reason — impossible God.

And mind you, this is the language, not 'of a
Pars! or one of your faith, but of an English
scholar who followed the shining path marked out
by the Chaldean Magi, and obtained, like them,
the true .meaning of $our mysteries. Occult Science
is the vindicator of Zoroastrianism, and there is
none other. Modern physical science is blind her
self to spiritual laws and spiritual phenomena. She
cannot guide, being herself in need of a helping

19

hand — the hand of the Occultist and the Heirophant
Chaldean sage.

Have you thought why the Fire is kept ever burn
ing on your altars ? Why is it ? Why may not the
priest suffer it to go out and re-kindle it each morn
ing ? Ah ! there is a great secret hidden. And why
must the flames of one thousand different fires be
collected — from the smithy, the burning-kiln, the
funeral pyre, the goldsmith's furnace, and every
other imaginable source ? Why ? because this spiritual
element of Fire pervades all nature, is its life and
soul, is the cause of the motion of its molecules which
produces the phenomenon of physical heat. And the
fires from all these thousand hearths are collected,
like so many fragments of the universal life, into one
sacrificial blaze which shall be as perfectly as possible
the complete and collective type of the Light of
Ormazd. See the precautions taken to gather only
the spirit or quintessence, as it were, of these separate
flames. The priest takes not the crude coals from the
various hearths and furnaces and pits : but at each
flame he lights a bit of sulphur, a ball of cotton, or
some other inflammable substance ; from this blaze
he ignites a second quantity of fuel ; from this a
third ; from the third a fqurth, and so on ; taking
in some cases a ninth, in others a twentieth flame,
until the first grossness of the defilement of the fire
in the base use to which it was put has been purged
away, and only the purest essence remains. Then only

20

is it fit to be placed on the altar of Ormazd. And even
then the flame is not ready to be the type of that
Eternal Brightness : it is as yet but a body of earth
ly flame, a body which lacks its noblest soul. When
your forefathers gathered at Sanjan to light the fire
for the Indian exiles, the holy Dastur Nairyosang,
who had come with them from Persia, gathered his
people and the strangers of the country about
him in the jungle. Upon a stone block
the dried sandal wood is laid. Four priests stand
at the four cardinal points. The Grathas are intoned,
the priests bow their faces in reverential awe. The
Dastur raises his eyes to heaven, he recites the mysti
cal words of power : and lo ! from the upper world of
space, descend silvery tongues of flame which lap round
the fragrant wood, and it bursts into a blaze. This is
the missing spirit evoked by the Adept Prometheus.
When this is added to the thousand other dancing
flames the symbol is perfected, and the face of Ormazd
.shines before his worshippers. Lighted thus at
Sanjan, that historic fire has been kept alive
for more than seven hundred years, and, until another
Nairyosang appears among you to draw the flames of
the ambient ether upon your altar, let it be fed
continuously.

This ancient art of drawing fire from heaven was
taught in the Samothracian and Kabiric Mysteries.
Numa, who introduced the Vestal Mysteries into
Rome, thus kindled a fire which was under the care of

21

consecrated Vestal Virgins, whose duty it was, under
penalty of death for neglect, to constantly maintain it.
It was, as Schweigger shows, the Hermes fire, the
Elmesfire of the ancient Germans ; the lightening of
Cybele ; the torch of Apollo; the £. re of Pan's altar,
the fire-flame of Pluto's helm ; the inextinguishable
fire in the temple of the Grecian Athene, on the
Acropolis of Athens ; and the mystical fires of many
different worships and symbols. The occult science,
of which I spoke, was shared by the Initiates of the
Sacred Science all over the ancient world. The
knowledge was first gained in Chaldea, and was
thence spread through Greece to more western and
northern countries. Even to-day the Fire-cult sur
vives among the rude Indian tribes of Arizona — a far
western portion of my native country, America. Major
Calhouif, of the U. S. Army, who commanded a
surveying party sent out by our government, told me
that, in that remote corner of the world, and among*
those rude people, he found them keeping alight
their Sacred Fire in their teocalis, or holy enclosures.
Every morning their priests go out, dressed in the
sacerdotal robes of their forefathers, to salute the
rising sun, in the hope that \Tontezuma, tfieir prom
ised Redeemer and Liberator, will appear. The time
of his coming is not foretold, but from generation to*
generation they wait, and pray, amd hope.

In her Isis Unveiled, Madame Blavatsky has shown
us that this heavenly Fire, however and whenever

22

manifested, is a correlation of the Akasha, and the
art of the magician and priest enables him to develop
and attract it down.1 But to do this he must be
absolutely pure — pure in body, in thought, in deed.
And these are the three pillars upon which Zoro
aster erected the stately edifice of his religion. I
have always considered it as a great test of the merit
of any religion that its essence can be compressed
into a few words that a child can understand. Buddh
ism, with its noble comprehensiveness, was distilled
by its Founder into seven words; Zoroastrianism, is
reduced to three — Humata, HulMa, Hvarshta.

A Parsi gentleman, with whom I conversed the
other day, explained the fact of your having no
wonder-working priests at present by saying that
none living were pure enqugh. He was right, and
until you can find such a pure celebrant, your 'religion
will never be again ensouled. An impure man who
"attempts the magical ceremonies is liable to be made
mad or destroyed. This is a scientific necessity. The 'law
of nature, is, you know, that action and reaction are
equal. If, therefore, the operator in the Mysteries pro
pels from him self a current of will-power directed again st
a certain qbject, and either because of feebleness

r l Occult sound as well as light emanate from ' Akasha ' : but the
true Brahman and Puddhist Initiates make a great distinction be
tween Astral Fire and Astral Light. Occult sounds and lights are
heard and seen by the Yogi, and he knows that they proceed from
his own Muladharam — the first of the six centres of force taught in
Yoga philosophy — " The centre whose name means the chief
foundation or basis is the seat of 'Astral Fire ', " they say.

23

of will or deviation caused by impure motives,
he misses his mark, his current rebounds from the
whole body of the Akasha, as the ball rebounds from
the wall against which it is thrown to the thrower's
hand, and reacts upon himself. Thus, we are told
that they who did not know how to manage the
miraculous Fire in the Vestal and Kabiric Mysteries
" were destroyed by it, and were punished by the
Gods".1 Pliny relates2 that Tullus Hostilius had
sought from the books of Numa, " Jovem devocare a
coelo " ; but as he did not correctly follow the rules
of Numa, he was struck by the lightning. The same
rule applies equally fco the attempt to use the black
art unskilfully. The old English proverb says, "Curses,
like chickens, come home to roost." He who would use
the powers of sorcery, or black magic, is sure to be
destroyed by them first or last. The old fables about
sorcerers being carried off by the mocking ' devils '
whom, for a time, they had employed to gratify their
unlawful desires, are all based upon fact. And, in
Zoroa^strianism, the Pars! is as carefully taught to
eschew and fight against the powers of Ahriman, or
the evil Spirits of Darkness, as to cultivate in
timacy with and win the protecting favour of the
Ameshaspentas and Yazatas — the personified good
Principles of Nature. You will not find any of your
European authorities speaking of .these personifications

1 Ennemoser, History of Magic, II. 32.

2 Histor. Nat., xxviii. , 2.

24

with decent respect, any more than of the
Nature-gods of the Aryans. To their minds these are
but the childish fancies of a florid Persian or Aryan
imagination, begotten in the infancy of our race, for
a good reason, too : not one of these spectacled
pandits has the least practical reason to believe that
there are such good and evil powers warring about
us. But I am not afraid to say to them all in my
individual, not official, capacity that I do believe in
them; nay, that I actually know they exist. And
this is why you hear me, a western man taught in a
western University and nursed on the traditions of
modern civilisation, say that Zoroaster knew more
about nature than Tyndall does, more about the laws
of force than Balfour Stewart, more about the origin
of species than Darwin or Haeckel, more about the
human mind and its potentialities than Ma/u$sley or
Bain ; and so did Buddha and some other ancient
•proficients in occult science. Pshaw ! Young man
of the Bombay University, when you have taken y'our
degree, and learned all your professors can rteach
you, go to the hermit and the recluse of the jungle
and ask him to prove to you where to begin your
real study of the world- into which you have been
born ! Your professors can make you learned but
not wise, can teach you about the shell of Nature ; but
those silent anct despised unravellers of the tangled
web of existence can evoke for you the soul that lurks
within that husk. Three centuries before Christ the

25

United Kingdom of Persia and Media exercised a
dominion extending over an area of three or four
millions of square miles and had a population of
several hundred millions of people. And do you
mean to tell me that the Zoroastrian religion could have
dominated the minds of this enormous mass of people —
nearly twice the present population of India — and
could have also swayed the religious thought of the
cultured Greeks and Romans, if it had not had a
spiritual life in it that its poor remnant of to-day
completely lacks ? I tell you that if you could put
that ancient life back into it, and if you had your
holy men to show this ignorant age the proof of the
reality of the old Chaldean wisdom, you would spread
your religion all over the world. For the age is
spiritually dying for want of a religion tjiat can show
just suck signs ; and for lack of them two crores of
western people have become Spiritualists and are
following the lead of mediums. And not only your*
religion is soulless. Hinduism, Southern Buddhism,
Judaisjn, and Christianity are so likewise. We
see following the missionaries none of the ' signs '
that Jesus said should follow those who were really
his disciples : they neither rafise the dead^, nor heal
the sick, nor give sight to the blind, nor cast out
devils, nor dare they drink any deadly thing in the.
faith that it will not harm them. Inhere are a few
true wonder-workers in our time, but they are among
the Lamaists of Tibet, the Copts of Egypt, the Sufis

26

and Dervishes of Arabia and other Muhammadan
countries. The great body of the people in all
countries, has become so sensual, so avaricious, so
materialistic and faithless, that the moral atmosphere
is like a pestilential wind to the Yozdathraigar (those
Adepts whom we have made known to India under
the name of BROTHERS).

The meaning of your Haoma you doubtless know.
In the ninth Ya9na of the Avesta, Haoma is spoken
of both as a God — Yazata — and as the plant or juice
of the plant, which is under his especial protection ;
and so is the Soma of the Aitareya Brahmana.

At the time of morning-dawn came

Haoma to Zoroaster,

As he was purifying the fire and reciting the Grathas.

Zoroaster asked him : Who, 0 man, art thou ?

Thou, wh'o appearest to 'me as the most beautiful in
the whole corporeal world, endued with thine 1)wn lifer
majestic and immortal ?

t Then answered me Haoma, the pure, who is far from
death.

Ask me, thou Pure one, make me ready for food.
Thus in the same line, is Haoma spoken of in his
personified form and as a plant to be prepared for
food. Farther on he is .described as

Victorious, golden, with moist stalks.

' This is the sacred Soma of the Aryans — by them

also elevated into a deity. This is that wondrous

juice which* lifted the mind of him who quaffed it to-

the splendours of the highest heavens, and made him

27

commune with the Gods. It was not stupefying like
opium, not maddening like the Indian hemp, but
exhilarating, illuminating, the begetter of divine
visions. It was given to the candidate in the Mysteries,
and drunk with solemn ceremonies fry the Hierophant.
Its ancient use is still kept in your memories by the
Mobeds drinking in the Ya£na ceremony, a decoction
of dried Haoma stalks, that have been pounded with
bits of pomegranate root in a mortar and afterwards
had water thrice poured over them.

The Beresma twigs — among you represented by a
bunch of brass wires — are a reminiscence of the
divining-rods anciently used by all practitioners of
ceremonial magic. The rod or staff was also given to
the fabled gods of Mythology. In the fifth book of the
Odyssey, Jupiter, in the t Council of the G-ods, bids
Hermes* to go upon a certain mission, and the verse
says :

Forth sped he ....
•Then taking his staff, with which he the eyelids of

mortals
Closes at will, and the sleeper, at will, re-awakens.

The rod of Hermes was a magic staff; so was that
of JEsculapius, the healing wand that had power over
disease. The Bible has many* references tQ the magic
rod, notably in the story of the contest of Moses with
the Egyptian Magicians in the presence of Pharaoh ;•
in that of the magical budding of Aaron's rod ; and
in the laying of Elisha's staff on the 'face of the
dead Shunamite boy. The Hindu Gossain of our day

28

carries with him a bamboo rod having seven knots or
joints, that has been given to him by his Guru and
contains the concentrated magnetic will-power of the
Guru. All magic-rods should be hollow, that the
magnetic power may be stored in them. In the
Ya£na II., note that the priest, holding the Baresma
rods in his hand repeats constantly the words, ' I wish '
— properly, I will — so and so. By the ceremony of
concentration of the sacred twigs a magical power
has been imparted to them, and with the help of this
to fortify his own will-force, the celebrant seeks the
attainment of his several good desires : the heavenly
Fire, the good Spirits, all good influences throughout
several kingdoms of Nature, and the Law or WORD.
In the middle ages of Europe, divining-rods were in
general use, not only to disQOver subterranean waters
and springs, and veins of metal, but also 'fugitive
thieves and murderers. I could devote an entire
•lecture to this subject and prove to you that this
phenomenon is a strictly scientific one. In Baring-
Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages will be
found highly interesting accounts of these trials of
the mystical power of the rods which time forbids
my quoting. To this 'day the rods are employed
to discover springs, and the Cornish miners carry
sprigs of hazel^ or other wood in their caps. The
author of the work named, while ascribing the
strange results he is obliged to record principally
to the imagination, is yet constrained to add that,

29

"The powers of Nature are so mysterious and in
scrutable that we must be cautious in limiting them,
under abnormal conditions, to the ordinary laws of
experience." And in this he is backed up by the
experience of many generations of witnesses, in many
different countries.

We have mentioned the invocation of the divine
Word or Name in the Ya9na. All the ancient author
ities affirm that there is a certain Word of Power by
pronouncing which the Adept subjugates all the
forces of Nature to his will. It is mentioned by many
authors. One of the latest is the author of a book
called Rabbi Jeshiia, who, speaking of Jesus, says,
" He had perhaps endeavoured to employ magic arts,
and to bewitch the Council by invocation of the Name
through which all incantations were rendered effect
ive. m Among the Aryans, the Agnihotra priest
used to prepare the sacrificial wood and, upon re
citing the appropriate Mantra, the heavenly fire of
Agni would descend and kindle it. In the Avesta,.
Zoroaster smites the fiends with the spiritual power
of the Word.2 It represents him as a saint- militant,
repelling force by force. In Fargard xi, Zoroaster
asks Ahura-Mazda how he shall purge the house, the
fire, the water, the earth, the.cow, the tree, the faith
ful man and woman, the stars, the moon, the sun,
the boundless light, and all good things. .

1 p. 143.

2 Darmesteter, Ixxvii.

30

Ahura Mazda answers :

Thou, shalt chant the cleansing words, and the house
shall be clean, clean shall be the fire, etc.

So thou shalt say these fiend-smiting and most healing
words ; thou shalt chant the Ahunavairya five times, etc.

Then are given various words to employ for dif
ferent acts of cleajising. But the WORD the one most
potent — the Name which Proclus in his treatise
upon the Chaldean Oracles says, " rushes into the
infinite worlds, " is not written there.1 Nor can it
be written, nor is it ever pronounced above the
breath, nor, indeed, is its nature known except to the
highest Initiates. The efficacy of all words used as
charms and spells lies in what the Aryans call the
Vach, a certain latent power resident in Akasha.
Physically we may describe it as the power to set up
certain measured vibrations, not in the grosser atmo
spheric particles, whose ^undulations beget light,
sound, heat and electricity, but in the latent ^Spiritual
Principle or Force about the nature of which modern

'science knows scarcely anything. No words whatever
have the slightest efficacy unless uttered by one' who
is perfectly free from all weakening doubt or hesi
tancy ; who is for the moment wholly absorbed in the
thought of uttering them ; and has a cultivated power
of will which makes h'im send out from himself a
conquering impulse. Spoken prayer is in fact an

''incantation, and when spoken by the heart as

1 Though properly — the WORD or the NAME is neither a word nor
a name in the sense we give it.

31

well as by the lips, lias a power to attract good and
repel bad influences. But to patter off prayers so
many times a day while your thoughts are roving
over your landed estates, fumbling your money-bags,
or straying away among any other worldly things, is
but mere waste of breath. The Bible says : " The
prayer of the righteous availeth much " ; and so it does.
There is the case of George Muller, of Bristol, Eng
land, who for thirty years has supported the entire
expenses of his orphanage — now a very large institu
tion of charity — by the voluntary gifts of unknown
passers-by at the door, who drop into his charity boxes
the exact sum he prays for to meet the day's neces
sities. History does not contain a more curious or
striking example than this. This man prays with
such faith and fervency, his motives are so pure, his
labours so beneficent, that he attracts^ to him all the
good influence's of Nature, although he knows neither
the ' Ahunavairya/ nor Aryan mantras, nor the
Buddhistic Pirit. Use what words you may, if tha
heart is clean, the thought intense, and the will concen
trated, the powers of Nature will come at your bid
ding and be your slaves. The Dabistan says.1

Having the heart in the body full of Thy remem
brance, the novice, as well as $ie Adept, in contemplation
Becomes a supreme king of beatitude, and the throne
of the kingdom of gladness.

Whatever road I took, it joined the street which leads.

to Thee ;

P2:

32

The desire to know Thy being is also the life of the
meditators ;

He who found that there is nothing but Thee has
found the final knowledge ;

The Mobed is the teacher of Thy truth, and the
world a school.

But this Mobed was not a mere errand-runner, or
droner of Gathas perfunctorily without understanding
a word he was saying, but a real Mobed. So high
an ideal of human perfectibility had ha to live up to,
that Cambyses is said to have commanded the execu
tion of a priest who had allowed himself to be bribed ;
and had his skin stretched over the chair in which his
son and successor sat in his judicial capacity.1 Mobed
is derived from Mogbed — from the Persian Mog, and
means a true priest. Ennernoser truly says that the
renowned wisdom of the Magi in Persia, Media, and
the neighbouring countries, " contained also the secret
teachings of philosophy and the sciences, which were
only communicated to priests, who were regarded as
mediators between God and man, and as such, and
on account of their knowledge, were highly respectecj. " a
The priests of a people are exactly what the people
require them to be. Remember that, friends, and
blame yourselves only for the state of religion among
you. You have just what you are entitled to. If
you yourselves were more pure, more spiritual and
more religious, your priesthood would be so. You

^Hist Magic", I., 2.

33

are merchants, not idolaters, but — as Professor Monier
William pithily remarks in the Nineteenth Century
(March 1881) — worshippers of the solid rupee. The
genuine Parsi, he says, " turns with disgust from the
hideous idolatry practiced by his Hindu fellow-sub
jects. He offers no homage to blocks of wood and
stone, to monstrous many-headed images, grotesque
symbols of good luck, or four-armed deities of fortune.
But he bows down before the silver image which
Victoria the Empress of India, has set up in her
Indian dominions. "

And this, according to Zoroastrianism, is a crime as
great. In his ecstatic vision of the symbolical scenes
shown him by the angel Serosh-Yazata for the warning
and encouragement of his people, Ardai Viraf , the purest
of Magician Priests at the court of Ardeshir Babiigan,
saw the pitiable state to, which the soul of a covetous
miser is reduced after death. The poor wretch,
penniless — since he could take not a dime
with him — his heart buried with his savagely-loved
treasures, his once pure nature corrupted and
deforced—moved the Seer to profoundest pity. " I
saw it " says he, "creep along in fear and trembling,
and presently a wind came sweeping along, loaded
with the most pestilential Vapours, even as it were
from the boundaries of hell .... In the midst of
this wind appeared a form of the most demoniacal
appearance .... The terrified soul attempts to
escape but in vain; the awful vengeful shape by

34

voice and power roots him to the spot. He enquires
in trembling accents who it may be, and is answered:
"I am your genius" (that is, his spiritual counterpart
and now his mastering destiny) " and have become
thus deformed by your crimes ; whilst you were in
nocent I was hamisome. . . . You have laid in no
provisions for this long journey ; you were rich but
did no good with your riches ... and not only did
no good yourself, but prevented, by your evil example,
those whose inclinations led them to do good ; and
you have often mentally said, ' When is the day of
judgment ? To me it will never arrive'." Say it is
a vision, if you will, yet neverthless it mirrors an
awful truth. The worship of the silver image of
Victoria on the Rupee is even more degrading than
the Hindu's worship of Granesha or Hari ; for he, at
least, is animated by a pious though^,, whereas the
greedy money-getter is but defiling himself with the
filth of selfishness.

' The Pars! community is already half-way along the
road to apostacy. Gone is the fiery enthusiasm t'hat
made your forefathers give up everything they prized
rather than repudiate their faith ; that supported them
during a whole century in the sterile mountains of
Khurasan pr the outlying deserts ; that comforted
them in their exile at Sanjan, and gave them hope
&fter the battle with their hereditary enemy Aluf
Khan. Formerly, it. was religion first and Rupee last;

1 Ardai Virdf Nameh, by Captain J. A. Pope, p. 56.

35

now it is Rupee first and everything else after it. See !
I, a stranger, point with one finger to your palatial
bungalows, your gorgeous equipages, and your
ostentatious annual squandering of twelve lakhs of
money at festivals ; with the other to the wretched
subscription of Rs. 16,000 towards the support of
Rahanumai Mazdiyasna Sabha — a good society for the
promotion of your religion among your own children,
and of Rs. 10,000 to the orthodox Pars! Society
of Khetwadi ! The proverb says, " Figures cannot
lie," and in this instance they did not. If I
wanted the best test to apply to your religious zeal, I
should look at the sum of your expenditures for vain
show and sensual enjoyment, as compared with what
you do for the maintenance of your religion in its
purity; and to the sort of conduct you tolerate in your
priests. That* is the mirror that impartial justice
holds u£> before you ; behold your own image, and
converse with your conscience in your private mo
ments ! What but conscience is personified in the
" maid of divine beauty or fiendish ugliness," accord
ing asthe soul that approaches the Chinvad bridge was
good or bad in life ? * " She the well-shapen, strong
and tall-formed maid, with the dogs at her sides, one
who can distinguish . . . and is of high understanding."
You have asked me to tell you about the spirit
of your religion. I have only the trjith to tell— the '

1 Yasht xxii.

2 Vendidad, Fargard xix.

36

exact truth, without fear or favour. And I repeat,
you are already half-way towards religious repudia
tion. You have already set money in the niche of
faith ; it only remains for you to throw the latter out
of doors. For hypocrisy will not last for ever. Men
weary of paying even lip-service to a religion they no
longer respect. You can deceive yourselves, you can
not deceive that maiden at the bridge. Let three or
four more generations of sceptics be passed through
the educational mint of the college ; and let the
teaching of your religion be neglected as it now is ;
and the time will have come when it will be only the
occasional brave heart that will dare call himself a
TMazdean. Let that stand as a prophecy if you
choose : it is one, and it is based upon the experience
of the human race. A black page will it be indeed,
in the record of human events, when the last vestiges
of the once splendid faith of Zoroaster s^hall be
blotted from it, the last spark of the heavenly fire
that shone from the Chaldean watch-towers of the
Sages be extinguished. And the more so, when that last
extinction shall be caused, not by the sword of tyranny
nor by the crafty scheming of civil administrators,
but by the worldliness of its own hereditary
custodians f those to whom the lighted torch had
been handed down through the ages, and who dropped
'it into the quenching black waters of Materialism.

Time fails me to enter into detailed explanation of
the Zoroastrian symbols as perhaps I might — though

37

I certainly am not able to do the subject full justice.
The sudra and kusti with which you invest your child
ren at the age of six years and three months have of
course a magical significance. They pass through
the hands of the .Dastur who as we have seen was
formerly an Initiate, and he imparted to them
magnetic properties which converted them into
talismans against evil influences. After that a set
formula of prayers and incantations is regularly
prescribed for the whole life. The wearer's thoughts
are directed towards the talismanic objects constant
ly and, when the faith is present, his or her will-power,
or magnetic aura, is at such time infused into them.
This is the secret of all talismans ; the object worn,
whatever it may be, need have no innate protective
property, for that can be given to any rag, or stone,
or bit of pape?, by an Adept. Those of you who have
read the Christian Bible will remember that from the
body of Paul the Apostle, " were brought unto the
sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases
departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of
them 'V In the Ahuramazda-Yasht of the Khordeh-
A vesta, it is written " by day and night, standing
or sitting, sitting, or standing, girt with the Aiwyaon-
hana (kusti) or drawing off the AiwyaonhtJna.

Going forwards out of the house, going forwards out,
of the confederacy, going forwards out of the region,
coming into a region. ,

1 Acts xix, 12.

t

38

Such a man the points of the Drukhs-souled, proceed
ing from Aeshma, will not injure in that day or that
night, not the slings, not the arrows, not knives, not
clubs ; the missiles will not penetrate and he be injured.1

Similar protective talismans are given by every
Adept to each new pupil.

The use of Nir&ng for libations and ablutions is a
survival of very ancient — probably pre-Iranian — my
thic conceptions. There is nothing in the fluid itself of
a disinfectant or purificatory character, but a magical
property is given to it by ceremonial magical formulas,
as a glass of common water may be converted into a
valuable medicine by a mesmeriser, holding it
in his left hand and making circular passes over
it with his right.

" The storm floods that cleanse the sky of
the dark fiends in it were described in a
class of myths as the* urine o£ a gigantic
animal in the heavens. As the floods from
.the bull above drive away the fiend from the
god, so they do from man here below ; they njake
him ' free from the death-demon ' (franasu), and
the death fiend flies away hell-wards, pursued ky the
fiend-smiting spell : f Perish Thou, 0 Drug . . .
never more to give over to Death the living world of
the good Spirit ! ' "2 It may be that there is a more
valid reason for the use of Nirang, but I have not yet
discovered it. fhat an occult property is imparted to

. * Haug's Ave&a, p. 24, Khordeh-Avesta, Eng. Ed. of 1864.
2 Nineteenth Century, January, 1881, p. 176.

39

the fluid by the ceremonial is clear, since if it be ex
posed to certain influences not in themselves putre
factive it will speedily become putrid ; while, on the
other hand it may be kept for years in a fresh condi
tion without the admixture of antiseptic substances,
and notwithstanding its occasional ^exposure to the air,
if certain ceremonial rules be followed. (Of course I
have this from Pars! friends and not from my own
observation. I would not express an unqualified
opinion before investigating the subject.) I recom
mend some Pars! chemist to analyse specimens of dif
ferent ages, especially to determine the relative quanti
ties of nitrogenous constituents.

The subject is treated in Darmesteter's ' Introduc
tion ' to the Vendidad.

When Professor Monier Williams vents his Oxonian
scorn upon tile ceremoifies of the Parsis he thereby
only provokes the pity of such as have looked deeper
than he into the meaning of ancient symbolism.
" H,ere and there " says he, " lofty conceptions of the
Deity, deep philosophical thoughts arid a pure morality
are discoverable in the A vesta like green spots in the
desert ; but they are more than neutralised by the silly
puerilities and degrading superstitious ideas which crop
up as plentifully in its pages as thorns anti. thistles in
a wilderness of sand."1 Mr. Joseph Cook, the other
day in this hall, said the same. The* good portions of
the Yedas were, he said, so few as compared with the

1 Ixxxviii.

40

trashy residuum, that he likened them to the fabled
jewel in the head of a filthy toad. It is really very
kind of these white Pandits to admit that there is
anything whatever except rottennes and puerility in
the old religions. Give each a statue !

In what has be5ii said I have, you must remember,
been speaking from the standpoint of a Parsi. I have
tried to sink my personality and my personal religious
preferences for the moment and put myself in your
place. That is the cardinal policy of the Theosophical
Society. It has itself no sectarian basis, but its motto
is the Universal Brotherhood of man. It was organised
to bring to light the long buried truths of not one, but
of all the world's archaic religions. Its members are of
all respectable castes, all faiths and races. It has many
intelligent Parsis among them. For the sake of them
and their co-religionists, thils lecture has been given.
I have tried most earnestly to induce one of them or
.some other Parsi to come forward and show you that
no religion has profounder truths, deeper spiritual
truths, concealed under its familiar mask, than yours.
That I am the incompetent though willing spokesman
for the ancient Yozdathraigar is your fault, not
mine. If I have spoken truth, if I have suggested
new thoughts, if I have given any encouragement
^to the pious or pleasure to the learned, my reward
is ample. <

" Yatha Ahu Vairyo " : " The Riches of Yohumano
shall be given to him who works in this world for

4L

Mazda ..." is the promise of the Avesta \ Bear it in
mind, ye Mazdeans, and remember the maiden and her
dogs by the Chinvad Bridge. I say this especially to
my Pars! Brothers in our Society, for I have the right
to speak to them as an elder to his junior. As Parsls
they have a paramount duty to their co-religionists,
who are retrograding morally for want of the pure
light. As Theosophists their interest embraces all
their fellowmen of whatever creed. For we read in
one of the most valuable of all the books for the
thoughtful Pars! the Ddbistan or School of Manners :

The world is a book full of knowledge and of justice,
The binder of which book is destiny, and the binding

the beginning and the end ;
The future of it is the law, and the leaves are the

religious persuasions . . .

For three years we have been preaching this idea
of mutual toleration and* Universal Bro'therhood here
in Bombay. Some have listened, but more have turn
ed a deaf ear. Nay, they have done worse — they
hav.e spread lies and calumnies about us, until we were
made to appear to you in a false light. But the tide is
turning at last, and public sympathy is slowly rising
in our favour. It has been a dark night for us ; it
is now sunrise. If you can see a good motive be
hind us and an honest purpose to do good1 by spread
ing truth will you not join us, as you have other so
cieties, and help to make us strong : »We can perhaps
be of service in aiding you to lear.n something

1 Fargard xxi.

42

more than you know about the spirit of Zoroastrian-
ism. As I said before, there are many important
secrets to be extracted from ancient MSS. in Armenia.
Perhaps they may be got at if you will join together and
send some thoroughly competent Pars! scholars to make
the search in co-opevation with the Tiflis Archasological
Society. See how the Christians have organised a Pales
tine Exploration Society to search for anything in the
shape of proof that can be found to corroborate their
Bible. For years they have kept engineers and
archaeologists at work. Is your religion less important
to you ? Or do you mean to sit on your guineas until
the last old MSS. has been burnt to kindle Armenian
fires or torn to wrap medicines and sweets in, as I
have seen Bibles utilised in India and Ceylon by
heathen Borahs ? One of our members i went over the
most important ground a f£w months &go. At the
monastery of Soorb Ovanness in Armenia there were in
1877 three superannuated priests : now there remains
but one. The " library of books and old manuscripts
heaped up as waste paper in every corner of the
pillar-cells, tempting no Kurd, are scattered* over
the rooms, " he says ; and, " For the consideration
of a dagger and a few silver abazes I got several
precious manuscripts from him " (the old priest) . Now
does not this suggest to you that thro ugh the friendly
intermediation of our Society, and the help of Madame
Blavatsky, you may be a.ble to secure exceptional
1 See The Theonophist^uly, 1881.

43

advantages in the matter of archaeological and philo
sophical research connected with Zoroastrianism ? We
do not ask you to join us for our benefit, but for yonr
own. 1 have thrown out the idea ; act upon it or not
as you choose. Beaten with ParsI children's shoes
ought the ParsT to be who next gives a gaudy nautch
or wedding tamasha unless he has previously sub
scribed as liberally as his means allow to a fund for
the promotion of his religion.

I told you in commencing that this subject of the
spirit of Zoroastrianism is limitless. In consulting
my authorities I have been perplexed to choose from
the abundance of material, rather than troubled by
any lack of it. There are a few more facts that I
would like to mention before closing.

Abul Pharaj, in the Book of Dynasties l states that
Zoroaster taught the Persians the manifestation of
the Wisdom (the Lord's Anointed Son, or Logos,
the Persian ' Honovar '). This is the living manifested
Word of deific Wisdom. He predicted that a Virgin
should conceive immaculately, and that at the birth
of that future messenger a six-pointed star would
appear and shine at noon-day. In its centre would
appear the figure of a Virgin. This six pointed star
you see engraved on the seal of the Theosophical
Society. In the Kabalah the Virgin is the Astral
Light or Akasha and the six pointed istar the emblem
of the macrocosm. The Logos or Sosios,h to be born

1 ii, p. 54.

44

means the secret knowledge or science which reveals
the ' Wisdom of God '. Into the hand of the Prophet
Messenger, Zoroaster, were delivered many gifts. The
act of filling the censer with fire from the sacred altar,
as the Mobed did in ancient days, was symbolical
of imparting to &h,e worshippers, the knowledge of
divine truth. In the GUa, Krshna informs Arjuna
that God is in the fire of the altar. " I am the Fire ;
I am the Sacrifice." The Flamens, or Etruscan priests,
were so called because they were supposed to be
illuminated by the tongues of Fire (Holy Ghost) and
the Christians took the hint. 1 The scarlet robe of
the Roman Catholic cardinal symbolises the heaven
ly Fire. In an ancient Irish 'MSS., Zoroaster is
called Airgiod-Lamh or he of the Golden Hand — the
hand which received and scattered celestial fire.2 He
is also called* Mogh Naudhit, the Magus of the new
ordinance, or dispensation. Zoroaster was one of the
first reformers who taught the people a portion of that
which he had learned at his initiation, namely, the
six periods or gdhambars in the successive evolution
of the world. The first is Maedyozarem, that in'which
the heavenly canopy was formed ; the second, Maedyo-
shahem, in which the collected moisture formed the
steamy clouds from which the waters were finally
precipitated ; the third, Paetishahem when the earth
'became consolidated out of primeval cosmic atoms,

1 Acts ii.

2 Ousley's Oriental Collections, I. 303.

45

the fourth, lyathrem in ^^•lnch earth gave birth to
vegetation ; the fifth, Maediyarem when the latter
slowly evolved into animal life ; the sixth, Hames-
pithamaedem, when the lower animals culminated in
man. The seventh period — to come at the end of a
certain cycle — is prefigured in ths promised coming
of the Persian Messiah, seated on a horse : when the
sun of our solar system will be extinguished and the
1 pralaya ' will begin. In the Christian Apocalypse
of St. John you will find the Persian symbolical pro
phecy closely copied ; and the Aryan Hindu awaits
the coming of his Kalaki Avatar, when the celestial
White Horse will come in the heavens, bestridden by
Vishnu. The horses of the Sun figure in all other
religions.

There exists among the Persian Par sis a volume
older than the-»present Zoroastrian writings. Its title
is Javidan Khirad, or Eternal Wisdom. It is a work
on the practical philosophy of Magic, with natural
explanations. Hyde mentions it in his preface to the'
Eeligo Veterum Persarum. The four Zoroastrian
' Ages ' are the four races of men— the black, the russet,
the yellow, the white. The four castes of Maim are
alleged to have typified this, and the Chinese show the
same idea in their four orders of priests, clothed in
black, red, yellow and white robes. St. John sees these
same colours in the symbolic horses of his Revelations
Speaking of Zoroaster, whom he admits as having poss
essed knowledge of all the sciences and philosophy then

46

in the world, the Rev. Oliver gives an account of the
cave temple of which so much is said in Zoroastrian
literature. "Zoroaster," he writes, "retired to a circular
cave or grotto in the mountains of Bokhara which he
ornamented with a profusion of symbolical and astro
nomical decoration, consecrating it to Methr-Az. . . .
Here the sun was represented by a splendid gem . . .
in a conspicuous parfc of the roof . . . and the four
ages of the world were represented by so many
globes of gold, silver, brass and iron.1

And now gentlemen — orthodox and heterodox —
leaders among the Pars! community — a word with
you on practical matters before we part. In three
days more I shall leave Bombay on a long journey
and the accidents of travel, to which we are all
liable, may prevent my ever addressing you again. I
pray you theVefore, to listen to what •<* sincere friend
has to say, a friend who is none the less one* in that
he never asked you for a pice of your money for
'himself, and never will.

I have lived among you for three years. During
this time I have been associating on terms tff con
fidential intimacy with some of your most intelli
gent young men. I have admitted them and, in some
cases, theii*, wives with them, into our Society. Thus
1 have perhaps had exceptional opportunities to learn
the real state of your people and religion. I find both
in sore need of an organised, unselfish and persistent

1 History of Initiation, p. 9.

47

effort among yourselves. Your people look up to you
as their best advisers, the Mobeds respect your influ
ence and court your favour. You have it in your
power to do a world of good. Will you do it ? You
now spend annually from twelve to fifteen lakhs of
rupees upon stupid tamashas — that ^io not belong to
your own religion at all ; that give you no real pleasure ;
that crush many poorer than you to the very ground
with debt ; that defile your own natures with dis
gusting pride and conceit ; that encourage intemperate
habits in the young and that weaken pious inclinations.
The burden of these upon the community is so sore,
and the common-sense of your best men so revolts at
them, that years ago you would have returned to the
simpler pleasure of your forefathers, had you not lack
ed the moral courage to combine. A reform like this
is never to be effected individually ; the leaders must
combine.' Take two of the fifteen lakhs you now
worse than waste and put it aside as a Fund for the
promotion of the Mazdean Religion and see what
you might do for your children and children's
children. Do not tell me you cannot afford to create
such a Fund, when the whole world knows that you
are ready to give thousands to every object suggested
by a European for the benefit or flattery of^ some one
of his race and even to rear statues to those who are
not the friends of your religion. " Charity begins at
home " ; give, then, first to your own people, and of
your remaining surplus to outside objects.

48

There is a fatal inactivity growing apace among
you. Not only are you not the religionists you were;
you are not the old-time merchants. You are being
elbowed out of commerce, and it is not very uncommon
to see your sons going from door to door in search of
employment at salaries of from fifty to seventy-five
rupees per month, with their pockets full of Matri
culation papers or F.E.A. and B.A.. diplomas. And in
stead of your being as in the olden time, the kings of
Indian trade and commerce, you are jostled by suc
cessful Bhattias, Borahs, Maimans, and Kkojahs who
have accumulated fortunes. You are making no proper
effort to impart a practical knowledge of your re
ligious principles and tenets to the educated rising
generation ; hence very naturally they are largely be
coming sceptics and infidels. They do not as yet actual
ly despise their religion en TI^LSSB — the tjme for that has
not quite arrived ; but, on account of your neglect to
show them its sublimity and make them deeply respect

' it, they have reached the stage of indifference. One
necessary step would be to have your prayer-tooks
translated into the Vernacular and English, wkh foot
notes to explain the text and especially commentaries
to show the reconciliation of Mazdean philosophy
with modern science. It is worse than useless — it is
highly injurious to one's faith — to patter off prayers

•' in an unknown tongue, encouraging the hypocrisy of
pretending to be pious while one has not the food at
hand for a single pious thought. I have watched

49

both Priests and Behedin at their prayers, morning"
and evening and seen more that were not attending*
to the business in hand than that were.

If you wish to revive your religion, you should, be
sides organising the exploring expeditions and archaeo
logical surveys I previously spoke <af, also rear a class
of Pars! preachers who would be able to expound
it thoroughly and maintain it against all critics and
enemies. These men should be highly educated and
versed in Samskrt, Zend, Pahalvi, Persian and English.
Some should know German and French — like my
honoured friend Mr. Kama. "With western literature
they should be familiar. Some should be taught
oratory so as to expound in a popular style the sacred
theme. It might also be well to found travelling
scholarships, as the Europeans have, to be given to
especially mervtorious students.

A stricter moral example should be set by you to
your youth, who have, as I said above, fallen in too
many cases into evil ways. They do not regard truth/
nor 'show as much respect to elders., as formerly.

As 'your understanding of the Spirit of your
religion has decreased, you have been growing more
and more superstitious ; essentials are neglected, and
non-essentials given an exaggerated consequence.

Finally, and chiefly, the priestly class needs a
thorough reformation. There are ,more than you1
need to perform the offices, of religion, and the
profession being over-crowded, their influence is

50

continually decreasing and they have come, as a Pars!
gentleman once remarked to me, to be looked upon
as licensed beggars — a state of things which must
certainly grieve your really learned Dasturs more than
any one else.

The foregoing ihoughts are submitted to you with
great deference and in the hope that they will be
pardoned in view of the kindly interest which
prompts them. Before embodying them in this
discourse I have taken the counsel of one of my most
respected Pars! friends, so that you may regard them
as in fact the views of one of your own community.

And now I ask you, as a final word, if the crisis has
not arrived when each of you is called upon, for
the sake of all he holds sacred, to be up and doing.
Shall the voice of Chaldean Fathers, which whispers
to you across • the ages, be h^ard in vayi ? Shall the
example of Zoroaster and others be forgotten * Must
the memory of your hero-forefathers be dishonoured ?
i^hall there never more arise among you a Dastur
Nairyosang Dhaval to draw down the celestial flame
from the azure vault upon your Temple-altar ? »Is the
favour of Ahura-Mazda no longer a boon precious
enough to strive for and to deserve ? The Hindu pil
grims to the Temple-slirine of the Jotir Math at
Badrinath affirm that some, more favoured than the
*est, have sometimes seen far up amid the snow and
ice of Mount Davalagiri, a Himalayan peak, the
venerable figures of Mahatmas — perhaps of Rshis —

I

J

51

who keep their ward and watch over the fallen Aryan
faith and wait the time for its resusciation. So too
our Brother travelling in Armenia writes : "there is
a cave up near the crest of Allah-Dag,1 where at each
setting of the sun, appears at the cave's mouth a
stately figure holding a book of recprds in his hands/'
The people say that this is Mathan, last of the great
Magian priests; whose body diedsome sixteen centuries
ugo. His anxious shade watches from thence the
fate of Zoroaster's faith. And shall he stand in vain ?
Is he to see that faith die out for want of spiritual
refreshment ? Ye sons of Sohrab and of Rustam,
rouse! Awake ere it is too late ! The hour is here ;
where are the MEN ?

i A mountain chain of Great Armenia For particulars of the*
legend here described see The Theosophist,?o\. II,p.213.

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THE ADYAR PAMPHLET*

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ANNIE BKSANT

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12. What Theosophy Does for Us. C. W. LEADBEATER

13. Elementary Lessons on Karma. ANNIE BESAXT

14. The Fundamental Idea of Theosophy.

BHAGAVAN DAS

15. The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons. H.S. OI.COTT

16. Education in the Light of Theosophy. ANNIE BRSANT

17. On the Bhagavad-Gita. T. SCBBA RAO

. AND NC;BJN K. BANNERJI

18. The Future Socialism. AXNII* BESAXT

19. Occultism, Semi-Occultism and

Pseudo-Occultism ANNIE BESANT

20. The Law of Cause and Effect. C. W. LEADBRATER

21. Mysticism. AXXIK BKSANT

22. Aspects of the Christ [)<>.

23. The Spirit of Zoroastrianism H. 8. OLCOTT

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