priest-caste

Updated: May 2, 2025

How I should enjoy once hearing Humboldt talk!" "A cabinet of natural curiosities we may regard like an Egyptian burying-place, where the various plant gods and animal gods stand about embalmed. It may be well enough for a priest-caste to busy itself with such things in a twilight of mystery.

- The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 02 : Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes

It was there that the Arian tribes first associated with themselves, and formally adopted into their body, the priest-caste of the Magi, which thenceforth was recognized as one of the six Median tribes. It is there that Magi are first found acting in the capacity of Arian priests.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3: Media : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

The mysterious fire-altars on the mountain-tops, with their prestige of a remote antiquity the ever-burning flame believed to have been kindled from on high the worship in the open air under the blue canopy of heaven the long troops of Magians in their white robes, with their strange caps, and their mystic wands the frequent prayers the abundant sacrifices the long incantations the supposed prophetic powers of the priest-caste all this together constituted an imposing whole at once to the eye and to the mind, and was calculated to give additional grandeur to the civil system that should be allied with it.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3: Media : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

He instituted Magian rites in lieu of the old ceremonies, and established his brother Magians as the priest-caste of the Persian nation. The changes introduced were no doubt satisfactory to the Medes, and to many of the subject races throughout the Empire.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5: Persia : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

Reverence for earth was shown by sacrifice, and by abstention from the usual mode of burying the dead. The Magian religion was of a highly sacerdotal type. No worshipper could perform any religious act except by the intervention of a priest, or Magus, who stood between him and the divinity as a Mediator. The Magi were a priest-caste, apparently holding their office by hereditary succession.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3: Media : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

This Magian order was a priest-caste, and exercised vast influence, being internally organized into a hierarchy containing many ranks, and claiming a sanctity far above that of the best laymen. Artaxerxes found the Magian order depressed by the systematic action of the later Parthian princes, who had practically fallen away from the Zoroastrian faith and become mere idolaters.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7: The Sassanian or New Persian Empire : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.