The Light and the Fire
Pious Zarathustra – priest of Sacred Light –
Preaching of his visions, (angel-brought at night),
That God was best worshipped in the private heart
Of each person’s conscience. Everyone is part
Of this world’s existence and must challenge sin
In the name of goodness if they are to win
That predestined homeland of the truly wise –
Future Paradise– as resurrection’s prize.
Rights and wrongs committed in their mortal strife
Weighed in Scales of Justice at the Afterlife.
Zealous Zoroaster – priest of Holy Flame –
Preaching Shirt and Cord to symbolise the same
Loyalty to Godhead, purely discarnate
In the Fires of Immanence that alone bate
Insidious Ahriman’s dark contrivances
To defile the Soul. Through the interstices
Of his temple-grates is displayed the essence
Of great Ormuzd’s spirit’s mystic elements:
Fire, the living Icon of Perfection’s light,
Purging the cold darkness of death’s poisoned blight.
Zarathustra-Zoroaster – Parsee priest –
Preaching his disciples would be soon released
From the bitter evils Ahriman imposed
On that pure creation Ormuzd had proposed –
He was not the author of imperfectness –
When he made the world and all that in it is.
When, from Towers of Silence, tainted flesh has flown
Bird-winged to the Heavens, leaving only bone
For casting in the pits, good Souls can aspire
To Paradisal life, purged by Ormuzd’s fire.
Notes:
Zarathustra-Zoroaster – founder of the Parsee religion c.500 BC.
Fire – the physical manifestation of the Good God in the Parsee religion.
Ahriman – the Bad God or Devil.
Ormuzd – the Good God.
Towers of Silence – where dead Parsees are exposed to be eaten by vultures before their
bones are buried in communal graves.
I have never understood why the Parsees, devotees of fire, didn’t practice
cremation of their dead. (Perhaps, unlike the Hindus, they consider that fire
is too sacred to be polluted by human flesh). J.A.B.
