Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. 2017
What is A Yazata, or Angel?
Theories of Mazdan Magic
In the philosophical-magical system of the Mazdan magician the gods and goddesses are called yazatas, literally “those worthy of worship.” Because the yazatas are seen as exponents or extensions of the one true and absolute God, the yazatas are also seen as the “messengers” of Ahura Mazda. They fulfill and extend the will of the Creator as emanations of aspects of the origin or source of all being. Because these entities were seen as messengers, they came to be the origin of the concept of “angels” in other religions. If it is more convenient for the contemporary magician to refer to the yazatas as “angels,” such a designation is not without traditional merit and is acceptable.
Our modern English word angel is derived from the Greek angelos (ἄγγελος), meaning literally “messenger.” It is a loan translation from Hebrew mal’āk, meaning “messenger,” which occurs in phrases such as mal’āk ’ĕlōhīm, “messenger of God.” The cognate word in Arabic is malâk. Both Hebrew and Arabic scriptures contain numerous references to such angels as messengers of God.
The famous English magician Aleister Crowley (1875—1947) is well known for writing that the higher purpose of Magic(k) is “to gain knowledge and conversation” of one’s “Holy Guardian Angel.” The very word magic derives from an Iranian root, of course, but the question remains: Does Crowley’s formulation about the real purpose of magic have any basis in Mazdan tradition, or is he just deceiving us? (He was, after all, reputed to be the “wickedest man in the world.”) To find the answer, we will have to delve deep into the Mazdan tradition of angels, or yazatas.
As we know, the Mazdan religion is both monotheistic and polytheistic and framed within a dualistic philosophy. This model is actually the only logical one as far as theology and philosophy are concerned. As God is pure consciousness, focused and isolate, and is all-good and all-seeing absolute Wisdom (Mazda), this entity can only be one. The Greeks, influenced by the Persians, called this entity the One (Gk. τὸ ἕν) and the Good (Gk. το αγαθων). At the same time, it cannot be denied that humanity worships—in other words, gives honor, attention, and devotion to—a great number of what David L. Miller, the author of The New Polytheism (1974), called “value centers.” These are individual aspects or extensions of the divinity with their own forms of existence. As we have seen, such an entity was called a divine “messenger” (angelos) by Christians writing in Greek but “one worthy of worship” (yazata) by the Iranians. Just as the Good has extensions and messengers (that is, substructures and paradigms) by which it functions in the world and in humanity, so too does the Bad. These bad mechanisms are poetically called daevas by the Iranians. Greek-speaking magicians called the two sets of entities agathodaímones (αγαθοδαίμωνες) and kakodaímones (κᾰκοδαίμωνες), “good-demons” and “bad-demons,” respectively. The Greek word daímôn (δαίμων) underwent a semantic shift similar to that of the Iranian daeva. Originally, daeva meant a god or divinity in general (it is cognate to the Sanskrit word deva, “a god”). In the terminology of the ancient Indo-European languages there were many words for gods and goddesses and divine powers.