Carved on the cliffs of Persepolis, struck on Sasanian silver, woven into the doors of the fire-temples of Yazd and Fārs — these are the signs by which we know one another. Each is a doctrine compressed to a shape.
𐬟𐬭𐬀𐬬𐬀𐬴𐬌
The winged figure rising from a ring — the most recognised sign of the faith, copied from the royal reliefs of Darius. It is read as the fravaši, the pre-existent higher soul that chooses to descend and fight for Asha.
The visible Asha. The altar with its rising flame appears on every Sasanian coin. Our highest grade of fire, the Ātaš Bahrām, is gathered from sixteen sources and never extinguished.
The eight-rayed star of Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, lady of the waters, fertility and the cleansing flood. Older than Iran itself, inherited from Ištar of the morning star.
The vast bird that nests in the Tree of All Seeds and scatters them upon the world. Healer and counsellor, she raised the hero Zāl. To be carried in her talons is to be remade.
The legendary banner — begun as the leather apron of Kāva the blacksmith, raised against the tyrant Zahhāk, and jewelled by kings until it blazed like a captured star. The standard of free Iran.
The human-headed, winged bull who guards the Gate of All Nations at Persepolis in Fārs — crowned, bearded, all-seeing. He turns away whatever comes to a sacred threshold with ill intent.
The lion of Mithra bearing the sun of sovereignty upon its back — courage joined to light. An emblem of Iran for a thousand years, its roots in the astral kingship of the old religion.
Evergreen against every winter, the cypress is the tree of life and freedom. Zarathushtra is said to have planted one at Kāšmar; the cypress of Abarkū in Yazd province has stood, they say, four thousand years.
The soul in flight — see above. Worn at the throat by every initiate of the Order, struck small in silver upon the day the five embers kindle.
Not every sign is struck in stone. Some are knotted at the waist each morning, drawn over the mouth at the fire, gathered in the hand at the altar. These are the symbols a Zoroastrian wears — the doctrine carried on the living body.
A simple shirt of white cotton, sleeveless and seamed of nine pieces, worn next to the skin from the day of Sedreh-pūšī for the whole of life. At its throat is sewn a small pocket — the girēbān, the “purse of righteousness” — kept empty so the wearer may fill it, unseen, with good deeds.
A hollow cord woven of seventy-two lambswool threads — one for each chapter of the Yasna — wound three times about the waist over the sudreh and fastened with four knots, two before and two behind. Its three coils are Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds; its knot binds the wearer to Ahura Mazdā and against the Lie. Several times a day it is untied and retied with the Padyāb-Kušti, the prayer of renewal.
The white cloth — also called the penōm — that the mōbed binds over nose and mouth when he tends the fire, lest a single breath or fleck of spittle fall upon the flame and defile it. Purity made into a garment: the priest may give the fire his care, but never his corruption.
The bundle of slender rods — once tamarisk or pomegranate twigs, now fine metal wires — that the priest holds and ranges upon the altar through the Yasna. It is the whole plant kingdom gathered into the offering, the vegetable creation of Ameretāt standing witness to the rite.
The footed vessel of bronze or silver in which the household and temple fire is enthroned, fed by hand with sandalwood and frankincense. Not an idol but a hearth: the visible seat of Ātar, the son of Ahura Mazdā, kept living from one generation to the next.
The faith is bound to places. To name them rightly is itself a sign of belonging.
The desert heart of living Zoroastrianism. Here the Ātaš Bahrām has burned, they hold, since 470 CE, and the wind-towers cool the houses of the faithful.
The cliff-shrine above Yazd where, legend says, the spring opened for the fleeing princess Nikbānū. Water drips eternally — čak, čak — from the living rock.
In Fārs, the ceremonial throne of the Achaemenids, where Darius and Xerxes carved the Faravahar and the winged guardians into stone that still stands.
The Towers of Silence on the hills outside Yazd, where the dead were given to the sun and the birds so that neither earth nor fire nor water be defiled by corruption.
No people carved their faith deeper into the rock than the kings of Pārsa. What follows are real relics — the very stones of Persepolis, Susa, and Babylon, where the symbols above were first set down.
The colossal winged, human-headed bull that watches the Gate of All Nations — crowned and bearded, set there by Xerxes to turn away every ill will.
Through this portal passed the tribute of twenty-three peoples, from Nubia to the Indus — the visible body of the empire’s tolerance.
The twin-headed griffin — the homā bird — that crowned the great columns of the Apadana, the bird of fortune whose shadow makes a king.
The glazed-brick guard of Darius’ palace — the Anūšiya, the “Ten Thousand,” whose number never fell, for each fallen man was at once replaced.
The processional stair where the nations bring their gifts in endless file, and the lion sinks its claws into the bull — spring devouring winter, the turning year.
Cuneiform on baked clay — Cyrus the Great’s decree freeing captive peoples and restoring their gods, called by many the first charter of human rights.