3 - The Gathas and Mithra

Summary

MORAL-SPIRITUALISM AND THEOLOGY IN THE GATHAS

Given that mystical elements can be read in to the Gathas, what the text itself actually conveys is a sense of moral-spiritualism. The Gathas or gaat-haas (“hymns” or “chants”) are “divine songs” that celebrate Mazda and his cohort of angelic forces. The Gathas may be the oldest transcribed religious text based on an ancient oral tradition located dialectically in northeastern Iran. Its content is written in verse and metrical form — appearing in stanzas or Yasnas — and draws on a rich and diverse cultural and religious imagination that preceded its own. Like the poetry of Hafez or Rumi, the Gathas incorporate a rich symbolic language, but their content is not explicitly mystical in nature; instead they serve as an important source of cultural repository for later “Persian Mystics”. One thing that remains consistent throughout the ages is the Persian inclination for synthesis and interpretation. Indeed, with the revival of Persian culture during the Abassid era 750—1258, learned Persians such as Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Avicenna and Sohravardi were acutely aware of their very ancient heritage, constantly referring to Persia's old “tradition of wisdom” (hekmat-e atiq). If we place Zarathushtra within this continuum, he too is perceived as uniting the religious symbolism of his ancestral past under the epithet Ahura Mazda or “Lord [of] Wisdom”.