دار بيبليون
Zara 3: Incestuous marriage and ascension in Zoroastrianism/Lecture by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom Wednesday 02/02/2022
Zarathustra was the first to speak of a resurrection after death
The resurrection after death is an authentic and ancient Zoroastrian belief. The prophet of Iran was the first to say so. Zoroastrian texts confirm that the Day of Resurrection will come after the final defeat of the forces of evil by the forces of good at the end of time. Then all men, good and bad, will have to cross a river of fire, the good will be saved by the Yazatas, the wicked will be completely eliminated, and evil will disappear from the world forever. The earth will prosper and the good people will live in the heavenly kingdom of Ahura Mazda, where they will dwell forever (). This is an era of messianism, of eschatological Mahdism par excellence. Zoroastrianism was the first to speak of an expected saviour, and named him Saoshyant, to whom we shall return later.
Divine grace and the aura its symbol
The concept of divine grace in Iranian religious thought is worthy of reflection. It seems to be the basis of the concept of prophecy which was transferred, most probably, from Iran to the Abrahamic religions, as we shall see. Divine grace, Khvarna or Farr in modern Persian, is an abstract idea that has become an essential part of the Iranian vision of the universe and of life in general. This grace is one of the characteristics of the chosen ones, i.e. those whom the gods prefer to others, and it brings them success, prosperity and well-being, while its regression leads to all sorts of calamities and disasters. Thus, heroes, kings and prophets owe their glory to this divine grace. From this came the concept of the Aura in later Persian paintings, the halo of golden flames surrounding the head of the blessed person. This aura is a symbol of grace. And it became a tradition in religious drawings. As it is later found in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other paintings.
The Marriage of the Brothers in the faith of Zoroaster
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt knew about marriage between brothers, and one of its purposes was to preserve the royal blood. The ancient Greeks were also famous for this practice, while the Romans forbade it, and the Jews, Christians and Muslims strictly prohibited it. They mocked it and described it in the most horrible way.
The Zoroastrian texts considered this type of marriage as a virtuous work. The Danish orientalist Arthur Christensen (1875-1945) says: “In fact, marriage between members of the same family is not regarded as incestuous, but rather as an act for which the one who performs it is rewarded from a religious point of view.” The Danish orientalist considers that this remarkable phenomenon among the Persians, is due, in one of the reasons, to the same motives as those advanced by the Pharaohs who resorted to it. He says: “The concern for the purity of the family blood, which was one of the outstanding characteristics of the customs of the Iranian community, required the permission of marriage between members of the same family: between father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister. This type of marriage is called Khuwayd and Keds, and in the Avesta: Khuwaith and Dana. The custom of incestuous marriage is ancient among the Persians, and in the history of the Achaemenids there are many examples” ().
Here Christensen mentions the names of some of the great Persian kings who married their sisters or daughters: “Cambez had a wife who was his sister Atossa, and another sister also. Dara II was married to his sister Parisats. Ardashir II was married to his daughters, Atosa and Amestris. Dara III married his daughter Statera. This orientalist mentions certain texts from the Avesta which claim that incestuous marriage expels Satan and erases major sins (). He cites a number of ancient sources that told this about the Persians: like the historian Desan. But the history of the time itself provides us with many such examples. Like Bahram Gubin, who took his sister Kurdya as his wife.
Christensen refers to a number of ancient Christian sources which criticised these Zoroastrians for this custom: In a Syriac law book on marriage, written by the patriarch Mar Abha who lived at the time of Khosro I, we find the following paragraph: “The strange justice of the worshippers of Ahura Mazda, requires that a man have lewd relations with his mother, his daughter and his sister. (…) and in another source we read: “This is Mahran Kishnesp, who had married his sister before entering Christianity, in accordance with the impure and ugly custom that these misguided people allowed” ().
For their part, Muslim authors have long reproached the followers of Zoroaster for allowing fraternal marriage, or what they called ‘incest’.
We had studied incest in the Rik Veda () and showed that, contrary to the Avesta, it had a negative attitude towards it, whereas ancient civilisations such as the Sumerians in Mesopotamia allowed it.
The question of incest poses many problems: psychologists, especially psychoanalysts, consider sexual attraction between son and mother, daughter and father, to be an innate affair that social and religious taboos curb. And they speak of the Oedipus complex on which Freud (1856-1939) based his theory of sexuality ( ) and the Electra complex ( ). They use the term ‘incest barrier’ to refer to: “The barrier or obstacle that social laws impose on the development of sexual life energy (libido) in the aspect of incest, and at the same time emphasise the feelings of guilt aroused by thoughts, fantasies and dreams that destroy the wall of this incest, the wall and cross it”
Is the issue then one of education and self-addiction? A person raises himself, or rather his society and family educate him, so that his mahrams (mother and sister in the case of a boy, father and brother in the case of a girl) do not arouse him sexually? Or sensual attraction? Yoga approaches this question from another angle: just as a person gets used to, or is brought up not to be sexually aroused by family members, she can, in the same way, be brought up and get used to not being sexually aroused by another woman. The Yoga sages, for example, ask the spiritual seeker, sadhak, to consider any woman as his mother and call her Mataji, i.e. my mother, ( ) ( ) and thus develop in him the virtue of celibacy Brahmacharia. The same thing is seen in some Arab traditions, where the man addresses the woman with the title Sister. And the question of sexual arousal is really a question of mental creation, says Yoga. Just as each person invents a sexual arousal mechanism for himself from childhood, he can, by the same process, deactivate that mechanism permanently or temporarily.
These are some of the ideas raised by the issue of incest which Zoroastrianism has permitted, whereas it is forbidden by most other religions and cultures. This marriage no longer exists in Iran today. Despite this, notes the orientalist Foltz: “Iranians of all religions still prefer marriages between first cousins” ( ).
Is the preference for cousin marriage due to the incestuous custom rooted in the subconscious of Iranian society, as Foltz alludes to here? The tradition of cousin marriage is found rooted in Arab or Bedouin tribal societies. Does this mean that they have known, in their antiquity, a type of incestuous marriage? We will not take the risk of giving a positive answer to this important question, even though Arab Bedouin societies have granted, and still grant, the cousin a vested right over his cousin, as long as he has desire for her, he is even able to remove her from the howdah in which she is walking to another husband, as the traditions say.
This may be due to tribal and clan relations, which Ibn Khaldun made one of the pillars of his social theory, as we explained in a previous research (). One of its objectives is the purity of blood and the preservation of family wealth, and this is one of the most important justifications for incestuous marriage, as we have seen.
Mi’raj (Night Journey) in Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is perhaps the oldest of the religions that spoke of the ascension of its founder and a number of its renovators to heaven. The Ascension will be one of the most important themes and miracles in later religions.
In Christianity and the Ascension of Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles spoke of it in his Letter to the Corinthians 12/5. On the basis of this Pauline text, an apocryphal text attributed to St. Paul was born in Christianity and was known as the “Apocalypse of Paul”. It dates from the last third of the second century AD to the middle of the third century AD. We have presented and analysed it in a previous research ().
And in Islam, there are accounts of the Ascension of the Prophet, which we have dealt with and analysed in four previous books. There we discussed the impact of the Persian Ascension.
What is remarkable about Zoroastrianism is that the revelation and the beginning of the preaching of this Prophet/Founder is directly related to the Ascension. Ancient sources, such as the story of Zoroaster (Zaradasht Nameh) and others, tell: “When Zoroaster reached thirty years of age, revelation came to him. The first revelation came to him on the banks of the river Daita near his village. There appeared to him a person nine times the size of the average man. He was an archangel whose name is Vohu Manah, meaning good thought. He spoke to Zarathustra and commanded him to remove his body and rise in spirit, in the presence of the wise god Ahura Mazda. The latter was sitting on the throne surrounded by angels when suddenly a great light appeared before Zoroaster from the assembly of angels. Fascinated by the light, he could no longer see his shadow. Ahura Mazda then begins to teach him the beliefs and duties of the true religion, which he entrusts to the public. Over the next eight years, the six principal angels appeared to him, completing his message.
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