Zoroaster
Description
Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster, was an Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. In the oldest Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, which he is traditionally believed to have authored, he is described as a preacher and a poet-prophet. Some have claimed, with much scholarly controversy, to find his influence in Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, and, perhaps less controversially, in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly through concepts of cosmic dualism and personal morality.
Facts
| Born | Unknown, traditionally c. 624–599 BC, Possibly Bactra (Balkh, modern-day Afghanistan) |
| Died | Unknown, traditionally c. 547–522 BC (age 77) |
| Spouse | Two unnamed wivesHvōvi |
| Children | Isat VâstraUrvatat NaraHvare ChithraFreniThritiPouruchista |
| Parents | PourushaspaDugdōw |
| Known for | Spiritual founder and prophet of ZoroastrianismComposer of the GathasProphet in the Bahá'í Faith, Ahmadiyya, and the Ahmadi Religion |
Life & work in brief
Summarised by section — one row per topic, for fast reading.
| Work / contribution | Significance |
|---|---|
| Name and etymology | Zoroaster's name in his native language, Avestan, was probably Zaraθuštra. |
| Date | There is no consensus on the dating of Zoroaster. |
| Place | The birthplace of Zoroaster is also unknown, and the language of the Gathas is not similar to the proposed north-western and north-eastern regional dialects of Persia. |
| Life | Zoroaster is recorded as the son of Pourushaspa of the Spitama family, and Dugdōw, while his great-grandfather was Haēčataspa. |
| Influences | Athanasius Kircher identified Zoroaster with Ham. |
| Philosophy | In the Gathas, Zoroaster sees the human condition as the mental struggle between aša and druj. |
| Iconography | Beginning in the nineteenth century, Zoroaster was visually depicted with physical attributes borrowed from other faith traditions. |
| Western references to Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism | The Greeks—in the Hellenistic sense of the term—had an understanding of Zoroaster as expressed by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Agathias that saw him, at the core, to be the "prophet and founder of the religion of the Iranian peoples," Beck notes that "the rest was mostly fantasy". |
| Notable influence on modern Western culture | A sculpture of Zoroaster by Edward Clark Potter, representing ancient Persian judicial wisdom and dating to 1896, towers over the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State at East 25th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. |
Contribution to the celestial-alphabet tradition
Eponymous founder of the magi as a priestly-sapiential order — the Persian root of the very word 'magus'. The Persian astral religion (the Avesta's 7 Amesha Spentas, 12, 72) feeds the cross-cultural number-structure this project surveys.
Lineage — influence tree
Where Zoroaster sits in the magi lineage: who shaped this figure, and who this figure shaped in turn. Mage names link to their own ficha.