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I declare myself to be a Mazdaist, a Zarathustrian, a sworn foe to the Daevas and a worshipper of Ahura-Mazda. I offer to thee, O Ahura-Mazda, sacrifices of all kinds. Mayest thou, O all-powerful, all-wise one, rule over thy creatures, over all waters and trees, all empires and dominions, causing fertility, happiness, and universal justice to abound in the world.
Second Edition, 1878, F. Windischmann, Zoroastr. Studien, 1863. Geldner, "Zoroaster," in Encyclopædia Britannica; "Zoroastrianism," in Encyclopædia Bibl. Mills, A Study of the Five Zarathustrian Gathas, 1892-94. Lehmann, in De la Saussaye. Dadhabai Naoroji, The Parsee Religion. On Mithraism, Dieterich Eine Mithras-liturgie. Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 1903.
According to this doctrine which was borrowed from the Zarathustrian theology of Persia the Messiah on his arrival was to free from Sheol all the souls of the righteous, causing them to ascend reinvested in their bodies to a renewed and beautiful earth, while on the other hand the wicked were to be punished with tortures like those of the valley of Hinnom, or were to be immersed in liquid brimstone, like that which had rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
After the Gathas proper we have other hymns written in the Gathic dialect, from which the history of the religion after its foundation may be to some extent inferred. These show that the Zarathustrian religion was regarded, after the departure of the founder, as a great divine institution, and was worked out on the lines he had laid down. The forms of it became of course more fixed.
For the final impression one carries away, after reading Nietzsche, is the impression of "distinction," of remoteness from "vulgar brutality," from "sensual baseness," from the clumsy compromises of the world. It may not last, this Zarathustrian mood. It lasts with some of us an hour; with some of us a day with a few of us a handful of years! But while it lasts, it is a rare and high experience.
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