Anyone anticipating a comprehensive scholarly study of the ancient Persian magi, practicing the religious system founded by the prophet Zarathoustra (ca. 1700 BCE), known in the West as Zoroastrianism, the religious system of the Mazdan way, will be disappointed, since this book is about magic and magical initiation to be used by individuals (x). It is a practical book within the ever-growing body of New Age, self-help, and psychology books, etc., featured by the publisher, and here the author describes “a complete curriculum of magical study and initiation based on exercises keyed to the sacred Zoroastrian calendar and [that] furthermore offers advanced magical rituals based on archaic Persian formulas.” The aim then, is to teach the ancient rituals for modern English-speaking people.
An Iranian class of practitioners of operative theurgy was known as the Magians or Magi, also called the Mazdans. We learn about a more comprehensive view on the relationship between magic and religion than the binary view still found within ancient scholarship despite claims that the distinction has been broken down. For the ancient Iranians, “there was little distinction between magic and religion,” since “[t]heirs was a magical religion" (ix). For Westerners these magi are perhaps mostly known in the Christian story of the three wise men who visited the newborn Jesus (14-15). In the ancient Greek tradition magoi were seen to be “a tribe of the Medes that constituted a priestly caste" (10), at least for the Greek historian Herodotus.
The book is divided into four main parts: history, theory, initiation, and practice. It includes a short acknowledgement section, a list of abbreviations, and a short preface. Following is an introduction, in which we learn that this is a book teaching magic; namely Mazdan magic, thereafter providing short definitions of central terms, “magic,” “sorcery,” “religion,” “Indo-European,” “Iranian,” and “Persian” (2-4), the latter two often used synonymously (170). We are told that the following book is “first and foremost…a practical book,” which “must be studied and its curriculum followed" (4-5). Next comes a note on the languages and texts of the Mazdan tradition. Following this are five chapters: “Iranian Magic as the Ancients Saw It”; “The History of Iranian Magic”; “Theories of Mazdan Magic”; “Initiation into Magic”; and “Rituals of Mazdan Magic.” Next come six appendixes: “A Brief History of Eranshahr” (the whole of the Indo-European world); “Guide to Pronunciation of Avestan” (one of the major languages of the ancient Mazdan tradition); “The Analysis of the Three Major Avestan Manthras”; “The One Hundred and One Names of God”; “Basic Mazdan Astrological Lore”; and “Resources.” The last part of the book includes a glossary, notes, bibliography and reading list, and finally an index.
In this book, magic is used “in its original sense of the arts and sciences of the Magians, or magavans, of ancient Iran" (3). The ultimate aim of magic is happiness, and the book sets out to teach the reader to acquire this, after providing some basic history and theory. Initiation is fundamental to obtain success in magic, and it “concerns the development of the individual on all levels: spiritual, psychological, ethical and intellectual" (3, and in chapter 4). In the latter part of the book, a twelve-month curriculum for initiation” is presented, containing a course of daily exercises and rituals. The apprentice is informed about what books to read from the reading list and when to read them, and the “major rites in which the fruits of the initiatory work can be put to use on a regular basis, or when needed” (3, and in chapter 5).
In short, although this book may be of minor interest to historians of antiquity who anticipate more information about the itinerant magoi often referred to by Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers, it is surely of practical interest to people wanting to become magians themselves, as well as for ethnologists, folklorists, and scholars of religious studies working on central trends within modern Western culture and religions.
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[Review length: 664 words • Review posted on May 8, 2018]