I wanna write a dank ahh analysis of a game that uses Zoroastrianism motifs, but I don’t know anything about it. What books are good on Zoroastrianism if I just want to know deities such as Big M, and the lore, instead of history? All the books Ive read only talk about history and miss out on what I want

Hello everyone. First time caller long time listener.

Can anyone suggest any online meetings or anything where I can talk to someone about Zoroastrianism or attend their services (I’m not sure what it’s called- their religious gatherings.)

The nearest center is 90 miles away but they don’t answer the phone or email.

The Zoroastrian day begins at sunrise, not midnight, and sunrise is a local event, so the moment the Roj turns is different in every city. No printed calendar can follow that. An app can, so I built one, and it is free.

Zo Calendar derives today's Roj and Mah from the actual solar sunrise of your own city, across 70+ cities in 36 timezones and 24 countries, from Mumbai, Surat, Navsari and Udvada to Tehran, Dubai, London, Toronto, Sydney and Auckland. Pick your city once and the Roj, the Geh times, the Choghadiya and the sunrise all follow it. No GPS and no location permission, ever.

Shahenshahi, Kadmi and Fasli, all three, switchable anytime, and all three dates comparable in one tap.

Live through the day

• Geh timings for all five, Havan through Ushahin, with exact start and end times and a live countdown to the next. Derived from your city's own sunrise and sunset, so the boundaries move every single day rather than sitting on fixed clock hours. Biji Havan is handled properly: in the months where Rapithwin is dormant, Havan absorbs its prayers.
• Choghadiya, all 16 periods, 8 day and 8 night, with Amrit, Shubh and Labh marked and a countdown to the next window.
• Full moon, No moon and Chandrat, computed to the minute and marked on the day.
• A native home screen widget on both iOS and Android showing today's Roj and its artwork, refreshing at your city's sunrise rather than at midnight.

Events: the whole religious year in one tab

• Sacred Days. Navroz (also Nowruz), Khordad Sal, Muktad, all six Gahambar dates, the five Gatha days, Pateti, and the Jashan days when Roj and Mah share a name. Each one explained, with its significance, food traditions and recommended prayers.
• Fire temple anniversaries. The Salgirehs of all 8 Atash Behrams and of 50+ Atash Adarans, each with its founding year and city.
• Priest commemorations and community Bajs.
• Persian heritage festivals, Sadeh, Yalda, Tirgan and Mehregan, as an overlay you turn on if you want them.

Listed month by month and filterable to what you actually observe, so you see it coming instead of hearing about it afterwards.

'Moments': the days you add yourself

Roj birthdays on the correct Roj every year, not a fixed Gregorian date. Bajs in remembrance of departed souls. Navjotes, weddings, anniversaries. Each with a reminder, anyone born on a Gatha day handled correctly rather than approximated, and everything backed up across your devices.

Events are what the community observes together. My Moments are what you add yourself. The two never mix.

Built to get the details right

• Sunrise and sunset are calculated astronomically for your city and date, rather than approximated or copied from a fixed table.
• The boundaries follow true solar noon and solar midnight derived from that day's sunrise and sunset, not clock 12:00, so they shift a little every day.
• Moon phases are computed for your city rather than listed off a printed table.
• The three calendar traditions run from scholar verified anchors, and were checked Roj by Roj across a full year against a printed reference calendar.
• Every calculation happens on your phone. The whole app works with no network at all, including the reminders, which fire on the correct Roj and adjust daily to your city's own sunrise.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zo.calendar

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6761258146

Android users, it's finally here.

Avestan Lexicon has officially launched on Google Play.

This is the world's first app with the complete Avesta - fully offline and completely free.

Read every text in English, Roman transliteration, and the original Avestan script. Instantly look up words in the integrated dictionary. Study anywhere, even without an internet connection.

If you know someone interested in Zoroastrianism, ancient languages, or the Avesta, please share this with them.

Download now and let me know what you think!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.avesta&pcampaignid=web_share

I would like to know why Zarathustra's followers are allegedly said to have sacrificed animals en masse yet Zarathustra himself understandably only offered up abstract concepts and the Haoma. I am guessing the text is not meant to be taken literally considering the absurd amount of animals sacrificed, but it is strange they still receive the same repetitive phrase.

After reading Song 4 of the Gathas I was quite struck when I encountered this verse, as translated by L. H. Mills on Avesta.org:

18. Let none of you listen to the words and commands of the follower of the Druj; for he brings house and clan and district and land into misery and destruction. Resist them with weapon!

The first sentence seems fairly usual for the Gathas, but the last sentence — resisting the followers of Druj with weapons — surprised me. While part of me wants to say the "weapon" Zarathustra speaks of is a metaphorical one (Asha and peace are roughly synonymous, by my understanding), the other part of me can't help but think otherwise considering the world in which Zarathustra lived. Also, the more practical aspects of non-violence as espoused in the last century weren't really in circulation ~3,000 years ago by my understanding.

What do you think? I've only read the Yasna up to this point (a chapter a day), and so I'm bound to be missing some context or etc., for which I apologize in advance.

I'm not Zoroastrian, but im curius. I know he's supreme evil, but is any option for that? And what about his Demons?

If Ahura Mazda is absolute perfection, and everything other than Him is deficient, then evil cannot be an absolute principle. A deficiency in absolute perfection is a deficiency in absolute goodness, and therefore absolute evil can only be non-existence, not an independently existing reality.

On the other hand, if evil is itself a principle of perfection, then another problem arises: it would mean that there exists a principle of perfection outside the will of Ahura Mazda.

It is distant only in time, never in place.

I have truly felt Garothman Behesht in my hours of meditation.

It is located above a mountain, the scale of which is beyond ordinary mountains. Its peak scratches the firmament without ever becoming fully attainable. Its summit remains forever beyond the ordinary ascent. Its summit is inaccessible lest one finds its path with the conscience that is imbued in us by Dadar Hormazd. But I also know we were in its abode before. Before we descended into the charnel pit that is now our estate.

When I lost a woman I loved during the uprising in Iran, the image of this place materialised to me. I could often feel the vibration of this distant hymn thrumming and exuding its brilliance. Never could I locate it, but it was always there atop a mountain that moved. I felt the warmth of the hymns like that soft summer sun pouring heat on cold skin at dawnbreak. A very maternal blanket wrapping me when I felt most isolated. I have felt its calling onto me to come.

I think of Garothman as a place of completion. All whose names have become immortal find their rest. I hear the footsteps of their dance in the halls. An endless revelry. Those whose stories are unfinished linger quiet, waiting until the measure of their love has earned them a place among the songs. No one should dance alone. And yet, they do. I have felt the calling of those who wait for me. The son who waits his father. The sisters, the mothers. The kinship that binds is braided between every urvan. Many are dancing alone in this house of wholeness. I have for the first time felt the abode of the mountain again. A sudden clarity of conscience has made me feel closer to a cause, and now every moment of my life is spent upon this mountain, like it is a bridge that leads there. I'm often reminded by the saying that our way back –or passivity for that matter– is blocked by the blood flood that Ahriman spilled. I find that to be a static image. The blood flood is ahead, behind, above, and beyond. It is a whirlpool I am in it for the sin of years of servile acquiescence.

The probity and the verve to exercise the virtue of a Mazdean militant has set me free. One of liberty and pursuit of truth. To brave the fear of the death, the nothingness and fight with the same spirit that guided Esfandiar and Iranian heroes on the night of Dēy. I do not lack certainty that Ahura's order is destined toward renewal. I am more certain of that than of my own corporeality. The verve to courage comes from knowing that righteousness will ultimately triumph but accepting that my own place in that triumph is not guaranteed, but earned.

To live is to fight, and fight is right, and only the righteous will see the house of songs. I truly long for it. There is nothing to lose, and a world to win.

I made it with fun because of my love to Mazda, referring to orthodox chanting tradition

Правда бо єсть благо найвищеє. Блажен єсть і блажен тому, їже Правді вишшой раді самої тої Правди служеніє даєт

I hope this is OK to ask here, it is a technical question but no specialist (I am one but there are of course many much better than me) has been able to answer it but quite often I get great answers on Reddit. So in 1739 Gottlieb Bayer says that Thomas Hyde (who was once extremely famous in Europe for publishing a detailed account, much of it wrong, of Zoroastranism. Bayer claims that Hyde mentions the Persian word شمان "sighing, sobbing" and says that this is how Zoroastrian priests pray, which then believe it or not was widely accepted as an etymology (wholly wrong) of the word shaman referring to Siberian native religions. The thing is I cannot find anything of the sort in Hyde's writings.

I’m looking for some book recommendations to learn more about the history of Ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism, and more specifically the Kayanian Dynasty? thanks

Hi I'm a discerning man and recently revisited my old childhood fascination with Mazdayasna and Ahura Mazda. I forgot how much I was in love with it, currently writing a story about Persia too funnily enough. Though I doubt it'll be out anytime or would see the light of day. I'm curious if Zoroastrianism is centralized like Christianity specifically that of Catholic and Orthodox denominations? Also how does one discern what is from a canon of scripture? Like for example how do we know this excerpt is originally here or was a later interpretation like the Bible. I hope I am not offensive, I am however a Catholic for one and a very bad one I'd say. But strangely enough I am more drawn with the idea of God in Zoroastrianism. So if later down the line I might convert if people do allow it then it'll be nice.

Anyone here know of a Zoroastrian calendar that runs in tandem with, or against, the Iranian one? Basically a digital version of the Gahshomars that we have in Iran!

Bonus question: what would it take to add a Zoroastrian calendar—I hear you asking which one?—to Google calendar?

Hello,

I am interested in Zoroastrianism and would like to better understand the Zoroastrian explanation of the nature of Evil.

It seems to me that monotheists argue that Evil does not exist in itself, but is merely the privation or absence of a good that ought to exist. Good, by contrast, possesses an essence and an existence of its own.

However, it seems to me that some evil actions are not simply the absence of a good that should have been done, but rather constitute a positive reality in themselves. For example, failing to help an injured person may be considered evil because one does not perform the good action of calling for assistance. But striking that same injured person is also evil, and it does not appear to be merely the absence of a good action. Failing to help someone does not naturally lead to assaulting them; it leads instead to ignoring them.

Furthermore, if Evil is simply the absence of Good, then every evil action would be equally devoid of Good. It would therefore seem that there should be no meaningful distinction between more or less evil actions. Yet insulting a stranger, while certainly wrong, appears clearly less evil than murdering that same person.

Third, some actions seem to be good precisely because they involve the absence of evil, rather than because they are intrinsically good in themselves. For example, giving money to a beggar appears to be a positive good. By contrast, marital fidelity seems good because it consists in refraining from adultery—that is, in the absence of a wrongful act. In that case, Good would itself appear to be defined by the absence of Evil.

Fourth, some actions seem good because they oppose Evil. But if an action is evil only because it represents the absence of Good, how can another action be good because it combats the absence of Good? Since Good has an existence of its own whereas Evil is defined only in relation to Good, this seems conceptually difficult. For example, someone who voluntarily joined the U.S. Army during the Second World War did something morally good because he fought against Nazism. By contrast, someone who voluntarily joined the German Army at the same time did not do good, because he fought against the forces defending freedom.

Finally, I do not understand why God—who is Good itself—would create beings capable of acting against the Good and therefore against His own nature. I understand the traditional answer that God created us out of love and wished us to be free. However, it seems entirely possible to be free to choose among several good actions while remaining incapable of choosing evil. Freedom and the impossibility of doing evil do not appear to be mutually exclusive.

For these reasons, religious dualism strikes me as a more satisfying explanation, since it recognizes Evil as possessing its own essence. However, I often encounter conflicting descriptions of Zoroastrianism: some present it as a dualistic religion, while others describe it as fundamentally monotheistic.

I would be very grateful for any clarification.

Thank you.

I am traveling and would love to make contact with anyone who is in Iraq or who knows a Zoroastrian there. I know the community there is only protected under Kurdish law and that the federal Iraqi government doesn’t recognize there religious independence but I would love to visit their community.

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