Glimpses of the Left..

liN pure light, majesty, beauty and such absolute goodness that man cannot
I'Omprehend. But the thought is always involuntarily accompanied by its
I1dversary - thus he imagined also the opposite character: darkness,
ugliness, and evil, and a shade of doubt appeared together with the faith of
11 bright essence of the unborn. A part from love, there were also opposite
l'lllotions: reluctance and envy. And though these were only shadows of
h'l'lings and thought, they were strong enough to conceive another son, the
opposite of the first, embodying all qualities that Zurvan rejected. The
other son was dark and evil, hostile towards the first one, aggressive and
lull of hatred. Zurvan was unaware of carrying two sons in his womb. As
III I-embracing unity, he did not know the nature of division, he did not
know that separation always results in two things, not in one. Therefore he
promised his first-born son the rule over the universe. But it happened that
the son who emerged first from Zurvan's womb was not the desired bright
1'ion, the Wise Lord Ohrmuzd, but the dark, hairy, foul, and full of hatred:
the first to corne was Ahriman.
This is one of the versions of the myth about the beginning of all things.
Another, influenced by the Persian Manichaeism, claims that originally
I here was only Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, the two primordial
Npirits, unaware of each other's existence. These are, however, stories that
lily at the foundation of the official religion of the Old Persia -
Zoroastrianism, the cult of the idealized Good Lord who embodied the
infinite wisdom, goodness, and purity. This purity was worshipped by
t·ady Zoroastrian priests (the Magi) in the form of fire. This Old Persian
religion represents what the Western Hermetic Tradition calls the Right
I land Path - where the worshipper is obedient to the official moral laws
(created by the Wise Lord himself) and social rules that govern the whole
community, and has to follow these regulations in order to deserve the
mercy of God (salvation). This god is usually somewhere outside, high in
abstract heavens, and the goal is to reunite with him after the death of the
physical body.
It is significant that in this and other cultures, mythologies represent not
only the gnosis (revelation) but also social changes occurring at those
times. The Mazdaic and later Zoroastrian dualistic concept of the eternal
struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness is a metaphor of the
rising Persian statehood - the transition from the nomadic (Ahrimanic)
tribal life into the settled agricultural system from which the first