Free Republic

Among the world’s present-day religions, Zoroastrianism, founded more than 3,000 years ago, is one of the most ancient and historically influential. Yet even though its adherents maintain vibrant communities on four continents, they acknowledge their numbers are dauntingly small — perhaps 125,000 worldwide. Starting Friday, about 1,200 attendees from 16 countries will be assessing their faith’s prospects during the four-day World Zoroastrian Congress in New York City, the first one held in the United States since 2000. The agenda reflects a keen awareness of the challenges facing their religion. Prospects for growth are limited, given that Zoroastrians don’t seek to...

An orchestra of young musicians have published a masterful take-down of a car company, in response to its “tired” stereotyping of youth music-making. Last week, the musicians released a video titled ‘An INFINITY Of Young Talent’, which references ‘Infiniti’, the luxury division of the car company, Nissan. Infiniti released an advert earlier this month titled ‘Beautiful Mess’, which promoted their new car, the QX60. “Quiet the chaos in style,” reads the ad’s description; the ‘chaos’ refers to the young musicians depicted in the video... The advert portrays a youth orchestra playing Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. However, the...

...“To Zoroastrians, fire is the physical form of God’s energy. It’s in all Zoroastrian rituals,” Mr. Bhandara explains. “We say that the fire has warmth and light. Light is a metaphor that cuts through the darkness of ignorance, bringing one face to face with the truth of the divine.” ...The supreme deity in the faith is Ahura Mazda. Zoroaster, or Zarathustra in ancient Persian, was actually a prophet after whom the religion came to be known among Westerners. Cyrus the Great, founder of the first Persian Empire circa 550 B.C., was a Zoroastrian. While Persia served as an incubator for...

Hope you enjoy. Also Sprach Zarathustra

Europe's oldest civilisation has been discovered by archaeologists across the continent, it was reported yesterday. More than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years, The Independent newspaper revealed. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming, The Independent reported. Excavations have taken place over the past three years but the discovery is so new that the civilisation has not...

While browsing through the ancient Persian history, I was struck and fascinated by another subject Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism has not only made a major contribution to the ancient philosophical thought but has also had a deep imprint on the Persian history and culture. Since ages, man has been striving to search for the meaning and purpose of life. Two ancient philosophies threw up answers to this eternal quest. One came out of the Vedic thought of re-incarnation (samsara) which believed in perpetual cycles of life, death and re-birth. It believed that soul (atma) finally got liberated (moksha) based on man's good...

Despite the tendency to see Iran as an Islamic monolith and the attempts of the ruling clerics in Tehran to cast it as such, the full complexity of Iranian identity is little understood and almost never discussed—even by Iranians themselves. Long before it was absorbed into the Islamic empire by Arab armies under Caliphs Umar and Uthman in the mid-seventh century, Persia had been the birthplace of Zarathustianism, or Zoroastrianism, the world’s first monotheistic religion.The religion was forged some 3,500 years ago around the philosopher-prophet Zarathustra’s teachings, which emphasized personal morality and a conscious choice between good and evil. From...