Zoroastrianism

[Sarah]

The religious system of Zoroaster, the legislator and prophetof the ancient Persians, which was the national faith of Persia;mazdeism. The system presupposes a good spirit (Ormuzd) and anopposing evil spirit (Ahriman). Cf. Fire worship, under Fire, andParsee.

[Sarah]

The dualistic religious system founded by the Persian prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) and set forth in the Avesta in the late 7th or early 6th centuries BCE, teaching the worship of Ahura Mazda in the context of a universal struggle between the forces of light and of darkness. It is one of the most ancient of living religions and once the faith of the Persian Empire. It is also rooted in ancient Aryan traditions. Today there are less than 200,000 Zoroastrians, mostly in Iran, India, and the West. At the age of 30, Zarathustra was returning with river water for haoma for spring festival when he had a vision and was taken before Ahura Mazda, The Wise Lord, the supreme creator

[Sarah]

Zarathustra (in Greek, Zoroaster) was a Persian prophet who at the age of 30 believed he had seen visions of God, whom he called Ahura Mazda, the creator of all that is good and who alone is worthy of worship. This was a departure from previous Indo-Persian polytheism, and Zarathustra has been termed the first non-biblical monotheist (though monotheism in Zoroastrianism never took on the absolute quality that it assumed in Judaism and Islam). Though there is disagreement among scholars as to exactly when and where Zarathustra lived, most agree that he lived in eastern Iran probably around the sixth century B.C.E.
Zoroastrian theology is strongly dualistic. In his visions, Zarathustra was taken up to heaven, where Ahura Mazda revealed that he had an opponent, Aura Mainyu, the spirit and promoter of evil. Ahura Mazda charged Zarathustra with the task of inviting all human beings to choose between him (good) and Aura Mainyu (evil). Consequently, Zoroastrianism is a highly ethical religion. Zarathustra taught that humans are free to choose between right and wrong, truth and lie, and light and dark, and that their acts, words, and thoughts would affect their lives after death. He was thus the first to promote a belief in two heavenly judgments: of the individual soul right after death and of all humankind after a general resurrection. His ideas of heaven, hell, and the resurrection of the body profoundly influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Later Zoroastrianism conceived of an opposition between body and soul, though there was no suggestion in its theology that the body was evil and the soul was good. A wandering preacher from Mesopotamia named Mani developed those theories into an extreme form of dualism called Manichaeism.
The Zoroastrian Avesta (Book

[Sarah]

Freddie Mercury's religion.

[Zipporah Schumaker]

a religion that developed in ancient Iran, based on the idea that there is a continuous fight between a god who represents good and one who represents evil

[Rihanna]

A monotheistic pre-Islamic religion of ancient Persia founded by Zoroaster in the 6th century BC.