Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. 2017
A Brief History of Eranshahr
Appendix
This is a book on magical practice, but this practice was originally rooted in a specific culture. It is a culture with which many readers may be unfamiliar, because the Western world has spent centuries trying to deny the Eastern heritage of magic and religion. For this reason, a brief history of the Iranian lands may be of some practical intellectual use.
The Iranians stem from the same roots as do the other Indo-European peoples: the Greeks, Italians, Slavs, Celts, Germanics, Hittites, as well as the Aryans of India. The original homeland of all these peoples was somewhere around the Caspian and Aral Seas in Central Asia. The Iranians remained in that region until some of them began to migrate southward into what is now Iran just before 1000 BCE. Another group moved a short distance to the east and became the East Iranians, while another group remained in the north and went to the west toward the Black Sea: these were the Northern Iranians (which included the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans). Those who moved southward became the Medes and Persians. Here, in the land that was to become what we know today as Iran, they immediately confronted the well-established civilizations of the Elamites and Assyrians.
The Northern Iranians maintained an equestrian culture similar to that of the original Indo-Europeans throughout the steppes of Central Asia and eastern Europe. The Scythians dominated between 700 and 300 BCE, while the Sarmatians were the leading Northern Iranian culture between 600 BCE and 450 CE, and the Alans were active roughly at the same time. The last vestige of that culture is found among the modern Ossets of the Caucasus Mountains. These Northern Iranian tribes interacted broadly with other Indo-European peoples, especially the Slavs and the Germanic peoples of northern and eastern Europe.
The Medes established a vast holding of land that stretched from the Black Sea to the Oxus River. Around 585 BCE a group of Persians rose up and absorbed the lands of the Medes and under their great emperor Cyrus (Koresh) conquered Babylon, extending the rulership of the Iranians over an even vaster area of land. This Achaemenid Empire was the first great world empire. Cyrus the Great was a cunning and wise emperor and became the model of all emperors for ages to come. He ruled with the authority of Ahura Mazda. His reign was followed by a number of other great emperors who formed the Achaemenid Dynasty, which lasted from 585 to 330 BCE. The empire was extended again to include all the lands from Egypt and northern Greece in the west all the way to the Indus River in the east. The empire included more than twenty different lands and peoples and more or less peacefully organized them into a cooperative whole without the use of slaves. The ruling principle was the wisdom of Ahura Mazda, which shunned the use of coercion. Good rulership provided the prestige that held the empire together. It was during this dynasty that the Persians and Greeks came into contact with one another and fought a series of wars, first between 500 and 479 BCE, and then finally the Macedonian Greeks under Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 330.
It was the intention of Alexander to merge the peoples of Greece and Persia into a greater empire. He took several Persian brides to try to form a new dynasty and assumed the title of the Persian emperor. This vision was not realized, and generally the Greek influence in Persia was destructive and the conflict between East and West would continue. Alexander died soon after this conquest, and the Greek rulership of Persia collapsed after a century.
The Greek period, known as the Seleucid Dynasty, was replaced by the Parthian Empire, which was far more loosely organized than the Achaemenid model had been. The Parthians were originally an Iranian tribe from the southeast of the Caspian Sea who took the mantle of the Persian culture. This age of Iranian history would last for nearly five hundred years, during which time the Western combatant in the conflict between East and West would become the Romans rather than the Greeks. The impact of Greek culture on Iran was also gradually lessened, and, over time, the culture became wholly Iranian again.
In 224 CE the Persian region in southwestern Iran again came to dominance, and a new empire, the Sasanian, would be established. It lasted until the time of the Arab conquest in 651. This four-hundred-year period was a new golden age for the Persian Empire. It saw great rulers such as Shapur I, Bahram V, and Khorasaw I. In this period there were also many accomplishments in military science, engineering, technology, architecture, literature, mathematics, and political reform. During this time Zoroastrianism was established as the state religion. This was a new development, as the Mazdan faith had for fifteen hundred years been the dominant religion of the court, army, and nobility, but not necessarily an official state religion. The long-held traditions of religious tolerance, however, generally maintained themselves. During the early part of this imperial period the conflict with the West remained heated with the Romans constantly trying to chip away at the western part of the empire. In this the Romans were unsuccessful. In 260 the Romans, under Emperor Valerian, were utterly defeated at the Battle of Edessa, and the Roman emperor, along with much of his army, was taken into captivity and settled in the cities of Bishapur and Gandishapur, where they lived in peace and even built a number of engineering projects for their “hosts,” such as the Pol-e Kaisar (Caesar’s Bridge) near Susa, which remained in use until about a hundred years ago.
In the 600s the Sasanian Empire was beset by internal strife and poor leadership. Into this situation the storm of Bedouin Arab fanaticism swept into the empire, bringing with it the new religion of Islam. At first this was merely a military/political conquest. Only a few Persians were converted to Islam. After about a hundred years the Persians reasserted their cultural superiority and modified the essence of Islam into a Persianized version of what was already a largely Arabicized Persian philosophy. Over the course of about three hundred years most of the population was converted to Islam, but Zoroastrianism survived, and does so to this day. Zoroastrian texts continued to be composed for centuries afterward in Pahlavi, Arabic, and eventually New Persian.
In 750 the Arabic domination was politically overthrown and the Abbasid Caliphate was established. This caliphate would last three centuries, until the middle of the eleventh century. It was during this time that Persian ideology became well established in the Islamic world. By the end of this period the Persian language was being used as a philosophical language.
Sometime during the middle of the tenth century a group of Zoroastrians left Iran and migrated to the coast of India, in the vicinity of modern-day Mombai. There they set up a new community and maintained occasional linkages with their coreligionists in Iran over the centuries. These Zoroastrians in India are known as Parsis, and it is among them that the religion continued to thrive most vigorously, free from persecution.
Persian culture was extended farther into Central Asia among the Turkic peoples and farther eastward into the Indian Subcontinent at this time. In subsequent centuries Iran absorbed, and as a matter of course “Persianized,” many often brutal invasions by Turkic tribes and Mongols. At the dawn of the modern age in 1502, Ismail I was crowned the first Shah of the Shi’ite New Persian Empire, known as the Safavid Empire, which would last until 1722. These dynasties tended not to be ethnically Persian but rather Turkic, although Persian language and cultural features dominated across all ethnic lines.
Although there were many cultural accomplishments by Persian men of letters and philosophers, and the Persianized form of Islam known as Sufism was developed, the Iranians would never again rise to the level of cultural influence and power they had had in the Zoroastrian ages of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires. Islam brought corrupt, cruel, and decadent leadership to the land. Instead of being an exporter of cultural and ideological material, the land increasingly came under foreign influence and domination. The grip of Islam and the Shi’ite mullahs tightened, and the past glories of Zoroastrian Iran faded from the memories of the masses.
The Pahlavi Dynasty, created and supported by Western powers, was not able to renew the glories of ancient Iran. The shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi tried to stem the tide of the power of the mullahs and was highly sympathetic to the ancient traditions of his country. In the mid-twentieth century, Iran was a pro-Western, pro-Israel regime. But illogically from a geopolitical perspective, the United States pulled support away from the institution it had created—an institution that could have transformed the Middle East into a progressive and secularized world. As a result, the shah was deposed in 1979, and the mullahs came to absolute power. Like all trends contrary to deeply established Iranian values rooted in the Mazdan way, this one will probably last about a century until the power of the Wise Lord reasserts itself.
There are movements—especially among the millions of Iranian expatriates—to restore the old religion of Zoroastrianism to an established position. It is a monumental task, yet it must be said that both history as well as wisdom are on their side.