Iran

78:6.3Ten per cent, in­clud­ing a large group of the Sethite priests, moved east­ward through the Elamite high­lands to the Ira­nian pla­teau and Tur­kes­tan. Many of their de­scen­dants were later driven into In­dia with their Aryan breth­ren from the re­gions to the north.

79:1.1For over twenty-five thou­sand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eura­sia was pre­dom­i­nantly, though di­min­ish­ingly, And­ite. In the low­lands of Tur­kes­tan the And­ites made the west­ward turn­ing around the in­land lakes into Eu­rope, while from the high­lands of this re­gion they in­fil­trated east­ward. East­ern Tur­kes­tan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser ex­tent, Ti­bet were the an­cient gate­ways through which these peo­ples of Mes­o­po­ta­mia pen­e­trated the moun­tains to the north­ern lands of the yel­low men. The And­ite in­fil­tra­tion of In­dia pro­ceeded from the Tur­kes­tan high­lands into the Pun­jab and from the Ira­nian graz­ing lands through Baluchis­tan. These ear­lier mi­gra­tions were in no sense con­quests; they were, rather, the con­tin­ual drift­ing of the And­ite tribes into west­ern In­dia and China.

80:9.6For al­most twenty thou­sand years the An­don­ites had been pushed far­ther and far­ther to the north of cen­tral Asia by the And­ites. By 3000 B.C. in­creas­ing arid­ity was driv­ing these An­don­ites back into Tur­kes­tan. This An­don­ite push south­ward con­tin­ued for over a thou­sand years and, split­ting around the Caspian and Black seas, pen­e­trated Eu­rope by way of both the Balkans and the Ukraine. This in­va­sion in­cluded the re­main­ing groups of Adam­son’s de­scen­dants and, dur­ing the lat­ter half of the in­va­sion pe­riod, car­ried with it con­sid­er­able num­bers of the Ira­nian And­ites as well as many of the de­scen­dants of the Sethite priests.

81:6.31. Nat­u­ral cir­cum­stances. The na­ture and ex­tent of a ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion is in large mea­sure de­ter­mined by the nat­u­ral re­sources avail­able. Cli­mate, weather, and nu­mer­ous phys­i­cal con­di­tions are fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of cul­ture.

78:8.3The peace­ful grain grow­ers of the Eu­phrates and Tigris val­leys had long been ha­rassed by the raids of the bar­bar­ians of Tur­kes­tan and the Ira­nian pla­teau. But now a con­certed in­va­sion of the Eu­phrates val­ley was brought about by the in­creas­ing drought of the high­land pas­tures. And this in­va­sion was all the more se­ri­ous be­cause these sur­round­ing herds­men and hunters pos­sessed large num­bers of tamed horses. It was the pos­ses­sion of horses which gave them a tremen­dous mil­i­tary ad­van­tage over their rich neigh­bors to the south. In a short time they over­ran all Mes­o­po­ta­mia, driv­ing forth the last waves of cul­ture which spread out over all of Eu­rope, west­ern Asia, and north­ern Africa.

78:8.4These con­querors of Mes­o­po­ta­mia car­ried in their ranks many of the bet­ter And­ite strains of the mixed north­ern races of Tur­kes­tan, in­clud­ing some of the Adam­son stock. These less ad­vanced but more vig­or­ous tribes from the north quickly and will­ingly as­sim­i­lated the residue of the civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and pres­ently de­vel­oped into those mixed peo­ples found in the Eu­phrates val­ley at the be­gin­ning of his­toric an­nals. They quickly re­vived many phases of the pass­ing civ­i­liza­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, adopt­ing the arts of the val­ley tribes and much of the cul­ture of the Sume­ri­ans. They even sought to build a third tower of Ba­bel and later adopted the term as their na­tional name.

78:8.5When these bar­bar­ian cav­al­ry­men from the north­east over­ran the whole Eu­phrates val­ley, they did not con­quer the rem­nants of the And­ites who dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Per­sian Gulf. These Sume­ri­ans were able to de­fend them­selves be­cause of su­pe­rior in­tel­li­gence, bet­ter weapons, and their ex­ten­sive sys­tem of mil­i­tary canals, which were an ad­junct to their ir­ri­ga­tion scheme of in­ter­con­nect­ing pools. They were a united peo­ple be­cause they had a uni­form group re­li­gion. They were thus able to main­tain their racial and na­tional in­tegrity long af­ter their neigh­bors to the north­west were bro­ken up into iso­lated city-states. No one of these city groups was able to over­come the united Sume­ri­ans.

• fire reverence long persisted

85:4.4Fire was mixed up with magic in the minds of prim­i­tive fear-rid­den mor­tals. A devo­tee of magic will vividly re­mem­ber one pos­i­tive chance re­sult in the prac­tice of his magic for­mu­las, while he non­cha­lantly for­gets a score of neg­a­tive re­sults, out-and-out fail­ures. Fire rev­er­ence reached its height in Per­sia, where it long per­sisted. Some tribes wor­shiped fire as a de­ity it­self; oth­ers revered it as the flam­ing sym­bol of the pu­ri­fy­ing and purg­ing spirit of their ven­er­ated de­i­ties. Vestal vir­gins were charged with the duty of watch­ing sa­cred fires, and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury can­dles still burn as a part of the rit­ual of many re­li­gious ser­vices.

• sun worship in

85:5.2Moon wor­ship pre­ceded sun wor­ship. Ven­er­a­tion of the moon was at its height dur­ing the hunt­ing era, while sun wor­ship be­came the chief re­li­gious cer­e­mony of the sub­se­quent ag­ri­cul­tural ages. So­lar wor­ship first took ex­ten­sive root in In­dia, and there it per­sisted the longest. In Per­sia sun ven­er­a­tion gave rise to the later Mith­raic cult. Among many peo­ples the sun was re­garded as the an­ces­tor of their kings. The Chaldeans put the sun in the cen­ter of “the seven cir­cles of the uni­verse.” Later civ­i­liza­tions hon­ored the sun by giv­ing its name to the first day of the week.

95:6.1From Pales­tine some of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies passed on through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and to the great Ira­nian pla­teau. For more than five hun­dred years the Salem teach­ers made head­way in Iran, and the whole na­tion was swing­ing to the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­li­gion when a change of rulers pre­cip­i­tated a bit­ter per­se­cu­tion which prac­ti­cally ended the mono­the­is­tic teach­ings of the Salem cult. The doc­trine of the Abra­hamic covenant was vir­tu­ally ex­tinct in Per­sia when, in that great cen­tury of moral re­nais­sance, the sixth be­fore Christ, Zoroaster ap­peared to re­vive the smoul­der­ing em­bers of the Salem gospel.

95:6.2This founder of a new re­li­gion was a vir­ile and ad­ven­tur­ous youth, who, on his first pil­grim­age to Ur in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, had learned of the tra­di­tions of the Cali­gas­tia and the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion—along with many other tra­di­tions—all of which had made a strong ap­peal to his re­li­gious na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly, as the re­sult of a dream while in Ur, he set­tled upon a pro­gram of re­turn­ing to his north­ern home to un­der­take the re­mod­el­ing of the re­li­gion of his peo­ple. He had im­bibed the He­braic idea of a God of jus­tice, the Mo­saic con­cept of di­vin­ity. The idea of a su­preme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as dev­ils, con­signed them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its as the tra­di­tion lin­gered in Ur, and, ac­cord­ingly, he cre­ated a galaxy of seven su­preme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These sub­or­di­nate gods he as­so­ci­ated with the ide­al­iza­tion of Right Law, Good Thought, No­ble Gov­ern­ment, Holy Char­ac­ter, Health, and Im­mor­tal­ity.

95:6.3And this new re­li­gion was one of ac­tion—work—not prayers and rit­u­als. Its God was a be­ing of su­preme wis­dom and the pa­tron of civ­i­liza­tion; it was a mil­i­tant re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy which dared to bat­tle with evil, in­ac­tion, and back­ward­ness.

95:6.4Zoroaster did not teach the wor­ship of fire but sought to uti­lize the flame as a sym­bol of the pure and wise Spirit of uni­ver­sal and su­preme dom­i­nance. (All too true, his later fol­low­ers did both rev­er­ence and wor­ship this sym­bolic fire.) Fi­nally, upon the con­ver­sion of an Ira­nian prince, this new re­li­gion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster hero­ically died in bat­tle for that which he be­lieved was the “truth of the Lord of light.”

95:6.5Zoroas­tri­an­ism is the only Uran­tian creed that per­pet­u­ates the Dala­ma­tian and Edenic teach­ings about the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its. While fail­ing to evolve the Trin­ity con­cept, it did in a cer­tain way ap­proach that of God the Sev­en­fold. Orig­i­nal Zoroas­tri­an­ism was not a pure du­al­ism; though the early teach­ings did pic­ture evil as a time co-or­di­nate of good­ness, it was def­i­nitely eter­nity-sub­merged in the ul­ti­mate re­al­ity of the good. Only in later times did the be­lief gain cre­dence that good and evil con­tended on equal terms.

95:6.6The Jew­ish tra­di­tions of heaven and hell and the doc­trine of dev­ils as re­corded in the He­brew scrip­tures, while founded on the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia, were prin­ci­pally de­rived from the Zoroas­tri­ans dur­ing the times when the Jews were un­der the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural dom­i­nance of the Per­sians. Zoroaster, like the Egyp­tians, taught the “day of judg­ment,” but he con­nected this event with the end of the world.

95:6.7Even the re­li­gion which suc­ceeded Zoroas­tri­an­ism in Per­sia was markedly in­flu­enced by it. When the Ira­nian priests sought to over­throw the teach­ings of Zoroaster, they res­ur­rected the an­cient wor­ship of Mithra. And Mith­ra­ism spread through­out the Lev­ant and Med­i­ter­ra­nean re­gions, be­ing for some time a con­tem­po­rary of both Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The teach­ings of Zoroaster thus came suc­ces­sively to im­press three great re­li­gions: Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity and, through them, Mo­hammedanism.

95:6.8But it is a far cry from the ex­alted teach­ings and no­ble psalms of Zoroaster to the mod­ern per­ver­sions of his gospel by the Parsees with their great fear of the dead, cou­pled with the en­ter­tain­ment of be­liefs in soph­ist­ries which Zoroaster never stooped to coun­te­nance.

95:6.9This great man was one of that unique group that sprang up in the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ to keep the light of Salem from be­ing fully and fi­nally ex­tin­guished as it so dimly burned to show man in his dark­ened world the path of light lead­ing to ev­er­last­ing life.

• Mithraism arose in

98:4.2The three mys­tery cults which be­came most pop­u­lar were:

98:4.31. The Phry­gian cult of Cy­bele and her son At­tis.

98:4.42. The Egyp­tian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis.

98:4.53. The Ira­nian cult of the wor­ship of Mithras as the sav­ior and re­deemer of sin­ful man­kind.

98:4.6The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies taught that the di­vine son (re­spec­tively At­tis and Osiris) had ex­pe­ri­enced death and had been res­ur­rected by di­vine power, and fur­ther that all who were prop­erly ini­ti­ated into the mys­tery, and who rev­er­ently cel­e­brated the an­niver­sary of the god’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, would thereby be­come par­tak­ers of his di­vine na­ture and his im­mor­tal­ity.

98:4.7The Phry­gian cer­e­monies were im­pos­ing but de­grad­ing; their bloody fes­ti­vals in­di­cate how de­graded and prim­i­tive these Lev­an­tine mys­ter­ies be­came. The most holy day was Black Fri­day, the “day of blood,” com­mem­o­rat­ing the self-in­flicted death of At­tis. Af­ter three days of the cel­e­bra­tion of the sac­ri­fice and death of At­tis the fes­ti­val was turned to joy in honor of his res­ur­rec­tion.

98:4.8The rit­u­als of the wor­ship of Isis and Osiris were more re­fined and im­pres­sive than were those of the Phry­gian cult. This Egyp­tian rit­ual was built around the leg­end of the Nile god of old, a god who died and was res­ur­rected, which con­cept was de­rived from the ob­ser­va­tion of the an­nu­ally re­cur­ring stop­page of veg­e­ta­tion growth fol­lowed by the spring­time restora­tion of all liv­ing plants. The frenzy of the ob­ser­vance of these mys­tery cults and the or­gies of their cer­e­mo­ni­als, which were sup­posed to lead up to the “en­thu­si­asm” of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity, were some­times most re­volt­ing.

• Mithraism arose in

98:5.2The cult of Mithras arose in Iran and long per­sisted in its home­land de­spite the mil­i­tant op­po­si­tion of the fol­low­ers of Zoroaster. But by the time Mith­ra­ism reached Rome, it had be­come greatly im­proved by the ab­sorp­tion of many of Zoroaster’s teach­ings. It was chiefly through the Mith­raic cult that Zoroaster’s re­li­gion ex­erted an in­flu­ence upon later ap­pear­ing Chris­tian­ity.

• triad gods of

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.

• Zoroastrianism founded in

131:5.1Zoroaster was him­self di­rectly in con­tact with the de­scen­dants of the ear­lier Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies, and their doc­trine of the one God be­came a cen­tral teach­ing in the re­li­gion which he founded in Per­sia. Aside from Ju­daism, no re­li­gion of that day con­tained more of these Salem teach­ings. From the rec­ords of this re­li­gion Ga­nid made the fol­low­ing ex­cerpts:

• kingdom of heaven concepts from

170:1.64. The Per­sian teach­ings por­tray­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a di­vine king­dom as the achieve­ment of the tri­umph of good over evil at the end of the world.

170:1.7Just be­fore the ad­vent of Je­sus on earth, the Jews com­bined and con­fused all of these ideas of the king­dom into their apoc­a­lyp­tic con­cept of the Mes­siah’s com­ing to es­tab­lish the age of the Jew­ish tri­umph, the eter­nal age of God’s su­preme rule on earth, the new world, the era in which all man­kind would wor­ship Yah­weh. In choos­ing to uti­lize this con­cept of the king­dom of heaven, Je­sus elected to ap­pro­pri­ate the most vi­tal and cul­mi­nat­ing her­itage of both the Jew­ish and Per­sian re­li­gions.

170:1.8The king­dom of heaven, as it has been un­der­stood and mis­un­der­stood down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era, em­braced four dis­tinct groups of ideas:

170:1.91. The con­cept of the Jews.

170:1.102. The con­cept of the Per­sians.

• influence on Christianity

170:5.3But the great step which marked the trans­plan­ta­tion of the teach­ings of Je­sus from a Jew­ish to a gen­tile soil was taken when the Mes­siah of the king­dom be­came the Re­deemer of the church, a re­li­gious and so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion grow­ing out of the ac­tiv­i­ties of Paul and his suc­ces­sors and based on the teach­ings of Je­sus as they were sup­ple­mented by the ideas of Philo and the Per­sian doc­trines of good and evil.

• influence on Christianity

170:5.16Je­sus’ ideal con­cept largely failed, but upon the foun­da­tion of the Mas­ter’s per­sonal life and teach­ings, sup­ple­mented by the Greek and Per­sian con­cepts of eter­nal life and aug­mented by Philo’s doc­trine of the tem­po­ral con­trasted with the spir­i­tual, Paul went forth to build up one of the most pro­gres­sive hu­man so­ci­eties which has ever ex­isted on Uran­tia.

62:1.3With the pass­ing of time the sea­coast of In­dia south­west of the moun­tains grad­u­ally sub­merged, com­pletely iso­lat­ing the life of this re­gion. There was no av­enue of ap­proach to, or es­cape from, this Mes­o­po­ta­mian or Per­sian penin­sula ex­cept to the north, and that was re­peat­edly cut off by the south­ern in­va­sions of the glaciers. And it was in this then al­most par­a­di­si­a­cal area, and from the su­pe­rior de­scen­dants of this lemur type of mam­mal, that there sprang two great groups, the simian tribes of mod­ern times and the pres­ent-day hu­man species.

79:2.4About 15,000 B.C. in­creas­ing pop­u­la­tion pres­sure through­out Tur­kes­tan and Iran oc­ca­sioned the first re­ally ex­ten­sive And­ite move­ment to­ward In­dia. For over fif­teen cen­turies these su­pe­rior peo­ples poured in through the high­lands of Baluchis­tan, spread­ing out over the val­leys of the In­dus and Ganges and slowly mov­ing south­ward into the Dec­can. This And­ite pres­sure from the north­west drove many of the south­ern and east­ern in­fe­ri­ors into Burma and south­ern China but not suf­fi­ciently to save the in­vaders from racial oblit­er­a­tion.

97:10.2When the Jews had been freed by the Per­sians, they re­turned to Pales­tine only to fall into bond­age to their own priest-rid­den code of laws, sac­ri­fices, and rit­u­als. And as the He­brew clans re­jected the won­der­ful story of God pre­sented in the farewell ora­tion of Moses for the rit­u­als of sac­ri­fice and pen­ance, so did these rem­nants of the He­brew na­tion re­ject the mag­nif­i­cent con­cept of the sec­ond Isa­iah for the rules, reg­u­la­tions, and rit­u­als of their grow­ing priest­hood.

64:7.11Dur­ing the fol­low­ing in­ter­glacial pe­riod this new Ne­an­derthal race ex­tended from Eng­land to In­dia. The rem­nant of the blue race left in the old Per­sian penin­sula later amal­ga­mated with cer­tain oth­ers, pri­mar­ily the yel­low; and the re­sul­tant blend, sub­se­quently some­what up­stepped by the vi­o­let race of Adam, has per­sisted as the swarthy no­madic tribes of mod­ern Arabs.