Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis - ImagoMundi

I belong to Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda, the Lord Wisdom), not to
Ahriman (the Spirit of Evil and of Darkness); I belong to the
angels, not to the demons. ... I am the creature of Ohrmazd,
not the creature of Ahriman. I hold my lineage and my race from
Gayomart (primordial Man, Anthropos). My mother is Spandarmat
(Angel of the Earth), my father is Ohrmazd. . . . The accomplishment
of my vocation consists in this: to think of Ohrmazd as
present Existence (hastih), which has always existed (hame-butih),
and will always exist (hame-bavetih). To think of him as immortal
sovereignty, as Unlimitation and Purity. To think of Ahriman as
pure negativity (nestih), exhausting himself in nothingness (avinbutlh),
as the Evil Spirit who formerly did not exist in this Creation,
and who one day will cease to exist in Ohrmazd's Creation
and who will collapse at the final time. 3 To consider my true self
as belonging to Ohrmazd and the Archangels {Amahraspandan).
These few simple but decisive formulas project the responses simultaneously
on a horizon both of pre-existence and of superexistence. They
imply that the moment of birth and the moment of death, recorded so
carefully in our vital statistics, are neither our absolute beginning nor our
absolute end. They imply that time, as we commonly conceive of it, as a
line of indeterminate length, losing itself in the mists of the past and the
future, has literally no sense, but is simply the absurd. If a modern mathematical
philosophy has taught us to conceive of time as a fourth dimension
added to the three dimensions of space, we may say that the myth of
Mazdean cosmogony reveals to us something in the nature of still another
dimension (a fifth dimension?), the one which situates a being's "elevation"
of light or depth of darkness.
The terms "elevation," or "height," and "depth" suggest the dimensions
of visual space, 4 and the exigencies of language compel the myth to place
the power of light and the opposing power of darkness in this sort of spatial
relation to one another. Yet any geometrical representation is doomed to
failure, since we must conceive of a space both infinite and limited. For in
point of fact, the primordial Light and Darkness do not occupy a space
3 Strophes 2, 3. Cf. the somewhat different translation in Junker, p. 133 (avin butih, to
have become invisible).
4 Or better still, since this light has been announced to us as vibrating eternally with the
voice of Ohrmazd (cf. below), we might evoke the idea of a sonorous space: a being in
whom the archetypal dimension that shines through resembles a musical motif which,
in marking its own outline, also utters the promise of its metamorphoses. In it the
limited and the unlimited coincide.
that is situated and defined in advance; they establish a spare that is absolutely
peculiar to themselves, that can only be measured in terms of light
and darkness. The height or depth of light may be designated as eternal
Time, and the space of light, in which awaken the creatures of light, who
fulfill the thoughts of this light, is eternally born from this eternal
Time.
It is then in this depth of light that originates the personal existence of
the being who recognizes himself on earth "as belonging to Ohrmazd and
the Archangels." But the time in which are inscribed the moment of his
coming into the earthly form of existence and the moment of his final departure
from it is not the eternal Time of this depth of light. It is a time
which originated in it, which is in its image, but which is necessitated and
limited by the acts of a cosmic drama of which it marks the prelude and
whose conclusion will also be its own. Deriving from this eternal Time it -
returns to its origin, 5 taking with it the beings who intervene as the cast
of characters in its cycle, because in this drama each one of them "personifies"
a permanent role which was assigned them by another Time. Essentially
a "time of return," it has the form of a cycle. The Mazdean cosmogony
tells us that time has two essential aspects: the Time without shore, without
origin (Zervan-i akanarak), eternal Time; and limited time or "the time
of long domination" (Zervan-i derany xvatai), the Aiwv in the strict sense,
although eternal Time also tends to assume this name. Eternal Time is
the paradigm, the model of limited time that was made in its image. And
that is why our time itself, as a dimension of earthly existence, gives an
intimation of a dimension other than its own chronological dimension—a
dimension of light which determines its form and meaning. Inversely, the
absence or annihilation of this dimension measures the depth of darkness
of one who is in this time. Since it discloses this relation with the origin,
the dimension of light may be called the archetypal dimension; as such, it
characterizes and situates a being of Light, a being of Ohrmazdean essence.
Forming a bond between this being and an eternal Time to which the limited
time of his actual form of existence carries him back, this archetypal di-
5 Cf. H. S. Nyberg, "Questions de cosmogonie et de cosmologie mazdeennes," Journal
asiatique (Paris), CCXIV : 2 (Apr.-June, 1929) ["Questions," I], p. 214, li. 9. Note
the use of the verb gumecit for the return of limited time into unlimited Time; this
is the same word which serves to designate the "mixture" (gumecishn) of Darkness
with Light. Cf. also R. C. Zaehner, "Zurvanica," III, Bulletin cf the School of Oriental
Studies (London), IX (1937-39), Denkart text 228 on p. 880, and the long extract from
Denkart 282 on pp. 883-84.