Not only does Ali literally reiterate and uphold every major dogma of the Quran, he also believes that the Quran is such a perfect and complete guide that any and every bit of “innovation” outside of itssharia is heresy and blasphemy. In Sermon 175 he writes:

…know that this Quran is an adviser who never deceives, a leader who never misleads and a narrator who never speaks a lie…You should also know that no one will need anything after (guidance from) the Quran…Know, O’ creatures of Allah, that a believer should regard lawful this year what he regarded lawful in the previous year and should consider unlawful this year what he considered unlawful in the previous year. Certainly people’s innovation cannot make lawful for you what has been declared unlawful; rather, lawful is that which Allah has made lawful and unlawful is that which Allah has made unlawful…People are of two categories – the follower of the shari’ah (religious laws), and the follower of the innovations to whom Allah has not given any testimony by way of sunnah or the light of any plea.

Ali is the first Imam of the Shiite tradition and not until the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765), is there any trace of mysticism. Jafar was known to have studied Neo-Platonism and the bulk of his followers were former members of the Mazdakite movement. It is the history and worldview of this pre-Islamic Zoroastrian sect that represents the deepest roots of Sufism of Rumi’s kind. The revolutionary doctrine which now bears the name of Mazdak in fact originated in the 3rd century AD, long before his time. Medieval historians tell us its roots go back to a Chief Mage of Persis named Zaradusht Khuragan, whose movement claimed to be a true return to the teachings of the prophet Zarathustra, after which he was named. These historians often refer to him as “Mazdak the Younger” in order to distinguish him from the movement’s later and more popular figure. In his al-TanbihMas’udi tells us: “Mazdak [the Younger] was the interpreter of the Book of Zoroaster, the Avesta…he is the first among those who believed in interpretation (ta’wil) and in inner meanings (båtin).” The movement’s Zand or “interpretation” of the Avesta was forwarded at the same time, and in the very same place, as the interpretation of Papak and his Sassanian successors. Thus we can assume that Zaradusht’s doctrine was a direct opposition and alternative to the contemporaneous rise of Sassanian Zoroastrian orthodoxy that survives to this day in enclaves such as Yazd and Bombay.

The historian Tha’alibi tells us that: “Mazdak declared that God placed the means of subsistence on earth so that people divide them among themselves equally, in a manner that no one of them could have more than his share; but people wronged one another and sought domination over one another; the strong defeated the weak and took exclusive possession of livelihood and property. It is absolutely necessary that one take from the rich for giving to the poor, so that all become equal in wealth.” Ferdowsi captures the gist of Mazdakite philosophy even more succinctly when he reports that they believed: “Men are turned from Righteousness by five demons: envy, wrath, vengeance, need and greed; to tread the path of the Just Conscience, wealth and women must be made common.”

Mazdak thought that Zarathustra’s enemies, the mumbling priests and stubborn princes, had hijacked and distorted his teaching. For him the solution lay in radical social reforms that undermined the pillars of these institutions. The Mazdakites considered these social reforms the expression of an inner-knowledge that comes about through an enlightenment of perfection and absolves one from all outward religious observances and allegorical doctrines. This echoes the division between conscience and ritual, with the former emphasized over the later, which was first advocated by Zarathustra in his Gathas. The inner-knowledge is conceived of as the universal Truth at the heart of every religion or philosophy throughout history. In each age there is an attempt to define it in terms of words and concepts. Mazdak taught that a given doctrine arises in this way but is ultimately fated to lose its vitality or relevance, petrify and then be destroyed in order to clear the way for a fresh reenvisioning of the same eternal Truth. These ideas are rooted in a belief that letters, words and concepts are facets that manifest God as the divine verb. A line of prophets extends throughout history to perform this periodic renovation. This succession will continue until enough people, who are reincarnating and spiritually growing with the experience of each lifetime, are enlightened so that there is no longer a need for outward practices and allegories. At this point a final prophet would come to abolish all religions and liberate the inner truth to its fulfillment in the outer world. As a reflection of these beliefs, Mazdakite communities lacked institutionalized buildings for religious observance and individuals were free to choose their own form of reverence and hold their own interpretations of the Truth, as long as they were fundamentally rooted in the movement’s socialist vision of justice and equality.

Mazdak strengthened the movement of “the Just” to such an extent that by the late 5th century BC it won the heart of a young Sassanian Emperor newly ascended to the throne, who deeply resented the thought of reigning as the handmaiden of the feudal lords and the Zoroastrian Orthodoxy. To their horror Emperor Kavad declared that Mazdak’s Zand was the true interpretation of Zarathustra’s doctrine and he began to pass laws crushing the feudal lords and enacting radical Mazdakite reforms as official state policy. Acting through Kavad, Mazdak extinguished the alters of all the Zoroastrian fire temples across the Empire, except for the three persisting from Achaemenide times. Emboldened by the Emperor’s patronage, the oppressed masses of Persia joined the movement by the droves and attacked granaries, storehouses, and aristocratic mansions, where they broke up harems and liberated their women. The Mazdakites modified their pacifist beliefs to rise to the occasion by allowing violence only in the event of mass insurrection against injustice, in other words,revolution.

This new attitude is reflected by their banner of revolt, the Sorkh Alam or “Red Flag”. As all things Zoroastrian, it had a three-fold symbolism: the Eternal Fire of Truth; the Wine of Union; and the Bloodwhich Mazdakites were prepared to give, and take, to defend their doctrine of Justice. They also wore red along with their traditional white robes that symbolize purity in Zoroastrianism. Not incidentally, when you combine the Red and White of the Mazdakite and orthodox Zoroastrian movement with the Green that symbolizes “Mithras of the green pastures”, you arrive at the national Iranian tricolor.

The feudal landowners and the clergy finally overcame their state of shock and joined hands to launch a coup which succeeded in deposing Kavad and replacing him with Khosrau. All out civil war ensued until with the military assistance of foreigners called the Hephthalites, Kavad ultimately succeeded in returning to court but only under the condition that all effective power would remain in the hands of Khosrau. The movement’s fate was sealed in 528 AD when Mazdak was made an offer he could not refuse, to appear at Court for a religious debate with the orthodoxy. The visit ended with him and his highest comrades being buried alive, planted with head down and feet up, in a terribly sarcastic allusion to their hope of bringing forth a ‘human garden’ of paradise on Earth. A massacre of Mazdakites in the Sassanian capital of Ctesephon immediately followed, and all of their writings were systematically collected and burned to ashes.

However the damage had been done. Already exhausted by a victorious but long and costly war with Rome, the added burden of the Mazdakite revolution had succeeded in destroying the Sassanian state even if it had failed to replace it with social justice. In this lies one possible answer to the question of how a horde of desert tribesmen were able to overrun the world’s most powerful empire. By the time the Arabs arrived, armed with little more than their fanatical Muslim faith, old Persia already lay in ruins.

In the wake of Mohammad’s death there was a struggle over who would rule the Muslim community. One party supported a council of elders in Medina who voted for a successor during the hectic preparations for Mohammad’s funeral; the other argued that while appointing no successor, Mohammad had so clearly favored his cousin (and son-in-law) Ali ibn abu Talib, that he had the right to the mantle of prophet. At first the council’s choice of a successor from among Mohammad’s ‘Companions’ came to power, but both he and his hand appointed successor died shortly. Ultimately Ali succeeded in becoming Caliph in 656, but was assassinated at Kufa in a coup by the opposition shortly thereafter in 661. Muawiyah I came to power in his place to firmly establish the brutal tyranny of the Ummayid Caliphate in the 8th century.

The Ummayid Caliphs were the first rulers of the Arab occupation of Persia, and it is in this context that we must see Ali’s son Hussein’s pledge to seek vengeance against his father’s murderers and establish himself as the rightful heir of Mohammad. This is especially the case because Hussein was married to the daughter of the last Sassanian Emperor of Persia. Imam Hussein’s descendants, due to succeed him were thereby invested with Persian blood of the Sassanian royal lineage. Thus when Imam Hussein and his revolutionary army were outnumbered and slaughtered by the caliph’s forces at Karbala, his martyrdom became the supreme symbol of the oppression and revolutionary struggle of the Persian people against Arab occupation. This symbol acted as an umbrella for a vast array of revolutionary movements all loosely knit together under the name Shi’a, meaning “faction” or “opposition”.

Foremost among these groups who rose up under the banner of Shi’ism were the Mazdakites. After their massacre at the hands of Khosrow, Mazdak’s widow, Khorramia had assumed leadership of the movement, henceforth known as the Khorramdin. I suspect that the movement was not named after her, but that she took the name “Joyous One” because the true name of the ‘Mazdakite’ movement had always been Khorramdin (the “Religion of Joy” or the “Joyous Conscience”). Lead by the legendary Babak Khorramdin in 816, the Neo-Mazdakites rebelled against the Abbassid Caliph and their armies were able to seize greater Azerbaijan (Northwestern Persia), where they established their radical social order. Babak raised the red flag and set out on a mission to “seize the earth, kill the tyrants and restore the religion of Mazdak”, with the promise that “he who had been humbled shall be honoured and the humble shall become great.” The peasants played a substantial part in the uprising as they had in the time of Mazdak, and support was also given by the small Persian landowners or dehqans. Together these two forces not only fought against the Arab-Muslim invaders but also against the original enemy of the Mazdakites, the feudal landlords of the old Sassanian order who had nominally converted to Islam and joined hands with the Caliph to bleed the non-believer tax from the poor Iranian masses. Finally Babak succeded in seizing the areas south and west of the Caspean sea (Azerbaijan and Gilan/Mazdandaran). There they held out for 20 years, until 837 when Babak was finally defeated and executed by the Caliph’s forces.

It is interesting to note that when Babak was handed over to the Arab-Muslim forces, he says to thedehqan who betrayed him: “You have sold me to these Jews!” Similarly, the rebel leader Afshin is known to have said, likely in reference to the Arab-Muslim sequestering of women, “Should I be afraid of these Jews, to keep my wife locked up in a fortress?” This shows that in 837 AD the Persians still regarded themselves as Aryans who saw their worldview as being so opposed to that of Semites that ‘Muslim’ and ‘Jew’ meant the same thing to them. This theme is also repeatedly alluded to by our historical sources who consistently refer to the struggle between the Khorramdin and Islam as one between the “white religion” of Zarathustra and Mazdak and the “black religion” of Mohammad.

Upon the failure of Babak’s movement it became increasingly clear to the Neo-Mazdakites that they would have to assimilate their movement to Islam and thereby entrench themselves for a long battle with the Arab Muslim regime under the guise of sectarian religious strife. This move is of tremendous importance, for it is the Islamization of the Mazdakite doctrine of ancient Persia that developed into the Shi’ite gnosis of Islam, as well as ecstatic Sunni Sufism. While Babak had been fighting his battle with the Abbassid Caliphs, the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadeq, began to advocate views clearly influenced by Mazdakite Zoroastrianism.

Imam Jafar argued that the shari’a of the Quran at the literal level is only an exoteric symbol (mithal) of an esoteric inner meaning (mamthul). The exoteric aspect, or Zaher, is an illusory representation subject to worldly flux and change through the ages of time, but the inner truth [haqiqah] or Batin is eternal and absolute. Jafar also echoes the Mazdakite idea of the human being, with its bodily existence emphasized, as the microcosmic symbol of the divine macrocosm. The Neo-Mazdakites who now came to be known as Batenis, or “Gnostics”, gathered around Jafar who redefined their ancient vision of a historical renovation of spirituality in Islamic terms by fostering the belief that parallel to the public revelation of the Quran to the rabble, Mohammad had privately passed a secret gnosis to his cousin Ali. Throughout history a succession of Imams will appear one after another who possess, guard, and pass down this gnostic heritage. These Imams who are to guide the Shi’ite community are accompanied by even more secret guardians of Truth, sages whose anonymity allows them to act as conduits that keep the light alive in its purest form – completely free of the exoteric dogmas of religion. These people were called the “spiritual nobles and princes” [awtad and abdal] and they compose the “(royal) succession of gnosis” [silsilat al-irfan] that continues until the coming of the Mahdi.

The Shi’ite idea of the Mahdi is so cunningly revolutionary because through the ‘interpretation’ so characteristic of the Mazdakites, it turns Islam’s own claim to be the ‘seal of prophecy’ against it. According to the Quran Mohammad is to be the last of the prophets and his is to be the final religious law. While this is interpreted by Sunnis as meaning that the shari’a alone suffices for the foundation of human society and always will, for early radical Shi’ites this ‘seal of prophecy’ meant that Islam itself is the last of parables prepared for the ignorant. Thus for them the realization of Truth implied by this ‘seal’ was not to be found in Islamic law itself, but at the point when this law is abolished – for it will have no replacement. Seen in this light the ‘return’ of the Quran to its source inta’wil implies almost a gesture of refusal whereby the sagacious Persians ‘give back’ the petty word that the Arab god has dictated to them. Thus at the heart of early Shi’ism we begin to discern a profound longing for the destruction of Islam in its original Arab form. It is a longing for liberation whose impossibility of being realized in the present has caused it to transform into an apocalyptic fantasy. According to the medieval author Baghdadi, the Muslim theologians of the time recognized this as having been their sole hope and aim all along:

Most (of the theologians) lean to the view that the object of the Båtinîya [‘the Gnostics’] was to convert the Muslims to the religion of the Magians [i.e. – Zoroastrianism in its Mazdakite interpretation] with the aid of the method of allegorization by which they interpret the Qur’an and the Sunna…they…disacknowledge…all the precepts of the Law, because they are disposed to permit everything to which one’s natural desires incline…their longed for goal is the removal of all positive religion [that is, religious ‘law’ or dogma]. They took council from Magians, Mazdakites…with whom they worked out a method, through which they would be able to free themselves from the rule of Islam.

Just as liberation from Arab domination became a real possibility for Persians, the Khorramdin movement met a tragic fate when at the dawn of the 13th century Mongol hordes emerged from Asia to overrun Persia on their way to Eastern Europe. The Mongols made their first priority the destruction of these “lawless” rebels whom they believed would never submit to foreign rule. Hülegü lead an army to exterminate nearly the entire population of Northeastern Persia. They also subjected the survivors to a second wave of forced miscegenation which, taken together with the earlier one at the hands of the Arabs, is responsible for white, ethnically pure, Iranians becoming a minority in their own country. Only 400 world-renowned Persian craftsmen were spared and brought to Mongol capitals in China where they were to exert a lasting influence on Asian art. As for the rest, their heads were severed from their bodies and thrown into piles for public display. Orders were given for the centuries-old Persian cities themselves, with their magnificent architecture, to be demolished so thoroughly that their sites could be ploughed upon. Even stray Persian cats and dogs were rounded up and slaughtered.

However, the Mongol invasion did not so much destroy the Khorramdin as cause it to conceal itself once more, this time by “donning the cloak of Sufism” as Henry Corbin puts it. Ismaili authors claim such monumental fathers of Sufism as Sanai (d. 1151), Attar (d. 1230), Rumi (1273), Nasafi (12th century) and Anvari (d. 1434) as their own. Before the Mongol invasion Sufism was little more than a Christian influenced ascetic-transcendentalist movement within Arab Islam. One would be hard pressed to find a doctrine more at odds with that of the Khorramdin than that upheld by figures such as Hasan al-Basra, Ibn Fudayl, and Rabia. The rationale for this move becomes apparent when we remember that Sufi saints or sheikhs were known for their extreme individualism and, because they were presumed to be very pious, their tendency not to mix with the masses of ordinary believers and to lead eccentric lives were condoned by the orthodox Caliphate. The respect they earned by their ascetic and pious image allowed them immunity from scrutiny. Furthermore, by the time of the Mongol invasion this early form of Sufism had already long been established in Khorasan (Northeastern Persia), after having been brought there by Arab sheikhs from Basra and Baghdad.

However, the assimilation of the Khorramdin into early ascetic Sufism was not as superficial a phenomenon as when it put on the appearance of early radical Shi’ism while retaining an essentially Mazdakite doctrine. Rather, the new culture of Persian Sufism consisted in a mesmerizing conflation of Muslim dogma with the life-affirming and sensuous vision of the Persian Khorramdin. The most pivotal figure in this transformation is Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, who is hailed by Sufis across the world as “Our Master” (Mowlana). In his work we see the persistence of Khorrami imagery and concepts, but now woven together with respect for the necessity of Muslim dogma.

Given the sociological and geopolitical context of the failed Khorramdin movement’s centuries-long insurgency against the Arab-Muslim occupation, such a transformation can only be viewed as a testimony to psychological colonization. Essentially, in a figure like Rumi we are seeing what could be called Sufi Stockholm Syndrome. A brutally colonized and terrorized population of ‘very understanding’ Aryans come to identify with their Arab and Mongol hostage takers and begin to make excuses for them that are so good that these abusers would never have been able to dream them up themselves. When Rumi became the greatest of the Sufis, he whitewashed Islam. Iranians say, Masnavié Mowlavi ast Qurân be zabâné Pahlavi, meaning “the Mathnawi of Rumi is the Quran in Pahlavi.” Since the term Pahlavi refers to the middle Persian language of Zoroastrian Iran, the saying suggests that Rumi made out of Islam something tolerable to the Persian ethos.

Take for example Rumi’s statement that: “So the saints have not said this lightly: the bodies of the purified ones become untainted, exactly like the spirit. Their words, their psyche, their outward form – all become absolute spirit without trace.” Here the life-affirming Zoroastrian tradition crops up again, in which the body may be transfigured in such a way that it is wholly spiritual (frashagardi) and earthly existence itself is thereby purified and sanctified (tan-pazin). Rumi’s belief in transmigration (tanaskokh) is another aspect of his view of the relation between Spirit and Body that is completely heretical in Islam. This belief that the soul migrates from the mineral, to the plant to the animal realms and is born in successive bodies, is yet another vestige of Mazdakism.

The very heart and soul of Rumi’s spiritual vision and doctrine is Love, one of the pillars of Mazdakism and, in form of Spenta Armaiti, one of Zarathustra’s core principles of progress. The ecstatic spiritual communion of human beings is the basis for Mazdakite egalitarianism and communism. However, in his conception of Ishqé Haqiqi, Rumi tries to strip this Love of the literally sexual dimension it had within the context of the ‘free-love’ practiced by the followers of Mazdak and Babak as a means to transcend lustful possessiveness and to overturn patriarchy. Sufis are careful not to admit that for Rumi God simply is Love. They argue that just as God is Knowledge and Mercy and all His other attributes, but is not encompassed by any one of them – God equals Love but Love does not equal God, for the latter to be true would be a great heresy from the Muslim standpoint.

Yet it is clear that at times Rumi does feel that Universal or True Love is the same as God, and that he is a coincidence of opposites of all the other attributes becauseHe is Love, or the reconciliation of all opposites. Rumi speaks of his Sufism as a “Religion of Love” not a Religion of Knowledge or Religion of Mercy, and so forth. This notion of the Religion of Love is profoundly problematic from the Islamic standpoint for Rumi clearly states that: “Love’s creed is separate from all religions: the creed and denomination of Lovers is God.” In the Divan he writes: “Love’s valley is beyond all religions and cults…here there is no room for religions or cults.” These passages do suggest that the Religion of Love is not Islam, just as it is not Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism. In a similar tone Rumi often suggests that a follower of the Religion of Love does not need to observe the sharia of Islam or of any other organized religion for that matter. This brings us right back to the spirit of Zarathustra’s teaching. That is because a doctrine whose whole emphasis is on a life directed by personal conscience is fundamentally incompatible with religious or moralistic prescriptions of this kind. The other native name of Zarathustra’s religion, besides Wisdom Worship (Mazda Yasna), is Daena Vahnui(Behdin) or “the Good Conscience”. The Gathas, when considered apart from much later Avestan accretions that were rejected by the Mazdakites, are the only ‘religious scripture’ entirely lacking any dogmatic code of conduct demanded by a deity or guru. It is the furthest we can get from the Torah, the Quran, or the Laws of Manu.

To be continued…

Mithra, or Mehr in contemporary Persian, means “Light”, “Love”, and “Friend.” He was born of his virgin mother in the middle of the night from December 24^th to 25^th, which (by the reckoning of ancient calendars) is the Winter Solstice – the rebirth of light from out of the most encompassing darkness. This is celebrated at Yalda (an Indo-European cognate of Yule Day), one of the four most sacred Zoroastrian holidays still commemorated in Iran. Mithras was the “lord of green pastures” and the evergreen tree represented Truth, evoking his status as the god of trustworthy Oaths and Contracts, so Yalda was celebrated by bringing an evergreen into an enclosure and giving it gifts. Unlike the contemporary practice of this Yule tree tradition, the evergreen – usually a Cypress (Sarv) in Iran – was brought in together with its roots and then re-planted after the holiday. Mithra wears a red Phrygian cap, evoked by the Mitre of the Pater (Persian Pedar, “Father” or Pir in Sufism), as well as a white belted red cloak and trousers – a distinctively Iranian garment of Parthian and Scythian riders that spread to Europe only later, in large part through Mithraism. Are you reminded of Santa Claus? Devotees of Mithra celebrated holy communion, with wine and loaves of bread that were impressed with the symbol of an equilateral cross inside of a circle – a reference to the equinoxes and solstices of the Invincible Sun (Mehré Jâvedân in Persian, Sol Invictus in Latin). Baptism was also practiced, since Anahita is the goddess of the holy waters and the Lady of the Lake. She virginally conceives of the avatar of Mithra by submerging in Lake Hamun (in Sistan), where legend has it that the seed of Zarathustra was preserved.

The similarities of Mithraism to Christianity frightened the Christian writers who became aware of them, and they resorted to claiming that the devil, who had the demonic power to attain foreknowledge of the coming of Christ, had imitated elements of what would become Christianity and introduced them into the world in order to denigrate them and to misguide people. Obviously, Zarathustra would have seen it the other way around: the Great Deceiver distorting Mazda’s World Savior. In The Error of Pagan Religions (350 AD), the early Christian evangelist Firmicus Maternus chastises his fellow Romans for their Persianization:

The Persians and all the Magi who dwell in the confines of the Persian land give their preference to fire and think it ought to be ranked above all the other elements. So they divide fire into potencies, relating its nature to the potency of the two sexes, and attributing the substance of fire to the image of a man and the image of a woman. The woman they represent with triform countenance, and entwine her with snaky monsters. …The male they worship is a cattle rustler, and his cult they relate to the potency of fire, as his prophet handed down the lore to us, saying: mysta booklopies, syndexie patros agauou (initiate of cattle-rustling, companion by hand-clasp of an illustrious father). Him they call Mithra, and his cult they carry on in hidden caves. …Him whose crime you acknowledge you think to be a god. So you who declare it proper for the cult of the Magi to be carried on by the Persian rite in these cave temples, why do you praise only this among the Persian customs? If you think it worthy of the Roman name to serve the cults of the Persians, the laws of the Persians…

The core symbols and rites of Mithraism that are appropriated by Christianity date from at least the third century BC, the start of the Parthian dynasty. The Parthian princes, who perfected the culture of knightly chivalry (Pahlavâni, Javânmardi) practiced by their Scythian and Sarmatian cousins in the North, were devotees of Mithra who engaged in a centuries-long struggle with the Roman Empire. Oddly enough, by the first century BC the Roman legionaries at war with Parthia began adopting the Iranian religion en masse and built Mithraeums everywhere they were stationed in Europe, from Palestine in the East to Spain in the southwest and Britain in the northeast.

The Mithraic legacy in Britain or Celtic Brittany and in southern Spain is particularly noteworthy because it did not only consist of indirect Iranian influence via the Roman legionaries. A group of Iranians from the Sarmatian confederation, whose warrior women and leading Ladies the Greeks mythologized as Amazons, rode from their homeland in the area between present-day Azerbaijan all the way across Europe. They are called Alans (Alani in Persian) and the name Alan in European languages derives from them. In fact, Alani is a linguistic corruption of Arani (think of how the Japanese turn an r into an l when they pronounce it). Aran was the ancient Iranian name of the Caucasus region. It is a contraction of Ar – the Indo-European root of the Persian words Arya and Arta (Truth) and of Greek words such as Aristocrat, Arete (Virtue) – and an, which is a place name designator, as in Gorgan (place of the wolves), or Abadan (well-built place).

Like their Scythian and Parthian cousins, the Alans were devotees of Mithra and especially of his lover and mother, Anahita – the Lady of the Lake. Their rituals involved a Cup or Grail filled with her holy water, and a trial of strength wherein a horseback rider would pull a cruciform sword up out of the earth in which it had been firmly lodged. They would also pray to these cruciform swords. The Alan Ladies controlled large territories as the chivalric knights (Javanmardan) would swear to be their champions (Pahlavan), pledging their love and loyalty in romantic courtly poetry. Rejecting the hierarchical authority of the Persian Empire, and consonant with the noble egalitarianism of Mithraism in general, these free-spirited Iranian knights each saw themselves as kings – so that their leader was simply a King of Kings, a knight of the round table. In their own adaptation of Zarathustra’s concept of the Saoshyant, the world savior Mithra, they looked forward to the return of a Once and Future King.

The Alans rode westwards across Roman Europe together with their close allies, the Goths, who absorbed this Grail mysticism and chivalric cult of courtly love for leading Ladies. One group of them that arrived in Spain even founded a kingdom together, Goth-Alania or Catalonia. It is from here that the Troubador culture spread throughout the rest of Occitan. That the Arthurian ethos of Germanic Europe is Iranian in origin is also supported by the fact that one of its masterworks, Tristan and Isoldeis modeled on Vis and Ramin – an epic romance originally dating from the Parthian period (247 BC – 224 AD), the era wherein the Mithra cult was most dominant in Iran. No earlier example of a convention-defying romantic love, and the roguish rescue of a lady in waiting, can be found than this tale which, after the Islamic conquest of Iran, was preserved by the 11^th century Persian poet Fakhruddin Gorgani.

Aside from its influence on specific literary works or elements of Grail mysticism, the Parthian culture of Iran, the culture of Mithra’s princes, has a thoroughly medieval European knightly aesthetic – centuries before Gothic culture in Europe! When one looks at the architecture, statuary, and stone reliefs at Parthian archeological sites, or at crafts products from the Sassanian period that preserve Parthian themes, and compares these to the contemporaneous aesthetic of the pagan Roman Empire, then to the atmosphere of medieval ‘Christian’ Europe, the direction of influence is quite clear.

Three very common European hand gestures also appear to have an origin in the Iranian iconography of Mithra, where they are attested before any trace of them in Europe. One is the hand shake or hand clasp. Remember that Mithra is the “Friend.” Another is the raised right arm, bent at the elbow, as a greeting (Hail! or Doroud in Persian) and as a gesture of oath-taking (Mithra in the guise of god of Trust, invoked for contracts and pacts). Finally, the military salute where the right hand shields the eyes from the glory of the Unconquerable Sun (Mehre Javedan or Sol Invictus).

But how could Mithraism have become the dominant religion of the pagan Roman Empire, even though it was the cult of Rome’s rival superpower? The Parthian king Mithradates I (195 – 132 BC), whose name means “Mithra’s Justice” (Mehrdad) in Persian, had either set up or bought out the Cilician pirates of the Mediterranean Sea and was employing them essentially as a black ops or false-flag Persian Navy. Ostensibly stateless pirates driven by private avarice, they actually answered to Mithradates and were the vanguard of Mithraism in Europe. These Mithraists, to whom Anahita as a goddess of the waters was also no doubt very important, had connections to aristocratic houses all across the Roman Empire. Eventually they grew so formidable that the Roman Navy did not have freedom of movement in the Mediterranean. Even Julius Caesar was once taken prisoner by them on the high seas.

The cult of Mithras was well suited to Pirates on account of its extraordinary egalitarianism, itself an outgrowth of Zarathustra’s teachings against the Vedic caste system and his emphasis on individual conscience. In the secrecy of a Mithraeum, merchants were on an equal footing with upstanding citizens, who treated slaves as their equals and in this occult order even a common soldier who had attained the highest rank of initiation could be looked up to by an emperor. We can see this from the fact that just after Constantine adopted Christianity as the official state religion, a failed Mithraic restoration of sorts was staged by Caesar Julian (336 AD) who was himself a devotee of Mithras. Such was the threat to Roman national security by the rise of Mithraism as the de-facto religion of the Empire that, Roman elites around Constantine may have seen the adoption of Christianity as a bulwark to guard against a potential military coup that would have erased the border between Iran and Europe – as if it would have been a bad thing to reunify the Indo-European world!

A reunification of the Indo-European peoples through the cult of Mithra (i.e. Mithras/Mitra/Maitreya) would in all likelihood have even extended into those parts of Asia that had embraced Mahayana Buddhism. An Iranian reform of the Buddha Dharma, Mahayana took shape under Zoroastrian influence. The Mahayana doctrine was developed by the Kushan dynasty, Iranians of the Scythian tribe who swept down into northern India from Khorasan. They are cousins of the free-spirited riders who established the Parthian dynasty in Western Iran. In fact, north Indians referred to the Kushans by one of the same names used by the Parthians, Pahlava(n) – meaning “champion” and the word from which we get Pahlavi or the name of the Middle Persian language. Since the Parthians clearly emerged from a Mithraic culture in Khorasan, which we see reflected in the chivalrous romances and tragedies preserved by Ferdowsi in the Shahnameh, it is reasonable to assume that the Kushans, who are known to have been some kind of Zoroastrians, also revered Mithra. The central figure of Mahayana is Maitreya, the Buddha To Come, a savior figure that is anathema to the Buddha Dharma in its orthodox form as preached by Gautama and whose name is clearly a variant of Mithra.

Mahayana or “the Greater Vehicle” emerged when the Kushan King Kanishka the Great (127–163 AD) convened the largest Buddhist council in history at Kashmir, led by his advisor Ashvaghosha. Under the influence of the Iranian king the monks and scholars worked out a new vision of the Dharma. The founding texts of the new doctrine were engraved on copper plates, not in Sanskrit but in Kharoshti, a Hellenic script designed by Kanishka to express the Iranian language of the Kushans. Fundamental changes in doctrine shepherded by these men reflect Iranian influence.

The first and foremost of these is the distinction between an esoteric teaching and an exoteric teaching. As we shall see, this was also a key feature of Western Iranian and Roman Mithraism. It is the means by which the Mahayanists could retro-actively claim that Gautama did teach their “Greater Vehicle” to initiates and that the Theravada doctrine that is his only publicly recorded teaching (in the Tripitaka) was a Hinayana or “Lesser Vehicle” calibrated to those with lesser understanding. The great difference between the two is that the Lesser Vehicle (which impartial scholars know to be Gautama’s actual teaching) focuses on individual escape from the cycle of karma in a world of misery. In its view a Buddha arises only once over vast cycles of time, so that the idea one could become a Buddha in one’s own lifetime is absurd. Whereas the Greater Vehicle holds that it is possible to attain perfect enlightenment here and now; the whole of creation is headed towards perfection, a Utopian society where all individuals will be delivered from suffering – essentially Zarathustra’s frashgard (frashokereti).

Instead of life being seen as suffering or perpetual dissatisfaction (dukkha), with the goal of life being extinction (nirvana), life comes to be seen as a blessed opportunity for self-perfection. In place of Gautama’s teaching that the ultimate nature of reality is nothingness (shunyata) and that one’s selfhood is an illusion to be overcome (anatta), Mahayanists put Zarathustra’s teaching about archetypes of our perfected light bodies into the mouth of their Buddha. Music, dance, art, and eros are condemned by Siddhartha as conduits of destructive desire and as behaviors that trivialize life’s all-pervasive misery. Prior to the Kushans there is hardly any ‘Buddhist art.’ Under Kanishka’s guidance we see merry making and even ecstatically erotic practices become sacraments of a Mahayana tradition that also generates a life-affirming ‘Buddhist’ art and architecture in a syncretic Greco-Persian style. Shakyamuni claims that women need to be reborn as men before attaining enlightenment whereas, like Zarathustra and the ancient Persian Emperors, Mahayana recognizes that women are the spiritual equals of men and are in some cases even fit to be their teachers. This was a view well suited to the horseback Iranian tribeswomen that Greeks mythologized as Amazons.

Under the influence of Zarathustra’s concept of Shahrivar or “Just Dominion”, unequivocal pacifism was rejected as a sign of Enlightenment. The Dharma Raja is no longer viewed as a beneficent but still unenlightened ruler, who would reject violence altogether if he were to attain Buddhahood. Instead, a perfectly enlightened sage can also be a ferocious warrior. Bodhidharma, a blue-eyed and red bearded Iranian, even developed a Buddhist martial arts tradition that he carried into Asia with him as part of the Chan or Zen teaching that was his particular contribution to Mahayana. Padmasambhava, another ethnic Iranian from Khorasan, later epitomized the Mahayana archetype of the fearsome warrior who is nonetheless a perfectly enlightened Buddha. The influence of the chivalric or heroic (Pahlavâni, Javânmardi) militarism characteristic of Mithraism is evident in these Iranian missionaries who carried Buddhism into Tibet and along the Silk Route further east to China and Japan. The first person to tread this path was the Persian prophet Mani, who was of Parthian lineage. Although he was not a Mithraist, that Mani explicitly tried to synthesize Zoroastrianism and Platonism with Buddhism, and even came to be known as “the Buddha of Light” as far east as China, speaks to the strategic depth and globalizing potential of Iranian influence during the period when Parthian Mithraism was the dominant religion of Iran and the rising de-facto faith of Iran’s greatest rival, the Roman Empire.

In fact, most of the Buddhist missionaries who turned the religion into an East Asian tradition were of Iranian origin and hailed from Khorasan, which was then the epicenter of Mahayana. The greatest Buddhist temple ever built, Now Bahar (“New Spring” in Persian) with its 93-meter golden dome, and the most colossal Buddha statues ever carved (at Bamiyan) were in eastern Iran. The Aryan bone structure, fair skin, blue or green eyes, and auburn hair of the missionaries who set out from here on journeys into Asia are clearly depicted in the beautiful cave murals that they left behind in places such as the Tien-Shan mountains of the western Gobi. Some of these caves have been sealed off from the public by the Chinese government. The reason is that the scenes depicted in them are so erotic that they would apparently offend contemporary public morality as badly as they would have offended the morality of early Indian Buddhists. What we have here is the iconography of the Left Hand Path, and I would argue that the true origins of Tantra are Mithraic and Iranian.

The Germanic barbarians, who would later dominate the Romans, first took on their distinct ethnic and linguistic identity when they broke off from the common ancestors that they shared with the Scythians living in the region north and west of the Black Sea (present-day Ukraine, Moldova, and Bulgaria). Unlike the Persians, who adapted Semitic writing systems (Cuneiform, Aramaic) for the administration of their Empire, the Scythians had a runic writing system for their northern Iranian language that is similar to but older than the Germanic runes, and one of these runes is particularly worthy of note. To this day the word Tyr means “arrow” in Persian. In Iran’s mythology it refers to the arrow of Arash, the heroic bowman. The Persians were famous for archery, and this greatest of all archers lets loose a magical arrow that defines the scope of the rightful realm of Aryans (Iran) in distinction from the non-Aryan (Aniran) world.

In Greek, Indo-European sh syllables are often softened into s (as in Kourosh becoming Cyrus). So Arash becomes Ares, the god of war referred to by the Romans as Mars. Roman Mithraists conflated Mithras with Mars, a fact that provides some further context for how the cult of Mithras becomes the dominant religion of the Roman military. Now, in Nordic mythology Tyr is seen to be the equivalent of Mars or Ares. His rune symbol is the arrow, the one loosed by the bow of Arash. Finally, the Norse see Tyr as the god of oaths and contracts, exactly the same function that Mithra has in the religion of Zarathustra. The dog was considered among the most sacred animals by Zoroastrians, and the Persians who used dogs to guard their homes from demons, and considered cruelty towards dogs a capital offense, originated the tradition of the dog as “man’s best friend.” Fenrir, the wolf that Tyr is trying to domesticate (into a dog) bites off his right arm.

Instead of being seen negatively, the extended right arm of Tyr being bitten by Fenrir is the Norse symbol of swearing an oath – in other words a symbol of the Truthfulness and Trust that are at the core of Zarathustra’s teaching and that Mithra in particular embodies. This is why Mithra is depicted, together with his mother Anahita, in Sassanian reliefs portraying the investiture of Persian emperors (their oath of office). At the same time, the wolf leaves Tyr with only one hand to use – his Left Hand. Since it is easy to see how Tyr and Arash or Ares the bowman are a single figure, this means that the Aryan archer – our god of war – is forced to use his Left Hand. I believe this lies at the origin of the designation “Left Hand Path”. That would also explain why the north Indian branch of the primordial Indo-European tradition warns that the Left Hand Path is only suitable for warriors or individuals with heroic natures (Vira).

Ahura Mazda is the ashura or Titan of Wisdom, and Mithra is his great champion and world savior in the battle against the gods or daevas. If Zarathustra’s revolutionary teaching is what originally divided the Indo-European community, then I propose that is because it is the original form of the Left Hand Path or the Titanic (Ahurai) Religion. It is also worthy of note that, when the Tantric core of Mahayana is ultimately distilled by Padmasambhava (who I remind you, was from Khorasan), it adopted the designation Vajrayana or “Thunderbolt vehicle” suggesting the adamantine strength of the titan who steals Indra’s scepter and makes it his own. The lightning strike or thunderbolt is, of course, another connection between the Norse tradition of Tyr or Thor and this titanic current of Buddhism that followed the silk route to Asia from Eastern Iran.

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