Zoroastrian Rituals: Addendum
I used the tutorial in the penultimate week of Zoroastrian Orality, Customs, and Ecology to ask about the Yasna and dive deeper into the meaning behind rituals.
The penultimate week ended with a tutorial, a kind of Q&A session on the past 2 weeks on rituals. Our Q&As end up becoming discussions with the Zoroastrian priests and other classmates expanding on the topics.
Rituals are the roadmap to the teachings of the religion; they preserve the scriptures; they bring the community together; and they touch the community physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and spiritually.
The Yasna
I asked about the Yasna, the why behind it. What is its meaning? Its essence? Western secular scholarship can describe the visible: the actions, the words, the implements, the place, and the time. It can strive to understand their ontological dynamism. But it cannot grasp the spiritual essence, the psychological, cognitive, emotional, spiritual impetus that infuses the ritual with meaning. And it may or may not be able to explain scientifically such transformations as bull urine, from being a bacteria growth medium, to sterile for years.
“Generally bacteria start setting in ordinary bull’s urine within six hours, but the Nirang remains bacteria free for years. In 1975 a sample of six year old Nirang was chemically analysed and tested at St. Nochlas Hospital by Dr,. Saunders in London and was certified free of bacteria.” Ramiyar Karanjia
Back to my question. I said that the lecturers presupposed background knowledge, which I didn’t have, and I wanted to know the purpose of the Yasna. I realized as I tried to word my question that there’s an implicit assumption that if you know Zoroastrian cosmology, then you know the why. But although I do, I hadn’t tied one to the other because, unlike Christianity which ties rituals to events, Zoroastrianism ties abstract concepts and beliefs to the rituals. (Later on, when he showed us a few slides from his talk to the World Zoroastrian Organization, Kerman Daruwalla expanded on how the Yasna is used.)
Cosmology Origin
Zoroastrian cosmology says that Ahura Mazda created a perfect, pure Earth. Then evil in the form of Ahriman or Angra Mainyu appeared and desecrated God’s perfect Creation. There are seven creations linked to the seven Amesha Spentas, which I believe I’ve written briefly about before.
Fire
Water
Earth
Plants
Metal
Animals
Humans
Air came up as one of the creations during the water discussion (will write on that); so now I’m confused because the sky surrounds the seven creations but isn’t one of them. Time for another question!
Anyway, back to the Yasna.
The cosmological purpose is to put the Zoroastrian worldview into action.
The Yasna draws upon the seven creations to strengthen the Cosmos and protect Nature.
Hand in Hand with God
The Yasna is about God’s good creation and represents our role of God’s co-worker in reverting Earth back to its created state of purity through resisting and vanquishing evil. Since humankind is one of the seven creations, and since the Yasna includes all seven, a human being must conduct the Yasna ritual: it cannot be a film played for a congregation or a robot that “conducts” it to compensate for the diminishing number of priests who can perform it.
The Yasna is divided into stages. And it begins with the two priests drawing water out of the Fire Temple’s well.
An aside: water must be found and a well dug and consectated before the community can build the Fire Temple. Freshwater determines the temple’s site.
After they draw the water, the two priests enter the pavi — a spiritual boundary of lines in the stone floor, inside which pollution cannot enter, only priests can enter — and they invite the deities to participate. Then they invoke spiritual power from Sraosha and haoma, which is then put into the Dron and haoma drink. The Dron (bread) and haoma drink infuse the priests with spiritual strength when they, respectively, ingest and drink them. Once they have acquired the power of the haoma, they are ready to consecrate the water. They recite the Gathas over the water and infuse the water with the spiritual power they’ve gathered, and the water becomes a libation that is poured back into the well to purify all water, not just the well water. Water everywhere on Earth is seen as unified.
Transforming ordinary well water into spiritually purified water that is then poured back into the well is performing the responsibility of human beings to rejuvenate the Earth.
Kerman Daruwalla: “The Yasna ritual has multiple purposes. It enables the priest to acquire the higher ritual power called the “moti khub,” which is a requirement to perform any of the longer inner ceremonies. Before the Yasna starts, the priests draw water from the well, which is then mixed with other ingredients and energized, and finally at the end of the ceremony, this libation is poured back into the well. This act of offering the invigorated water back to the well signifies giving power to all the creations of Ahura Mazda.
In ceremonies like the Visperad and Videvdad, these texts are inserted into the 72 chapters of the Yasna, and then performed within the Yasna ceremony.
The ceremony or the consecration of the Nirang is the Nirangdin ceremony, and the main act of consecrating the Nirang is done within the Videvdad ritual performed on the last night of the 18-day ceremony.”
The Long Liturgy includes the Yasna on its own or the Yasna plus Visperad. The Intercalation ritual comprises the Yasna, Visperad, and the Videvdad or Vishtasp Yasht. Then there are combination ceremonies that include multiple Yasnas. For example, the Hamayast invokes 12 deities and so has rituals devoted to each. Twelve Yasnas for each of the 12 deities. Then the Small Hamayast has one Videvdad devoted to each of the 12 deities; the Long Hamayast has 12 devoted to each. Since one priest taking 144 days to conduct the Hamayast would probably conk the poor person out, they have six or seven pairs of priests conducting the rituals simultaneously. That way, the priests can complete it in about 50 days. But with the diminishing number of priests, the last Long Hamayast was conducted in Surat in 2003. I forgot to ask what the Hamayast is for.
That’s the background purpose. Specific reasons are many, and the Yasna is incorporated into other rituals.
Ritual Levels and Ceremonies: Why?
Higher levels of purification are needed for higher ceremonies because the priests need more spiritual strength and power to perform these ceremonies and to transfer into what is to be consecrated (eg, bull urine). I suppose it’s the spiritual version of the further you run, the more muscle strength and cardiac power you need to last the distance. The more power the target requires, the more power you must acquire from the deities and from Sraosha and haoma.
“By far, the theme of Sraoša’s protection of the world from demonic forces dominates his hymns.” Encyclopedia Iranica
“Through the potency in his plants [Yazata Haoma] grants “speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves to the study of the nasks” (Y. 9-22)….Among traditionalists he is still especially prayed to by women wanting children and those desiring illustrious sons. Modern reformists have abandoned his observances.” Encyclopedia Iranica
In the Yasna, the water tells the story of the cycle of the soul. It’s drawn, it undergoes transformation, it’s poured back in in a better form.