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Happy Midsummer, and soon Happy Tirgan

“We sacrifice unto Tishtrya, the bright and glorious star, whose rising is watched by men who live on the fruits of the year, by the chiefs of deep understanding; by the wild beasts in the mountains, by the tame beasts that run in the plains; they watch him, as he comes up to the country for a bad year, or for a good year, (thinking in themselves): ‘How shall the Aryan countries be fertile?’
‘For his brightness and glory, I will offer him a sacrifice worth being heard….’ ”
(Zoroastrian Literature – Avesta: Khorda Avesta. 8. TISHTAR YASHT. XIII : 36)¹

“TIRGÂN (The Rain Festival)

The festival of Tiragân is observed on July 1st, and it is primarily a rain festival and it is one of the three most widely celebrated feasts (along with Mehregan and Norooz) amongst Iranian peoples. Tir in modern Persian,; Tishtar in Middle Persian or Pahlavi; and Avestan Tishtrya, is the Yazad presiding over the Star Sirius, brightest star in the sky, and of rain, and thus Tir Yazad especially invoked to enhance harvest and counter drought (Av. Apousha).

Tiragan is also associated with the legend of the arrow (‘tir’), which is briefly alluded to in the Tishtar Yasht (Yt8.6):

‘We honor the bright, khwarrah-endowed star Tishtrya who flies as swiftly to the Vouru-kasha sea as the supernatural arrow which the archer Erexsha, the best archer of the Iranians, shot from Mount Airyo-xshutha to Mount Xwanwant.
(7) For Ahura Mazda gave him assistance; so did the waters …’ ” ²

References:
1 . http://www.avesta.org/ka/yt8sbe.htm

2 . http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Celebrations/tirgan.htm

Photos’ credit:
1 . Public Domain
2 . https://welcometoiran.com/arash-the-archer/

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300!

A movie called ‘300’ !!! So here some knowledge for getting rid of being brainwashed. Here you are:


“Nietzsche ties Greek triumph in the Persian Wars to Greek philosophical and ethical decline. … Its intellectual arrogance, which stifles the likes of Pindar, Empedocles, and Heraclitus, eventually leads to the philosophical decline of Greece. Nietzsche creates an interesting causal relationship between the realms of the military and political (i.e. the Persian wars) and the creative and philosophical. The political prevents the creative from reaching its heights, as the Greek revolt against Persian rule leads to the Greeks’ downfall.”

Reference:
Roberts, Lee. Germany and the Imagined East. Newcastle upon Tyne, GBR: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 April 2015.
Copyright © 2005. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. All rights reserved.

The Magi

“To put a different question: what sort of people would we expect, in Iranian lands, to possess the knowledge in which we are interested? The answer that immediately proposes itself is ‘the Magi,’ that formidable caste which held a controlling influence in all matters of religion. The Iranian cosmological doctrines recorded by Aristotle, Eudemus, and Theopompus, are attributed by those authors specifically to the magi. They were the people one talked to about such things….But what invaded Greek speculation in the mid-sixth century was no mere convolvulus that withered away when its season was past, leaving the sturdy stems of Hellenic rationalism to grow unimpeded as they had always meant to. It was an ambrosia plant that produced a permanent enlargement where it touched. In some ways one might say that it was the very extravagance of oriental fancy that freed the Greeks from the limitations of what they could see with their own eyes: led them to think of tenthousand-year cycles instead of human generations, of an infinity beyond the visible sky and below the foundations of the earth, of a life not bounded by womb and tomb but renewed in different bodies aeon after aeon. It was now that they learned to think that good men and bad have different destinations after death; that the fortunate soul ascends to the luminaries of heaven; that God is intelligence; that the cosmos is one living creature; that the material world can be analysed in terms of a few basic constituents such as fire, water, earth, metal; that there is a world of Being beyond perception, beyond time. These were conceptions of enduring importance for ancient philosophy. This was the gift of the Magi.”


Ref: M.L.West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2001), 240-41.
Seen at: Roberts, Lee. Germany and the Imagined East. Newcastle upon Tyne, GBR: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 April 2015.
Copyright © 2005. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. All rights reserved.

Mythology, Earth, and Mountains

“If it is true that Anaximander described the earth’s surface as concave, he would seem to be modernizing a mythical scheme of geography according to which the earth was surrounded by a ring of mountains. This is not a Greek scheme: it is oriental…In Iranian cosmology, besides the idea of a polar mountain, we find the idea that the earth is surrounded. Mt. Elburs, the Caucasian mountain is extended sideways into a complete ring, and upwards to connect with the sky.…From another point of view Anaximander’s astronomy presents a distinctly Iranian appearance. He placed the stars nearest to the earth, then the moon, then the sun. He is almost the only Greek known to us who arranged the heavenly bodies in that order; but it is the standard Persian connection. In the Avesta, stars, moon, sun, and the Beginningless Lights are regularly named as a series.” Ibid., 87-89.


Ref:
Roberts, Lee. Germany and the Imagined East. Newcastle upon Tyne, GBR: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 26 April 2015.
Copyright © 2005. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. All rights reserved.

Khayyam

Omar Khayyam (11-12th Iranian mathematician, philosopher, poet) and Scheerbart (19-19th century German Author):

“The Glass Pavilion reflected the Scheerbartian concept of an architecture of glass and concrete. It was inscribed on the drum with Scheerbart’s words: “Light seeks to penetrate the whole cosmos and is alive in crystal.” Scheerbart’s novels, apart from the glass and crystal metaphors, drew the attention of the group to the “Orient” and oriental mysticism. Scheerbart had read the works of Li T’aipo, Abu Nuwas, and Omar Khayyam, which he passed on in his novels…”

Ref:
Roberts, Lee. Germany and the Imagined East. Newcastle upon Tyne, GBR: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005.

The Sun of Philosophy

“In ancient times, however, Persia was known to the Occident also as the land where the sun of philosophy shone so brightly that Plotinus entered the Roman army with the hope of going to Persia to encounter its philosophers. Moreover, when what remained of the Platonic Academy was closed by the Byzantines, the philosophers residing there took refuge in Persia. As far as Zoroaster, the prophet of ancient Persia, is concerned, he was known in the ancient world not only as a prophet but also as a philosopher. Furthermore, the three wise men present at the birth of Christ who represent Oriental wisdom hailed from ‘the East’, which at that time for Palestine would mean most likely no other place than Persia. As for Islamic philosophy, whose earlier schools influenced the West so greatly, most of its figures were either Persian or belonged to the Persianate zone of Islamic civilization.”

Reference:
Nasr, S.H., and Aminrazavi, Mehdi. Anthology of Philosophyin Persia, Volume 1 : From Zoroaster to Umar Khayyam. London, GBR: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Copyright © 2007. I.B. Tauris. All rights reserved.

Art of Magic

“Pliny the Elder in his chapters on the history and dissemination of magic informs us that Hermippus wrote in painstaking fashion about the whole art of magic and did an explanatory commentary on two million lines of Zoroaster, the individual volumes of which he equipped with indices.”

References:
Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World. By Matthew Dickie. Page 114. Seen at Google Books. Internet access 07 April 2019.

Women’s Managerial Position in Antiquity

For those, who are interested in having a glance at the topics of “Human Resource Management” and “Women’s Managerial Position” in antiquity: 
You may find the following book useful and informative:
“Es kündet Dareios der König” (in German) Or “So Says King Darius” (in English); written by: Heidemarie Koch.