Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The central ritual of Zoroastrianism is the Yasna, which is a recitation of the eponymous book of the Avesta and sacrificial ritual ceremony involving Haoma. [86] Extensions to the Yasna ritual are possible through use of the Visperad and Vendidad, but such an extended ritual is rare in modern Zoroastrianism.
The Navjote (Persian: سدرهپوشی, sedreh-pushi) ceremony is the ritual through which an individual is inducted into the Zoroastrian religion and begins to wear the sedreh and kushti. The term navjote is used primarily by the Zoroastrians of India (the Parsis), while sedreh pushi is used primarily by the Zoroastrians of Iran.
The 72 threads of lamb's wool in the Kushti, the sacred thread worn by Zoroastrians, represent these sections. The central portion of the Yasna is the Gathas, the oldest and most sacred portion of the Avesta, believed to have been composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself.
This innermost core includes the 17 chapters of the Gathas, the oldest and most sacred texts of the Zoroastrian canon. Yasna 1–27.12 Yasna 27.13–27.15: three of the four of the most sacred Zoroastrian prayers Yasna 28–34: Gatha 1 Yasna 35–41: the "seven-chapter Yasna" Yasna 43–51,53: Gathas 2–5 (chapters 43–46, 47–50, 51 and 53)
[1] [2] [3] In Zoroastrian doctrine, atar and aban (fire and water) are agents of ritual purity. Clean, white "ash for the purification ceremonies [is] regarded as the basis of ritual life", which "are essentially the rites proper to the tending of a domestic fire, for the temple [fire] is that of the hearth fire raised to a new solemnity". [4]
Haoma was the first priest, installed by Ahura Mazda with the sacred girdle aiwiyanghan (Yasna 9.26) and serves the Amesha Spentas in this capacity (Yasht 10.89). "Golden-green eyed" Haoma was the first to offer up haoma , with a "star-adorned, spirit-fashioned mortar," and is the guardian of "mountain plants upon the highest mountain peak."
The Avestan term for the sacred thread is aiwyaongana.Kustig is the later Middle Persian term. [3]The use of the kushti may have existed among the prophet Zarathushtra's earliest followers due to their prior familiarity with practices of the proto-Indo-Iranian-speaking peoples, and its Vedic analogue, the yajñopavita.
Atar is already evident in the Gathas, the oldest texts of the compendium of the Avesta and believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself. At this juncture, as in the Yasna Haptanghaiti (the seven-chapter Yasna that structurally interrupts the Gathas and is linguistically as old as the Gathas themselves), atar is still—with only one exception—an abstract concept simply an instrument ...