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Of the earliest periods of the Mazdean religion we have unfortunately no records; in the time of the decadence of the national religion, especially in the Thousand and One Nights, the fire-worshiper or Magian is commonly a wicked magician, as was natural since he belonged to a faith hostile to Islam, and the practicer of good magic is generally a Moslem.
The fire-worshiper of ancient times, the fierce tribesman, the savage hunter and fisher, the religion-making nomad, the daring pirate, the bedecked barbarian, the elemental fighter with nature and fellow and rival of every kind, the master of the world in making comes before you in dramatic and often pathetic array in the unfolding life of the ordinary boy.
The man's life is a succession of delightful surprises. An odd trait of his character is his love for fire. He could easily have been a veritable fire-worshiper instead of an orthodox Christian! He has always loved a blaze, and he says reminiscently that for no single thing was he punished so much when he was a child as for building bonfires.
But it seems that they were so considered in Greece as early as the fifth century B.C., and after the Moslem conquest of Persia and the suppression of Zoroastrianism a fire-worshiper or Magian is especially a representative of magic.
Captain Burrows took off his hat at the foot of the mainmast, and said: "'My men, this is the first Sunday we have all met together; and as some of you are not familiar with the religious services on board the 'Duncan McDonald, I will state that, as you may have noticed, I asked no man about his belief when I employed him I hired you to simply work this ship, not to worship God but on Sundays it is our custom to meet here in friendship, man to man, Protestant and Catholic, Mohammedan, Buddhist, Fire-worshiper, and pagan, and look into our own hearts, worshiping God as we know him, each in his own way.
She remembered that he said he thought his "intensest pleasure in life had been to watch the growth of flowers," but she was sure he never felt their beauty more devoutly "than the little half-savage being who knelt, like a fire-worshiper, to watch the unfolding of those golden disks." The time came at last, as it comes to every human being, for asking the reason of the faith that was in her.
Dwelling amid nations who are almost universally destitute of veracity, the Parsees are eminently truthful; surrounded by polygamists and sensualists, they maintain habits of purity and virtue; and accustomed to every-day association with those who make a boast of cheating, my memory fails to recall the case of a single Fire-worshiper who was not strictly upright and honorable in his dealings.
I strained at the oars as if in a race, with all eternity at stake, blindly urging the boat ahead through water that flashed crimson at every stroke. The mountain now flamed like a beacon, and I rowed for dear life over a sea of blood. Farquharson sat entranced before the spectacle, chanting to himself a kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance before his god.
Has their music a meaning, or is it all a matter of blind impulse? Some bright morning in March, as you go out-of-doors, you are greeted by the notes of the first robin. Perched in a leafless tree, there he sits, facing the sun like a genuine fire-worshiper, and singing as though he would pour out his very soul. What is he thinking about? What spirit possesses him?
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