When we think of the cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, of a god of light facing a spirit of darkness, of the judgement of souls after death and of a paradise for the righteous, we tend to think of Christianity or Islam. Well, dear readers: several centuries before either of those two creeds existed, a religion born in ancient Persia was already preaching all of that. It was Zoroastrianism, the faith of Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes, among others, the great Persian kings who took on Greece and the Egypt of the pharaohs. And its influence on everything that came afterwards is as enormous as it is unknown. Come with me to discover one of the most fascinating and ancient religions of humankind, (one of the most venerable in existence, comparable in age to the very roots of Judaism).
A prophet wrapped in mist
Let us start with the founder: Zoroaster. Also called Zarathustra (yes, the very same figure from Nietzsche's book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", and from the symphonic poem that plays in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey; that is the character, even if Nietzsche used him to spread his own ideas). Zoroaster was a prophet and religious reformer of ancient Persia.
When exactly did he live? Well, this is where the problems begin, and the honest popular historian had better warn you: nobody knows for certain. Scholars' estimates swing wildly, from more than a thousand years before Christ to dates closer to the birth of Jesus. His figure is wrapped in the impenetrable mists of time and rooted in legend. What does seem clear is that he was a real person who reformed the ancient beliefs of the Iranian peoples, preaching a new and revolutionary vision of the divine.
One good god against an evil spirit
Zoroaster's great innovation was to portray the universe as a battlefield between two opposing cosmic forces. On one side, Ahura Mazda (the "Wise Lord"), the supreme god, the creator, the source of all light, truth and goodness. On the other, Angra Mainyu (the "Evil Lord", also called Ahriman), the destroying spirit, the source of all lies, darkness and evil.
The whole of human existence, according to this faith, rests on the constant struggle between those two principles: Truth against the Lie, Light against Darkness, good against evil. And here is the important part: human beings, all of them, from the king to the lowliest peasant, are not mere spectators of these events. Each person, through their deeds and words in this life, chooses a side. Zoroastrianism can be summed up in one of the loveliest and simplest moral maxims in the history of religions: the good thoughts, good words and good deeds we perform over the course of our lives lead us straight to salvation and paradise, and those who live by that motto fight on the side of the light. Those who do not, obviously, will get nothing but trouble, punishment and the eternal flames…
This was revolutionary. As against the pantheons of capricious, jealous, vengeful and quarrelsome gods of other ancient cultures, (the Greeks, for instance and to look no further, had a Mount Olympus full of mad divinities who behaved like a gang of head-cases in urgent need of a psychiatrist… the sooner the better), Zoroaster proposed something far more orderly and moral: one good god, one evil principle, and everyone's duty to choose the good.
Fire as the symbol of light, strength and purity
Zoroastrians have sometimes been called "fire-worshippers", and this point is worth clearing up, because it is a classic misunderstanding. They do not worship fire itself. For them, fire is a symbol, the visible symbol of the light and purity of Ahura Mazda. In their temples they kept (and still keep, for there are still clandestine practitioners of Zoroastrianism in Iran) a sacred fire forever burning, as a representation of the divine presence and of the truth that never goes out.
From this come the famous Persian "magi", the priests of this religion, charged with the rites and with the care of the sacred fire. And from that word, "magus", come our word "magic" and our "Magi" (the very same who, on a 25th of December in the Bible, come to Bethlehem to honour the newborn child Jesus, precisely from the East, from the land of Persia, following the trail of a comet-star. The close connection between Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism is no accident at all).
The religion of the kings who fought Greece
And this is where Zoroastrianism crosses paths with the great history Herodotus tells us. Because this was the religion of the Persian Empire. The faith of Cyrus II the Great, of Darius and of Xerxes, the kings who led the Greco-Persian Wars, the monumental military clash between Persia and Greece that Herodotus devoted his whole life to narrating so that we might know what really happened.
When the Persians invaded Greece, they did not bring only a colossal army and the first hens and chickens, edible birds never before seen in our part of Europe: they also brought a unique vision of the world, an organised and morally sophisticated religion, set against the more anarchic polytheism of the Greek gods. Herodotus, with his insatiable curiosity, observed and described the Persians' religious customs: how they raised neither statues nor temples to their gods as the Greeks did, but worshipped them on the tops of mountains and paid homage to the sun, the moon, fire, water and the winds. To a Greek accustomed to his human-shaped gods and his XL-sized temples crammed with columns and marble statues, all that was exotic, strange and fascinating.
An immense religious and cultural legacy (almost forgotten today)
The most astonishing thing about Zoroastrianism is the mark it left behind. Many scholars hold that several of its ideas profoundly influenced the great religions that came afterwards. The concept of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, the figure of a malign spirit (something close to what would later be the demon Ha-Satan of the Jews, the Satan of the Christians and the Shaitan of the Muslims. Almost identical names, as you can see), the judgement of souls after death, the resurrection of the dead, a paradise for the righteous and an eternal punishment for the wicked, and even the Christian biblical concept of the "Parousia", that is, the future second coming to Earth of a new saviour… all these elements, which sound so very familiar to us, were already present in the Persian faith many centuries earlier.
It is not only that all the later monotheistic religions copied one another wholesale, (which they did, and shamelessly), but that all these sacred matters are extremely complex and still, to this day, stir up great passion and dangerous fanaticism.
Scholars of the history of religions still argue a great deal about who influenced whom and to what extent. Although this humble author, with the historical calendar of events and the latest archaeological discoveries to hand, is in no doubt at all. The coincidence is so striking that it is impossible to ignore. Zoroastrianism was, in many ways, a bridge stretched between the old religions centred on the manifestations of nature and the great monotheistic religions, centred more on the moral and spiritual sphere of the human being, that would go on to dominate the world.
Today Zoroastrianism survives, reduced to a few small communities, but it lives on, almost three thousand years later. The Parsis of India, for example, (descendants of Persians who moved there fleeing the later religious persecutions) are the best known of the Zoroastrian religious communities, but in Iran and Iraq, it seems, there are still some who, in the strictest secrecy and for fear of religious persecution, practise it to this day.
And one last, very telling note: it turns out that today many young Kurds in Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey have turned away from Islam and embraced Zoroastrianism in large numbers, driven by the fierce and bloody war that pits them against the most radical Islamist groups, such as ISIS — the very ones who persecute them without mercy, killing their men and abusing their women — and by the conviction that this ancient Persian faith was their original religion, before the conquest and submission to Islam.
One of the oldest religions of humankind, the one that perhaps invented the very idea of good against evil, still keeps its sacred fire burning.
If the Persian world of kings Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes has stirred your curiosity, you will find their whole story in my book "The Book of the Muse Clio", the first in a series of nine, where the great Persian Empire and its clash with Greece come back to life and speak to you as they never have before…
👉 Buy The Book of the Muse Clio on Amazon 👈
Per Aspera, Ad Astra.
✠ David S. Matrecano
Ibiza, June 2026
Sources and references
- Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Histories, Book I (description of Persian religious customs: chs. 131-132, worship on the heights, of the sun, the moon, fire, water and the winds; the magi).
- Zoroastrian tradition: Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu, the maxim "good thoughts, good words, good deeds", the sacred fire.
- Studies on the influence of Zoroastrianism on later religions (dualism, eschatology, the judgement of souls) — a matter of academic debate.
There is NO fiction in this article
The description of Persian religious customs during the Zoroastrian period (such as worship practised on the mountain tops, the cult of fire and the sun, the absence of statues and temples, the magi of Media) comes directly from the histories of Herodotus, Book I. The doctrinal concepts of Zoroastrianism (Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu, the good/evil dualism, fire as the symbol of light and strength, the moral maxim) are the documented historical doctrine of this ancient religion. The article explicitly notes that the influence of Zoroastrianism on later religions is still a matter of academic debate, without asserting it as settled fact. The uncertainty over the real dates of the prophet Zoroaster's birth and death is expressly flagged and warned of. The cultural references (Nietzsche, Kubrick, the Magi) are real, documented context. The lexical architecture and the aesthetic structure of this article, as well as the narrator's comments and observations, are an integral part of the personal literary voice and creativity of the author David S. Matrecano.