Zoroastrianism in Iran

Iran and Zoroastrianism during our two-week trip to Iran organized by the nation's travel in May of 2016 we took over 15 hours of video this video was produced by editing parts of that video while in Iran we had the opportunity to visit the historic city of yes where the Zoroastrians have practiced their religion since about 400 BC yazd is located in the middle of the Iranian plateau close to the spice and Silk Roads during our visit to yes we had a mini history given by our excellent guide Afshin Pasha about Zoroastrianism we start our tour at the Fire Temple of the Zoroastrian Zoroaster as we call it in our language Azhar touched was the Prophet who brought this religion of the unique god the creator of heaven and earth earth and the sky back to almost three thousand two hundred seventy years ago more or less officially it is known as the first human religion and many other religion got the lessons from Zoroastrianism he was born the North West of Iran he never claimed that he's a prophet or he talked to anyone who something he just said I have a message for you this is a better way to live if you just follow this simple principle the religion of the religion is simplified in three simple words as you can see there are three writings on the best symbol which says good thoughts the other side good behavior or good good deed and down they're good words which actually means good thoughts means creative and positive thoughts good behavior or deed means proper behavior and good action good words means no lies tell the truth and be respectful so he says if you just follow these three simple words you will be a perfect person and you will have a happy life on earth that symbol in the middle is the symbol of the Zoroastrian which is called para bajar which is the name of that symbol it's an open winged bird in the middle there is a man an old man with a long beard if you remember yesterday I said the beard was symbol of wisdom so he's the one who's holding his right hand as a sign of respect and prayer and he's really is having a ring in his left hand that is the ring of promise and pledge between human being to his God so that he always remembers that he follows the path of his own God this ring now is internationally known as the ring of marriage on the left hand this is one thing the first thing that we have it from the Zoroastrians into the international community so he's standing in middle of another bigger circle that bigger circle is life universe earth whatever that a man or human being exists in so a man I mean human being is in the center of creation he's the best form of creation so he is respectful and he always remembers that he must follow the path of his God how positive thinking have good out and good mind do great things create great things and be polite and never lie that's what it says the open wings also has got three rows of feather which again refers to these three words and there is down there like the tailor's got three words which is if you say if you do opposite you always go down and the intention is go high or having having a very I mean happy spirit always going to heaven there is something like yellow things down there which looks like the legs you know of the bird but it also looks like and a bowl which it is actually not a bowl but it means that you should always be taking care of yourself on the other you should have some protection down there as well Zoroaster chose the white color as the symbol of his religion nowadays we use the white color a symbol of peace when two groups are fighting they have white black flag and then it means that I'm not in war please stop it so the white thing also comes from him to the world - nowadays a lot that we have and fire was the symbol that he chose for he for his religion for his ideas because he believed that whatever pain and trouble that we have in our life is because of unawareness because of darkness darkness in your life darkness your mind darkness in your heart and fire is the symbol of light it brightens everywhere it warms everywhere so it can give you or show you the way at least it can give you some vision for whatever you have around you the Zoroastrians do not worship the fire they just pray around the fire so that they can have they are bright enough to see everything clear mind and clear heart so that they can see their God and the people around them for this reason they always have fire when they pray back two centuries ago where we had so many trees they always used the wood to make this fire but nowadays to take care of the nature generally they do not use wood except in this temple to follow the old tradition a priest comes to this temple more or less three times a day and he adds some wood to the fire that wood is generally from the cherry wood the cherry wood burns for a longer time and has less smoke in this way actually they won't have that room totally black with the smoke and the other thing is that they don't need to too many trees and these trees are the dead trees which are collected from the gardens which are these old trees they want to throw away they all tell all the people if your trees they are just cut it then we can use it here hello he says that why do you ignore myself when I go you were just talking to us Bob the bird it's a raven it's a raven black and white well this temple the fire in this temple is considered as a holy fire in Zoroastrianism if a fire burns for more than a thousand years that is considered as a holy fire originally this fire was started some 1,000 three to four hundred years ago somewhere near Shiraz near Persepolis after the arabs invasion which again happened about 14th century ago they carried this fire to the yas province which later eyes explained more why yes now is the center we have more Zoroastrian on the east rather than to the west it's because of the Arab Arabs pressure and people are escaped and ran toward the central to the desert part with the Arab did not come here anymore so this is again there's that we already had this a we're not going to go there they will die back there there is no water so they came and stayed here so this fire was brought to a city near yazd it was kept for a few hundred years over there and later during 19th century they made this building it was donated by the people and they made this fire temple here and the fire was finally brought to this place it's kept here and people can see they oh this is actually a functioning temple it's not only for the visitors they have special ceremonies and the activities that are related to the Zoroastrians but mainly it is open to the people for the visitors how do they keep the fire burning for such a long time you know that if you know this priest they always have a special place I had the chance to be in the house of the main priest of the Zoroastrian in Iran well supposedly I'm a Muslim I cannot go inside but because I was with the film crew the same movie that I mentioned journeys to the ends of the earth the second episode was people of the flame which actually refers to the Zoroastrian if you can find that movie watch it actually I have it in turn right and give it to you so that in that movie actually we travel I and David Adams travel around the country is looking for the Zoroastrians and then we come - we came - yes then we went to the house of priests and then I had some talk with him little bit of you know not a very friendly talking I mean polite but a little bit quarrel with him said that all this because of you later we'll talk about that so and he showed me that we have a special place back here and there's fire down then it was and it was completely covered with ash and it just removes some of these Isis virus down there and we will add more wood to it so we always keep this fire burning if anybody needs fire for example for the wedding birthdays anniversaries or whatever they want to have the holy fire in their homes they will refer to us and we just give them some part of this you know fire they take it home they make more fire and do the rituals that's actually how they keep this fire burning for such a long time when we go inside you can see the fire burning in the middle there are some other things inside that I explained when we go inside all right before we go questions of course on the top they have you know the word magic comes from magic and the magic I was the name of the high priests of the Zoroastrians the three-match eyes who moved from Persia to see Jesus Christ the Magi are actually the priests the name we call it more or the plural form will be Mohan so on the top we have the priests and for sure they have you know lower ones which later become greater according to the studies and the rank they have so each fire temple or each ceremony generally hat was has got one leader that's a priest of the Zoroastrian oh they pray today they pray to Ahura Mazda Ahura Mazda is great God and he's the only God is the creator of heaven and earth and everything we had just like other religion what we do this practice before Iranian from thousands of years ago believed in Sun and the water so Sun for thousands of years we have Mitra Mitra means Sun so we have me tourism from very very all time from almost three thousand two hundred years ago one so Rasta came he said that even the Sun is a creation of a bigger God who is the creator of everything on this earth and ajita was the goddess of water so you see the four elements which are in the Zoroastrians the fire also the Sun the same thing the water the earth and the air it was a secretary a treasurer and the idea was to convert the Armenians to Zoroastrianism and the Armenians were incredibly stubborn but they sent a whole host of first of all there was a small war which the Persians won one of the early wars on record and the Magi that was sent to kind of do a little brainwashing and so forth found that the Armenians were incredibly stubborn and would not convert and they finally decided look is it that important to him let him be so hey we're rather broad-minded in tolerance so whatever anyone says about the early Zoroastrians toleration must have been an important part of person were to say thank you that was the world suppose say means three and past means take care of three take care of these three suppose means when I say thank you to you means I will take care of these three when I need you means I will surely be polite to you I won't lie to you and then I will try to do something good to you it means thank you stay with me be with me so that's why from almost 2,000 and Jews out years and more they created one way which generally in the West they related to you know the countries like Jordan or the people in China because they want to put Iran aside they say no this is their creation but we know that it started first here this was called the subterranean or underneath canal system we are 3,600 kilometers of these canals down there which they carried there you know they found sources of water down there and then by digging all these tunnels which were very narrow where only one person could crawl inside they brought the water to the surface and distributed among the people with this is also practice in Jordan in any desert countries so the she was injured still functional out of these three thousand six hundred kilometers probably only thirty persons are working because the waters down there are dried and nobody's maintaining them because we have the city water so we say who cares about all this you know trouble things to go down and dig because it's very dangerous as well now it comes from you know the pipes you know coming from dams and you know purified water from dams and other sources which are provided by the government from other cities as well we have just entered the toshka da or Zoroastrian fire temple this zoroastrian temple was built in 1934 in a site belonging to the association of the Parsee Zoroastrians of india under the supervision of Jamshed Ahmad the sacred flame behind a glass case and visible from the entrance hall has been apparently burning since about 84 70 and was transferred from najeda pars temple first to artic and then T as and to its present site this is the picture that they believe sort of as I look like him the thing is that as as I mentioned his name is sato store or shoes at first which is the name harassin Zoroaster Zarathustra Zoroaster uh shoes are torched there to share all the names given to the persian name are our shoes our two Shores are toast the walls are various verses by Zahra through straw these are just a few verse - one is unable to realize the right path clearly and choose the same if they are misled by the wrong temptations her Mazda has appointed me as your teacher so that both parties of good and evil may live in accord with asha verse 7 our mahdi love and faith shall grant the person who is gifted with spiritual strength good thought truthfulness and purity the firmness and stability of body such a person shall no doubt be successful in life's ordeal and shall be regarded oh my Hurra Mazda as thy good servant verse 9 o god of life and creation may we be sincere servants of yours like those who make the world renewed may we enjoy your health through Asha so that whenever our minds waver in doubt our hearts and thoughts may turn to you honey of having one day of you know celebration like a feast in every month that was because the name of the month and the name of the day were the same how did it happen now here you can see we have 30 names here starting from number 1 to 30 all these names are the names of the day of the month and out of these 30 names we have 12 of them which are also the name of the months for example we have number two the second which is called batman' which means good thoughts and the eleven month of the year is also batman so ii of batman is always Batman Batman Batman in Batman good thoughts in good thoughts so that was a there was a big celebration or just imagine my birthday number seven am ordered which means eternity immortality this is the seventh day and the month itself is the fifth months so the seventh day of the fifth month it was a big celebration which was also in the middle of the summer and people you know cooked lots of food cookies made a lot of drinks and they served each other probably they had some music dance or whatever I don't remember I was just a little child 1000 year ago only 2,000 years ago yeah these are the names of the month among these 30 names so this world was happening before the others but after that everything turned into like a religious to the new religion which was Islam then we have Islamic celebrations which we had the birthdays of you know Muhammad the birthday of a leader they are Fatima Hassan Hassan and the other amounts of the Shia for the she as you as I mentioned before that we have Muhammad Allah is the god Muhammad and then comes Ali and Fatima his daughter and his son-in-law and cause him and then his grandsons Hasan Hussein and the rest of the children after the 12th Imam who is actually now absent and then he's going to revive and come back and save the people so these are actually the differences between the two religious ceremonies that we have in the past man now Paul as well for example batman aza may all these are the name of the people as well so we have someone called Batman someone called Aza Batman is a man or there is a woman for example so ladies and men have the names from the days of the week as well and Iran for your information is also the name of a lady though it comes from I Aryan or the Aryans and then transfers I Irian into Iran it's also a name of a lady who used to be in our myth our legendary books we have Iran bond or Iran bond means lady Iran who was the queen of the country as well inside the fire temple we had a chance to walk around and look at the various exhibits you will see along the wall the various verses by xerath ooh straw you [Music] we're walking out toward the towers of silence [Music] we went into this building where Austin gave a briefing on how the Zoroastrians buried the dead the wind was blowing very strongly at the beginning which interfered with the microphone so I'm going to repeat his words at the beginning this was called towers of silence probably saw before there are two towers on each side and the reason they called him towers of silence is because people were put on the top when they were silent because they were dead when people died they preferred not to bury them directly without any covering into the ground into the soil to protect the earth for this reason they found a new option of choice exposing the body directly to the vultures the birds so that they ate the flesh and the bones remained so they could actually bury the bones for this purpose they made you know towers of silence in different cities or areas where they lived yas is the major city for the Zoroastrians they have some of these towers towers of silence around the city these are not the only two but we have stopped doing this from almost 60 to 65 years ago probably as far as we are told because the city has started to grow and they they were worried that maybe these birds sometimes they carry some parts of the bodies of bones away and they might have brought some of the diseases to the people so they stopped it for this purpose they made this you know the same walls where you saw the toilets where right behind it is the cemetery this is where the bodies are buried just like normally the other people who are buried in this country except they do not need to be facing Mecca because they are Zoroastrians only Muslims need to face Mecca when they are buried well when the people died I mean when people died they the bodies were brought here the priests started to pray do you know basic you know praying things then they were wrapped in white pieces of cloth which also the Muslims are also now wrapped in a white piece of cloth and then they are buried we do not use coffins the coffins are now used here but for the Muslims when they go down they make something like a concrete box down there they put the body inside for them this is for the Muslims on the right shoulder face toward Mecca and then they put other concrete blocks on the top so they make it look like a coffin down there but not a wooden one like a concrete one they do the same thing here with the Zoroastrian as as well so when the bodies were brought here in the first you know part of the pray year was performed by the prayer year what the preacher or the priest there were some people known we know them in English as Untouchables these are the people who were allowed to touch the bodies and these people generally did not get very much involved with the people in the society in the cities or villages the purpose was not that because they are not clean or there are dirty people the main source of diseases in those days where you know was transferred by touching and because they touch these bodies and probably there was a chance of you know having some of diseases they preferred not to be in the society just in case they make more people sick for this reason they had one space back there in the same area which was only used by these people interesting thing is that the name of these people in Indian and our culture we call it untouchables for the immersion they call them Masters is very very important people because they were very brave to touch the dead bodies you never knew that someone might have died from a very deadly disease so they were very brave to touch these people so they were rather respecter respected not like India who were rather you know ignored or hate yeah kept away from the society so after you know these Untouchables carried the bodies to the top of these towers they unwrap the body just imagine this is face up there in the tower this is just like the same space except there is a wall round wall around it about four meters to make sure that the you know the birds do not carry the whole body out of the building they wanted to make high enough for them not to go away and then just like the surface and imagine in the middle there is like a ditch a bit deeper and they put the bodies inside they waited for a few days and they also locked the door to make sure that no fox or wolf or dogs get inside because they could carry the body right so they locked the door and came outside people have stayed here down here until you know the birds did their job there are different buildings around here they try to separate people from different villages so that they do not mix up if for example one man died from village a and another man died from village B they stayed in their own section 20 50 100 people just having you know food and dinner and ceremony one these buildings and the other four villagers in the other building that's the reason why you see many buildings here and this building here this was mainly like a kitchen this was burned they actually prepared the food for the families they came here they've cooked the food and then the service among the people so after the bodies you know this ceremony which lasts for a day or two or three at most they could have asked these Untouchables to collect some bones and break it back to them so that they can they can bury it somewhere near their homes but generally as we know they had this line this white powder that you know decomposition they had the line and they put it over the bones and it just simply decomposed down there they didn't it didn't bring to anything but if anybody asked they could have the same piece I'm in a white class together they could have one or two bombs drafting the peace of God back to the family so that they could bury it somewhere near their own homes if they wanted to do so there are two towers here these are actually the towers that one is according to the sign that we had on the wall was a spy a sponsored I'm made by one of the Indians the Parsees from India who spent some money and asked them to make these towers here for the Zoroastrians so there is no difference if they put the men on one side or women on the other side as far as I know there was no difference they could be put involved in the same place because after all they are dead so doesn't mean that one of them is higher one of his shortest because of something there are all other superstitions as well for example see if the bird took the right eye first the man went to heaven if you took the left eye first he went to hell and then who was there to see for example the birds had the church okay he looks like the nasty person let me take the right left eye first no these are just stories that people make and again I mean I should remind you that this was like one of the options of baring otherwise we have already remembered the kings of Persia they were old buried somewhere one of the option was laid this to make sure that people are safe because of the diseases and also to keep the earth which as they did a lot of agriculture if they wanted to bury people everywhere with all these diseases the water would run down there and this water could bring come back to the people's life and make many people sick so this was only for some hygiene purposes which was part of the ritual of tourists to go to the top of this tower is really hard it's rather about 300 metres above the level and it's very long we are not going up there for two purposes first it's very steep and a very tough climb over there second this place actually closes at 12 o clock so I had to ask this guy to give some extra time for us to here third of all what you see there is not something like a building painting drawing writing or anything you just see the same thing you see here exactly the same thing just with the big round wall around it that's all yeah when you see you know the gravestone you see the name of that person when he was born when he died where he was born whose child he was his father's name no not really we have you know in some very very old cemeteries rocking the mountains and villages far away in the corner they had something little sign of this guy was a carpenter this guy was for example the textile maker or whatever but not very common not at all and on the gravestone nowadays they can write anything this is now it's become very very popular people spend a lot of money and have the picture of the man or the woman on the grave under stone actually which when you go there you see what lovely picture of that man in carved on the stone which is very nice actually and they pay a lot of money for that as well if you go back to something around 2200 years ago by the time that the Parthians and the Sassanid came to power this was the early type of dome shaped building you see we have four walls we have a big cross in the middle remember cross okay they added one angle here one angle here and made four into eight and from eight they started to make it smaller ones going to around things in the meter but this one because this is a kitchen that they needed to the smoke to go out here they kept it open if you continued going round that becomes a dome here one thing I forgot to tell you what that little dome over there with the two towers next to it and right in the front you can also see steps those steps if you walk down you do not need to walk then there is nothing down there it's already blocked by the soil and stones if you walk down those steps you go right down that dome underneath was that type of you know water that I mentioned coming from this you know tunnels for the people to use when they wanted to cook or wash your things like that but this is not using and those two towers functions as ventilation the city of Yas is famous for few things this water system under you know underneath topically subterranean subterranean water system the wind towers the other thing important here are Zoroastrian ISM center of the Zoroastrian this is the place for mainly Zoroastrian state so later when in the afternoon we'll go to the old part of the town I'll explain about the wind towers and how it work there are actually to make the homes cool which the difference sometimes could be something around 20 degrees I had the chance to go inside one of these houses many years ago where the weather outside was something out of 47 degrees very very hard I was just burning under the Sun when I got into one of these houses I couldn't believe it and then said that do you have the a/c said no we have our wind tower it was something you're about twenty six or seven degrees so cool down there and it's the same story in the winter as well when it's minus five here out when you go inside it's 25 26 because of the type of material they use in the old houses thickness of them and a style of building them keeps it warm in the winter cool in the summer so every year every two years they have to cover all these buildings with the straw in the afternoon you'll see more examples of them they had like these five places they had smaller rooms you know they make fire to cook things but this just had like a fire burning here here in this middle only for the fire to burn like for warmth we then had approximately one hour to walk around and look at the various ruins at this historic site [Music] we turned around just in time to see one of the more as like members of our tour group Bruce Bohr from Oakland California jogging up to the tower of silence and looking in this is the sixth video we have produced from over 15 hours of video footage taken during the two weeks we were in Iran while Abe is adding a few final comments a list of the titles of our other five videos with their respective URLs will be shown at the top of the list is the URL for our conscience films YouTube site where all of our videos can be seen in closing we just want to emphasize that if anyone has the opportunity to visit Iran they should by all means take full advantage of it the country is remarkable in terms of its very old and extensive history the many archaeological sites are quite fascinating there are in fact some 20 world heritage sites they're very different in terms of scope they're well maintained the language of the labeling is not perfect but they're very acceptable one of these many world heritage sites probably the best-known is the ancient capital of Persepolis the ruins while they are ruins reflect the incredible city that Alexander the Great took vengeance on and destroyed much of it the remnants are sufficient to show that it must have been something quite fantastic well worth a visit in and of itself if you want to Iran only to see Persepolis that would be well worth it the people are very welcoming they like Americans they like tourists the particularly fond of Americans and we believe that the bad press that's been given Iran and the Iranian people is not justified by any means in our experience one couldn't have met more open kind and friendly people now we want to thank finally our guide who is exceptional in many many ways of shin pasha he did a fantastic job of keeping a very large group under control and made sure that we did not go astray in the heavy traffic we thank him very much and that Nation magazine which many will know is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States they have a travel division now that they call nation travels that has been doing some exceptional trips that are well led and it's because of their ability to harness the energies of such excellent guides like Afshin Pasha that it makes the all the difference

Channel: Eugene Taylor & Abraham Krikorian

Views: 84,222

Keywords: Conscience Films, Eugene Taylor, Abraham Krikorian, Iran, Zoroastrianism, Zoroaster, Zarathustra, Towers of Silence, Untouchables, Religions, Yazd, The Nation, Nation Travel, Afshin Pasha, Zoroastrian, Armenia, Christian Armenia, India, Middle East, Dakhma, Fire Temple

Id: 8faEenA8GpI

Length: 39min 40sec (2380 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2018