>>507745148Zoroastrianism was a liturgy applied to Vedic paganism, with a basic template of pseudo-deities to accommodate the way Babylonian religion worked.
It has exoteric rites like fire rituals and esoteric rites. These crowded out locally distinct pagan practices. The point was to create cultural unity. It was not in contradiction with paganism.
By the end of the Parthian period, Persia was nominally Zoroastrianism, although as I said it wasn’t a “religion” as such.
But the esoteric rites were replaced with Mithraism, and the exoteric practices, though diverse, were often Hellenic.
They liked Dionysus and Tyche and Hellenized Babylonian shit.
Sassanid Zoroastrianism was a formal religion and a larp and was built on the same model as Roman Christianity. It was created by Jews and specifically was aimed to polarize Persian against Roman society since that strategy was insanely effective in the era of Greece and Parthia and Rome and Parthia.
Advantages against Parthia the Jews could offer gave them direct access to high families and the imperial court.