Persian Mythology

[Mehrbod]

Amesha Spentas and Chakras - part 2
by: Shahriar Shahriari

Now the question becomes, how are these related to the Chakras?

1- The Law is what determines the basis of the operation of the universe. Our lives and our world, work according to the Law. Therefore we can only operate properly in this world if we understand what the laws are and honor them and base our actions upon them. In other words, unless we understand how the physical domain operates, we cannot fulfil our needs and desires through our decisions and choices. We will not know what cause to focus on in order to create our desired effect. Our survival becomes a matter of reliance on the mercy of the world, and we become randomly determined components of that system.
? Asha is our grounding of the Law � the Root Chakra

2- The Plan or Blueprint is our creative aspect. We desire and then plan in order to create. We have the urge and the drive in order to procreate. If we plan with benevolent intentions, then we have acted in accordance with the spirit of the Good Mind. Otherwise, we have deviated away from this spirit, thus creating evil rather than goodness.
? Vohu Mano is our creative aspect � the Second Chakra

3- Khshatra is our ability to act based on our plans and intentions in order to manifest our desires. It is our power to change our environment and our world according to what we perceive to be the best. If we act in the spirit of goodness, we will plan well and manifest goodness, if not, the outcome will be evil contribution.
? Khshatra is our power and ability to manifest � the Third Chakra

4- Spenta Armaiti is the spirit of Love and faith. It is this center that gives us the ability to love another, both in the sense of individual love (like lovers or parent-child) as well as divine love (love of humanity and Ahura Mazda). If we make our choices in a loving spirit and with faith in the goodness of the world, then we have connected with the spirit of Love, otherwise our contributions are based on disconnection from this spirit and can only have fear based and hateful results.
? Spenta Armaiti is our ability and urge to Love � the Fourth Chakra

5- Haurvatat is the spirit of Perfection, perfection of expression. Part of this perfection is working in accord with the totality of the interrelated and interconnected universal system, and such work needs communication and communion. This communication is not just limited to person to person communication, but includes communication with animals, plants, objects and our environment. In other words, if we make our expression in the spirit of Perfection, then we express ourselves perfectly, and we communicate with all aspects of life perfectly.
? Haurvatat is our ability to express ourselves perfectly � the Fifth Chakra

6- Ameratat, the spirit of Immortality is an understanding of the timeless nature of the universe. While our physical existence is time-based and time-dependent, our soul or essence is timeless and immortal. Ameratat is our ability to be in touch with our soul or essence, which itself is a part of the divine and as such connected to every other soul. Our level of sensitivity and empathy, our level of contact with others (people and things) is also a measure of our psychic development. If we develop our psychic powers, we will experience the spirit of immortality. If we put it to Good use, then we will experience the goodness of this connectedness, otherwise, we will only be harming ourselves, immortally.
? Ameratat is our psychic energy center � the Sixth Chakra


Now the question remains, what of the Crown Chakra?

According to Zarathushtra, if we make our choices in accord with the six Amesha Spentas, we will be a Cosmically Conscious human being. In other words, the development of Cosmic Consciousness is not a separate project, but a byproduct of our development of our six divine aspects.

According to Zarathushtra, the person who operates in accordance with the Law, Plans well, Manifests accordingly, is Loving and has Faith, strives for Perfect expression, and is in touch with his/her Immortality, is in union with Ahura Mazda. In other words, this person is Cosmically Conscious.

Therefore, in this representation, the Crown Chakra which symbolizes our gateway to the divine, is in fact our divine connection and our oneness with Ahura Mazda. Zarathushtra did not propose any representation or name for this connection. Instead he made the totality of the six Amesha Spentas become that by calling them aspects or emanations of Ahura Mazda.

To go back to our cube analogy, once all six faces are present and in their rightful places, then we also have the cube!



Source:
Amesha Spentas & Chakras

[Mehrbod]

Spenta Mainyu
aka: Sraosa

Spenta Mainyu is the Holy Spirit of Ahura Mazda. In Zoroaster's initial vision the first act which he conceived Ahura Mazda performing was the evocation of the six lesser divinities through his Holy Spirit, Spenta Mainyu.

Spenta Mainyu is the self-revealing activity of Ahura Mazda. The supreme godhead, we have seen, is immutable, perfect, spiritual unity. Zarathushtra solves the problem of reconciling the unchangeable nature of Ahura Mazda with the world of change by postulating a principle that intervenes between the unmoved mover and the moved.

Spenta Mainyu is as old as Ahura Mazda, for be ever was in Ahura Mazda and with Ahura Mazda. Though he is thus part of Ahura Mazda, in his manifestation as the working self of Ahura Mazda he is different from Ahura Mazda. He is not an entity or personality. Ahura Mazda is the greatest spiritual personality. Spenta Mainyu is his image, his replica. He represents the creative attribute of Ahura Mazda in his relation to the created world.

Spenta Mainyu symbolizes the ideal or perfect existence as conceived in thought by Ahura Mazda. The materialization of the divine thought in creation spells imperfection and Spenta Mainyu is shadowed by his inseparable opposite.

The context shows that "spenta" means "incremental, increasing, expanding, progressing, and progressive." "Mainyu" means "means of thinking, faculty of thinking, mind, and mentality." The term "Spenta Mainyu" is an attribute of Mazda Ahura, literally "Super-wisdom Being". Mainyu stands for the divine intelligence with a continuous creative, sustaining, and promoting function.

[Mehrbod]

Ameretat
aka: Amurdad

Ameretat means "Deathlessness and Immortally". Together with Haurvatat, it is the ultimate goal and represents the completion of our evolutionary development and the final achievement of our life on earth. She is associated with plants. She personifies immortality and rules the physical and spiritual aspects of eternal life as are symbolized in plants. Ameretat is the Amesha
Spenta of long life on earth and perpetuality in the hereafter. In the day-name and month-name dedications of the Zoroastrian calendar, the seventh day of the month and fifth month of the year are named after Ameretat/Amurdad/Mordad and are under her protection. Her eternal opponent is the Arch-Demon of aging, Zarich.

The word amərətāt is grammatically feminine and the divinity Ameretat is a female entity. Etymologically, Avestan amərətāt derives from an Indo-Iranian root and is linguistically related to Vedic Sanskrit amṛtatva. In Sassanid Era Zoroastrian tradition, Ameretat appears as Middle Persian Amurdad, continuing in New Persian as Mordad or Amordad.

The relationship between Ameretat and Haurvatat is carries forward into the Younger Avesta. The Younger Avestan texts allude to their respective guardianships of plant life and water (comparable with the Gathic allusion to sustenence), but these identifications are only properly developed in later tradition. These associations with also reflect the Zoroastrian cosmological model in which each of the Amesha Spentas is identified with one aspect of creation.

Like the other Amesha Spentas also, Ameretat is already attested in the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrianism and considered to have been composed by Zoroaster himself. And like most other principles, Ameretat is not unambiguously an entity in those hymns.

Through the association with plants and water, Ameretat and Haurvatat are consequently identified with food and drink, and traditionally it was out of respect for these two Amesha Spentas that meals were to be taken in silence

According to the cosmological legends of the Bundahishn, when Angra Mainyu (MP: Ahriman) withered the primordial plant, Ameretat crushed it to pulp and mixed it with water. Tishtrya then took the water and spread it over the world as rain, which in turn caused a multitude of other plants to grow up.

[Mehrbod]

Fire Temples
Aka: Atash-Kadeh

All traditional Zoroastrian temples, also know as agiaries or "places of fire," include a holy fire to represent the goodness and purity toward which all should strive. Once it is properly consecrated, a temple fire should never be allowed to go out, although it can be transported to another location if necessary.

A fire temple is the place of worship for Zoroastrians. Zoroastrians revere fire in any form. In the Zoroastrian religion, fire, together with clean water, are agents of ritual purity. Clean, white "ash for the purification ceremonies [is] regarded as the basis of ritual life," which, "are essentially the rites proper to the tending of a domestic fire, for the temple [fire] is that of the hearth fire raised to a new solemnity".


Keeping the Fires Pure

While fire purifies, even consecrated, holy fires are not immune to contamination, and Zoroastrian priests take many precautions against such an action occurring. When tending to the fire, a cloth known as a padan is worn over the mouth and nose so that breath and saliva do not pollute the fire. This reflects an outlook on saliva that is similar to Hindu beliefs, which shares some historical origins with Zoroastrianism, where saliva is never allowed to touch eating utensils due to its unclean properties.

[Mehrbod]

Mitra
Aka: Mithra, Mehr, Myhr
Avestan: Miθpa

Mithra is the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) of covenant and oath. In addition to being the divinity of contracts, Mithra is also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth, and the guardian of cattle, the harvest and of The Waters. The most important of the Yazatas outside the Amesha Spentas, Mithra gained the title “The Unconquered Sun”, not
for being Ahura Mazda’s son, but for recovering the Sun Chariot that carries the Sun, slaying the Divine Bull before it reached heaven and thus creating all live on the World from his blood, among other things.

While Mithra is not the divinity of the Sun in Zoroastrian scripture (or in Indian scripture either), this being the role of Hvare. khshaeta (literally "radiant Sun", whence also Middle Persian Khorshed for the Sun), in Zoroastrian/Iranian tradition, Mithra became the divinity of the Sun. How, when or why this occurred is uncertain, but is commonly attributed to a conflation with Babylonian Shamash, who – in addition to being a Sun god – was a judicial figure like Mithra. In the Hellenistic era (i.e., in Seleucid and Parthian times), Mithra also seems to have been conflated with Apollo, who – like Mithra – was an all-seeing divinity of the truth.

Mithra always presents himself on the world as a person with a high sense of justice, always on the alert and quite perceptive. Notably he was a famous police man, a security man, a fighter for world peace, a watcher of the streets. Even as a man, he seems a hero. Great things and achievements are expected from the Scions of Mithra and they commonly live to them. They fight to keep peace and justice on the worlds and their connections. All life on those worlds is just as important as the worlds themselves.

Together with Rashnu "Justice" and Sraosha "Obedience", Mithra is one of the three judges at the Chinvat bridge, the "bridge of separation" that all souls must cross. Unlike Sraosha, Mithra is not however a psychopomp. Should the good thoughts, words and deeds outweigh the bad, Sraosha alone conveys the soul across the bridge.

In the Zoroastrian calendar, the sixteenth day of the month and the seventh month of the year are dedicated to, and under the protection of, Mithra. The position of the sixteenth day and seventh month reflects the Mithra's rank in the hierarchy of the divinities; the sixteenth day and seventh month are respectively the first day of the second half of the month and the first month of the second half of the year. The day on which the day-name and month-name dedications intersect is (like all other such intersections) dedicated to the divinity of that day/month, and is celebrated with a Jashan (from Avestan Yasna, "worship") in honor of that divinity. In the case of Mithra this was Jashan-e Mihragan, or just Mihragan in short.

[Mehrbod]

Zam
aka:Zamyad, Zamyat, Zam Yazad

Zam (Zām) is the Avestan language term for the Zoroastrian concept of "earth"(prototyped as a chemical element in ancient philosophy, and as a minor Yazata in Zoroastrianism and later Persian mythology.), in both the sense of land and soil and in the sense of the world. The earth is prototyped as a primordial element in Zoroastrian tradition, and represented by a
minor divinity Zam who is the hypostasis of the "earth". The word itself is cognate to the Baltic 'Zemes' and Slavic 'Zem', both meaning the planet earth as well as soil.

The term 'Zam' exists with the same meaning in both Avestan and middle Persian languages. Zam is occasionally paired with the Amesha Spenta Armaiti, with whom Zam shares some attributes. According to Xenophon(Greek historian), Cyrus sacrificed animals to the earth as the Magians directed.

The element zam exists with the same meaning in Middle Persian, which is the language of the texts of Zoroastrian tradition. The divinity Zam however appears in the later language as Zamyad, which is a contraction of "Zam Yazad", i.e. the yazata Zam.

The last hymn recited in the procedure for the establishment of a Fire temple is the Zamyad Yasht. This is done because to achieve the required 91 recitals in honor of the Yazatas, would in principle require each of the 30 hymns associated with the divinites of the 30 days to be recited thrice with one additional one.

notwithstanding the dedication of the 28th day of the month and the manifestation as one of the primordial elements, Zam is not a particularly significant divinity.

From among the flowers associated with the yazatas, Zam's is the Basil.

[Mehrbod]

Fire-temple of Baku

At the city of Baku in former Iranian province of Arran, today known as the republic of Azerbaijan, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, there was for a long time a very old fire-temple; this particular fire-temple was probably older than recorded history. (Other fire-shrines dotted the whole area of Baku, which in the present day is a major petroleum source.)

According to Haxtha usen (who wrote about Baku in a book published in 1863) this Atish-gah or Atish-jah--that is, the Place of Fire; in Persian, 'fire-temple' is atash kuda--had been recently rebuilt: the holy flame issued from a central opening and also from four hollow pillars in the temple, which was a building of triangular form, about one hundred and ninety paces to the side, constructed by a Hindu merchant in the eighteen hundreds. He described the flame as about four feet high, bright, and a wondrous sight as it waved heavily to and fro against a dark sky - ie, the temple was unroofed.

In 1876, the English traveler James Bryce also visited the fire-temple, and remarks that its maintenance and the upkeep of the one attendant priest was paid for by the Parsee community of Bombay, whose members also visited Baku on pilgrimage.

And in 1784, by the account of George Forster of the Bengal Civil Service, the Atish-gah was a square structure about 30 yards across, surrounded by a low wall and containing many apartments, in each of which was a small jet of sulphurous fire issuing from a funnel "constructed in the shape of a Hindu altar." The fire was used for worship, cookery and warmth. On closing the funnel the fire was extinguished, at which time a hollow sound was heard accompanied by a strong and cold current of air. Exclusive of these, there was a large jet from a natural cleft, and many small jets outside the wall, one of which was used by the Hindus (of which there was a large trading community at Baku just then) for burning their dead.

[Mehrbod]

Ashi
aka: Ashi Vanghuhi, Ashishwangh, Ard

Ashi`s origin meaning is portion and plenty but after that gets character and became independent & lavish goddess. It was imagined like a beautiful girl that is sited on a bench at sky and is protecting spring blooms.

She has always known of a good epithet and donor of happy and good life for humankind. And against Greek beliefs is a donor of good and happy life. A life that every one hope to have her help.

The good Ashi, the beautiful Ashi, the shining Ashi you make happiness for men whom are on your way by your holy Ascent .There are good smell happy life and friend ships at those houses that house which you walk in it. The good Ashi if you help men, they will make a country with enough food. Indeed good for people who get help from you please help me you donor and powerful.

The 25th day of the month in the Zoroastrian religious calendar is named for her. She is a co-worker of Spenta Armaiti.

Seventeenth Yasht (part) of Avesta which is on of the oldest parts of Avesta is dedicated to Ashi and at this part this Persian beautiful goddess has been prayed by beautiful and attractive songs.

Art by Linda Bergkvist

[Mehrbod]

Tishtrya
aka: Tistrya, Tir, Tishtryaeninis, Tishtar

Tishtrya (Tištrya) is the Avestan language name of an Zoroastrian benevolent divinity associated with life-bringing rainfall and fertility. Tishtrya is Tir in Middle- and Modern Persian. As has been judged from the archaic context in which Tishtrya appears in the texts of the Avesta, the divinity/concept is almost certainly of Indo-Iranian origi
n.

As soon as Hormozd (Ahura Mazda) had rested from his creation, he appointed Tishtar to irrigate the world by taking rain from the clouds to drench the land, refresh the plants, open the flowers, fill the rivers with water and make he springs flow and all the Aryan lands prosperous and flourishing.

In the Zoroastrian religious calendar, the 13th day of the month and the 4th month of the year are dedicated to Tishtrya/Tir, and hence named after the entity. In the Iranian civil calendar, which inherits its month names from the Zoroastrian calendar, the 4th month is likewise named Tir.

During the Achaemenid period, Tishtrya was conflated with Semitic Nabu-Tiri, and thus came to be associated with the Dog Star, Sirius. The Tiregan festival, previously associated with Tiri(a reconstructed name), was likewise transferred to Tishtrya. During the Hellenic period, Tishtrya came to be associated with Pythian Apollo, patron of Delphi, and thus a divinity of oracles.

[Mehrbod]

Name: Vayu-Vata
aka: Vata, Vayu

Vayu-Vata (or Vata-Vayu) is the Avestan language name of a dual-natured Zoroastrian divinity of the wind (Vayu) and of the atmosphere (Vata). The names are also used independently of one another, with 'Vayu' occurring more frequently than 'Vata', but even when used independently still representing the other aspect.

The entity is simultaneously angelic and demonic, that is, depending on the circumstances, either yazata - "worthy of worship" - or daeva, which in Zoroastrian tradition is a demon. Scripture frequently applies the epithet "good" when speaking of one or the other in a positive context.
In Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism, a now-extinct form of Zoroastrianism), Vata-Vayu represented two facets of the quaternary Zurvan. In this arrangement, Vata-Vayu represented "space" while the other two facets represent "time."
Vayu-Vata has Indo-Iranian roots, and has the same name in historical Vedic religion.

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