Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein Read Free Book Online Page A

angels. They serve Ormazd as messengers and warriors who defend all that is good. In times of danger and difficulty, the Yazatas are willing to help humankind when called upon. (After Ahriman was released from hell, he created a corresponding group of evil angels, inferior to the Yazatas. These demons exist for the sole purpose of making humans miserable.)
    Ormazd is a spirit without a body. However, he has a male and a female aspect. In creating our physical bodies, he is our Father. In creating our spiritual being, he is our Mother.
    Ormazd created all living things and, since he is light, all creatures need light to survive. Ormazd’s last creations were Gayomart, the first man, and his ox. As they came directly out of the hand of the Wise Lord, Gayomart shone like the sun, and the ox, like the moon. Gayomart and his ox lived in peace for thirty years, at the end of which time the evil one was released from hell. Ahriman immediately went to work creating demons, flies, germs, disease, vermin, and every other vile thing. Ahriman is sometimes called the “lord of flies,” because they buzz around filth, manure, and decaying things.
    One of Ahriman’s wicked attendants, a demoness named Johi, volunteered to make Gayomart and his ox suffer and die. Johi is the personification of all feminine evil. She is the source of prostitution, vanity, gossip, nagging, and other forms of evil seen in women. Not that women per se are evil, as they are the creation of Ormazd and are even possibly morally better than men.
    Johi succeeded in making the ox sick and then turned her efforts to Gayomart. Since Gayomart had no sexual desire for her to prey on, he ignored her at first, which made her even more virulent. She then unleashed horrible diseases on the ox, who began to die. The Wise Lord gave the ox marijuana to chew, in order to ease its pain. Then the ox died.
    Gayomart himself became mortally ill. When he died, his shiningbody decomposed, depositing gold and silver in the earth. From his sperm, a tiny plant with a male and a female shoot sprang from the ground and grew into a great tree that bore as its fruit the ten races of mankind. The tree separated, and the male part became a man named Mashya, and the female became his wife, Mashyane.
    The Wise Lord loved Mashya and Mashyane, supplying them with every need without any work or effort. Ormazd spoke to them directly and told them the story of Gayomart, their father. They learned of Gayomart’s faithfulness to the Wise Lord through many difficulties. Ahriman hated the two humans and sought to deceive them.
    One day, the couple, hitherto unaware of evil, began saying to each other that it was Ahriman and not the Wise Lord that had created them. This was the first sin, a lie. And as it always is with lies, more were sure to follow. This first lie was the first of the many sins of mankind. At that instant Ormazd came to earth and told Mashya and Mashyane that they would have to henceforth work for a living. They would have to offer their praises and sacrifices only to the Wise Lord, or they would have no protection and be destroyed by Ahriman. He also instructed them how to have sexual intercourse in order to perpetuate their kind.
    But Ahriman and Johi were determined to confound creation, and they took away the human couple’s sexual desire for fifty years. When Mashya and Mashyane were able to produce children, the demons ate them. So the Wise Lord saved humankind by taking away a little of the sweetness of the children, and they became like the children of today.
    Ormazd loves the human race and wants it to survive. He needs our help to defeat Ahriman. Likewise, without the help of the Wise Lord, Ahriman would destroy us. But the triumph of good is inevitable.
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    Today it is everywhere self-evident that WE are on the side of light. THEY on the side of Darkness. And being on the side of Darkness, THEY deserve to be punished and must be liquidated (since OUR divinity