Ahura Mazda and Ahriman

Before the kings and heroes, there is a choice. In the Gathas, the seventeen hymns of the Avesta that Zoroastrians attribute to the prophet Zarathustra himself, two primal spirits appear as twins. One chooses truth and good; the other chooses the lie. Every human being, the hymns say, must make the same choice. This is not a legend kept behind glass. Zoroastrianism is a living faith, practised today in Iran, India and a worldwide diaspora, and what follows is its own account of the beginning, told with that in mind. The supreme being is Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord". Opposing his creation stands Angra Mainyu, the "Hostile Spirit", whose name softened over centuries into the Middle Persian Ahriman. The two are not equals. Ahura Mazda creates; Ahriman can only spoil, bringing death, drought, decay and falsehood into a world that was made good.

Later Zoroastrian books in Middle Persian, above all the Bundahishn, or "Primal Creation", give this struggle a shape in time. Ahura Mazda fashions the world in stages: sky, water, earth, plants, the first animal, the first human, and fire running through everything. Ahriman breaks in and poisons it. History is the long contest that follows, and it ends with frashokereti, the renovation, when evil is defeated and the world is made whole again. Accounts differ in their details, and the Gathas themselves say far less than the later books.

Outsiders have long called Zoroastrians fire-worshippers. Zoroastrians say otherwise: fire is a symbol of truth and purity, and they pray in its presence, not to it. In the fire temples of Yazd and elsewhere, flames are tended without being allowed to go out. The ethics are carried in a phrase every Iranian schoolchild knows in some form: humata, hukhta, hvarshta, good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

Why it still matters

Much of the Iranian year bears this faith's mark. The months of the solar calendar carry the names of Zoroastrian divine beings, among them Farvardin, Ordibehesht and Mehr. Nowruz, the new year, and Chaharshanbe Suri, the fire-leaping night before it, have Zoroastrian roots, even if most who celebrate them today are not Zoroastrian. The winged figure called the faravahar, carved at Persepolis and worn as a pendant across the diaspora, is read in many ways; to many Iranians it simply means the old idea that your life is a choice you make, every day, between better and worse.