# Zoroastrianism: heaven, hell, and the first cosmic battle

The faith of the Persian empires and the hidden ancestor of much of Western religion: Zarathustra's vision of a good god at war with a devil gave the world cosmic dualism, angels and demons, heaven and hell, and a final judgment, ideas that entered Judaism and passed into Christianity and Islam.

*This story led to: How Christianity grew and split*
*This story parallel: How Islam began and spread*
*This story led to: The story of Judaism*
*This story parallel: The old gods and their long shadow*
*This story parallel: Easter, Lent, and the roots of the spring festival*
*This story parallel: The old gods hidden in everyday English*

## c. 1000 BCE — Zarathustra founds the first great world religion of good and evil

The prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster) preaches a faith centered on one supreme god, Ahura Mazda, locked in cosmic struggle with the spirit of evil. Scholars date him anywhere from 1500 to 600 BCE, but his religion introduced ideas that would reshape all the later faiths of the West.

## c. 999 BCE — The cosmic battle: light against darkness

Zoroastrianism teaches that all of history is a war between the good creator Ahura Mazda and the evil Angra Mainyu, in which every person must choose a side. This dualism of a good god and a devil, of light against darkness, was a new idea in religion.

## c. 550 BCE — Zoroastrianism becomes the faith of the Persian Empire

Under Cyrus and Darius the Achaemenid Persian empire, the largest the world had yet seen, holds Zoroastrian belief. For the first time the religion of the one wise lord governed a superpower straddling three continents.

## c. 549 BCE — Nowruz: the spring festival that outlived the empire

The Zoroastrian new year Nowruz, held at the spring equinox to mark the renewal of the world, is still celebrated by hundreds of millions of people from Iran to Central Asia. One of the world's oldest festivals of rebirth is still alive.

## c. 538 BCE — The Jews meet Zoroastrianism in the Persian age

After Cyrus frees the Jews from Babylon, Jewish thought during the Persian period takes on ideas with strong Zoroastrian parallels: a cosmic evil power (Satan), armies of angels and demons, a heaven and a hell, the resurrection of the dead, and a final judgment. Many scholars see here the hidden root of later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic belief.

## c. 500 BCE — The Magi and the word 'magic'

The Magi were the Zoroastrian priestly caste; their name gives us the word 'magic', and the wise men who visit the infant Jesus in the Gospel are Magi from the east. A Persian priesthood is woven into the Christian Nativity and the English language alike.

## c. 499 BCE — The Saoshyant: the world-savior to come

Zoroastrianism looked for a Saoshyant, a future savior who would defeat evil, raise the dead, and renew the world in a final judgment. The pattern of a coming redeemer and an end-time victory echoes through later messianic and apocalyptic religion.

## 224 — The Sassanids restore Zoroastrian Persia

The Sassanid empire makes Zoroastrianism the state church of Persia again and gathers its scriptures, the Avesta. For four more centuries the fire-temples of the wise lord burned across an empire that rivaled Rome.

## 651 — The Arab conquest ends Zoroastrian Persia

The Muslim Arab conquest topples the Sassanid empire, and Zoroastrianism slowly gives way to Islam in its homeland. Over the following centuries many of the faithful would flee eastward to India.

## c. 936 — The Parsis carry the fire to India

Zoroastrian refugees settle in India as the Parsis, keeping the faith alive for a thousand years. Their small community would later found great modern industrial houses such as Tata and Godrej, and produce figures from Freddie Mercury to Zubin Mehta.

## 1883 — Nietzsche revives the name of Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche borrows the prophet's name for Thus Spoke Zarathustra, using the founder of the first good-and-evil religion as the mouthpiece for a philosophy beyond good and evil. The ancient name re-entered Western culture, if not the ancient faith.