![ahura210[1].gif](https://i.imgur.com/I8xTwIw.gif "ahura210[1].gif")
This religion has always fascinated me. It only seems to exist in the public consciousness now through weird fetishisms and orientalist caricatures, or in the echoes it left in the big Abrahamic religions. But it was the major religion of many of the longest lasting and most powerful and influential empires of all time, in the cradle of civilization.
Anyone any more than a wikipedia expert here who could help explain what the basic theology was?
>>13241
It still kinda exists in India
Look up Parsis community. They are direct descendants of these guys
A lot of people I see on the internet associate it with incest because of the game Crusader Kings 2 in which the defining feature or Zoroastrianism is the ability to have marriages in your immediate family.
In what cursory research I did, I could find virtually no reference whatsoever to incest being actually practiced as part of Zoroastrianism. The only source seems to be a history book by an Iranian muslim which purports that Zoroastrian priests in the Sassanid empire encouraged incest in the royal family because the combination of royal blood was considered 'sacred' and 'produced stronger children'. He goes on to claim that the populace didn't like this and it was a major reason that people were willing to convert to Islam.
This sounds really dubious, especially coming from an author with a marked bias against Zoroastrians. Anyone have more info or want to offer some insight?
>>13241
>Anyone any more than a wikipedia expert here who could help explain what the basic theology was?
Dualism. They're credited with inventing the concept of good and evil, most gods in a pantheon tend to have an equal mix of good and evil.
I know that they held fire and earth to be sacred elements and neither one should be defiled by the dead, so dead bodies were laid out in open air temples and picked clean by carrion birds.
>>13538
Yeah, Freddie Mercury was a Parsi, his funeral even followed Zoroastrian rites.
>>14074
>It's fucking true
Holy shit Freddie Mercury was actually zoroastrian. As if the religion couldn't get any cooler.
>>14188
Fuck, I always thought Paradox were really stretching with this one, like with the Messalians.
>>14188
This is thing is so outrageously footnoted and referenced it's almost scary. Like holy shit.
But basically the royals probably married sisters and such, the rest of the population probably did cousins, which makes sense considering the amount of cousin marriages today in the region for the same economic reasons I'm reading so far in this link.
>>13241
I too like incest.
Is incest really such a big issue in America? What made it suddenly be seen as negative there? Cousins hardly count as incest?
>>14596
Jokes aside, marrying a first cousin isn't that far out. Pretty sure rudy giuliani got his first marriage annulled by the catholic church because he said his wife was also his first cousin. This happened very early in his political career too.
>>14825
>Is incest really such a big issue in America?
The rest of the country has a running joke that the south, and other rural parts of the country are famous for inbreeding and incest.
I really would like to know the best resources for learning about it
>>14968
lots of history is built upon incest though
>>14188
Wow, that's more than I could ever expect. Thank you for the link.
>>14825
It's a big deal everywhere m8
>>14596
That's pretty normal for a historical journal, its just not normal at all to put all the references IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING TEXT, like seriously at least use footnotes if not endnotes.
>>15032
>lots of history is built upon incest though
Oh sure, not debating that. But anon asked if incest was a problem here. It's not really, except as a running joke against rednecks.
Probably because we never had any kind of royal tradition here, and the country was founded by colonist and immigrants with nothing but room to expand. Expansionist by design, because of that it doesn't require you to look that hard to find someone not even distantly related to you.
>>15311
Incest is a universal taboo..pretty much everywhere. Which is what makes things like zoroastrian incest so unique and interesting.
>>15435
>Incest is a universal taboo..pretty much everywhere.
I'm specifically talking about royal lines, and the amount of GPD created by trying to keep royal blood pure.
>>15435
There is nothing taboo about the beauty that is incest.
>>15435
The very link anon posted states the opposite of what you said. The notion of incest as a 'universal taboo' was disproven by anthropologists some time ago.
>>14596
>the royals probably married sisters and such
To be fair, that wasn't particularly uncommon in those days either (Ptolemies, Seleucids)
The simplest explanation would be that there are two forces in the universe: Ohrmazd (embodiment of Goodness), and Ahriman (embodiment of Evil). They were not omnipotent, and they were only as powerful as whatever morals humans decided to live by. They are fated to duel in an Armageddon-type ordeal, wherein Ohrmazd will eventually triumph and the world will end.
Sky burials aren't that bad of an idea really
>>17239
>and they were only as powerful as whatever morals humans decided to live by.
Could you expand upon that a little? The strength of the gods was based on the belief of mortals? Thats a pretty crazy idea.
Serious question, do they still practice incest
>>18010
No
>>13834
In Zoroastrianism there is a concept known as xwēdōdah, or the holy union of father and daughter/mother and son/brother and sister. It was and still is considered by the religion as the most pious acts one can perform as a Zoroastrian for reasons that are far too complicated to explain in a simple 4chan post. However, since nothng in the religion requires it and most people simply don't want to marry someone in their family, it very rarely happened outside of royalty.
How are Zoroastrianism and Manichean related?
>>17239
>They are fated to duel in an Armageddon-type ordeal, wherein Ohrmazd will eventually triumph and the world will end.
>good wins
>world is gone anyway
Yeah thanks for nothing your holiness.
>>17963
Yep. Every person has free will, but are instructed to live by 3 rules: Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds.Naturally, there are post-death consequences, as you are judged by Mithra and sent to either Heaven or Hell, but there is no "divine plan" in the Abrahamic sense, where God decides who lives and who dies. The two forces are equal.
>>18258
The Zoroastrians believe the world is inherently evil, so you can see how that's not necessarily a bad thing in their view. .
>>18284
I love this. Thanks for the information, could you tell me more about the characters of Ahriman and Ahura Mazda? Or are they just platonic embodiments?
>>17239
Thats just like here in /his/ where /pol/ and plebbit fight and eventually /pol/ wins and the board gets deleted because muh raysis
>>18424
those are not two different sides
/pol/ is just reddit for edgy kids, they're racist and full of hot air over there too, they just have to hide it behind enough subreddits and better language.
![freddie-mercury[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DK05D4n.jpg "freddie-mercury[1].jpg")
Off to bed now, thanks for the interesting posts so far, keep the thread up with Zoroastrian things while I'm away, okay?
>>18406
Absolutely. However, I wouldn't be able to adequately describe to you the entirety of a religion as complex as Zoroastrianism in something as mundane as a series of 4chan posts.
I recommend you pick up "Avesta: The Religious Book of the Parsees" by Arthur H. Bleeck, and "the Shahnameh" to read in your leisure.
As for their characters, there is a story in Zurvanism (a sect of old Zoroastrianism) which details the fact that both figures are capable of both good and evil: Ahriman created the peacock to prove that he can make something as lovely as any of Ohrmazd's creations, but *chooses* not to, indicating that even these two have free will.
>>18566
Not that anon, but thanks for those book recs. I was just about to ask for some
>>18481
You're an idiot
>>13834
That aspect of it was relegated mostly to royalty.
Crusader Kings 2 is a game in which you play a royal dynasty, so of course it is highlighted.
Still hot, but, I doubt they did it for the reasons us 4chan deviants enjoy incest.
>>18219
The Manichean faith came much, much later than Zoroastrianism. It took a lot from Zoro., but it also drew upon Christianity and Buddhism. This drove it away from Zoro. in a sense.
tl;dr Manichean is the mixed, great-great-great grandchild of Zoroastrianism
I'm half-Persian and I won't lie, Zoroastrianism only interests me because my dad basically raised me to be ultra-nationalistic which includes venerating pre-islamic religions in Iran.
>>16220
>>17988
Nuclear family incest is bad is a Christian meme.
The only old world "incest is bad" story we have is Oedipus, which only cast a bad light on parent-child incest, which is a lot different from sibling incest.
Old Norse and Egyptian stories have plenty of brother-sister incest, with the latter being not just relegated to the "royals".
Rome prevented marriages between immediate family, but that only really picked up in the AD period after Christianity started taking root.
Even today, sibling incest isn't really seen "as bad" as parent-child, with most European countries dropping prosecution of acts of sibling incest (but not allowing marriage). The reason parent-child incest is frowned upon is because of consent mindsets and the higher chance for child sexual abuse.
it seems so interesting but it's a shame it seems to be going extinct. I've heard they're being killed in the middle east as well
>>24275
It's just a continuation of 7-8th century practices when the caliphate took over. Given ISIS wants to re-establish a caliphate, it's no surprise they're extinguishing everything, from offshots of Sunni Islam to ancient Iranian practices.
What a shame. Their evil god was called Angry Manjew. I can get behind a religion like that.
I've heard it's experiencing a small resurgence in Kurdish Iraq. Is there any truth to that?
>>18131
>It was and still is considered by the religion as the most pious acts one can perform as a Zoroastrian for reasons that are far too complicated to explain in a simple 4chan post.
Can you try at least? Shit is fascinating.
>>20713
I'm you but in a few years. Your teenage-ness is showing in this post.
>>14188
>On the Desirability of Footnote and Endnote Usage In Academic Papers
>by This Guy
>>15435
except like, among contemporary Egyptian royalty and shit
>>27669
In that case, though, they didn't spend much time together. Generally speaking, the boys slept and lived in one part of the palace, and the girls slept and lived in another. So that helped prevent the Westermarck effect.
