UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

"...may [it] be favorable to me, with Satevis the star Sataves who is near the water, with the stars which are seeds of water, seeds of the earth, seeds of trees; with the star Venant Vanant and with the stars that compose the Haftorang the Seven Stars, or Ursa Major brilliant with light (1)."

I would have to transcribe the entire Zend-Avesta the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism here if I wished to gather the multitude of prayers addressed therein to Nature and its parts. It often speaks of the celestial people, or what the Jewish books call the celestial militia referring to the "host of heaven" or the stars and planetary spirits. We will limit ourselves to the short extract just given, and we refer the curious reader to the original books themselves to be certain of the important role attributed to Nature in the ancient religion of the Persians. Magisme Magism, the religion of the Magi, or the worship of fire, has not changed the nature of primitive worship, but only its symbolic form. Indeed, the religion of the Persians can be considered under three different forms: some worshiped the stars on the peaks of mountains, cast their gaze over the vault of the heavens, and had no other temple, no other image of Nature than Nature itself; this is the most ancient form, the most universal, that of nomadic nations; finally, it is the primitive worship of the Persians as depicted for us by Herodotus (2). Others adopted representative worship, with all the apparatus that genius, arts, sciences, and above all astrology gave in Egypt and Asia to the religion of the sun. The Mithraic monuments are a proof of this, and especially the famous monument of the sun, or its genius, who subdues the equinoctial bull, a monument that we will have occasion to explain elsewhere. Finally, others, loving to return to the primitive simplicity of worship, had no other image of the sacred fire which composes the lumi-

nous substance of the stars, or a kind of emanation of solar fire, or the fire lit by the rays of the sun, which they religiously preserved in their pyrées fire temples. To this fire they sought to give an image of the perpetuity of the eternal Æther the pure upper air or divine fire by the care they took to maintain it without ever letting it be extinguished. This latter form of worship is known by the name of Magism, and still relates to Nature, whether one sees in it a direct worship of the element of fire, or whether one sees, as Kircher (3) does, a worship relative to the light and fire that compose the substance of heaven, the sun, and the stars, which Herodotus told us were the only divinities of the Persians. This difference in the form of worship is regarded as an invention of Zoroaster according to some (4), and of Perseus according to others (5).

"Perseus, it is said, brought to Persia the initiations and magic, which by its secrets makes fire descend from heaven; with the help of this art, he attracted celestial fire to the earth, and had it preserved in a temple, under the name of immortal sacred fire; he chose virtuous men as ministers of the new worship, and established the Magi as depositories and guardians of this fire, which they were charged to maintain."

Isaac Tzetzes (6) also speaks of the manner in which Perseus, arriving at Iopolis where the moon had her temple, established the worship of fire there and gave the Magi the title of priests of fire; this is what led to the saying that the Magi, although worshipers of all the elements in general, nevertheless gave a kind of preeminence to fire.

Sextus Empiricus puts them in opposition to the Egyptians: the Persians (7), he says, deify fire, and the Egyptians deify water; others another element. It is

UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

possible that the reason of utility, which caused the water of the Nile to be given a kind of preference in Egyptian worship, also caused a preference to be given to fire among the nations who descended from Northern Asia. Thus, Clement of Alexandria attributes the worship of fire not only to the Persians, but also to almost all Asians (1).

Julius Firmicus says not only that they honor fire, but that they give it preference over other elements (2); and he establishes this reason of preference, which the ancients gave to an element, based on the greater or lesser utility they derived from it (3). Thus, he says, the Egyptians, who drew such great advantages from the water of their river, rendered the most religious worship to water; however, water was not for that reason without worship among the Persians. Agathias assures us (4) that these peoples had the greatest veneration for water, so much so that they did not dare use it to wash their faces, nor touch it for other uses than for drinking, or watering plants. But he adds that it was principally to fire that they rendered the most religious worship, as being the most sacred element; that the Magi kept it preciously in small chapels where this eternal fire burned, and where mystical ceremonies were practiced in its honor; that they even drew omens from this element for divination. They had yet other Gods, but who were, says Agathias (5), the same as those of the Greeks under different names, such as Jupiter, whom they called Belus: Hercules was called Sandes, Venus was called Anaïtis, and so on. The office of the Magi was

to ensure that one did not defile the purity of these two elements (6). One finds traces of this respect for water in Hesiod: it had originated in Egypt and the East (7).

"Do not perform any filth," says this poet, "in the beds of rivers that flow into the sea, nor in the fountains; never cross the pure waters of a river on foot, without having greeted its genius."

Thus we see that Tiridates, being on the bank of the Euphrates with Vitellius, a Roman general, would not cross this river until he had offered a horse to it in sacrifice (8). Vitellius followed his example. As for fire, their veneration for it was so great that it was a crime worthy of death to blow upon it, or to defile it by contact with a corpse (9). A Persian regarded death as a lesser evil for himself than to profane the element of fire (10); everything that bore the image of this element (11) was sacred to them; they gave it the title of lord and master, and spoke to it as to an intelligent being when, while feeding it, they said: "Lord fire, nourish yourself," a formula of address to fire that Maximus of Tyre has preserved for us (12). To whatever God a Persian sacrificed, he began before all things, Strabo tells us (13), by addressing his prayers to the eternal sacred fire, which the Magi maintained on an altar, near which they pronounced mystical words and sang sacred chants. Chrysostom says formally that they saw in fire a God (14), and that in his time they still rendered worship to it under this title (15). Suidas says as much, as do the historians Socrates, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Eustathius, and others.

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