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In this manner could be explained the occurrence of evil in a world, the maker and ruler of which is supremely good. Each of the personified principles of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, had his subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It is the duty of a good man to cultivate truth, purity, and industry.
But the nobles would not suffer him to linger, neither to waste time in words, and they buckled upon him his armour, and they threw his leopard-skin about him, and they saddled Rakush, and made ready the hero for the strife. And they pushed him forth, and called after him: "Haste, haste, for no common combat awaiteth thee, for verily Ahriman standeth before us."
Chief in Man's bosom sits thy sway, And frequent, while in words we pray Before another throne, Whate'er of specious form be there, The secret meaning of the prayer Is, Ahriman, thine own. Say, hast thou feeling, sense, and form, Thunder thy voice, thy garments storm, As Eastern Magi say; With sentient soul of hate and wrath, And wings to sweep thy deadly path, And fangs to tear thy prey?
That the serpent in the early part of Genesis denoted the same Satan, is probable enough; but this only goes to show, that that narrative is a legend imported from farther East; since it is certain that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman. In Paul the same idea is strongly brought out.
And so evil continued to exist, and to produce impurity and evil wherever and whenever the good spirit created the pure and good. For the evil spirits which dwell in every human being, and are emanations from Ahriman, will be destroyed in the punishment inflicted on men after death. "Light alone is pure and good; darkness is unclean and evil.
Zoroaster explained the history of man as being one long contest between these two powers until a time to come when Ormuzd would be victorious over Ahriman. Ormuzd, as the ruler of the universe, seeks to draw men to the light, to dispel the darkness of ignorance, and to extend the triumph of virtue over the material and spiritual world.
The difference between these two is the difference between light and darkness, between Ormuzd and Ahriman: whereas the difference between Intelligent work and what for want of a better word I am calling Imaginative work, is a matter of degree only; and in times when art is abundant and noble there is no break in the chain from the humblest of the lower to the greatest of the higher class; from the poor weaver's who chuckles as the bright colour comes round again, to the great painter anxious and doubtful if he can give to the world the whole of his thought or only nine-tenths of it, they are all artists that is men; while the mechanical workman, who does not note the difference between bright and dull in his colours, but only knows them by numbers, is, while he is at his work, no man, but a machine.
In almost all the liturgies that I have read need is felt for a mediator between the seeker after God and his goal. Mithras himself saw a Mesîtês, a Mediator, between Ormuzd and Ahriman, but the ordinary mediator is more like an interpreter or an adept with inner knowledge which he reveals to the outsider.
Onyambe is the Bad God, Typhon, Vejovis, the Ahriman or Semitic devil; Shiva the Destroyer, the third person of the Aryan triad; and his name is never mentioned but with bated breath. They have not only fear of, but also a higher respect for him than for the giver of good, so difficult is it for the child- man's mind to connect the ideas of benignity and power.
The Persian religion ultimately came to have a very simple and very striking theology; and that theology was made up by transforming the abstractions in which the founder dealt, into persons, and arranging them after the pattern of Oriental society. Ahura and Ahriman confront each other as the good power and the evil. Both alike had part in making the world what it is.
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