Goals that are familiar to many of their neighbors. I am asking for your continued help, for the kids.” Through slush, snow and mud, these goals have been achieved. You have passed on your financial and moral support to your kids so they can learn the religion. You have published books in English about the religion. And you have established religious centers, with classes and seminars. “If you came after the revolution, you came to establish yourself in a new world. You adapt, you bring some of the old, you learn the new, so you can have a happy tomorrow. “You have all come to this country, by choice or not. “Close your eyes, imagine you are in New York on a wagon train headed for the West Coast,” he began. In Southern California, leaders such as Fariborz Shahzadi are vigorously reviving the religious commitment. Zoroastrians have been allowed to practice their faith in Iran during this century, but several nearby countries were restricted under Communism. What had been a social gathering, with coffee cups and flicking cameras, turned quieter.įariborz Shahzadi, the center’s religious education director, reminded the group of the fuller meaning of the day. Each one held a sprig of green, a symbol of life and fertility.Īt the first sound of the ancient prayers at the Westminster rite, women covered their heads with scarves. At the ceremony in April, he was among the mobeds, the community of priests that included his grandfather.
“I was nervous before I had to recite, but afterward I felt so proud,” says Soroushian of his initiation day. Fire temples, or smaller centers, dot the state from San Jose to Los Angeles, Westminster to San Diego. Worldwide membership figures vary widely with estimates from fewer than 200,000 to more than 500,000.Ĭalifornia has become a center for the religion with the influx since the early 1980s of immigrants from Iran following that country’s revolution and later after the Iran-Iraq war. Iran has about 45,000, and North America about 10,000, scholars estimate. India has the largest community of Zoroastrians in the world, with about 76,000 adherents. The tradition continues in Bombay, India. If our actions are good, we can say we are living in heaven.”Ī desire to care for the environment led Zoroastrians from earliest times to expose their dead to the elements rather than “pollute” the ground by burying bodies. “We can make this world heaven or hell depending on how we think, speak and act. “Both are in the next world and in this world as well,” explains the senior and scholarly priest. All other Zoroastrian beliefs flow from it. That simple teaching is as basic to the faith as the “law of love” is to Christianity. “Zarathustra taught the importance of good thoughts, good words and good deeds,” Shahzadi explains in precise English. It is the face of a young man with a dark beard who wears a turban and robe similar to those worn by Zoroastrian priests during modern religious services.Ī thorough tutor, Shahzadi explains that Zarathustra wrote the Gatha, a collection of hymns that is contained in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian book of sacred scripture. Above his desk there is a portrait of Zarathustra, who is believed to have founded the faith in the region of Afghanistan.
In a library filled with books about the religion, its history and theology, Mobed Bahram Shahzadi, director of the Westminster fire temple, spends most of his day. However, while its roots extend to at least the 7th century BC, and some scholars date its beginnings as far back as the 16th century BC, most Westerners are not familiar with Zoroastrianism’s primary teachings. For some Westerners, the name of the religion is as familiar as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, also based on a belief in one God. What was a flourishing religion in ancient Iran and across the Persian Empire has dwindled through centuries of foreign conquest to be perhaps the smallest of monotheistic faiths.
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