Chapter 13. Fire, Magi and Temple: The Priesthood and Its Rituals

To outsiders, Zoroastrians became the “fire-worshippers” (Guebres, Gabrs), and the fire temple became their best-known institution. The library’s scholarly sources, led by Mary Boyce, argue that the temple was not original. In their account, prayer before the hearth fire, under the open sky and on mountain tops, came first. The consecrated temple fire came late, under the Achaemenids, possibly as a counter to an image cult. Under the Sasanians it became the weapon of a deliberate iconoclasm. This chapter follows that history: the fire, the grades of fire, the Magi and the hereditary priesthood, the yasna liturgy, funerary exposure and the calendar of feasts.

Fire in the Gathas and the house-fire

Duchesne-Guillemin starts from the Gathas: “The role of fire in them is fundamental. Twice Zoroaster calls upon ‘the fire of Ahura Mazda’.” Offerings are made “to the fire of the Lord” in order to venerate asha, and when each element is placed under one of the Entities around Ahura Mazda, “Asa is the patron of Fire.” He goes on to the later doctrine of five fires, cosmic and vital, noting a confusion between the first and the fifth (spenishta, “the most sacred”) [Duchesne-Guillemin, Studies, #60380, “Le Zervanisme et les manuscrits de la Mer Morte”]. Boyce describes the daily ritual: the believer washes, unties the kusti, and prays “upright in the presence of his Maker, his eyes on the symbol of righteousness, fire” [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, ch.3]. Moulton notes that the Parsi house-fire is itself sacred. A family moving within a town carries its fire with it, and “No Parsi may blow out a light” [Moulton, The Treasure of the Magi, #55091, Book II ch.3].

From fire-holder to temple: Boyce’s thesis

Boyce finds no Achaemenid temple at Pasargadae. She finds only two plinths for worship in the open and three stone “fire-holders,” which “cannot be called altars in the strict sense,” since a Zoroastrian fire-stand simply “hold[s] the fire in whose presence believers pray.” She thinks these bore the king’s elevated hearth fire inside the palace. The Greeks said the Persians “despised temples,” and Herodotus wrote that they built “no statues or temples or altars” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “Fires and fire altars”]. The change came with Artaxerxes II (404-359 BC). He was the first king to invoke “Ahuramazda, Anahita and Mithra,” and, according to Berossus, he set up statues of “Aphrodite Anaitis” in the chief cities. Boyce holds that the temple fire was “a counter-measure to this image cult”: the orthodox “yielded to the new fashion of erecting consecrated buildings,” but “in place of a statue… they set a fire in the sanctuary” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “The divine beings”, “Icons and temples”]. She adds that the Vendidad’s phrase daitya gatu, fire “in an appointed place,” is “the only mention in the whole Avesta of temple fires” [Boyce, #55117, ch.6].

Boyce sets the label “fire-worshipper” in this history. Herodotus speaks of Persian reverence for fire but “does not single this out,” and “it is only after the founding of temple fires that those of other faiths came to label Zoroastrians as ‘fire-worshippers'” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5]. Parsi and Theosophical writers answer the label differently. Kapadia calls it “the old fallacy of confusing the symbol with the idea” [Kapadia, The Teachings of Zoroaster, #55090, “Fire, the Symbol of Purity”]. Moulton reports that “educated Parsis always protest vehemently that for them there is one God” [Moulton, #55091, Book II ch.3]. Fluegel compares Parsi fire-lore with Hebrew and Brahmanical rites [Fluegel, The Zend-Avesta and Eastern Religions, #55079]. Olcott links the ritual purification of fires to “this ancient art of drawing fire from heaven… taught in the Samothracian and Kabiric Mysteries” [Olcott, The Spirit of Zoroastrianism, #55087]. Annie Besant gives an occult account, which she offers as Theosophical teaching: as Zarathushtra spoke, “there was at first no fire at the altar at his side; there was sandalwood in fragrant heaps… As the prophet stood there He held a Rod of which every occultist knows, a Rod, a copy of which was used in the Mysteries filled with the living fire of the upper spheres” [Besant, Four Great Religions, #55017, “Zoroastrianism”].

The grades of fire and Sasanian iconoclasm

Boyce dates the later grades of fire, at least in embryo, to the end of the Achaemenid period. The great “cathedral” fires were dedicated to Verethraghna, yazata of Victory (Atakhsh i Varahram, Atash Bahram), and formed “from the embers of many kinds of ordinary fires.” The lesser “Fire of Fires” (Atash Aduran) was formed from hearth fires of each social class, “roughly equivalent to the parish churches of Christendom” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5]. The Sasanians made the system an instrument of policy: “they forbade the use of images in worship… statues were removed from consecrated buildings, and, whenever possible, sacred fires were installed in their place.” Ardashir I smashed statues of the dead in Armenia. The high priest Kirder boasted that “images were destroyed and the lurking places of devs demolished,” since iconoclasts held that statues were inhabited by demons [Boyce, #55117, ch.7 “Iconoclasm and sacred fires”]. When an image was removed from a humble shrine, it might be replaced by a “Little Fire,” Adurog i pad dadgah, “abbreviated in modern times to Dadgah,” which a layman in a state of purity could tend [Boyce, #55117, ch.7]. The same campaign also served central power: Ardashir “razed the temples and confiscated the endowments” of the vassal kings’ dynastic fires, so that “only one regnal fire might burn in Iran” [Boyce, #55117, ch.7].

Moulton describes the three Parsi grades as they existed about 1916. An Atash Behram “has to be compounded of sixteen different fires.” One of them is fire from a burning corpse, purified by kindling sandalwood through a perforated spoon “ninety-one times”; lightning-fire needs ninety purifications, and fire from flint 144. An Atash Adaran combines four hearth fires, each purified thrice, and a Dadgah uses an ordinary house-fire. The first Indian Atash Behram was at Sanjan and has been at Udwada “since 1743” [Moulton, #55091, Book II ch.3].

The three great fires and the movement of fires

The three greatest fires, Adur Burzen-Mihr, Adur Farnbag and Adur Gushnasp, were “if not already enthroned under the Achaemenians… installed early in the Parthian period.” By Sasanian times their origins “had become wrapped in mystery.” Legend held that Ahuramazda created them to protect the world and that they once rode the mythical bull Srisok to light a night crossing of the sea. Adur Burzen-Mihr, on Mount Revand in Parthia, was the Parthians’ own fire, said to have been installed by Vishtaspa himself [Boyce, #55117, ch.6 “Fire temples and image shrines”]. Fires could also be carried. In her later articles Boyce records that “the chief Fire of Tehran was brought by two priests from Yazd… across the Central Persian desert, by the old caravan-route past Jangak-i Biyabanak.” She adds that “the foundation of the Atash Bahrams of Yazd and Kirman is lost in antiquity,” although a repair of the Kerman fire is on record [Boyce, Selected Writings 1955-2005, #54999].

The Magi: a Median tribe and the Babylonian parallel

Boyce follows Herodotus (I.101): the magoi were one of the six Median tribes, “a learned, sacerdotal one, which provided priests not only for the other Medes but also for the Persians,” and “may well have formed a stiff obstacle to the western spread of Zoroastrianism” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5]. Herodotus reported that “no sacrifice can be offered without a magus.” He also saw the magi kill every creature “save only dogs and men” [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “Practices of the faith”]. Geller, writing as an Assyriologist, says that “essentially all we know from Greek eyewitness accounts is that magi worshipped at fire altars.” The “most distinctive feature of Persian ritual was the sacrifice of horses to gods, which is unprecedented in Mesopotamia.” The Akkadian loanword magušu died out “possibly because the role of the magus was so closely identified with that of the mašmaššu (exorcist) that the loanword became redundant.” In his view, the magi’s prestige at the Persian court helped raise the Babylonian exorcist clans to dominance [Geller, Ancient Babylonian Medicine, #69076, “Medicine and Philosophy”]. Jackson notes that the classical writers present all the Achaemenid kings as “followers of the Magi, despite the Magophonia of Darius,” the feast that commemorated a massacre of Magi. The Pahlavi Denkard says that “on account of the Magianship of Kai-Vishtasp he was suitable for the sovereignty” [Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, #55164, ch.X §§90-91].

Priesthood, liturgy and the dead

Boyce traces the clerical titles. Herbad (from Avestan aethrapati) seems to have been a Parthian dignity. Mobad comes from Old Persian magupati, “lord of priests,” and ordinary Sasanian priests were simply mog [Boyce, #55117, chs.6-7]. Moulton found the Parsi priesthood “strictly hereditary.” No one could be recruited from outside, and a family lost eligibility after three generations in lay dress. Grades ran from Ervad/Herbad to Mobed to Dastur, and a Mobed serving the inner rites must repeat the nine-day barashnum “for a journey by rail or by sea, or even the falling off of his turban.” He also records, critically, that many priests recited the Yasna “without understanding a word of it” [Moulton, #55091, Book II ch.2 “The Priesthood”]. The Textual Sources volume explains the daily yasna as sanctifying “the seven creations, each of which was represented there: earth in the ritual precinct; water and fire in vessels; the stone of the sky in the pestle and mortar for the ‘haoma’ pressing; plants in the haoma,” together with the animal offering and the priest as man [Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, #55116, §11.6].

For the dead, Boyce notes a contradiction. Exposure was the orthodox rite, yet the kings embalmed their dead and laid them in rock tombs. “There is no sanction for such a practice in the Avesta,” so the kings apparently “regard[ed] themselves as above this particular religious law.” Herodotus says that ordinary Persians covered the corpse “with wax and bury it in the earth,” while the magi let it be “torn by bird or dog.” The oldest archaeological evidence for exposure is the ossuary (astodana) of Artimas in Lycia, about 400 BC [Boyce, #55117, ch.5 “Achaemenian palaces and tombs”]. Pompeius Trogus says of the Parthians that “their general mode of sepulture is rending to pieces by birds or dogs” [Boyce, #55117, ch.6 “Funerary practices”]. Moulton describes the Parsi Tower of Silence and the rite around it: the “four-eyed” dog of the sagdid, corpse-bearers (nasasalars) working in linked pairs, the furrow (kasha) drawn three times round the corpse, and the deathbed Patet confession [Moulton, #55091, Book II ch.3].

The seven feasts and the calendar schism

Boyce writes that Zoroaster’s second “strict obligation” was the seven feasts: six gahambars (Maidhyoi-zaremaya, Maidhyoi-shema, Paitishahya, Ayathrima, Maidhyairya, Hamaspathmaedaya) and No Ruz, the feast of fire, which “foreshadows Frasho-kereti” [Boyce, #55117, ch.3]. The later Achaemenids created a 360-day Zoroastrian calendar with a yazata for every day. Ardashir’s reform added five “Gatha” days, which people called “stolen,” and observances were duplicated. The quarrel over which No Ruz was true, 1 or 6 Farvardin, outlasted the Sasanian era [Boyce, #55117, chs.5, 7 “Calendar changes”]. Among the Parsis, Moulton dates the Kadmi-Shahenshahi schism to 6 June 1745. In 1916 the Shahenshahis kept Naoroz on 11 September and the Kadmis on 12 August, since “the necessary intercalation has been dropped for nearly nine hundred years by the September party and for a thousand years by the August” [Moulton, #55091, Book II ch.2]. Pithavala’s pamphlet argues for a fixed, equinoctial “true” year [Pithavala, The True Zoroastrian Year, #60427].

Key points

• Duchesne-Guillemin notes that the Gathas twice invoke “the fire of Ahura Mazda”; prayer before the hearth fire is the basic rite [#60380, #55117].
• Boyce holds that temple fires began under the later Achaemenids, probably as an orthodox answer to Artaxerxes II’s Anahita images [#55117].
• The Sasanians enforced iconoclasm and replaced statues with Bahram, Aduran and Dadgah fires; Kirder held that images housed demons [#55117].
• The three great fires (Burzen-Mihr, Farnbag, Gushnasp) are legendary in origin; fires could be carried, as from Yazd to Tehran [#55117, #54999].
• The Magi were a Median priestly tribe. Geller sets them beside the Babylonian mašmaššu and notes horse sacrifice as a distinctively Persian rite [#69076].
• Moulton describes a hereditary priesthood (Ervad, Mobed, Dastur) and the 16-fire Atash Behram [#55091].
• Royal embalming conflicted with exposure; the Towers of Silence carry on the Vendidad rite [#55117, #55091].
• Parsi and Theosophical writers (Kapadia, Olcott, Besant) answer the “fire-worshipper” label in different ways; Besant’s “Rod” story is an occult claim [#55090, #55087, #55017].