>>40761319In its inclusion of all nature, the old Mazdean religion even in its pre-Zoroastrian roots, is notable, for the Magi taught that all life, not merely the human, had a higher destiny. This was a basic Mazdean tenet, extending not only to animals but plants as well, and even crystals and minerals.
Indeed, at the end of "the time of the long domination by evil", all the life of the earth is due to be transfigured. Zamyat, the feminine higher being or Yazat in charge of our planet, is actually a form of the Divine Mother, Spenta Armaiti, who also appears as Ardvî-Surâ-Anâhitâ (High-Sovereign-Immaculate One) and Arshtat: She Who nurtures and dispenses the living fire of immortality, the glorious xvarnah (pronounced "khvarnah"); and She provides all the transfigured forms of earth-life with higher bodies of luminous, nonmolecular substance-energy as recounted in the ancient stanzas of the nineteenth and the eleventh Yasht. She is also Savagaetha, "She-Who-bears-the-Heaven-of-Light (Sanskrit sattva)."
And in Yasna XXX, verse 9, one finds the resplendent vow and prayer:
>O grant that we be among those chosen to bring about the Transformation of the Earth, for there do our thoughts tend.The later-recorded Pahlavi sacred scripture, the Dên-kart, which preserves many ancient and even pre-Zoroastrian teachings, tells us (in Book 9, Chapter 28) that in its final metamorphosis our transfigured earth will be transported to a higher starry sphere by the power of the ever-living fire, the xvarnah: "that glory which can never be seized by force" as the ancient G3th3s tell.
So we see that the evolutionary stakes are indeed high and that the human species is not necessarily the sole prize winner, let alone the evolutionary favourite. We as humans need to cultivate a more welcome lack of arrogance in our spirituality as well as a more realistic appraisal of our place in the great scheme of things. All this the Lion(ess) Path can teach us if we will.
