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Beneath an apparent unity it is divided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reign over the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world a demoniac cult of which it shall be high priest. "This society has its seat in America. It was formerly directed by one Longfellow, an adventurer, born in Scotland, who entitled himself grand priest of the New Evocative Magism.
Modern scholarship inclines to the belief that this great religious leader was born in West Media about B.C. 600, and carried on his great work in Bactria. The religion with which his name is connected is really a reformed and spiritualised kind of that Magism which prevailed in Media and contiguous countries.
The Magi took advantage of it to attempt a substitution of Magism for Zoroastrianism as the religion of the state. When this attempt failed, there was no doubt a reaction for a time, and Zoroastrianism thought itself triumphant. But a foe is generally most dangerous when he is despised.
Upon the whole, Magism, though less elevated and less pure than the old Zoroastrian creed, must be pronounced to have possessed a certain loftiness and picturesqueness which suited it to become the religion of a great and splendid monarchy.
And the practices of the Guebres, their fire temples, and their customs and ceremonies and Guebreism or Magism, still continue among the people of Fars and there are not in, any country of Islam so many Guebres as in the land of Fars. It has been their capital or residence."
The result which supervened upon contact with Magism seems to have been a fusion, an absorption into Zoroastrianism of all the chief points of the Magian belief, and all the more remarkable of the Magian religious usages. This absorption appears to have taken place in Media.
Magism, repulsed in its attempt to oust the rival religion, derived wisdom from the lesson, and thenceforth set itself to sap the fortress which it could not storm. Little by little it crept into favor, mingling itself with the old Arian creed, not displacing it, but only adding to it.
Magism could not have come from the Semitic races, whose original religion was theism, like that of Melchisedek and Abraham; nor from the Japhetic races, or Indo-European, whose worship was polytheism—that of personal gods under distinct names, like Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
When the Iranic nations, cramped for space in the countries east and south of the Caspian, began to push themselves further to the west, and then to the south, they were brought into contact with various Scythic tribes inhabiting the mountain regions of Armenia, Azerbijan, Kurdistan, and Luristan, whose religion appears to have been Magism.
It may be suspected that the religious element entered into some of these struggles, and that the unusual number of the revolts and the obstinate character of many of them were connected with the downfall of Magism and the restoration of the pure Zoroastrian faith, which Darius was bent on effecting. But this explanation can only be applied partially.
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