The Urantia Book

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Parsees

3 paragraphs · about 1 minute

Every paragraph the index cites under Parsees, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

69:6.6The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the ob­ser­va­tions of fire caused by light­ning. These ideas of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin led di­rectly to fire wor­ship, and fire wor­ship led to the cus­tom of “pass­ing through fire,” a prac­tice car­ried on up to the times of Moses. And there still per­sists the idea of pass­ing through fire af­ter death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still per­sists in the sym­bol­ism of the Parsees.

88:1.4If an an­i­mal ate hu­man flesh, it be­came a fe­tish. In this way the dog came to be the sa­cred an­i­mal of the Parsees. If the fe­tish is an an­i­mal and the ghost is per­ma­nently res­i­dent therein, then fet­ish­ism may im­pinge on rein­car­na­tion. In many ways the sav­ages en­vied the an­i­mals; they did not feel su­pe­rior to them and were of­ten named af­ter their fa­vorite beasts.

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.