Daena:
Spenta Armaiti, Spendarmat - the feminine
Archangel of Earth, is the Mother of Daena.
Corbin, Spiritual Body.. pp.15 paraphrased
“Daena is, in fact, the feminine Angel who in herself
typifies the transcendent or celestial “I”; she appears as the soul at the dawn following the third night after its departure from this world: She is its Glory and its Destiny, Its Aeon.”
Henri Corbin continues:
"For man to
undertake such a work,is primarely for his own being what
the Pahlavi texts call Spendarmatikih (an abstract
noun derived from Spendarmat, the Pahlavi form of the
name Spenta Armaiti), and which we can translate as
Sophianity, the Sophianic nature of Spenta Armaiti considered as Sophia (Plutarch translated the Pahlavi concept
thus)..By assuming this nature, the human being is then, in
the true sense, the son of the Angel of the Earth, and so able to have a mental vision of her. The soul then awakens also to consciousness of its celestial kinship."
----------------------
I read an interview with Jose Saramago, the
Portuguese Nobel´s Literary Award winner of 98- where he
basically denied the existence of acollectively
verifyable and humanly normative"reality"; I do not
remember precisely what his argument where, but he would
need some kind of distance from so-called
"objectivity" even to be narrator/story-teller with good
conscience. He´s a contemporary disciple of Plato and quoted
the Republic quite a lot.A true poet needs to
believe that the soul needs liberation, he must truelly
be interested in how the cage feels and looks like
for the nightingale.. if he says "Oh, what a nice
song that bird produces".. he belongs among the
spectators, not in blindfolded at the firing range, which is
the place of every true adventurer in life... In
this nightmare of counterfeits, produced of
convenience and the attempt to calm the mind, still the
senses and numb the feelings..it is important to
remember why we ask questions about the veracity of any
thing or being or concept: it is because we need to
know the direct relevance of these things presented to
us. If we awake in the middle of that night which is
the world in its sleep, we must move beyond the
safehouse of the collective dream - and commune with
another reality. And why is that? We awoke because we
were touched..we were embraced..we were aroused by its
perfumes, moved by the beauty of its song.But then,
alas, we become lost to the world.. no more can we
become devalued,degraded and prostitute to its false
glories...
Stephan Hoeller's lectures have followed me around the past ten years or so now... I studiously borrowed the dear cassettes from my friend Jan Valentin Saether, since I had such a long bus rides home everytime I had business in the big city. I live about an hour's drive north of Oslo, so I usually got to listen to a lecture each visit on my Walkman. Times are changing and I remember the topic was dicussed that perhaps it would be more rational to create archives of the specific lecture series, in for example CD-RW or CD-Rom format, so that it would be all in one place and also accessible through more than one medium. Cherished as the old cassette players where, it was fading out.
I now notice that Bruce Campbell at BC recordings have decided to make a compromise that at least some people will find useful. BC Recordings is digitizing and making mp3 versions of Stephan Hoeller's lectures. This may help preserve both the existing collection as well as the new additions for the future.
In addition to the free Real Audio format lectures that Lance Owens in Utah has formatted and published on the Gnosis Archive, - you can now find a growing assortment of more recent lectures held by Stephan Hoeller at the Gnostic Society, Philosophical Research Society &c, which you may purchase through their new online store.
I for one has paid attention to the Friday lecture schedule for years thinking it is a damn shame I live so far away, like for instance, last month he held a series on the Apocryphon of John, a Gnostic scripture I think is quite unique among the remains after the Alexandrian school of Christian Gnosticism because it contains a complete account of the Gnostic myth as well as an extensive soteriology. I'll be checking out BC Recordings store occasionally to see if some of the semi-old lectures (the Gnostic Library in Oslo has a few hundred cassettes which spans the late 80's and onwards to the late 90's or somesuch, along with lectures by Roger Weir, modern renaissance man and hermetic philosopher.. who I feel complement Stephan Hoeller's work quite brilliantly.) from 2000 and onwards is available for purchase.
I'd like to see John Goeltz, Lance Owens, Jan Valentin Saether and others who have guest lectured at the Gnostic Society represented as well, but thats another issue.
This might not mean much to people who are not familiar with the work of Stephan Hoeller, who is the Director of Studies at the Gnostic Society as well as a respected Bishop in the English Gnostic lineage.
I recommend checking out the lecture section of the Gnosis Archive which is the official homepage for the Gnostic Society.
Henry Corbin:
"The victory of the soul incarnated in terrestrial existence is measured by the degree of this restoration /transfiguration of the world and the expulsion of the powers of darkness from the existencial
sphere human,natural and angelic- restoring the
"paradisical purity",that is, by the degree of the soul´s
Xvarnah (Light-of-glory, "substance of superessential
luminousity"), of its growth toward its celestial existence to
come, of it´s resurrection body, the substance of which, reciprocally, is made of that celestial Earth
which is its action and its work."
pp.37 Spiritual
Body and Celestial Earth.
Henri Corbin:
"The filial relationship with
the Archangel Spenta Armaiti extends from the pre-existencial celestial "I" to that celestial "I" by and for whom She will engender the man. It is the consummation of a form of existence preluded in Heaven at the dramatic moment when the Fravartis accept to descend to the material Earth and there wage battle on the side
of the Powers of Light against all the human-faced demons. For the human soul, it is the moment of choosing to come to Earth and answer there for the Powers of Light, as the latter will answer for it post mortem.."
(TdB:reminding me of the persian legend of the Advocate.);
"Therefore the choice of the soul will also be its judge.Participating at each moment of the Aeon in the final work of the Saoshyants, each soul of light must fight for the Transfiguration of the Earth, for the expulsion of the demonic Powers from the Ohrmazdian creation.."
pp.37 of Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.
Henri Corbin:speaking of "Geosophy"(he begins by a description of the "transfigured earth"
experienced by the `Urafa (Gnostics in terms of devotees of
the Spenta Armaiti/Sophia) as a bounty won by their "choosing" in emulation of the Fravarti ("choosers"))
"The very term geosophy suggested is merely a
translation of the name Spenta Armaiti, the Sophia and the Feminine Angel of the Earth. What this term makes apparent from the start is the striking difference between a
vague feeling (and the commonplace notion) of being a "son of the earth" on the one hand and on the other the feeling and knowledge characteristically expressed in the Mazdean profession of faith, and impressed on the adept in that context, of being a human
individual who is the son of Spenta Armaiti, the feminine Archangel of the Earth.The second term in the filial relationship is now no longer a man imprisoned between the boundaries of terrestrial birth and death, but a human being in his totality, including the past of his pre-existence and the future of his superexistence."
On the Internet there is no telling what you will find. Ricardo Franco has recently been very active posting links to the Manichaean discussion forum at Yahoogroups, a lot of what he offers I have seen or read before, but Die Buddhistische Spätantike in Mittelasien--Die manichaeischen Miniaturen - by A. Von Le Coq is a new one for me. I have studied, rather than read, Hans Joachim Klimkeit's monography on Manichaean calligraphy and iconography and got an impression of the "field" of Manichaean iconography - but the name Le Coq was new to me. Apparently it was published in Berlin in 1923.
The book in question is in German, but with tools like Babelfish it is possible to get an arbitrary impression of the contents, if you like me do not understand the language. It is presented in high resolution scans of the pages, but it features a useful OCR representation of the contents.
The book was published by the Digital Silk Road Project in Japan which has made a lot of material from the two centuries of archeological digs in the wide cultural and geographical area of the ancient Silk Road.The illustrations, of which there are few, but which are rare indeed, is nevertheless worth a tour of the book.
From the First Book of Ieu, Chapter 3
The living Jesus said : "Blessed is the man who has known these things. He has brought heaven down, he has lifted the earth and has sent it to heaven, and he has become the Midst for it is nothing."
The apostles answered, saying : "Jesus , thou living one, Lord , interprete for us how we may bring heaven down, for we have followed thee in order that thou shouldst teach us the true light."
The living Jesus answered and said : "The Word which existed in heaven before the earth came into existence - this which is called the world - but you, when you know my Word, you will bring heaven down, and it will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible Word of the Father; but when you know these things you will bring heaven down. As to sending the earth up to heaven, I will show you what it is , that you may know it : to send the earth to heaven is that he who hears the word of gnosis has ceased to have the understanding mind of man of earth, but has become a man of heaven. His understanding mind has ceased to be earthly, but it has become heavenly. Because of this you will be saved from the archon of this aeon, and he will become the Midst, because it is nothing."
The living Jesus said again : "When you become heavenly you will become the Midst because it is nothing, for the .. . .. rulers and the wicked powers (exousiai) will you and they will envy you because you have known me, because I am not from the world, and I do not resemble the rulers and the powers (exousiai) and all the wicked ones. They do not come from me. And furthermore he who (is born) in the flesh of unrighteousness has no part in the Kingdom of my Father, and also he who know me according to the flesh has no hope Kingdom of God the Father."
You are Axis Mundi. You are the centre of a myriad worlds. But who are you? When you have received knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven no geography tracing its contours over the entire universe can attract an undue attention, an admiration, an awe, a worshipful pose from you. No crafted image giving off the most beautiful lustre, swaddled in the delicate of forms does your thought any justice. No jumble of words, however well phrased, will satisfy your hearing or your reading. No answer will address itself to the question you have finally deared to ask, which is the entirety of the Fullness from the entirety of Fullness, no longer a similitude, but the most intimate and the most far-reaching of all questions, which lays waste all answers given by all preceeding generations. Your fathers are dust, your mothers are ashes, their forefathers a sentimental notion, no particle left. They are mist. If you look, you are apostate of the generations which came - where are your blood running off for now?
What a problem. The credo is consistent enough, "May I be one who assist in the transfiguration of the earth." But what manner of work is this transfiguration? A Kosmos is and will always remain a confined term, it is confinement and limitation in itself - if the law of languages allows me or anyone else to say "All", to say "Everything", to say "God" and with those words, according to the limitation which is the only remaining witness, resistance, obstacle -cloud before the Pleroma, what prohibits our words to signify the nothing according to the flesh, which never was, and never is, and never will be more than a lifeless corpse. The Kosmos is a lie. It is not that which raises up. It is not that which gives substance to anything else. It is not some magnification of the gods of our forefathers into an absolute panentheistic democratic anemic divinity beyond theology, myth or philosophical abstraction. The Kosmos is the system, the everything of the insuffiencient grasp, the imperfect knowing, the miscomprehension, the failing glance,the mishearing.. hamareithia, Sin - Missing the target; intending without contact with that which intelligently intends, intelligently and authentically wills. The Gnostic understands he goes nowhere to seek refuge, sanctuary. He understands that while there are many places, there is no space hospitable, wide, beautiful enough for him to dwell, there is no day like today, there is no day like yesterday, there is no day like tomorrow. There are no travelling here, the paths have left horizontality, there are no maps. There are no landscapes for maps to portray. This is where it begins. You bring that which were before existence into existence, you shape it before and above the creation, the universe, the world, the universe, Cosmos.. Chaos, call it what you will. In this twilight, the unborn God is born.
Then the day which has no today, no yesterday and no tommorrow will die forever, not to have been - time folds upon itself to become an attempt to interrupt eternity, to silence consciousness, stop breath, arrest motion, still the pulse, which now, before the beginning of all beginnings, has failed and cease to be.
Gnosis is Holy Silence and a rest for every inquiry.
I came across Dame Elisabeth S. Drower's The Secret Adam: A Study of Nasoraean Gnosis earlier this week, much to my delight. It is published in the Mandaean scriptures section of a website administered by the "open-source" Thelemite Church named Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis by its founders. I am going to give the link to the section here - both due to the fact that the online document is in Acrobat PDF format, and out of respect for the pioneering spirit and effort made by those responsible.
This dissertation does a rather arcane subject some justice.
It has been alleged that the Mandaeans are the only surviving religion or tradition associated with Gnosticism in antiquity, moreover there has always been a mystique attached to the Mandaeans, about whom it has also been alleged they in the middle ages, when encountered by Christian travellers, would profess to be "Christians of St.John" - it would only take a few scarce centuries before this profession of affiliation was brought into question, some saw the colourful reports of this strangely serene people, untouched by western and eastern Christian orthodoxies and the painfull controversies which lead to the great schism over the Filioque clause in the 11th century - as direct ancestors of a type of Christianity in direct rivalry with the mainstream of tradition from the onset, as followers of St.John the Baptist, not St.John the Apostle. Eventually some missionaries, Jesuits would you not guess it, with their orientalist appetites and sensibilities, hoarded sacred scriptures and manuscripts, not only from the Mandaeans, but also from Zoroastrians, Nusairies (so-called "Ansiree", also associated with a St.John) and Yezidis (Ms. Drower also published a study on the Kurdish Yezidis titled Peacock Angel, published at www.avesta.org ) and other living traditions of the Middle and Near East. Such hoardings and loot did indeed serve as kindling for a new activation of consciousness about context, meaning,wholeness and eternity in the minds of Western intellectuals, among whom there were many Christians with a proclivity for simplifying and generalising. Among these, notably, a Professor named Lidzbarski associated with the German "religionsgeschichte" school, went so far ahead with a few of the Mandaean scriptures he was translating as to assert that Christianity had sprung out of the Mandaean, and thus, indirectly, Gnostic movement, rather than vice versa; he was inclined to consider the sacraments of the Mandaean religion as more pure, primitive expressions of the sacraments found in the Church, i.e. the Catholic Church contemporary to himself. The Theosophist G.R.S. Mead made a similar observation upon publishing his translation of the Mandaean scripture Sidra D'Yahia - which he titled The Gnostic Book of John the Baptist, based on a discovery found within the text itself: Here we find asserted that John and Jesus grew up together and held familiar ties, John being his cousin, but that John was the result of a divine intervention whereas Jesus, although elect and priveleged to be party to the Nasirutha, the initiatory Gnosis of their religion - they were Mandaeans, eventually went astray, because he spoke of the secret and forbidden mysteries of the religion he belonged to, to basically everyone and did not observe the strict discipline of his forefathers, he became a betrayer, whereas John became a prophet, a rescuer of the tradition - but not a savior or Messiah.
Drower, The Secret Adam.
"Only as manuscript after manuscript is studied does a picture gradually form of an ancient theosophy true to the type we call gnostic, which developed in the syncretistic centuries which preceded the fall of classical paganism. This theosophy was hybrid. It embraced the star-knowledge and wisdom of Babylon and Egypt, the dualism of the Iranian sages and Plato, the high speculation of the Greeks, and the stern morality of the Jews and its book of books. Deeper roots may have reached yet farther east. If one may venture into hypothesis, seedbeds in which Nasirutha (secret knowledge) could well have germinated were the flourishing Jewish colonies in commercial towns in Parthia,Media, and Babylonia.These were, of course, in constant touch, not only wih one another, but with Jerusalem. I suggest that such a sect may have spread into the Jordan valley, Galilee, and Judaea, where it would naturally have split into sub-sects, one of them possibly Christianity, which recognized in Jesus its crowned and anointed king - the Messiah. It is a striking fact that in all the Mandaean texts the word msiha (Messiah, Christ) is only used with the qualification "lying" or "false" of Jesus, and this is the more suprising as every priest is a king (malka), crowned and anointed, as microcosm of the macrocosm Adam Kasia, the crowned and anointed Antrophos, Arch-priest and creator of the cosmos made in his form.
The word oil of unction is msia and the verbs for its application are RSM and ADA.The implication is that the word msiha (the anointed one) was so inextricably connected with the hated Jew and Christian that the root MSH was banned from Nasoraean use.
Having set foot on the slippery road of speculation, I assume that it might well follow that after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Jewish Christians for the most part settled in East Jordan, our Nasoraeans, hating, and hated by, both Jew and Jewish-Christian, would naturally seek harbour in the friendlier atmosphere of Parthia and the Median hills - exactly as the Haran Gawaitha related,and, according to that manuscript, a number of them migrated later under Parthian protection into Babylonia and Khuzistan.
Did they find in the well/watered marsh districts there a baptizing gnostic sect like - or affiliated to - their own?
It might explain much,but here I can only refer the reader to Chapter X of this book."
"In the "secret scrolls" Jesus and John are unmentioned. In the two condices accessible to the uninitiated (Ginza Rba and Drasha d' Yahia, the Book of John)the former is represented as a perverter of Nasoraean teaching. In contrast, when Jesus appears in the Coptic Christian gnostic manuscripts (TdB: Drower refers to the discoveries and publications of the Codex Askew and Codex Brucianus and the first published fragments from the Nag Hammadi Library. She wrote this book in the late 1950's to 1962)he is used as a mouthpiece of gnosis.There is no attempt to represent him as an historical figure, although by use of his name the Coptic gnosis is given a Christian aspect."
pp.xi-xii, Introduction, The Secret Adam, E.S. Drower, Oxford University Press, 1962.
pp.xiv
"That Nasoraeans were originally a Jewish group or partly Jewish group is suggested by their claim that John the Baptist was a member of theirs ect, and by the fact that the Jordan is an essential and central feature of their tradition. Today the word yardna (jordan) is applied not only to running water as used in baptism and immersion, but to any flowing stream; yet the conjunction of John the Baptist and Jordan is significant.
Epiphanius (Adversus Haereses, xxix:6) says that there were Nasoraeans amongst the Jews before the time of Christ. The name could have been applied to any strictly law-observing Jewish sect for the root (TdB:in Hebrew,sorry I have no means to transcribing it) means to "keep,observe, guard" and could have been used as a laudatory term for more than one group of dissidents, particularly if they had secret teachings. Nasoraeans of the Mandaean type "keep and observe" ritual law with zealous fidelity and "keep back" - even from their own lairy - mysteries considered deep and easily misunderstood by the uninitated.Nasoraean hatred for Jews must have originated at a period at which Nasoraeans were in close contact with orthodox jewry and at a time when the orthodox Jews had some authority over them. All this points to the truth of the Haran Gawaitha tradition. Heterodox Judaism in Galilee and Samaria appears to have taken shape in the form we now call gnostic, and it may well have existed some time before the Christian era. In the Schweich Lectures given by Dr.Moses Gaster in 1923 on the Samaritans, the lecturer, speaking of settlements of Jews and Samaritans in the Diaspora, mentioned similarities which exist between Parseeism, Judaism and Samaritanism, and pointed out the possibility that Mandaeism might also have sprouted in such seedbeds.
The figure of Pthahil and its connexion as demiurge with the Egyptian god Ptah, the Mandaean tradition that they once had fellow religionists in Egypt, and the apparently ancient belief transmitted by word of mouth that they dove slaughtered before the masiqta is called a ba (unsatisfactory though these may be as evidence, for I find little to justify them in the texts) must be considered contributory when assessing the possibility that Nasirutha originated in semi-paganized Jewish circles.
In this book I have tried to view Nasoraean gnosis as a whole and have not concealed my belief that the secret teaching, based upon the Mystic Adam, goes back to the first and second centuries. Vitally significant aspects of that gnosis are evident in unpublished scrolls held as a closely-guarded heritage by the inner circle, the Nasoraeans. These a layman, however pious, is not allowed to see or hear. They contain tenets imparted only to an initiated few; indeed, Nasirutha could be called truly esoteric - a religion within a religion, a gnosis within a gnosis, and its heart is the interpretation which it attaches to sacramental acts."
Abstracts from E.S.Drower's pioneering work in more thorough, modern manner on the Mandaeans ; The Mandaeans of Iran and Iraq, first published in 1962 can be found at the "Holy Order of ONE" website, which contains spread throughout a lot of information about Manichaeanism and the Mandaean tradition. Introduction, continued here. ,
which Drower reports a census made 30 years before the book was published: "According to the last census (April 1932) the number of Subba in Iraq is given as 4,805". Fortunately this is not currently the case but the Mandaeans are struggling against great odds. The Middle East has historically not been a good climate for minority groups, etnic or religious, who have little in common with the major power-houses of raw political power, be they secular or religiously inclined. This people with a symphathy for the Christian Gnosis of the first centuries are painfully aware of. If anything, it is feasible for modern students to project a motif of an extremely hostile environment as a background for the Cosmological Agon between the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness.
During the newsround on occasion of John Paul II, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, a nun commented that the Pope has left behind time and history and entered the peace and abundance of God. Time, meaning this world. However successfull the Roman Church, or for that matter any organization around the theme of Ekklesia, this is what each single participant in religion may hope for - a final transcendence of the boundaries of local time and space, which confines our consciousness to a desolate realm of shadows and types, this world under this world's regent, who is not God and never where God and never will be God, and who has no characteristic in common with the Divine Logos. Karol Wojtyla always struck me as a thoughtful, sincere practicioner of the Christian faith, a person of mystical and contemplative disposition who understood the meaning of duty. Alas, the Roman Catholic Church, like any ecclesiae, types and images striking at times powerful similes, but never more than that - of the true Church, the only claimant to any perfection any Pleroma (fullness.. I mention this because the Vatican has made use of the term to describe the worldly organization of the Roman Catholic Church in this current age and world, an assertion even the most ecumenical of Gnostics are bound to disagree with)- laid claim on him. Through his illness I became increasingly aware of the frail condition of all mankind through his suffering, and how we with old age and the tearing of time and gravity upon our bodies, succumb to an inglorious end. Or such an end the world sees, but alas, the world is blind. When the Logos descended, raining like a drop out of the Pleroma, it was not the Kosmos that received it, but Man. In this sense the Man is the Logos incarnate and the distinctions which the disciples insisted upon, which Christ on his own part dissuaded - are as clouds before the luminous sun.
Rome will see in the coming days a great pilgrimage, it will be marked by reverance, love and a sincere sorrow at the loss of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but also of a person whose attention and care they greatly respected, like they would respect their (biological) father. For my part I will be attentative to the necessary change which will come over the greatest, numbers-wise, religious denomination of the world and the most continuous representative of the Apostolic Christian tradition.
Pope John Paul II. has overcome the world, he stepped out of time, his journey, however, as the mysteries reveal, has just begun.
The nature and person of the individual entity,whether Yazata or Fravarti, or among the tutelary angels/servants/messengers - are understood in Mazdean ontology to be discernable in one of two ways;
a getik(material,earthly,"ordinary") way and a mentok (imaginal,visionary,"suprasensual") way;
unlike some speculations of like kind,to the Mazdean the getik state is not accorded as being a "degradation" of the splendour and glory of spiritual beings; but that this aspect of its being, once it is
comprehended and accorded attention - actually lifts up the
sensory appreciation of the "seer" into another world, one which does not consist of shadow and minor lights, but only supernatural and primordial Light.
Every being can be considered and "perceived" in one of
two ways; so also for the Fravarti of Earth (zam) the
Spenta Armaiti.Through these one might arrive at a
understanding, no longer only of what these beings are - but
who they are, and what relationship each have with
the other and with ones own.
H.Corbin:
"It is quite evident that the mental vision of the Angel of
the Earth, for example, is not a sensory experience.If, by logical habit, we classify this fact (of the vision) as imaginary, the question nonetheless remains as to what can justify an identification of what is imaginary with what is arbitrary and unreal, the question
as to whether representations, deriving from physical perception are the only ones to be considered as real knowledge, whether physically verifable events alone can be evaluated as facts. We must ask ourselves whether the invisible action of forces that have their
purely physical expression in natural processes may not bring into play psychic energies that have been neglected or paralyzed by our (mental) habits, and directly touch an Imagination which, far from being arbitrary invention, corresponds to the Imagination which the
alchemists called Imaginatio vera which is the astrum
in homine."
H.Corbin :Spiritual
Body and Celestial Earth.pp.10-11.
The Kyrios Soter - the Lord Saviour - of the Zervanite Persian tradition, has three male and three female Archangels.
Ohrmazd along with his three male archangels are called "Yezatas"- each of these four are accorded a formal liturgy, a Yasna, and assigned a quarter of the liturgical year for observances.
Whereas the four male "Powers" of the Heptad are accorded especial attention and festivals,the three single female Archangels are considered as the consecrating "Powers" which oversee the liturgies and spiritualize the worshippers with gifts (like the Muses do in Greek and Roman formal and mystery religions).
The three "archetypes" or "ideal figures" of all the other Fravartis are
the following:
1. Spenta Armaiti (Isfandarmuz),
whose representative symbolical image is that of the
Earth, and who is sometimes referred to as "Image of
Wisdom", and representation of a "Woman clothed with
Light".
2.Haarvata (meaning integrity, variant. Pers: Khurdad) - which is connected to the Waters, with her is
associated all kinds of aquatic images - she is possibly the
origin of the "Mermaid".
3.Amertat (meaning immortality, variant Pers: Murdad) -connected to the plants, with her is associated all kinds of vegetative imagry.
Within the Mazdean cosmology one encounter a multitude of Celestials such as Ohrmazd and the Amahraspands.Every physical or moral entity, every complete being or group of beings belonging to the world of Light, including Ohrmazd - has its own Fravarti. In reverse of an occidental attitude -the "male" Celestials are referred to as being Yazata (Pers. Izad) which means "Adorable ones", so the Fravarti of these are lovers/adorers.
Fravarti means "those who are chosen," those who have in
themselves decided to fight in order to come to the help of Ohrmazd, the individual "Savior" of not only human souls, the worlds, the universes(dimensions) - but also of the angelic hosts and all the other Yazatas.
In short, one gets the impression they consist in a vast and complex Knighthood.The Fravartis are considered to be feminine, and sometimes depicted in the iconography of Persian and Parthian illuminated manuscripts of the Mazdean/Zervanite (2nd and 3rd generation
"Zoroastrianism" - beginning in the persian hellenistic area ca.
200 BC, ending at the time of continental dominance in the middle east of Islamic Sunnah orthodoxy ca. 900CE) tradition - as young girls. In comparison with the internal symbology of Dante Alighieri´s Divina Commedia - one is reminded of the character of the virgin Beatrice who meets the young Dante at the gate of a garden. The description the Poet and his later
"disciples" make of Beatrice is evocative of the character of
the Fravarti.