COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY i. In Zoroastrianism/Mazdaism

The “orthodox” myth. The extant Avesta contains no systematic exposition of the cosmological beliefs of the people among whom it was composed and who eventually brought Zoroastrianism to western Iran. Such expositions are known only from much later, in the Pahlavi tradition of the Sasanian period. The main texts are the Bundahišn and the Selections of Zādspram, both of which, however, clearly contain material from the Older Avesta. According to these texts, in the beginning Ohrmazd (Av. Ahura Mazdā) dwelt on high, in pure light; Ahriman (Old Av. Angra Mainiiu, Young Av. Aŋra Mainiiu) dwelt in the depths, in darkness. Between them was the void. Ohrmazd was aware of Ahriman’s antagonism, and, to prepare himself for battle, he first shaped his creations in a spiritual (mēnōg) state, in the form of “bright, white fire” (Bundahišn 1.44). The creations remained in this state for 3,000 years. In the meantime Ahriman made his demonic creatures out of darkness. He then attacked the luminous world. Ohrmazd initially offered peace, which was rejected. Finally, the two spirits made a treaty (paymānag) to wage war for a limited period of time (a speculative duration of 9,000 or 12,000 years is given) in a well-defined arena: the world. The three stages in the cosmic drama were the (material) creation (bundahišn), which began with the treaty; the mixture (gumēzišn) of good and evil; and the separation (wizārišn) of evil from good. The last stage, however, was to fall outside historical time.

The period of (material) creation, also to last 3,000 years, began after the treaty, when Ohrmazd recited the Ahunwar (Av. Ahuna Vairiia) prayer, revealing to Ahriman his ultimate defeat and causing him to fall back into the darkness in a stupor, which lasted for the entire period of the creation. During this time Ohrmazd fashioned his creations in material (gētīg) form, by celebrating a “spiritual yasna” (Bundahišn 3.23). He placed each creation under the protection of one of the seven Amahraspands (Av. Aməša Spənta). First he created the sky (protected by Šahrewar, Av. XšaΘra Vairiia), which enclosed the world like the shell of an egg (cf. Bailey, pp. 135-36). The second creation was water (protected by Hordād, Av. Haurvatāt), which filled the lower half of the “egg.” The third creation, earth (protected by Spandārmad, Av. Spənta Ārmaiti), shaped like a flat disk, floated on the primeval waters. On it stood the fourth, fifth, and sixth creations, respectively the single plant or tree (protected by Amurdād; Av. Amərətāt), the uniquely created bull (protected by Wahman, Av. Vohu Manah), and the first man, Gayōmard (Av. Gaiiō.marətan, protected by Ohrmazd himself). The seventh creation, fire (protected by Ardwahišt; Av. Aṧa Vahišta), was said (e.g., Bundahišn 3.8) to have permeated all other creations. During the 3,000 years of the period of material creation these creations were motionless, and the sun stood still in the middle of the sky.

Eventually Ahriman successfully renewed his attack. Ohrmazd rescued the “prototypes” (karb) of the plant, bull, and first man by placing them in the heavenly spheres of stars, moon, and sun (Bundahišn 7), but Ahriman penetrated the sky, polluted the waters, made a hole in the earth, caused the plant to wither, killed the bull, attacked and eventually killed Gayōmard, and tainted fire with smoke. Initially he was thus victorious: The world had become dark (Bundahišn 4.22; Dādestān ī dēnīg 36.34; Zādspram 2.11, 2.18-19, 3.1). Then movement entered the world, and Ohrmazd’s creations began to fight back. As a result, Ahriman was said to have been trapped in the sky, which prevented him from reaching the heavenly spheres (Bundahišn 4A; Zādspram 3.2). Night alternated with day. The waters flowed and could thus be purified; salt water was separated from sweet. The mythical lake Frāxwkard (Av. Vourukaṧa) was formed, from which other seas and lakes developed (see below). The earth was anchored by the roots of the mountains that grew up on it. The first rain divided the original landmass into seven continents. The dried first plant was pounded and mixed with water, which caused plant life to develop. More plants are said to have sprung from the limbs of the bull (Bundahišn 6.2), whose seed became the source of animal life. Similarly, Gayōmard’s body produced metals (Bundahišn 6F.8; Mēnōg ī xrad 27.18), and the first human couple developed from his seed. Fire protected the world of righteousness and made life and movement possible; it was closely connected with the concept of xwarrah “fortune, glory” (Zādspram 3.77ff.). All these developments took place in the stage of mixture, the current stage, the total duration of which was to be 3,000 years. At the end of that time the “separation” of evil from good would be achieved, and after a final yasna ceremony (Zādspram 35.15-16; cf. Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 35.29) the renovation ( frašegird ; Av. frašō.kərəti) would begin.

The evidence from the Younger Avesta is too scanty to show conclusively how this myth developed. In a number of passages the creations are enumerated in approximately the same order as in the later tradition (e.g., Y. 19.2.4; Vd. 9.33.42, 11.2.9-10). In some instances fire is omitted altogether (Y. 23.1; Yt. 13.22, 13.28; Visprad 7.4), but elsewhere it is apparently represented by a reference to the dwelling places of the righteous dead (Yt. 13.86) or by the sun (Y. 19.8). The Yasna Haptaŋhāiti equally attests close links among fire, sun, and Aṧa (Y. 37.4, 36). In Yasna 37.1 Ahura Mazdā is worshiped as the creator of “the bull and Aṧa, the waters and plants, those lights and the earth.” Man and fire appear to be represented there by Ahura Mazdā and Aṧa (“those lights” referring to the bright sky; see below). This association strongly suggests an early connection between the creations and the entities (pace Narten, p. 119).

It is widely held that the Gathas contain allusions to such links (Lommel, pp. 120-21; Boyce 1970; idem, Zoroastrianism I, pp. 203-4). The nature of these texts is such, however, that it cannot be conclusively proved or disproved that the dogma of the seven creations formed part of Zoroaster’s teaching. The gathic evidence does agree with that of the later tradition, however, in stressing Ahura Mazdā’s role as the sole creator of the universe (e.g., Y. 43.5, 44.3-5) and in attributing the present state of the world to the destructive activities of the power of evil (Y. 45.1: “The one of evil doctrine shall not destroy existence a second time”; cf. Ahura Mazdā’s epithet ahūm.biš “healer of existence”; Y. 44.16).

Traces of different myths. According to the Pahlavi Rivāyat accompanying the Dādestān ī dēnīg (46; Williams), Ohrmazd placed all the creations into an (apparently human) body, where they gestated. The perfected creations were then brought forth from the different parts of this body. This myth has been connected with the Indian Puruṣa myth (Zaehner, pp. 136-37) and with that of the Iranian first man (Williams). A comparable link between macrocosm and microcosm may be found in the Bundahišn (tr. Anklesaria, 1.a.10), where the earth is said to have been created “in the semblance of a man,” and in Zādspram (30.1), where the human body is likened to the firmament.

Various speculative teachings about the cosmogony have generally been ascribed to the Zurvanite sect. Some of them, however, occur in works deriving from the “orthodox” Zand (notably the Great Bundahišn and Selections of Zādspram), which suggests that they had come to be widely accepted by a majority of Zoroastrian scholars. The Zurvanites held that Zurwān, the god of time, was the first divine being and that it was his primordial sacrifice, accompanied by doubt, that caused Ahriman and Ohrmazd to be born. According to one Zurvanite source (the second ʿOlamāʾ-e Eslām, p. 9, cited in Zaehner, p. 410). Time first created fire and water, and when he brought them together Ohrmazd came into being. The Zurvanite cosmogony appears to have contained more speculative elements than the original “orthodox” cosmogony. Prominent features included the creation of “time of long dominion” (zamān ī dagrand-xwadāy) from “unlimited time” (zamān ī akenārag) and teachings about space (wāy, gyāg) and the firmament (spihr; cf. Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 1.39-49; Zādspram 1.9.28; Zaehner, pp. 88-89, 112-13). The concepts of gestation and emanation appear to have played as prominent a role as did creation in these speculations (e.g. Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 1.39, 1.50; Dēnkard 349.1-2; cf. Zaehner, pp. 371-72). Zurvanite teaching was profoundly influenced by astronomy and astrology; a preoccupation with the zodiac may have inspired the belief in a 12,000-year period of limited time. In Zādspram (34.20), moreover, a sequence of twelve creations is mentioned (see Gignoux, p. 63).

Some western Iranians evidently held the belief that Ohrmazd had originally been incapable of creating light. The demon Mahmī, who had learned the secret from Ahriman, taught him how to beget the sun and moon by intercourse with his mother and sister (for references, see Zaehner, pp. 438ff.).

Furthermore, according to a number of sources, a mediating figure watched over the treaty between the two spirits. Plutarch attributed this function to Mithra, Eznik of Kołb to the sun, and Šahrestānī to the “angels” (cited in Zaehner, pp. 448, 443, 433 respectively). The accounts of Eznik and Šahrestānī are essentially Zurvanite, but in the Avesta a similar function is attributed to Srōš (Av. Sraoša), some of whose features were borrowed from Mithra (Yt. 11.14; cf. Y. 57.17). The concept of a treaty between Ohrmazd and Ahriman (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 1.25-7) may itself have originated in Mithra’s more prominent role as lord of the covenant in a pre-Zoroastrian cosmogony (see below). Mithra, moreover, is to be identified with the “protector” (Av. pāiiu-, Mid. Pers. pānag), who, together with the “fashioner” (Av. Θβōrəštar-, Mid. Pers. brīngar), “fashions all creatures” (Y. 57.2; cf. Y. 42.2; Kreyenbroek, p. 78).

The Avestan hymn to the Frauuaṧis (Yt. 13), though heavily “zoroastrianized,” contains traces of a fundamentally different account of the origin of the world. Because of the Frauuaṧis, it is said, the waters flow, plants grow, the wind blows, children are born to man, and the moon and stars move in their appointed courses (vv. 14-16). The Frauuaṧis help Ahura Mazdā to “hold asunder” (vī.’āraiia-) heaven and earth (v. 2). In verses 55-56 it is stated that after the creation the plants had long been motionless; the Frauuaṧis are praised for having delivered them from this unhappy state. Elsewhere (vv. 77-78) Vohu Manah and Ātar are said to have prevented Angra Mainiiu from attacking the world, “so that he could not stop the waters from flowing, the plants from growing; at once, the very strong waters … flowed forth, the plants grew.” The latter passage appears to indicate that, in an earlier cosmogony, plants and waters had in fact been motionless and without growth until an act of deliverance took place.

The combined evidence from Yašt 13 therefore strongly suggests that, in a pre-Zoroastrian version of the cosmogony, a primordial state in which plants could not grow, men (and presumably animals) did not procreate, and the luminaries stood motionless in a sky (which perhaps pressed upon the earth) was postulated. This static condition was plainly regarded as inferior to the state of growth and motion that was subsequently brought about. The legend of Yima’s triple extension of the earth (Vd. 2.10ff.) also suggests an older myth in which the original creations were freed from their confinement by a positive act at the beginning of time. The implications of such a myth, however, are, strikingly different from those of the “orthodox” Zoroastrian myth, in which the original, motionless state was described as ideal, and motion, procreation, and diversity were indirectly attributed to the incursion of Ahriman.

The origin of the Iranian cosmogonies. Both the drying and pounding of the original plant and the slaying of the bull suggest that a link may have existed between the cosmogony and the yasna ceremony (Boyce, 1970; idem, Zoroastrianism I, p. 141; cf. Ohrmazd’s “spiritual yasna,” Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 3.23).

The yasna ceremony, which originated in the Indo-Iranian period, was essentially intended to create a link between heaven and earth through ritual offerings of the juice of the haoma plant, and initially also through animal sacrifice, in the presence of the life-giving elements water and fire, which also received offerings. The proper time for this rite may have been the early morning, just after sunrise, as it still is in Persia (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 170). Whether or not human sacrifice was ever associated with the yasna ceremony is unknown (cf. Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 141); the myth of the killing of the first man may have developed on analogy with that of the slaying of the bull.

If this ritual served as a model for an ancient Indo-Iranian cosmogony, it may be supposed that the latter encompassed an initial stage in which the prototypes of the creations were motionless and possibly dark (the yasna being performed at sunrise), and that a primordial sacrifice caused vegetable, animal, and human life to grow and multiply, the waters to flow, the earth to be extended, and the luminaries to move in a (perhaps raised) sky, giving light to the world. Although no coherent myth of a primordial sacrifice is attested in the ancient Indian texts, many elements of Vedic cosmogony may have been derived from such a myth: Before the second stage of the cosmogony the world was dark (cf. Ṛgveda 10.129.3); the sun and the cows were hidden in “stone” (áśman; cf. Ir. asman- “stone, sky”; Kuiper, pp. 110-11); and the earth floated on the waters (Kirfel, p. 9), but the waters were also confined. The “second act of creation” liberated the cows and the waters, and brought forth the sun, fire, and soma; soma then generated all plants (MacDonnell, pp. 43, 154). This act was most often ascribed to Indra, who also “made firm” the earth (Ṛgveda 2.12.2), extended it, and supported the sky on high (Oldenberg, p. 148). When Indra “found the light” he was apparently accompanied by the “seven seers” or by the “fathers” (Oldenberg, p. 285), which may point to an original priestly act and to a link with the Iranian Frauuaṧis.

Indra is, however, held by scholars to be a comparatively “young” god (Benveniste and Renou; Thieme, pp. 311-12). It is widely recognized that his creative functions were borrowed from the Asuras Varuṇa and Mithra, the lords of water and fire respectively (cf. Ṛgveda 7.61.4). Varuṇa’s creative functions are still clearly recognizable in the Rigveda (MacDonnell, p. 134). It seems likely, therefore, that the rise of the cult of Indra led to far-reaching distortions of the original myths, causing the link between cosmogony and sacrifice to be forgotten in India, while most of the original features of the myth were retained there and placed in a different setting.

A number of traits of the Vedic Indra were borrowed from Mithra (Thieme, pp. 311-12), and he may have eclipsed the latter in India. In the Zoroastrian tradition it was Mithra’s original element, fire, that caused motion and growth, and he had special links with the sun and with the yasna (Boyce, 1969, pp. 26-27). In Mithraism, which may have been derived at least partly from a non-Zoroastrian western Iranian cult, Mithra played the role of a primordial sacrificer (Hinnells, pp. 310-11). Taken together, these facts suggest that Mithra played a prominent part in the original myth of the primordial sacrifice, possibly setting in motion the creations fashioned by Varuṇa, which would explain his role as “protector” (see above) and perhaps as a mediator, who, by setting the world in motion, became particularly responsible for it.

The role of the original sacrificer in the postulated original myth was mirrored in many ways by that of the Zoroastrian Ahriman. In the Zoroastrian tradition, however, it was Indra, rather than Mithra, who was vehemently rejected, implying that Indra was a prominent divinity in the pre-Zoroastrian pantheon. This rejection also suggests that Zoroaster’s teaching that the second stage of the cosmogony was brought about by the evil spirit may have been inspired by the increasing prominence of myths ascribing creative functions to Indra. In contrast to the “flawed” second stage, Zoroaster stressed the ideal nature of Ahura Mazdā’s original creation. This novel interpretation of the cosmogony not only implied a different understanding of the links between the origin of the world and ritual, but also required fundamental reinterpretation of some elements of the cosmogony.

The origin of light is a case in point. The ancient belief (echoed in the western Iranian legend that Ohrmazd had not created light initially and in the “orthodox” myth of Ahriman’s first victory), that the primordial cosmos was dark and the sun hidden in the dark, stone sky, was incompatible with the Zoroastrian dogma of an ideal first creation. In Zoroastrianism it was therefore taught that Ahura Mazdā created light, that the sun had shone in the middle of heaven before the onslaught of evil, and that the sky was made of rock crystal or shining metal.

The explanation of death as a result of the onslaught of evil largely superseded and rendered meaningless older myths about the origin of death, in which Yima played a central part. Later such a myth apparently became interwoven with a legend similar to that of the Indian Vala (from which the cows were liberated when the world was made habitable). In the Iranian legend (Vd. 2.20ff.) Yima preserved the best men, animals, and plants from the hazards of the world of mixture, in a confined subterranean space (var-). At the end of time, when the world would be restored to its pristine state, Yima’s var- would be opened and would yield up its inhabitants (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 33.30).

Cosmology

Sky, lights, and fire. The ancient Iranians believed that the sun, moon, and stars were set within a stone sky (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 132). The theory of a transparent crystal sky, through which the light of the luminaries could pass, presumably led later scholars to identify the created sky with the “firmament” (spihr; Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 2.2), which was located below the spheres of moon, sun, and endless lights. The firmament was set above the “cloud sphere” and was itself divided into two levels: the sphere of the constellations and above it that of the “unmixed stars,” which had the task of warding off Ahriman’s attacks on the higher reaches of the cosmos (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 2.2-9, 3.7, 6.J). Above the firmament (or “star sphere”; Haug and West, 7.5) came the spheres of the moon, the sun, the Amahraspandān, and the endless lights (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 3.7, 2.13; for minor variations, see Haug and West 8-9; cf. Yt. 12.35-37). Beginning with the star sphere, the upper levels also served as abodes for the souls of the righteous dead (Haug and West, 7-12; cf., e.g., Y. 19.6). Light filtered down from the pure light of Ohrmazd, losing brilliance as it descended through the spheres. The prototypes of the creations were said to have been preserved in the various spheres, and their light reached their terrestrial counterparts (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 7.9; cf. Yt. 8.38, 12.28-29), a theory that may reflect older ideas.

Fire was connected with the endless lights. The link between light, which passed from the prototypes to the creations, and fire, which permeates them, was alluded to. There were thought to be five kinds of fire: fire dwelling with Ohrmazd on high, fire in men and animals, fire in plants, fire in clouds, and earthly fires (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 3.7, 7.9; cf. 18; see ātaš).

The sun, moon, and stars were said to revolve around the peak (tērag) of Harā, which had 180 windows in the east and as many in the west, thus accounting for the 360 days of the ancient Iranian year (Yt. 12.25; Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, V.b.2-3; see below).

Oceans, rain, and rivers. After the onslaught of Ahriman, Tištriia (Mid. Pers. Teštar) swept all the waters together to form the mythical ocean of sweet waters, Vourukaṧa. After an initial defeat by Apaoša, the demon of drought, Tištriia caused the first rain to fall (Zādspram 3.115-16). The ocean Vourukaṧa, which remained in existence, was then “divided” into three salt seas: Pūdīg (Av. Pūitika, lit. “cleansing”), Siyāwbūm, and Kamrōd (Zādspram 3.17ff.; Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 10.7-8). In Sasanian times Pūdīg was identified with the Persian Gulf, Siyāwbūm with the Black Sea, and Kamrōd with the Caspian (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 145). A number of lesser seas and lakes were mentioned in the tradition, notably Kąsaoiia (Mid. Pers. Kayānsīh) and Sadwēs. In the latter Ahrimanic salt water was said to have been separated from sweet water by the wind, so that only sweet water would flow into Vourukaṧa (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 10.9).

In the middle of Vourukaṧa stood Mount Us.həṇdauua (Mid. Pers. Usind; Yt. 8.32; Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 9.8; cf. Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 136 and n. 51). Around it vapors gathered into rain clouds, which were then distributed over the earth. Part of their water came to the peak of Harā and fed the mythical great river Arəδuuī Sūrā (Mid. Pers. Ardwīsūr), which supposedly flowed from the peak of Harā back into Vourukaṧa (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 11.6, 18.8; Zādspram 3.2; cf. Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, pp. 71-74; see anāhīd). Two more great rivers played a prominent role in Zoroastrian cosmology: the Raŋhā (Mid. Pers. Arang) and the Vaŋhᵛī Dāitiiā (Mid. Pers. Wehrōd), which flowed from north to south and formed respectively the western and eastern boundaries of the inhabited world. When the water of these rivers had passed round the earth, it had been cleansed and returned to Vourukaṧa (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 11.1, 11a.1, 11.c.2).

Earth, mountains, and plants. Like the Vedic Indians, the Iranians believed that the earth had been stabilized during the second stage of the creation. In the Zoroastrian tradition mountains were said to have grown up after the onslaught; their roots anchored the earth (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 6.c.1-2). The first mountain range to develop was that of Harā, which encircled the world. According to the Bundahišn (tr. Anklesaria, 9.2), it grew to reach the “highest part of the sky.” There may have been a confusion here with the peak of Harā (Av. Hukairiia, lit. “of good activity,” Mid. Pers. Tērag ī Harburz or Čigād ī Dāidīg; Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 137), the axis around which the luminaries revolved (see alborz ii). The peak grew from the roots of the Harā range in the middle of the earth. The Činwad bridge (Av. Činvatō Pərətu, Mid. Pers. Činwad Puhl; lit. “bridge of the separator”) rested on it (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 5.b.1, 9.9).

The first rain caused the original solid landmass to be divided into seven “continents” (Av. karšuuar-, Mid. Pers. kišwar). XᵛaniraΘa (Mid. Pers. Xwanirah), the central continent, which was inhabited by humanity, was as large as the other six put together. They were scattered around XᵛaniraΘa but cut off from it by seas and mountains (Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 8.1, 8.3-5).

The myth of Mount Us.həṇdauua, standing in the middle of the mythical ocean Vourukaṧa, may reflect a belief that prototypes of natural phenomena existed beyond the known world (on prototypes of the creations and Yima’s var-, see above). The same is true of the mythical “tree of all seeds,” or “tree of Saēna,” which also grew in the middle of Vourukaṧa. It had sprung from the seeds of all the plants brought forth by the pounding of the first plant (Yt. 12.17; Vd. 5.19; Bundahišn, tr. Anklesaria, 6.d.1-5, 16.4, 24.8). Each year the bird Saēna (Mid. Pers. Sēn) mixed its seeds with water, and Tištriia distributed them over the earth.

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY ii. In Mithraism

The cosmogony and cosmology of Mithraism, the mystery cult centered on the god Mithras, which flourished in the Roman empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E., are difficult to determine for two reasons. First, the sacred texts of the cult have all perished, as has almost all contemporary writing about it by outsiders. Reconstructing its cosmology is thus a matter of interpreting its sacred art (statues, reliefs, frescoes), which, though plentiful and complex, has as its primary referent a cycle of myth, not a set of doctrines. Second, there is still, and probably always will be, room for legitimate scholarly disagreement about the extent of the Iranian legacy to Mithraism (for a survey of the question, see Beck, 1984, pp. 2063-71). The classic view is that of Franz Cumont, that Mithraism was essentially “reformed Mazdaism” (p. 104), that its core had been shaped by Iranian magi in Anatolia during the final centuries b.c.e, and that its Western elements were superficial and adventitious (pp. 15-32). Its cosmology (pp. 104-40) was thus an Iranian one, thinly veiled in Greco-Roman guise. This is most apparent in the pantheon of Mithraism. For Cumont each Mithraic divinity was but a mask for an Iranian counterpart (pp. 107-12). The Mithraic Jupiter-Caelus, for example, was really Ohrmazd, and hence he, rather than Mithras, was, after Zurwān (see below), the ruling power of the cosmos. Recent scholarship has generally taken a less thoroughgoing iranizing position. Reinhold Merkelbach, in the latest full monograph on the cult, while recognizing many Iranian borrowings (especially in the area of myth), views Mithraism as a new Western creation, with its cosmology largely determined by Western philosophy, especially Platonism, and by a Western astronomical/astrological outlook (pp. 75-77, 193-244). He concludes that “there is no trace of Ahura Mazdā” (p. 75; see Gordon, 1975, for the most effective critique of Cumont’s iranizing interpretations; Widengren, 1966, 1980, for succinct reaffirmations; and Turcan, pp. 12-25, 94-114, for a well-presented intermediate position; Campbell postulated an extremely detailed Iranian cosmology behind all aspects of Mithraic iconography, but his work, though valuable in parts, commands little credence overall).

That Mithraism had an elaborate cosmology, central to its doctrines, is proven first by the structure of its cult shrines (mithraea), which took the form of caves (real or artificial) because, as Porphyry (6) stated, the cave is an “image of the cosmos.” For this reason mithraea were equipped with “symbols of the cosmic elements and climates set at appropriate intervals.” They functioned, in effect, as cosmic models, a fact borne out by certain of the actual excavated exemplars, notably the “Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres” at Ostia (Gordon, 1976). Mithraic art is indeed replete with symbols of the great constituents of the universe, significantly deployed: the seven planets, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the sun and moon (which also figure as persons in the myth cycle; and, of course, in the cult Mithras is himself deus sol invictus Mithras “the invincible sun god”), the wind gods (as symbols of the four quarters of the world), the seasons (with the celestial bodies, symbols of time), the four physical elements, and so on. Cosmology was important in Mithraism because it impinged directly both on its cult life (each of the seven grades of initiation was under the protection of one of the planets) and on its doctrine of the destiny of souls (a Mithraic symbolon of a “seven-gated ladder with an eighth gate on top” represented the passage of souls through the spheres of the seven planets and the single sphere of the fixed stars beyond; Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22). (On all these matters see, most conveniently, Beck, 1988.)

Mithraic art also suggests an elaborate cosmogony, the cardinal event of which was the slaying of a bull by Mithras. This bull slaying is the subject of the famous central icon in Mithraism (see Plate IX). Although Mithra’s deed was undoubtedly cosmogonic in some sense, there is considerable dispute as to whether it actually created the world (Merkelbach, pp. 193-206; see also Bellelli) or ordered and vivified a world that Zurwān or Ohrmazd had already created (Cumont, pp. 107-8; Turcan, pp. 103-4). Mithras was indeed called the “maker and father of all,” who “created” (edēmiourgēse) the cosmos (Porphyry, 6; see Giuffré Scibona), but the exoteric and philosophical provenance of the information has put it in question (Turcan, pp. 94-95). More than any other episode in the cycle, the bull slaying has important Iranian parallels, which are also cosmogonic. In the Bundahišn (TD ₂, p. 68.1-12; tr. Anklesaria, chap. 6E, pp. 80-81) useful plants and beasts are said to have been created from the marrow and sperm of a primal bull, which were first purified in the moon. In the Mithraic bull slaying the moon goddess is a witness to the deed (bull and moon are also closely related astrologically), and the bull’s life-giving fluids in the form of blood and sperm are also indicated, the former by the dripping wound at which a dog and a snake dart upward, the latter by the presence of a scorpion seizing the genitals. To be noted, too, is the magical transformation of the tip of the bull’s tail into cars of wheat. In the myth of the Bundahišn, however, it is the evil Ahriman who slays the bull, not the good Mithras. The question, then, is whether it was Mithraism that altered the myth (Cumont) or the Bundahišn (a comparatively late source, probably compiled in the 8th and 9th centuries) that records a change from an original Iranian cosmogony accurately reflected in Mithraism (Lommel; for a summary of the question, see Merkelbach, pp. 9-14). (On further cosmological dimensions of the bull-slaying scene, in particular its astronomical/astrological significance, see Beck, 1984, pp. 2081-83; Ulansey.)

Plate IX. Relief of the bull-slaying Mithras in the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus, Rome. Photograph Musei Capitolini.View full image in a new tab

Finally, certain peculiarly Mithraic deities must be mentioned, for, according to the most probable interpretations, they encapsulate important cosmological principles. First is a pair of deities who are found flanking the bull slaying, one bearing an upright and the other an inverted torch; they are named Cautes and Cautopates (for possible Iranian etymologies, see Schwartz). They represent the principles of opposition and polarity (sunrise and sunset, summer and winter, growth and waning, and so on), which Mithras, set symbolically at his “proper seat at the equinoxes” (Porphyry, 24), controls and reconciles (Beck, 1984, pp. 2084-86). Second, numerous representations, mostly statues, of a formidable lion-headed deity whose body is wrapped in the coils of a snake have been discovered. Unfortunately, with one ambiguous exception (Vermaseren, nos. 833-34; see Beck, 1984, pp. 203-4), no dedications have preserved its name. There is general agreement, however, that the image symbolizes time (or eternity), cosmic sovereignty, and perhaps control over the processes of ascent through the celestial spheres (for a survey, see Beck, 1984, pp. 2086-89). Cumont (pp. 107-10), on his general principle that Mithraic gods are all Iranian gods in disguise, affirmed that the lion-headed god is the god of time Zurwān, parent of Ohrmazd and Ahriman, and the ultimate cause of the universe. Cosmologically, Mithraism would thus be an offshoot of Zurvanism. An alternative identification, first proposed by I. F. Legge, is that the god is actually Ahriman, purged perhaps of his exclusively evil connotations. The view is supported by dedications (unfortunately without accompanying statues) to a god “Arimanius” (Vermaseren, nos. 222, 369). These at least confirm that Ahriman played some role in the cosmology of the cult, whether or not the lion-headed god is he. Mithras, according to Plutarch (De Iside 46), was the median god (mesitēs) between Ōromasdēs and Areimanios. (For a syncretistic interpretation that reconciles a number of identifications, see Duchesne-Guillemin.)

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iii. In Manicheism

Manicheism, like contemporary Zoroastrianism and various gnostic sects, offered a detailed cosmogonic myth, or cosmology. Although Mani (b. Babylon 216, executed probably 277 through the machinations of the Zoroastrian clergy and the high priest Kerdīr) claimed that his teaching would provide answers to all the riddles of the world, the principal aim of the cosmogonic myth was narrower, to provide answers to the primary existential questions about the origins of evil and of man, as well as about the role of man in the world.

Texts. Manichean cosmogony is known from a variety of primary and secondary sources. The versions represented in these sources reflect the same basic ideas, though differing in some details and in what is included or omitted. For example, Mani’s cosmogony remained a closed system from its beginning in Mesopotamia and Persia throughout the history of the faith, among his followers in both the west (Egypt and North Africa) and in the east (Central Asia, Chinese Turkestan, and China). His own mother tongue was Aramaic (Syriac), and he wrote in this language, except for Šābuhragān, written in Middle Persian, the official language of the Sasanian empire, for the benefit and honor of King Šāpūr I (241-72). Mani discussed his cosmogony in several of his writings, including Šābuhragān (note the quotation from this work in Šahrestānī, p. 192; Taqīzāda and Afšār Šīrāzī, p. 244; Adam, p. 6 text b) and the Epistula Fundamenti (see, e.g., Feldmann, pp. 12-21). Of his original writings only parts of the Šābuhragān have survived in fragmentary manuscripts; other works are known only from translations or extracts in texts in a variety of other languages. His western followers wrote in Syriac, Coptic, and Latin; his eastern followers in Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Turkish, and Chinese (see chinese turkestan vii); and his Christian and Zoroastrian critics, as well as Christian and Muslim historians, in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Pahlavi, Persian, and Arabic. Unfortunately, unless the original source is mentioned by these authors (e.g., Bīrūnī, Āṯār, p. 208; Šahrestānī, explicitly citing Šabuhragān; cf. Hutter, pp. 159-60), it cannot be determined from which of Mani’s works they took their information.

Some of the most important texts containing descriptions of or references to Manichean cosmology will be mentioned here. The cosmogonic account in Šābuhragān can be reconstructed from fragments published by F. W. K. Müller (pp. 37-43; Salemann, 1908, pp. 16-17; cf. Jackson, pp. 22-73; Sundermann, 1979, pp. 97-98; Boyce, Reader, pp. 60-62) and by W. B. Henning (Mir. Man. I, pp. 175-222; cf. Boyce, Reader, pp. 63-87). Numerous other Middle Persian and Parthian fragments of cosmogonic texts, in both prose and verse, have been published, notably by Carl Salemann (1912, pp. 7-14: a fragmentary hymn in Middle Persian with some admixture of Parthian, later analyzed by Jackson and reedited and translated by Henning, 1932; cf. Boyce, Reader, pp. 100-101), Mary Boyce (1951; 1952; cf. Reader, pp. 94-100), and Werner Sundermann (1973, pp. 11-80). A few fragments from the beginning of the Parthian Manohmed rōšn wifrās (Sermon of the Light Nous) contain cosmological matter (Sundermann, 1973, pp. 54-57), and a fragmentary Sogdian manuscript published by Henning (1948) contains a detailed description of the World of Light. The Old Turkish text published by Albert von Le Coq (pp. 7-17) includes an account of the rescue of First Man (see below). In the Chinese “traité manichéen” (actually a translation of Manohmed rošn wifrās) there is a summary of Manichean cosmology (Chavannes and Pelliot; Schmidt-Glintzer, pp. 77-80). Finally, the Coptic Manichean texts include a cosmological passage in the Manichean Psalm Book (Psalm 223; Allberry, pp. 9-11) and discussions of individual questions in the Kephalaia (esp. pp. 6-7, 17-18, 23, 31-35, 44-45, 53, 55, 56).

Descriptions of Manichean cosmogony can be found in two Greek texts, a refutation of Manichean doctrine by Alexander of Lycopolis (ca. 300 c.e.) and Acta Archelai (see archelaus) by Hegemonius (probably composed in the first half of the 4th century, with a Latin translation from the end of the century), and in the Latin works of Augustine (354-430), which contain numerous references to Manichean doctrine, especially in Contra Epistulam Fundamenti (Against the Letter concerning the beginning; pp. 193-248; for attempts to identify fragments of the Epistula Fundamenti, a Manichean text current among North African Manicheans, see Decret, pp. 107-23; Feldmann). At the end of the 8th century the Christian Theodore Bar Kōnay (pp. 313.10-318.4; tr. in Cumont, I; tr. Hespel and Draguet, pp. 234-37; cf. Jackson, pp. 221-54; Adam, pp. 15-23), who wrote in Syriac, described the Manichean system, “in order to shame the faces of the Manichaeans” (Jackson, p. 222); if his account was based on original Manichean writings in Syriac, it may contain terms actually used by Mani himself. The late Zoroastrian Škand-gumānīg wizār (Exposition intended to smash all doubts, possibly of the late 9th century; ed. de Menasce, pp. 226-61; cf. Jackson, pp. 174-201), a critique of religions other than Zoroastrianism, also contains a chapter devoted to refutation of the Manichean heresy (ērang). The three most famous Muslim authors who discussed Manicheism in the 10th and 11th centuries were Ebn al-Nadīm (Fehrest, ed. Flügel, I, pp. 329-31, cf. pp. 52-58, 86-90; tr. Dodge, II, pp. 777-83), Bīrūnī (Āṯār, passim; 1885-86, passim), and Šahrestānī (pp. 620-28; tr., pp. 625-26; cf. Taqīzāda and Afšār Šīrāzī, pp. 240-44).

(For collections of source texts see especially Adam [Greek and Latin texts, translations of Iranian, Syriac, and Arabic texts], Taqīzāda and Afšār Šīrāzī [Arabic and Persian texts], and the translations in Böhlig and Asmussen, pp. 103-56; Asmussen, 1975, pp. 113-42; and Klimkeit, pp. 57-99).

The classic studies of the Manichean cosmogonic myth are those by H. J. Polotsky and Henri-Charles Puech, who, however, argued that all the versions could be traced to a single original (see also Jonas, pp. 209-28; Rudolph, pp. 336-39; for succinct surveys with notes, see Asmussen, 1965, pp. 12-14; Boyce, Reader, pp. 4-10, the latter with a useful table of the members of the different creations and their Iranian names). The most complete and detailed description of the Manichean worldview remains that of A. V. W. Jackson (pp. 22-73), which also includes drawings. Manfred Hutter’s work is a detailed reexamination of the Iranian cosmogonic texts. Reinhold Merkelbach has also contributed important new interpretations.

The Manichean system. Bar Kōnay provided a succinct description in Syriac of the Manichean cosmology. (Arabic technical terms in the following discussion have been drawn from the Fehrest; Latin terms, chiefly from Hegemonius, are common in the scholarly literature; for the Iranian names of deities, demons, and men, see Sundermann, 1979.) Before the cosmos was created there were two natures (Syr. kyānīn, Mid. Pers. bun, Ar. kawnān): that of the Father of Greatness (Syr. abā d.rabbūtā, Lat. bonus pater, pater ingenitus, Mid. Pers. bay zarwān, pid ī wazargīh, etc., Ar. malek jenān al-nūr) and that of the King of Darkness (Syr. mlekḥeššōkā, Mid. Pers. Ahriman, Ar. Šayṭān), each with his five attendant worlds. When the King of Darkness sought to invade the Realm of Light, the Father of Greatness adopted countermeasures, which, through a series of “evocations,” ultimately led to the creation of the world. In order to understand subsequent developments, it is important to keep in mind that all these evocations, or creations, were derived from the Father, that is, the original Light itself, and identical with it (Augustine: una substantia “of one and the same substance”). The Father of Greatness evoked from himself the Mother of Life (Syr. emmā d.ḥayyē, Lat. mater vitae, Mid. Pers. mādar ī zīndagān, Ar. omm al-eḥyāʾ), who in turn evoked the First (or Primal) Man (Syr. nāšā qadmāyā, Lat. primus homo, Mid. Pers. ohrmizdbay, Parth. mard hasēnag, etc., Ar. al-ensān al-qadīm), who, as an evocation of the Father himself, is also his “soul”; the Mother of Life and the First Man constituted the First Creation. The First Man and his sons, the Five Resplendent Gods (Syr. ḥamšā elāhē zīwānē; Mid. Pers. mahrāspandān: air or breeze, wind, light, water, fire), then went into battle against the King of Evil and his five sons. When the powers of Darkness came against the World of Light, First Man and his sons offered themselves to them as a meal (Syr. l.mēkultā, Mid. Pers. sūr ī xwaš; Sundermann, 1973, p. 18), “as somebody mixes poison in a cake to give to his enemy” (or as bait to catch fish; see Puech, p. 169 n. 311). The five sons of First Man were then literally swallowed or devoured by the five sons of Darkness, with the result that a part of the Light became imprisoned in the Darkness. The First Man, however, was only rendered unconscious by the Darkness and soon regained consciousness and pleaded with the Father of Greatness for the rescue of the Light. This plea led to the Second Creation, of the Friend of the Lights (Syr. ḥabbīb nahīrē, Mid. Pers. rōšnān dōšist or xwārist, Ar. ḥabīb al-anwār), the Great Builder (Syr. bān rabbā, Mid. Pers. rāz ī wuzurg, Parth. bāmyazad, Ar. al-bannāʾ al-kabīr), and the Living Spirit (Syr. rūḥā ḥayyā, Lat. spiritus vivens, Mid. Pers. wāxš zīndag, Parth. wād žīwandag, Ar. rūḥ al-ḥayāt). The Mother of Life and the Living Spirit together rescued the First Man. First, the Living Spirit called down to the First Man; his call split the darkness like a sword and uncovered the First Man, who responded to it; as this exchange of greetings is in metrical form, it may be from an original poem by Mani. The call (Syr. qāryā, Mid. Pers. xwandag, mizdagtāzyazad, Parth. xruštag, Ar. al-ṣawt) and the response (Syr. ʿanyā, Mid. Pers. azdegar yazad, Parth. padwāxtag) ascended to the Mother of Life, who donned the response, “her beloved son,” and the Living Spirit, who donned the call. (According to Ebn al-Nadīm the call “became another god,” the Enthymesis of life, Mid. Pers. handēšišn ī zīndag, the power that at the end of the world will gather the remaining Light and arrange for it to be brought back to the Realm of Light; its opposite, the Enthymesis of death, is equal to the greedy spirituality of matter; see below.) The Living Spirit and the Mother of Life, assuming the function of demiurges, then formed from the bodies of the slain demons eight worlds and from their skins eleven heavens (ten spheres and the zodiac). Other demons were imprisoned in the worlds and the heavens, and the task of watching over and protecting the regions of the world was assigned to the five sons of the Living Spirit (hence their names in Mid. Pers.: Dahibed, Pāhragbed, Zandbed, Wished, Mānbed). The Living Spirit then revealed himself to the captured demons, or archons (the so-called “seduction of the archons”), which caused them to emit some of the Light that they had swallowed, and from some of this Light he made the “ships” of sun and moon. From the remainder of the Light emitted by the archons he created the “wheels” of wind, water, and fire, as well as other parts of a cosmic machine constructed for the deliverance (Mid. Pers. uzēnišn; Mir. Man. II, p. 296) of the still-imprisoned Light. At the request of the Mother of Life, the First Man, and the Living Spirit, the Father of Greatness then called forth the Third Creation, the Third Messenger (Syr. izgaddā, Lat. tertius legatus, Mid. Pers. narēsahyazad, Parth. hridīg frēštag, etc.), who evoked the twelve maidens (Syr. btultē, Mid. Pers. kanīgān rōšnān). The Third Messenger arranged to set the two “ships” (sun and moon) and the three “wheels” in motion, and, as the “ships” reached the middle of the sky, he showed himself naked to the male and female archons in female and male form respectively; because of their lecherous nature they began to emit (through ejaculation and abortion, according to the long Middle Persian text) the remaining Light, the Light Soul, though mingled with some of their own sin, “like a hair in the dough.” The Third Messenger then covered his manifestations and separated the sin from the Light. The sin fell to the earth, half on wet and half on dry land. What fell onto wet land became a horrible dragon (Mid. Pers. azdahāg, see aûdahā i); the fourth son of the Living Spirit (Light Adamas, Sogd. wašaγni βaγi < O.Ir. vṛΘragna) went to war against it and conquered it. What fell onto dry land became demons, plants, and animals. At the conclusion of a series of cannibalistic and sexual acts among the demonic creations Ašaqlūn and Nebrōʾēl (Namrāʾēl; see āsrēštār), incarnations of the principle of Lust itself (Mid. Pers. āz ), which was also identical with matter (Greek hylē), fashioned the first two people in the image of the Third Messenger, Adam (Mid. Pers. noxwīr, lit. “first man”) and Eve (Mid. Pers. farrahān srīgar, lit. “the female of the glories”). In this way, through continuous fragmentation of the Light Soul by means of procreation, they endeavored to render redemption more difficult and to keep it forever imprisoned in the demonic creation, the human body. The Light Soul was also called World Soul, because imprisoned in the world, and Living Soul or Living Self (Mid. Pers. grīw zīndag, etc.), in contrast to matter, which belonged to death; the human body, however, was called “corpse” (Mid. Pers. nasā, contrasted to gyān “soul”; see, e.g., Boyce, Reader, p. 75). In the same way that the Living Spirit aroused and redeemed the First Man, Jesus the Splendor (Syr. Išōʿ Zīwānā, Mid. Pers. Xradešahryazad), an emanation of the Third Messenger, then awakened Adam from his deathlike sleep and showed him the way to salvation. With this event the history of mankind began.

The most important omission in Bar Kōnay’s account is that of any mention of the Column of Glory (Syr. esṭūn šubaḥ [mentioned by St. Ephrem], Lat. columna gloriae, Parth. bāmistūn, Ar. ʿamūd al-sobḥ), also called the Perfect Man (Mid. Pers. mard īg ispurr, Lat. vir perfectus), an evocation of the Third Messenger, through which the portions of the Light scattered through the world were purified and carried up to the moon, whence they ascended into the ship of the sun and thence into the New Paradise of Light (Polotsky, col. 255). These concepts are, however, mentioned in several other texts.

Bar Kōnay’s source appears to have been one of Mani’s Syriac works, for the long Middle Persian text that appears to be part of Šābuhragān (see above) contains a much more complete and detailed description. In the latter the Column of Glory appears as the World-Bearing God (kišwarwār-yazad) and perhaps also as the Upward-Leading God (abar-ahrām [yazad]), as well as with a Zoroastrian appellation, srōš-ahrāy. The description of the redemption of the Light is not very clear, however. Instead of the twelve Light Maidens mentioned by Bar Kōnay, there is reference to the female incarnation of God (srīgar-kirb čihr ī yazadān), that is, the Light Maiden, who is an aspect of the Third Messenger. Another noteworthy feature of this text not mentioned by Bar Kōnay is the connection between the cosmogony and calendrical speculations stimulated by the Aramaic Enoch writings (Tubach; see aḵnuᵛkǰ), as well as a travesty of the biblical creation story within the framework of a description of the demonic creation of the first human couple (Mir. Man. I, p. 200).

The detailed Middle Persian work of cosmogonic content published by Sundermann (1973, pp. 11-37, text no. 1) was probably also based on a work by Mani; the fragmentary nature of the text, the complexity of its language, and the comparatively large number of unfamiliar words make it very difficult to understand, but it appears to contain passages related to the sacrifice of the First Man, the “seduction of the archons,” and the arrangement of macrocosmos and microcosmos (see below). Among the many other cosmogonic fragments published by Sundermann is a detailed description (1973, pp. 37-41 text no. 2) of the creation of the world by the Living Spirit (Mihr-yazad).

A second group of texts, preserved in Middle Persian, Parthian, and Turkish in versions that are closely related but not identical, may not have been based directly on Mani’s writings. In these texts the sacrifice of the First Man and his sons is described in terms of the heroic and victorious struggle of a ruler and his entourage, while the aspects of sacrifice and suffering remain in the background (Sundermann, 1973, pp. 41-54 texts nos. 3-4).

Characteristics of Manichean cosmogony and anthropogony. The doctrine of two original principles exposed Manicheism to occasional criticism for being dyotheistic (Polotsky, col. 250). The two principles were never regarded as of equal importance, however; the powers of Darkness always proved inferior to those of the Light. For example, the First Man, though merely a part of the Light, dared to descend into the very depths of the Darkness and face it in its totality. The demons, who had left their world to invade the Realm of Light, were all bound in the precosmic mingling and thus came into the cosmos of the Living Spirit as into a prison, not as rulers. The powers of Darkness did for a while display their evil might, yet, with the establishment of the world as a mechanism for redemption, their final defeat was already a certainty. Man was created as a defensive act by the she-demon Lust only out of fear that the conquered Light might escape, but instead of an eternal prison for the Living Self man became the means of salvation. The world of Darkness will never again be as it was before the prehistoric battle, whereas the world of Light suffered only one loss and a temporary change in its nature.

In Manichean cosmogony and anthropogony, the creation of the world by gods and the creation of man by demons were recognized as mirror images of a sort. Man, as microcosm (Mid. Pers. nasā and šahr ī kōdag, Parth. zambudīg kašūdag), was an imitation of the macrocosm (Mid. Pers. nasā ī wuzurg, Parth. zambudīg wuzarg; Sundermann, 1973, pp. 25-33, 57, cf. idem, 1983, pp. 232-33; cf. Kephalaion 70). The macrocosm and microcosm had in common their construction from demonic matter, yet the world became a prison for demons under the rule of the Perfect Man or the Column of Glory, and man became a prison for Light under the rule of Lust. Although there was thus no opportunity for the demons to overthrow the cosmic order, the rule of Lust in man could be overthrown by the interference of the Light Nous, and the New Man could be called into being (see Kephalaion 33, esp. pp. 96-97). Equally, although the macrocosm primarily hindered the demons from invading the Realm of Light by confining them in the matter they caused to be created, the microcosm, created from the same matter, became the most effective instrument for the escape of Light from confining matter. Man’s fate was thus the central concern of Manichean cosmology and soteriology.

The similarities in soteriological functions of the various creations sometimes led to the transfer of motifs and names from one to another. The deities of the Third Creation effected the release and salvation of the Light trapped in the cosmos in the same way that the Living Spirit and the Mother of Life of the First Creation had effected the salvation of the First Man, who embodied the major part of the Light trapped before the cosmos was created. In Bar Kōnay’s text the Living Spirit, by displaying himself to the demons in order to cause them to emit the light they had swallowed, anticipated the similar methods of the Third Messenger (see above). Finally, in the Chinese text, in which other parts of the cosmogonic myth are also distorted, the Living Spirit (jing feng “pure wind”) was transformed into the Holy Spirit, that is, the Light Nous (Mid. Pers. wahman or farrah ī dēn, Parth. manohmēd rōšn) of the Third Creation. These phenomena have not yet been systematically examined, nor is it known whether they can be ascribed to Mani himself or result from later speculations.

If cosmogony is defined as the creation of the world and the time in which it exists, then, to the Manicheans, this event was not the “beginning.” The struggle between Light and Darkness and the suffering of the Living Soul began before the cosmos was formed. Similarly, the redemption of the Living Soul, that is, the return of the Light to its origin, was not completed before the end of the cosmos. According to Kephalaion 39, the redeemed Light would abide for a while in the New Paradise of Light (like a tribe of nomads traveling from place to place; Mir. Man. III, p. 850), a creation of the Great Builder (cf. Mid. Pers. nōgšahrāfur-yazad), before it returns to the realm of the Father of Greatness. Cosmogony was thus viewed in Manicheism as one stage in a long process of salvation, its exact function being, first, to protect the Realm of Light from the attacks of the powers of Darkness and, second, to restore, as far as possible, the world of Light in its original integrity.

Sources for Mani’s cosmogonic ideas. According to Mani, knowledge (Gk. gnôsis, Mid. Pers. dānišn) was a prerequisite for salvation (see, e.g., Mir. Man. II, pp. 297-99; Boyce, Reader, pp. 88-89; tr. in Asmussen, 1975, pp. 7-8). Manicheism was, as noted, anticosmic and antimaterial, and it contained the idea of a Soul that had somehow become separated from its original homeland and fallen into a degenerate world, as in a Parthian hymn to the Living Self: “I am of the Light and the Gods, and I have become exiled from them. The enemies fell upon me and led me into corpses” (Mir. Man. III, p. 874; Boyce, Reader, p. 106; cf., e.g., the summary of the Valentinian speculation in bardesanes; on the characteristic features of gnosticism, see, e.g., Puech, pp. 69-72; Rudolph, pp. 53-59). What distinguished Manicheism from other gnostic teachings, however, was the concept of two active and independent worlds of Light and Darkness, separate from the outset, and the attribution of the fall of the Soul into the worldly sphere, not to a progressive degeneration of the Light, as in several other gnostic speculations, but rather to the attack of evil upon the world of Light. On this particular point Mani’s cosmogony is strongly reminiscent of Zoroastrian cosmology as described in the Pahlavi texts, and it has been repeatedly argued that Mani borrowed numerous details from Zoroastrianism. On this basis, Hans Jonas (pp. 236-37) characterized Manicheism as an “Iranian” type of gnosis (cf. Rudolph, pp. 335-36). Dependence upon Zoroastrian ideas—as they are known chiefly from the 8th-9th-century Pahlavi books—is most certainly clear in the framework for the cosmogonic events, the strict dualism between Light and Darkness and between good and evil (also characteristic of the Mandeans of Mesopotamia [Rudolf, p. 65] and the Mazdakites [see iv, below]), but perhaps also for the course of history, in which three phases are distinguished: first separation of Light from Darkness, their mingling, and renewed separation (see, e.g., Widengren, 1978, pp. 312-13), though the contents of these three phases differ considerably in the two systems.

In many instances the similarities are more superficial, however, and more closely reflect the Iranian terminology used than actual identical functions; it thus may not be possible to go as far as Geo Widengren, who repeatedly argued (e.g., 1978, pp. 307, 314; 1961, pp. 48-50; 1965, p. 300) that all the basic mythological features of Manichean cosmogony are in keeping with those of Zurvanism, the Zoroastrian heresy; in one version of the latter Zurwān, the god of time, was the father of Ohrmazd, and, according to another, he was the father of both Ohrmazd and Ahriman. Gherardo Gnoli has argued that, if the Zoroastrian features were removed, there would be nothing left of the Manichean system (pp. 74-75). At the other extreme Alexander Böhlig has considered the alternative possibility that Mani’s dualism was no more than a sharp dialectical intensification of gnostic mythology (p. 29). As in Zoroastrianism, evil was seen as the cause for the creation of the world, but, whereas in Zoroastrianism this material world (gētīg) was a creation of Ohrmazd, man an auxiliary to the divine, and its ethic based on life in the world, in Manicheism the world was a prison for demons made from demons and man a creation of demons. The Manichean worldview was therefore materialistic and negative (cf., e.g., Bianchi, pp. 13-18) and its ethic ascetic and hostile to the world.

As for the division of history into three phases, not mentioned in the extant Avesta, the similarities between the two religions are also not very great. Widengren emphasized the “mixture” (Mid. Pers. gumēzišn) of matter, which is prominent in Zoroastrian teachings, and traced the Manichean phases to such a pattern (1961, p. 71; 1965, p. 307; 1978, pp. 306-7). The concept of “mixture” is applied in very different contexts in the two religions, however: In Manicheism “mixture” refers to the imprisonment of the Living Self in demonic matter, whereas in Zoroastrianism it refers to a period of 3,000 years when “the will of both Ohrmazd and Ahriman would prevail” (Bundahišn, ed. Anklesaria, pp. 8-11). In eastern Manicheism, where the doctrine was often simply called “the teaching of the two principles and the three ages” (cf. Asmussen, 1965, pp. 174-75, 196, 220), the first age was the time from before the principles of Light and Darkness met until the fall of the First Man, and the second encompassed the time between the rescue of the First Man and the final separation of the principles. There are some indications that this doctrine of three phases was current in western Manicheism as well (Koenen), which could point to Zoroastrian influence and thus support Widengren’s view, but a totally different version of the three ages, though no doubt equally old, is to be found in the seventeenth Kephalaion, in which they are said to correspond to the First, Second, and Third Creations (Nagel, pp. 201-7; Henrichs, pp. 190-96). The second age (that of mixture) would thus refer to the original mixture of Light with Darkness through the defeat of the five sons of the First Man, not to the creation of man and the historical period in which man lives.

As Zoroastrian theology is known mainly from texts that are much later than the 3rd century c.e., it is also possible that some of the similarities between the two religions may reflect the influence of Manicheism upon Zoroastrianism. One example of such influence is the function of āz “greed” in Zoroastrianism, where it does not seem to be derived from Avestan āzi (masculine) but rather from the Manichean female principle of Lust (Sundermann, 1986, pp. 15-16).

Details of the Manichean myth reveal greater similarities with the cosmogonic and anthropological teachings of Bardesanes than with Zoroastrianism, suggesting that he may have been the most significant source of inspiration for Mani (Drijvers; Aland). Finally, the uniqueness of Mani’s teaching about the aborted demons, fallen from heaven as creators of human beings, can be traced back to Jewish Enoch literature (Henning, 1943, p. 53; Stroumsa, pp. 153-54, 158-67).

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY iv. In the Mazdakite religion

The most important source for modern knowledge of Mazdakite cosmogony is the description of the Mazdakite religion in Ketāb al-melal wa’l-neḥal, written by Abu’l-Fatḥ Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Karīm Šahrestānī (pp. 192-94; tr. pp. 663-66), in 624/1227, several hundred years after the period in which the sect flourished. Ehsan Yarshater (pp. 1006-12) has gleaned a few additional details from other Arabic sources (Maqdesī, Nawbaḵtī, Ebn al-Nadīm).

Šahrestānī’s description can be summarized as follows: Light and darkness are the two “modes of being and principles” (al-kawnān wa’l-aṣlān) that existed before the world. Light acts intentionally and voluntarily and is endued with knowledge and perception, whereas darkness acts blindly (be’l-ḵabṭ) and at random (be’l-ettefāq); darkness is ignorant (jāhel) and blind (aʿmā). The mixture of light and darkness came about by chance and at random (ʿala’l-ettefāq wa’l-ḵabṭ); at the end of the world the separation of these principles will also come about by chance and not through free will (be’l-eḵtīār). After some comments on Mazdakite ethics Šahrestānī’s discussion of cosmogony continues: The three primal elements are water, earth, and fire. The mixture of these elements has resulted in a guiding force of good (modabber al-ḵayr) and a guiding force of evil (modabber al-šarr). These forces are not to be equated with the two principles, however. Because they effect the good and the evil in the elements, they can be regarded rather as demiurges that have formed the world.

Šahrestānī then turned to description of the Mazdakite “object of veneration” (maʿbūdohū) and hierarchy. This aspect of Mazdakite cosmology has been distorted to a greater degree than any other by errors in transmission and has therefore been the subject of repeated controversy (see, e.g., Christensen, p. 249 n. 3; Altheim and Stiehl, pp. 360-76; Klíma, 1957, pp. 183-92; idem, 1977, pp. 32-39; Shaki, 1985, pp. 527-43; Yarshater, pp. 997-98, 1006-8). The most recent annotated translation, by Daniel Gimaret and Guy Monnot, represents significant progress over earlier versions in that the problem of the “twelve spiritual beings” has been convincingly solved (p. 664 n. 58). In the text the “object of veneration” is compared with the ḵosrow, or king, of the Sasanians. Arrayed before him are the four powers: discernment (al-tamyīz), understanding (al-fahm), memory (al-ḥefẓ), and joy (al-sorūr). They are comparable to the four highest dignitaries at the Sasanian court, the high priest (mōbedān mōbed), the great teacher (hērbed al-akbar), the commander of the army (esbahbed), and the (court) musician (rāmešgar).

The four powers govern the world through seven ministers (wozarāʾ); the Middle Persian titles for these beings have not yet been fully explained. The seven are the commander (sālār), the provost (pēškār, var. pēšgāh), the unidentified bʾlwn, the messenger(?; brvʾn, i.e., parwān(ag)), the expert (kārdān), the statesman (dastūr), and the page (kōdag, lit. “little one”). These ministers are said to “revolve” within the twelve “spiritual” beings (rūḥānīyūn), whose names are all Middle Persian present participles (e.g., ḵᵛānanda “the announcer”). They have been identified with the twelve signs of the zodiac by all interpreters. The most convincing readings appear to be those of Gimaret and Monnot (Šahrestānī, tr., pp. 664-65), though perhaps instead of *āb-deh as the name for Aquarius the reading should be *āb-baranda “water carrier.” Finally, Šahrestānī reported that the ruler of the upper world governs by means of those letters that represent the sum of his name, probably a reference to alphabetic numerals, though which alphabet is not clear (for a different interpretation, see Altheim and Stiehl, pp. 374-76).

Šahrestānī’s recital of the divine powers begins with a comparison of the upper levels of the hierarchy to the court of the Sasanian kings, a type of presentation that has parallels in other teachings (see Tardieu). It then shifts to astrological theology, in which the twelve signs of the zodiac constitute the lowest level of the divine world. It is reasonable to assume that the seven powers “revolving within them” are the planets, but this conclusion cannot be confirmed on the basis of their names (pace Shaki, 1985, pp. 535-36). Despite the imbalance in this system, the series four-seven-twelve probably forms a unified whole.

There are two salient characteristics of Mazdakite cosmogony. The first is a sharply dualistic frame of reference similar to that in Mazdaism or Manicheism: light and darkness as original principles, two demiurges that result from the mixture of the elements and effect the good and evil in the elements. The second is a theology of the created world in which the divine entity acts through four, seven, and twelve beings respectively. This scheme was probably derived from the ideas of Mazdean astronomy: the four “generals” of the heavens (de Saussure; Henning, p. 230; see astrology and astronomy ii, p. 866), the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. The identity of the supreme being in this hierarchy (corresponding to the polar star, the grand commander, in astronomy) remains unclear. It can hardly be a personification of the supreme light, because it acts itself directly on the earthly world. The fact that the supreme being rules through the power of the stars and is not limited by a “guiding force of evil” speaks against identifying it with the good demiurge. Could Mazdak’s “object of veneration” have been a third order of divine beings, or did Šahrestānī or his sources combine heterogeneous traditions? The matter is still open to debate.

Nor is it certain how precisely Šahrestānī’s description reflects actual Mazdakite doctrine, which came into existence around the year 500, and to what degree it incorporated later traditions. The image of a divine hierarchy on the model of the Sasanian court suggests a Sasanian or somewhat later source. The reference to the king by a proper name, Ḵosrow, that had come to be used as a title in the Islamic period suggests a date no earlier than the end of the reign of Ḵosrow II (500-628; Altheim and Stiehl’s explanation, pp. 199-200, of Ḵosrow as an old Choresmian name is not convincing). Šahrestānī’s comparison of the Mazdakite principle of common possession of women and property to that of common ownership of water, fire, and fodder was formerly interpreted as drawn from the agrarian sphere of Mazdak’s followers in the 5th-6th centuries, an interpretation with significant implications (Sundermann,1977). Gimaret and Monnot (Šahrestānī, tr., p. 663 n. 48) point out, however, that the comparison was in fact probably taken from a well-known Islamic Hadith. At best Šahrestānī transmitted traditions preserved in the persecuted Mazdakite community in Islamic times, which Yarshater has called “neo-Mazdakite” teachings (p. 1011). Any attempt to determine the sources and origins of early Mazdakite teachings is complicated by this fact.

The argument that Mazdakite teachings were derived from a Manichean heresy (Christensen, pp. 100-101; Klíma, 1957, p. 183) finds some support in Šahrestānī’s own comparison of the dualism of the two religions (tr., p. 663). The same comparison might also be made with Mazdean cosmogony, however; Mansour Shaki has several times drawn attention to the essentially Mazdean nature of Mazdakite teachings (1978, pp. 298-300; 1985, pp. 529-30). Yarshater characterizes Mazdakism as agnostic religious movement (p. 991), and in this context the relationship between Mazdean social ethics and those of the Carpocratians can be mentioned (Klíma, 1957, pp. 209-11; Pugliese Carratelli, p. 288). One of the peculiarities of Mazdak’s teachings, the assumption that the three basic elements are water, earth, and fire, has a parallel, according to Šahrestānī, in the cosmogony of the *Canteans, a southern Mesopotamian baptist sect (tr., pp. 82, 671).

These parallels are sufficient evidence of the syncretistic nature of Mazdakite teachings, which were certainly not derived from a single source, but they are not sufficient to explain the particular nature of Mazdakism. Above all, Mazdakism differs from both Manicheism and Mazdaism in its assertion that the final resolution of the mixture of principles will come about by chance and at random (without the offices of man), that is, in the same way in which the mixture came about in the first place. In this context Otto Klíma’s interpretation (1977, pp. 34-35) of ḵabṭ in the social-revolutionary sense, as a reestablishment of the ideal state by force, is not convincing. Mazdakism differs from gnostic teachings and especially Manicheism in its fundamentally positive, nonascetic attitude toward the world and the powers that govern it, especially in its positive interpretation of the planets, in which it differs also from Zoroastrianism. The possible influence of philosophical ideas cannot be excluded, but a dependence on the thought of the neo-Platonist Porphyry cannot be demonstrated. It is worth noting, too, that Christian ideas are totally absent from Mazdakism.

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY v. In Twelver Shiʿism

Imami traditions contain a chaotic abundance of material portraying the origin and structure of the universe. Book XIV, “On the heavens and the earth,” of Moḥammad-Bāqer Majlesī’s Beḥār al-anwār, fills ten volumes (LVII-LXVI) in the most recent edition and contains several thousand traditions; to this abundance must be added related material from elsewhere in Majlesī’s vast compilation and in other Imami collections of Hadiths. Further information is to be found in Imami polemics, apocalyptic, and even narratives of the ascension (meʿrāj) of the Prophet Moḥammad. Of most interest is the older corpus of traditions, in which mythical elements had not yet given way to the rationalist discourse of later theological and juridical tradition (Amīr-Moʿezzī, 1992b, I/2). In view of the abundance of material and frequent inconsistencies, it is possible to discuss here only the most common themes. Cosmological traditions fall into two groups, the first differing only in detail from the Sunni cosmological traditions attested from the same period; the second contains material peculiar to Shiʿism, dealing mainly with the cosmological role of the imams.

Elements shared with Sunni Islam. According to early Imami sources, God created the universe “from nothing” (lā men šayʾ; Kolaynī, n.d., I, p. 183; idem, 1389/1969, I, p. 135). The essence of the Creator is separated from the creation by veils (ḥejāb), curtains (setr), and pavilions (sorādeq) impregnated with the divine attributes (Majlesī, LVIII, chaps. 2ff., with frequent references to Ebn Bābūya). Two parallel series of “first created things” are described. On one hand, there are creations that can be considered archetypes, like the pen (al-qalam), the well-guarded tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), the throne (al-ʿarš), and the seat (al-korsī); it is said, for example, that at the divine command the pen of light was dipped into the nūn (cf. Koran 68:1) and wrote with ink of light on the tablet of light all that was destined to happen until the resurrection (Qomī, sub 68:1; Ebn Bābūya, 1379/1959, p. 23). The seat seems to encompass the entire universe in its exoteric aspects (ẓāher), while the throne incorporates the esoteric aspects (bāṭen; Kolaynī, n.d., I, pp. 175ff.; Ebn Bābūya, 1398/1978, pp. 321ff.). On the other hand, creation is also said to have begun with the elements: First was the water on which the divine throne rests (cf. Koran 11:7). According to some traditions, this water itself rested on air (ʿAyyāšī, sub 11:7; Nahj al-balāḡa, p. 26). When God wished to “unleash” creation, he drew the wind from the water and ordered it to whip up the latter. The lashing of the waves gave birth to a vapor, which formed the heavens, and a foam, which dried and formed the earth (Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, sub 11:7; Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, p. 135). In another version the water transformed itself into fire; the heavens originated in its smoke, the earth in its ashes (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, p. 223; Nahj al-balāḡa, pp. 26, 241ff.). Sometimes the two series of protocreations are combined, for example, when the throne is said to have been created after air, the pen, and light (Ebn Bābūya, 1398/1978, pp. 325-26).

Creation took place in six days (cf. Koran 32:4). The Islamic cosmogonic tradition draws abundantly on biblical and midrashic literature (Eisenberg, pp. 13-28), which is why in Imami narratives creation is often said to have taken place between Sunday and Friday, with Saturday apparently reserved as the Creator’s day of rest. On the first day (Sunday) good was created, on the two first days the earth, on the third day nourishment for the earth, on the fourth and fifth days the heavens, and on Friday the nourishment for the heavens (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, 213; Majlesī, LVII, pp. 53ff.). In other narratives the creation of the heavens is placed before that of the earth (e.g., Nahj al-balāḡa, p. 26), both hypotheses being compatible with the concise language of the Koran (cf. 2:29, 41:9-12, 9:7, 32:4, 25:9, etc.). There are seven heavens, the proportion of each to that above it being that of a small ring to an immense desert (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, pp. 224-25). The imams have provided their names and described their colors, constituent elements, and inhabitants (Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1986, II, p. 280; idem, 1329 Š./1950, II, p. 74; idem, 1377/1958, I, p. 241; Majlesī, LVIII, pp. 88ff.). Among the elements of this celestial topography are paradise, sometimes placed below and sometimes within the seventh heaven; hell, located either in the first heaven or below the seventh earth (see below); the “lotus tree of the boundary” (sedrat al-montahā; cf. Koran 53:14, 53:16), the blessed tree of the highest heaven (cf. Wensinck, 1921); and the “house frequented” (al-bayt al-maʿmūr; Koran 52:4), a temple located at the center of the same heaven (Majlesī, XVIII, pp. 319ff., on the meʿrāj; LVIII, chaps. 3ff.).

Twelver angelology is highly developed, and the heavens are thus described as densely populated. In the angelic hierarchy, below the four principal archangels (Gabriel, Michael, Seraphiel, and Azrael), who rule the seven heavens and attend the divine throne, are the angels in charge of each heaven, presiding over armies of angels millions strong, each category with its own task (Majlesī, LIX, pp. 144-256). The natural order, including even meteorological events, is also conceptualized in terms of angels: Eclipses, winds, the courses of the stars, and the like are considered the work of angels specifically assigned to these tasks (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, pp. 119, 130, II, p. 91). In some traditions even the “archetypal creatures” like the pen and the well-guarded tablet are associated with angels (Ebn Bābūya,1379/1959, pp. 23, 30). There are also other celestial beings, distinct from the angels: the spirit (al-rūḥ), which is superior to them, inspiring and sustaining the imams (Ṣaffār Qomī, IX, pp. 16-19; Kolaynī, n.d., II, pp. 17ff.); the terror (al-roʿb), a celestial being who is to “march” with the Mahdī and assist him in his eschatological mission (Noʿmānī, p. 337; Ebn Bābūya, 1405/1985, I, p. 331; see below); and even the cosmic cock, its claws resting on the seventh earth and the throne sprouting from its head, which announces the Day of Judgment in its prayers, thus arousing the cocks of the terrestrial earth (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, II, pp. 91-92). Finally, the stars, which were created after the heavens and are considered living beings that pray to God, are almost as important in the universal harmony as are the angels (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, p. 230, II, p. 125; Majlesī, LVIII, chaps 5ff., LIX, pp. 327-98).

There is also a topography that lies between heaven and earth and encompasses such elements as the region of darkness (ẓolomāt), with the fountain of life (ʿayn al-ḥayāt) in the center; the silver tents (ḵīām men feżża), where the spirits of past imams dwell; and even the “kingdom of the earth” (malakūt al-arż) and the cities Jābolqā and Jābolsā, which, though described as located at the hidden center, the extreme east, and the extreme west of the earth respectively, seem nevertheless to be located outside its physical boundaries (Ṣaffār Qomī, VIII, pp. 12-14, X, p. 14). These topoi play an important role in Twelver initiation rites, when the imams “dispatch” their disciples to visit these places; the terms in which they are described are simultaneously spiritual and corporeal, suggesting an ontological reality beyond the senses.

Parallel to the heavens there are also seven earths, each like a ring in a desert in comparison to the one above it (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, pp. 224ff.). Their names, inhabitants, and events are known to the imams (Majlesī, LIX, pp. 343-98). The terrestrial earth, the equilibrium of which is ensured by the weight of the mountains (cf. Koran 13:3, 21:31), especially Qāf, the largest of them, consists of seven climes (Ebn Bābūya, 1329 Š./1950, II, pp. 97ff.), with the Kaʿba at the center. The Kaʿba is also the middle member in a tower of fifteen sanctuaries located in the centers of the superimposed seven heavens and seven earths; apparently all are cubical, the highest being the “house frequented” (see above), which stands just below the throne and was constructed in its image (Ebn Bābūya, 1404/1984, p. 196; idem, 1376/1957, II, p. 201; idem, 1385/1966, II, pp. 396-98; cf. Wensinck, 1916).

The positions of some elements in the hierarchy of the “physical” universe fluctuate considerably. In the most frequently mentioned sequence the seventh earth rests on the cock, which stands on a rock poised on the back of a whale that swims in the ocean of darkness; the ocean is borne by the air, which is in turn sustained by the moist earth (bard; Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, pp. 224, 127; Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, sub Koran 11:7). All the lists end with ṯarā, which is said to constitute the farthest limit of human knowledge. In the hierarchy of the celestial universe the seventh heaven is surrounded by the hidden ocean contained in the mountains of cold (bard; or of hail if the word is read barad), which in their turn are contained within the air; the latter is supported by the veils of light encased in the divine korsī (Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, p. 225).

As for the inhabitants of the earth, information is even more confused, for the relevant traditions also incorporate several other notions, including the cycles, age, and number of the worlds. Aside from such confusion, it is also impossible to know whether the term “world” (ʿālam) as used by the imams refers to the entire universe or only to the sublunary earth. The “worlds” are numbered seven, twelve, twelve thousand, or even a million, and all the inhabitants, excepting naturally the “enemies” of the imams and their partisans on earth, recognize the walāya (spiritual guidance) of the “immaculate ones” (maʿṣūmīn). The age of the world is often said to be 50,000 years, divided into five periods of 10,000 years each. During the first the world was empty, arid, and uninhabited; during the second it was populated with beings who were neither jinn nor angels nor human beings. In the third period the world was again empty and uninhabited. The fourth was that of the creation of the jinn and the monstrous nasānes (sg. nasnās). In the fifth period, of which the major part has already elapsed, humanity, the descendants of Adam, was born. But Twelver Shiʿism also incorporates cycles of humanity, the individual duration of which is unknown; only after the disappearance of the last generation of human beings will the world be entirely renewed, with a population not divided between male and female and totally dedicated to the worship of God (Masʿūdī, p. 3; ʿAyyāšī, s.v. Koran 2:30, 50:15; Ebn Bābūya, 1329 Š./1950, II, pp. 107ff., 322ff., III, pp. 321ff.; idem, 1398/1978, p. 277). The accounts of the creation of Adam, the events of his life, and the personages that surrounded him (Eve, Eblīs, Cain, Abel, etc.) do not offer cosmological features properly so-called and in fact belong to the chapter on theology; here it is possible only to cite the koranic passages, enriched with information drawn from the written and oral esrāʾīlīyāt literature. The subhuman categories of the jinn, created from fire, and the nasānes, monsters of evil, have been invisible to ordinary human beings since the inception of the fifth era, that in which the “world” was created; in addition, there are the “monstrosities” (mosūḵ), human beings reincarnated in the bodies of unclean animals. These categories seem to correspond to a doctrinal need: Some of the jinn who are believers and initiates into Islam correspond on the subhuman plane to the Imami faithful, just as the nasānes correspond to the partisans of the imams’ enemies. The mosūḵ are almost always reincarnations of adversaries of the Imami cause (on the jinn and the nasānes, see Ṣaffār Qomī, II, p. 18; Kolaynī, n.d., II, pp. 242ff.; idem, 1389/1969, II, p. 54; Masʿūdī, p. 3; on the mosūḵ, see Ṣaffār Qomī, VII, p. 16; Kolaynī, 1389/1969, I, p. 285, II, p. 37; Ebn Bābūya, 1329 Š./1950, II, pp. 329ff.; idem, 1377/1958-59, I, p. 271; Noʿmānī, p. 387).

Aside from several features with esoteric and initiatory connotations (the cycles of the world and of humanity, treatment of the terrestrial and celestial topoi, certain aspects of angelology) and several doctrinal characteristics (treatment of the subhuman), this “first level” of Twelver cosmogony is not fundamentally different from Muslim cosmogony in general, as it has been set forth by such authors as Azraqī (d. after 244/858), Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Moṭahhar Maqdesī (Pseudo Balḵī; d. after 355/966), Kesāʾī (d. beginning of the 11th century), or even Ṯaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), all approximately contemporary with the first Imami compilers (cf. Fahd). The details of this level are derived from an ancient Semitic background, with traces of Judaism and mediated through it very ancient Near and Middle Eastern traditions, especially those of Mesopotamia.

Elements peculiar to Shiʿism. The teachings of the imams, as they appear in the nonrational esoteric tradition, constitute a second cosmogonic and anthropogonic “level,” differing from the contemporary Sunni tradition and exhibiting some similarities with Iranian cosmogonies. These teachings, fundamentally Imami, can be characterized as “primordial,” for the events described preceded the creation of the universe. Twelver primordial cosmogony is explained in two groups of apparently unrelated but actually interdependent and complementary traditions.

In the first it is reported that thousands of years before the creation of all things, in the immaterial “place” of the Mother Book (omm al-ketāb), God sent forth from His own light the shaft of light identified with Moḥammad—that of exoteric prophecy—and from that shaft a second, that of ʿAlī, typifying the imamate, or esoteric walāya (Noʿmānī, p. 131; Ebn Bābūya, 1404/1984, pp. 75, 236, 347-48; idem, 1385/1966, pp. 134, 174, 208; idem, 1379/1959, pp. 306ff.; Ebn Šahrašūb, I, p. 183). This primordial light, single and dual, is the sacred pleroma of the fourteen immaculate ones (Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1966, I, pp. 135ff.; 1405/1985, p. 319; 1329 Š./1950, II, pp. 307ff.; Ḵazzāz, pp. 110-11, 169-70). The lights of the immaculate ones are described in numerous traditions as “shades,” “spirits,” or “shadows” of the light (ašbāḥ, arwāḥ, aẓella nūr or men nūr; Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1966, I, pp. 23, 162, 208; idem, 1405/1985, pp. 335-36; Ebn ʿAyyāš, p. 95; Majlesī, XI, pp. 150ff., 192ff., XXV, pp. 23ff.). According to some imprecise and allusive reports, the stage of the “shadows of light” is supposed to have occurred not in the primordial world of the Mother Book but in the “second world,” called in the texts “the first world of shadows” (ʿālam al-aẓella al-awwal) or “the first world of particles” (ʿālam al-ḏarr al-awwal; Noʿmānī, pp. 274, 309; Ebn Bābūya, 1404/1984, p. 612; Ḵazzāz, pp. 169-70). The transition from the world of the Mother Book to the first world of shadows would thus mark the passage from the amorphous light of the immaculate ones to light in human form, of an extremely “subtle” substance (Noʿmānī, p. 328; Ebn Bābūya, 1329 Š./1950, I, p. 156; Ḵazzāz, p. 112). It must have been at that stage that the divine throne was created, for it was around the throne that the primordial luminous entities, the immaculate ones, performed an archetypal circumambulation, testifying to the Oneness of God (tahlīl, tawḥīd) and praising His glory (taḥmīd, tamjīd, tasbīḥ, etc.; Ebn Bābūya, 1405/1985, pp. 318-19; idem, 1377/1958, I, pp. 262ff.; Ḵazzāz, p. 170; Ebn ʿAyyāš, p. 123). In a subsequent stage the “shadows” or “particles” of those who can be called “pure beings” were created. Despite the disorder and lack of clarity in the traditions, it is nevertheless possible to class the “pure beings” in three broad categories: shadows of future spiritual and nonhuman inhabitants of the heavens and the earth; shadows of the prophets, with particular emphasis on the ūlo’l-ʿazm (lit. “prophets endowed with firm resolution”), and finally shadows of the initiates (moʾmenūn, a technical term designating initiates into the esoteric religion, in contrast to the moslemīn, adherents of the one true exoteric religion; for the opposition moʾmen/moslem, or īmān/eslām, see Amīr-Moʿezzī, 1992b, s.vv.) among the descendants of Adam, that is, the followers of the imams in all periods (Ṣaffār Qomī, II, pp. 6, 8, 11; Ebn Bābūya, 1342 Š./1963, pp. 11-12; idem, 1385/1966, p. 122; Ebn ʿAyyāš, pp. 41, 58).

The next stage was the one in which God concluded the primordial covenant (mīṯāq) with the “pure beings.” This covenant encompassed four solemn oaths, though it is rare that all four are mentioned in a single tradition: the promise to adore God and the promises of love for and fidelity (walāya) to Moḥammad and his prophetic mission, to the imams and their sacred cause, and to the Mahdī, the universal savior at the end of time (Ṣaffār Qomī, II, pp. 7, 12; Kolaynī, n.d., III, pp. 12ff.; Noʿmānī, p. 274; Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1966, pp. 117, 124, 312ff.). It is for this reason that the first world of shadows is also known in the texts as the “world of the covenant.” Despite the lack of precision in the traditions, it seems logical to place the “primordial initiation” after this covenant, in accordance with a universal rule of esoteric and initiatory doctrines. In fact, the shadows of the “pure beings” are said to have been initiated by the luminous entities of the immaculate ones into the secrets of the two sacred sciences of unification and glorification, well before the creation of the other shadows (see above); these secrets were the four sacred formulas lā elāha ellāʾllāh, sobḥānaʾllāh, al-ḥamdo leʾllāh, and Allāho akbar (Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1966, pp. 5ff.; idem, 1405/1985, pp. 254-55; 1377/1958, pp. 262ff.; Ebn ʿAyyāš, p. 63). Even the number of these formulas, which contain the most sublime mysteries, has a cosmic value, for it is because of these four that the throne and all the sanctuaries occupying the superimposed centers of the seven heavens and the seven earths are cubical (Ebn Bābūya, 1376/1957, II, p. 201; idem, 1385/1966, pp. 396-98; Majlesī, LVIII, pp. 5ff.). Another event is said to have taken place in the world of shadows: the creation of the descendants of Adam, in the form of particles, from earth and water. They were divided into “people of the right” (aṣḥāb al-yamīn), characterized by their obedience to God, and “people of the left” (aṣḥāb al-šemāl), who refused to obey the divine order (Ṣaffār Qomī, II, p. 7; Kolaynī, n.d., III, pp. 10ff.; Ebn ʿAyyāš, pp. 9-10; see below).

The division between people of the right and of the left serves as a transition to the second group of traditions mentioned above. There is, in fact, a large body of traditions about the division of creation into two opposing groups: on one hand, beings of light and knowledge, on the other, beings of darkness and ignorance. The most important tradition in this corpus is without doubt the account of the cosmic creation of supreme intelligence (ʿaql) and of ignorance (jahl) and their respective armies (jonūd). The supreme intelligence was the first of the spiritual creations (rūḥānīyūn); drawn from the right side of the throne and formed from sweet water, it is characterized by obedience and yearning for proximity to God. It is endowed with seventy-five armies, which are actually moral qualities elevated to the rank of cosmic powers. Next ignorance, proud and disobedient before God, was created from cloudy, brackish water. When it protested because of the strength of its adversary, God endowed it also with seventy-five armies, vices as cosmic powers. The battle of the forces of good and evil thus began before the inception of the physical world. The identification in early Imami tradition of ʿaql with the imam (Amīr-Moʿezzī, 1992b, index, s.v. ʿaql; cf. 1992a) helps to explain the interrelation of the two groups of cosmogonic traditions. Both refer to a perpetual struggle in which the initiated oppose the “counterinitiates,” the army of the imams of light (aʾemmat al-nūr) opposes the imams of darkness (aʾemmat al-ẓalām), the people of the right oppose those of the left, and the creatures of the highest heaven (ʿellīyūn) oppose the creatures of the lowest hell (sejjīn; on these pairings, see Ṣaffār Qomī, I, pp. 15-16; Kolaynī, 1389/1969, II, pp. 52ff.; Ebn Bābūya, 1404/1984, pp. 345, 412). In fact, this level of Imami cosmogony comprises a genuine anthropogony, containing the two constants of Imami doctrine, the notions of initiation and of struggle. In this anthropogony it is said that the spirits and hearts (the heart being the seat of the spirit) of the imams were created from a clay found above the divine “place,” the ʿellīyūn, and their bodies from that of the ʿellīyūn itself. The spirits and hearts of the imam’s initiates and of the prophets are created from the clay of the imam’s body, and their bodies from a clay found below the ʿellīyūn. In rigorous parallelism, on the other side the spirits, hearts, and bodies of the enemies of the imam are created from the clay of the infernal “place,” the sejjīn, the intellects and hearts of their partisans from the same clay, and finally the bodies of the latter from a clay below the sejjīn (Ṣaffār Qomī, I, p. 9; Kolaynī, n.d., II, pp. 232-34, III, pp. 2-16; Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1986, p. 117; on ʿellīyūn and sejjīn, see Koran 83:18-21, 7-9; cf. Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq, sub 82:12-13; Qomī, sub 83:7-19, 18-21).

Eschatology. Like all mythical constructions of an initiatory character, Imami doctrine has a tripartite structure concerned respectively with origins, the present, and ultimate events—that is, a cosmogony (based essentially on a theosophical anthropogony), a cosmology (in which the “real” is based on the irruptions of the first sacred fact), and an eschatology (essentially soteriological because founded on a return to the sacred origin). Each of the three can be fully understood only in relation to the other two. For example, Imami eschatology begins with the creation of Adam. The light of Moḥammad and ʿAlī is said to have been deposited in Adam and to have begun its “journey” through the sacred history of humanity, in order to return to its original possessors, the historical Moḥammad and ʿAlī and the eleven other imams. This light is transmitted through a dual genealogy including several prophets and their imams. The content of this legacy (waṣīya) of light, essentially the initiatory science (ʿelm) and supernatural power (qodra; for these translations of ʿelm and qodra, see Amīr-Moʿezzī, 1992b, svv.), is transmitted on the visible plane (ẓāher) through the natural genealogy of the Prophet and the imams in the medium of the seminal substance, whereas on the hidden plane (bāṭen) it is transmitted through the spiritual genealogy, by means of the initiation that each prophet reserves for his imam or imams (Amīr-Moʿezzī, 1992b, II/2; idem, 1991; Rubin, 1975; idem, 1979; Pellat; on the dual genealogy, see Masʿūdī, p. 8-74; Ebn Bābūya, 1376/1957, IV, pp. 129-30; idem, 1405/1985, I, pp. 211-13; Ebn ʿAyyāš, pp. 51-52). It can be inferred that in the same way the darkness of original ignorance has been transmitted throughout history to the enemies of the different prophets and their imams.

If cosmology in general is defined as the explanation of the laws of the universe, Twelver cosmology can be articulated along two axes. The first, vertical axis belongs to the spiritual world; it extends between two complementary poles, defined by such pairs as ẓāher and bāṭen (visible and hidden, exoteric and esoteric), nabī and walī (prophet and imam), tanzīl and taʾwīl (literal revelation and spiritual hermeneutics), and eslām and īmān (submission to the revealed religion and initiation into its esoteric aspects). It is vertical because passage from the exoteric to the esoteric is defined as a progressive approach to the divine and ever greater knowledge of the secrets of the universe. The second axis is horizontal and belongs to the world of the senses and history. It is characterized by two opposing poles, defined by such pairs as emām and ʿadūw (imam and enemy), ʿaql and jahl (intelligence and ignorance), aṣḥāb al-yamīn and aṣḥāb al-šemāl (people of the right and people of the left), aʾemmat al-ʿadl and aʾemmat al-jawr (imams of justice and imams of violence), and walāya and barāʾa (sacred love of the imams and sacred hatred of their enemies). The vertical axis is that of progressive initiation; it traverses all the phases of creation from initiation of the shadows of the “pure beings” in the world of the covenant by the luminous entities of the imams to the universal initiation by the Mahdī at the end of time, including the initiations of the faithful by the imam or the imams of each religion. It thus begins with the first creation in order to arrive at the end of time, where, through the universal unveiling of the secret, the visible will become hidden and the hidden visible and the world will thenceforth be inhabited only by initiates, as it was in the time of the covenant of the four oaths. The horizontal axis is that of perpetual struggle, also traversing all the phases of creation, from the primordial cosmic conflict between the armies of ʿaql and those of jahl, repeated in every period as the imams and their faithful are pitted against the enemies and their partisans, until the definitive destruction of the forces of evil by the Mahdī at the end of time. The dominating and persecuting enemy throughout history will be conquered once and for all, annihilated, and the world will become again as it was in the time when only the ʿaql, the imam of the good creation and the divine armies existed, close to God. The fundamental role of the imam in this specifically Twelver cosmogony/anthropogony is to be understood as the perfect manifestation of those aspects of God that can be made manifest; he is the agent of initiation, the perfect guide, the leader of the forces of good. It is owing to him that the spiritual world exists and that the world of the senses is not plunged into chaos and ignorance, the darkness. That is why it is said that God “unleashed” creation in order that the created might know Him, and this knowledge is possible only thanks to that of the imam (Ebn Bābūya, 1385/1966, p. 9). The imam is thus the ultimate reason for the creation.

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vi. In Ismaʿilism

Ismaʿili cosmology evolved in four major stages.

Stage 1. Pre-Fatimid doctrine, dating from the second half of the 9th century, seems to have been propagated mainly orally and is known only summarily, mostly from later texts. It reflects a cosmological myth of gnostic character, set forth most comprehensively in the Resāla of Abū ʿĪsā al-Moršed (see Stern, pp. 6-29; Halm, pp. 75-80 and passim). God created through an act of his Intention (erāda) and Will (mašīʾa) a light, which He addressed with the creative imperative kon (be!). Through duplication of the letters kāf and nūn the name became Kūnī (be!, fem.). Kūnī constituted the female, receptive principle in relation to the Creator but the male, active principle toward the creation below it. By order of the Creator, Kūnī created from its light Qadar as a vizier and assistant. Through Kūnī He produced (kawwana) all things, and through Qadar He determined (qaddara) them. Kūnī and Qadar were thus the first two principles of creation, also called the Antecedent (sābeq) and the Follower (tālī) and often identified with the koranic qalam (pen) and lawḥ (tablet). Together their names comprise seven (consonantal) letters, known as the higher letters (ḥorūf ʿolwīya), which are the archetypes of the seven Speaker (nāṭeq) prophets. Corresponding to them Kūnī next created seven Cherubim (karūbīya) with esoteric names, out of the light between it and Qadar. On its command, Qadar created and named twelve Spiritual Beings (rūḥānīya) out of its light, which, however, was not diminished by their creation. The Spiritual Beings are the intermediaries between Qadar, in which Kūnī is veiled (eḥtajaba) for creation, and the Speaker prophets. The first three of them, Jadd, Fatḥ, and Ḵayāl, often identified with the angels Jebrāʾīl, Mīkāʾīl, and Esrāfīl, take a prime role and are described as forming a pentad together with the Antecedent and the Follower. The material world was produced by Kūnī through the initial creation of air and water, which, in esoteric language, are named the throne (ʿarš) and the footstool (korsī) respectively. The seven spheres and seven seas of creation correspond to the seven Cherubim and the twelve signs of the zodiac to the twelve Spiritual Beings. Before the creation of Qadar, Kūnī for a moment did not see any other being beside itself and proudly thought that it was alone. Immediately six spiritual Ranks (ḥodūd) emanated from it through God’s power, in order to teach it that there was an omnipotent One above it, without Whom it had no power. Three of these Ranks were above Kūnī and three below it. Kūnī then acknowledged its Creator, testifying “There is no god but God.” Whereas, in gnostic terms, Kūnī appears as the demiurge, Qadar is expressly identified as the Celestial Adam (Ādam al-samāʾī). After the further creation Kūnī ordered the Cherubim, Spiritual Beings, and Ranks to prostrate themselves before Qadar, to which it wanted to turn over command. All obeyed except Eblīs, the first of the lower Ranks, who was therefore expelled from the Ranks and cursed. This event in the higher world was duplicated in the lower world, as Eblīs, according to Koran 2:32, refused to prostrate himself before the Adam of the religious community (Ādam al-mellī). The five remaining Ranks, who submitted in obedience, were Tawahhom, Erāda, Mašīʾa, Bedāya, and Martaba.

Although many of the mythological themes, concepts, symbolic numbers, and cabbalistic letter speculations of this cosmology are similar to those found in various earlier gnostic systems, the terminology is mostly koranic or derived from Islamic sources. Claims by Muslim heresiographers that Ismaʿili doctrine was derived from Persian dualist religions must be viewed with reserve. The duality of Kūnī and Qadar is not based on a cosmic dualism of good and evil, light and darkness.

Stage 2. Early Ismaʿili cosmology was transformed and partly superseded by the introduction of Neoplatonic thought, first apparently by the Transoxanian dāʿī (proselytizer) Moḥammad b. Aḥmad Nasafī (q.v.) in his lost Ketāb al-maḥṣūl, written about 300/913. The basic doctrine of the book can be recovered from later quotations, particularly in Abu’l-Qāsem Bostī’s Kašf asrār al-Bāṭenīya (see Stern, p. 307) and Ḥamīd-al-Dīn Kermānī’s Ketāb al-rīāż. A major source of influence on Nasafī’s thought seems to have been the “longer version” of the so-called Theology of Aristotle. This appears at the present stage of research more likely than the alternative possibility that the “longer version” was composed under Ismaʿili influence (see Pines, pp. 7-20; Zimmermann, pp. 196-208). God was described by Nasafī as the One beyond comprehension, beyond being and nonbeing, beyond any attribute and name. Kūnī and Qadar were replaced as the Antecedent and Follower by the Intellect (ʿaql) and the Soul (nafs). The Intellect, the first originated being (mobdaʿ awwal), was produced by ebdāʿ, origination out of nothing, through God’s Word (kalema) of command (amr). The Word is described as the mediator (wāseṭa) between God and the Intellect, as its cause (ʿella) and as the act of origination (ebdāʿ). It maintains its separate primordial identity, although its form (ṣūra) comes to inhere in the Intellect. The Intellect is eternal (azalī), perfect (tāmm), motionless, and inactive. The Soul issued from it by emanation (enbeʿāṯ) and is deficient, seeking perfection through the Intellect. This desire is the cause of its movement and activity (feʿl). From the Soul emanated Nature (ṭabīʿa), consisting of prime matter (hayūlā) and form. It first formed the seven spheres and their stars. Through their revolution in time the four elements (mofradāt), humidity, dryness, cold, and warmth, became mixed to form the four composites (morakkabāt), earth, water, air, and ether. Out of the mixture of the composites the plants developed with a vegetative soul (nāmīa); out of the plants the animals with a sensitive soul (ḥessīya); and out of the animals man with a rational (nāṭeqa) soul. Through his individual soul man joins the quest of the Universal Soul, of which it is part, for perfection.

Nasafī’s teaching was criticized on some points by the contemporary dāʿī Abū Ḥātem Rāzī (d. 322/934-35) in his Ketāb al-eṣlāḥ, representing a less Neoplatonic point of view (see Zimmermann, p. 208). Abū Ḥātem held that the soul was perfect in essence like the Intellect and deficient merely in its action. He drew a sharp boundary between the world of nobility and virtue of the spiritual beings and the darkness and turpidity of the material world, holding that Nature and matter could not issue from the Soul by emanation as the Soul emanated from the Intellect but that they were merely the effects or traces (aṯar) of the Soul. In particular he insisted that individual human souls were traces, not parts, of the Universal Soul. Man was wholly the fruit (ṯamara) of the physical world, not a fallen part of the spiritual world temporarily imprisoned in it. Abū Ḥātem also identified the Intellect with time and held that motion originated in the bestowal of all things by the Intellect upon the Soul and that rest originated in their reception by the Soul, thus giving motion primacy over rest.

Abū Ḥātem’s criticism was rejected by Abū Yaʿqūb Sejestānī (d. after 365/976), a pupil of Nasafī and the chief representative of Neoplatonic Ismaʿili thought after him, in his Ketāb al-noṣra. Abū Yaʿqūb’s teaching was elaborated in numerous works written over a period of at least four decades and displaying some variation in substance and approach. After initially defending Nasafī’s thought, he came into conflict with the latter’s school, partly over missionary tactics (see Stern, p. 308) but also over doctrinal questions. He thus backed belief in metempsychosis (tanāsoḵ) in a few of his works, holding that human souls pass through a series of rebirths until the advent of the Qāʾem, when they will ultimately rise to the spiritual world. These rebirths are in human bodies only. Abū Yaʿqūb later abandoned this doctrine, perhaps under pressure from the official Fatimid daʿwa, which was strongly opposed to belief in metempsychosis (Madelung).

Stage 3. A further transformation of Ismaʿili cosmology was brought about by Ḥamīd-al-Dīn Kermānī (d. ca. 411/1020). His cosmology was systematically set forth in his Ketāb rāḥat al-ʿaql. It was partially based on the philosophical thought of the school of Fārābī and took account of some of Abū Ḥātem’s objections to Nasafī’s teaching. The duality of Intellect and Soul in the spiritual world was replaced by a series of ten Intellects. The First Originated Being is the First Intellect, identical with the act of origination (ebdāʿ), unity (waḥda), and one (wāḥed). Kermānī denied the hypostatic status of the Word. The First Intellect is not eternal in beginning (azalī al-awwal), but everlasting (azalī al-āḵer), motionless, the first mover of moving things, the cause (ʿella) of all beings, Intellect, intelligent (ʿāqel) and intelligible (maʿqūl) in its essence. It is living, powerful, knowing, and perfect in its essence, yet it has no knowledge of the Unknowable Originator for which it longs. From its higher relation (nesba ašraf) and its lower relation (nesba adwan) the Second and Third Intellects respectively issued by emanation (enbeʿāṯ), which is described as a radiation of light from the essence of the First Intellect without primary intention (qaṣd awwal). The Second Intellect is the First Emanated Being, actual (qāʾem be’l-feʿl) and, like the First Intellect, combining the first and second perfection (kamāl awwal wa ṯānī). The Third Intellect is Prime Matter, Nature, the First Second Emanated Being (al-monbaʿeṯ al-ṯānī al-awwal), potential (qāʾem be’l-qowwa) and initially lacking the second perfection. From the First and Second Intellects proceed seven more immaterial intellects identified with the Seven Higher Letters of earlier Ismaʿili cosmology. Each of the Intellects of the Abode of Origination has the form of man (ṣūrat al-ensān).

The Third Intellect, Matter or Nature, formed the corporeal world, in which it is, from the aspect of its substance, a single thing and, from the aspect of its acts, numerous things. It consists of two parts (jozʾ), each one having two relations (nesbatān), one toward the First Originated Being, through which it exists, and one toward the multiple things, which exist through it. The first part is by its first relation actual life, also called form, emanating from the spiritual world, lacking independence (ḡayr mostaqella) in its existence, spreading throughout the corporeal world, and by its second relation it is the mover (moḥarrek) of all corporeal things, also called nature. The second part is by its first relation potential life from the spiritual world, equally lacking independence in its existence, in need of the first part, which is actual life, and in its second relation it is the three-dimensional body.

The physical world consists of nine celestial spheres, the highest sphere, the sphere of the fixed stars, the seven spheres of the planets, as well as the sublunar world of generation and corruption. The spheres are the simplest bodies in nature; their motions are circular, the noblest of motions, and they are not subject to change and corruption and do not accept forms other than their own. Each sphere is related to one of the Intellects. The Tenth or Active (faʿʿāl) Intellect governs the sublunar world in place of the First. Among the celestial bodies, the moon in particular is in charge of the matters of the world of generation and corruption. All Intellects and spheres, however, exert an influence on the lower world.

The First Material (mādda ūlā) of the sublunar world consists of the four elements (arkān). They are stratified and do not increase or decrease in their total mass, but mingle at their fringes under the influences of the higher world. From their mixture arises the Second Material (mādda ṯānīa) with the three realms of generation (mawālīd), minerals, plants, and animals. Even minerals have, through the life that spreads through all of nature, something like a soul that preserves their essence. The souls of the higher beings are cumulative; the sensitive soul of the animals includes the vegetative soul of plants. Man is the microcosm (ʿālam ṣaḡīr) and the second end (nehāya ṯānīa) of nature. Both body and soul of man arise from nature. The human soul has two states. At first it is like an accident (ʿaraż) and thus vanishes if it is separated from the body. In the second state it becomes a self-subsistent substance through the acquisition of spiritual knowledge. When the human soul thus reaches its second perfection, it is called the Second Emanated Being (monbaʿeṯ ṯānī). The early Ismaʿili triad Jadd, Fatḥ, and Ḵayāl represent ways in which the soul receives the knowledge from the spiritual world. After separation from the body, the souls are assembled in the barzaḵ, which forms a limit between paradise and hell and is the highest place in the world of nature. Kermānī rejected metempsychosis, denying that the soul could become attached to another body. Only after the advent of the Qāʾem and the Resurrection (baʿṯ) will the souls arrive at their final destination in paradise, which is next to the First Intellect, or in hell, which is the remotest place from it.

Stage 4. Among the Yemenite Ṭayyebīs in the post-Fatimid period Ebrāhīm Ḥāmedī (d. 557/1162), the second dāʿī moṭlaq, transformed Ismaʿili cosmology in his Ketāb kanz al-walad. While basically adopting Kermānī’s system and also drawing upon the Rasāʾel Eḵwān al-Ṣafāʾ, especially al-Resāla al-jāmeʿa, the works of Moʾayyad fi’l-Dīn Šīrāzī, and a few less-known earlier Ismaʿili works, he formulated an original interpretation of them, personifying Kermānī’s spiritual principles and introducing a mythical “drama in heaven” (Corbin). God initially originated, all at once, an innumerable host of spiritual forms, who were all, in accordance with His justice, equal in rank. One of them first recognized that there must be an Originator of the world and testified to His divinity, denying his own and his equals’ divinity. By this act he acquired his second perfection and became the First Originated Being and the First Intellect. Two more spiritual forms immediately followed him, competing for the second rank. One of them testified to the divinity of the Originator and glorified the First Intellect and became the First Emanated Being and Second Intellect. The other also glorified the First Intellect but failed to recognize the precedence of the Second Intellect and also failed, by inadvertence, not by intention, to testify to the divinity of the Originator. This was the cause of his fall from the third rank. Most of the other spiritual forms followed suit and became arranged in seven ranks, each headed by an Intellect. As the fallen Third Intellect repented of his failure, he came to be ranked as the Tenth, who is the Spiritual Adam (Ādam al-rūḥānī), free from body. Those of the spiritual forms that had initially followed him in his mistake and then failed to recognize their fault became darkened and solidified (takaṯṯafū) and formed the physical world. Their chief is Matter and Form, the Third Emanated Being, who will appear at the end of the era of 50,000 years as the Qāʾem. Those of the dark forms whose fault was minor became established in the celestial world of the spheres and planets, while the most obstinate became assembled in the sublunar world of generation and corruption. The Tenth Intellect, as the demiurge, was charged with summoning them to repentance and recognition of the ranks above them.

The lower world evolves under the successive influence of one of the planets in millennia. The first millennium was dominated by Saturn alone, the next by Saturn jointly with one of the other six planets in succession. After 50 millennia the domination passes to the next planet. After the greatest aeon (kawr aʿẓam), lasting 350 millennia, the world disintegrates and then is completely restored for the next aeon. In the first six millennia the three realms of generation (mawālīd) evolved to reach their climax in man with the (upright) Alef stature (qāma alefīya), on whom the hope for salvation rests. The first men and women were produced in caves (maḡārāt) by natural generation. On the island of Sarandīb (Ceylon) the most noble twenty-eight men and twenty-eight women were thus produced. One of the twenty-eight first recognized that the whole world must have an Originator and testified to His divinity, denying his own and his companions’ divinity. He thus became the Universal Adam (Ādam al-kollī), the Owner of the Originational Body (ṣāḥeb al-joṯṯa al-ebdāʿīya). He summoned his twenty-seven companions to affirm the Unity of God and to testify to His divinity and then sent them to the Twelve Provinces (jazāʾer) of the earth to summon all other men to the worship of God. He thus opened the first cycle of revelation (kašf) in the seventh millennium. After his passing the Universal Adam rose to the spiritual world and took the place of the Tenth Intellect, who in turn rose in rank on his way to reach his original place next to the Second Intellect. After 50 millennia the first cycle of concealment (satr) was inaugurated by the first Speaker Prophet (nāṭeq), the Partial Adam (Ādam al-jozʾī); it will be closed by the Qāʾem, the seventh Speaker, opening a new cycle of revelation.

The spiritual knowledge acquired by every faithful adherent from his superior in the teaching hierarchy forms a resplendent light in his soul that grows as he advances in gnosis. When he dies his soul, together with this light form, join the soul of his superior. The cause of its rise is the divine magnet (maḡnāṭīs elāhī) or Light Column (ʿamūd al-nūr), which extends from the Originator through the spiritual and the teaching hierarchies to the faithful, conveying spiritual light and taking it back. The soul and light form thus rise from rank to rank until they reach the gate (bāb) of the Qāʾem, where all of them assemble to form a light temple (haykal nūrānī) in the shape of a man. The light temple is called the Emāma. A trace of man’s vegetative soul, the innate warmth (ḥarāra ḡarīzīya), remains behind in the dead body of the faithful adherent. Three days after death it rises up to the planets as a fine invisible vapor called the wind-like soul (nafs rīḥīya) and is eventually purified, together with the other wind-like souls, by the sun and Jupiter. The purified souls are sent down to earth and are consumed by the Imam and his pure wife, in whose womb this pure matter forms the noble, camphor-like body (jesm kāfūrī) of the next Imam. Then the Gate with the light temple in him joins the newborn Imam. The light temple becomes the soul or divine nature (lāhūt) inside the Imam, while the camphor-like body, the envelope (ḡelāf), constitutes his human nature (nāsūt). The imams who were descended from the Universal Adam, who had taken the place of the Tenth Intellect as the demiurge, rose after their death to his horizon, together with all the light forms assembled in them. There they remained until the advent of their Qāʾem, when they assembled to form an immense light temple, each imam forming a member of it. Judgment, Reward, and Punishment occurred at the hands of the Qāʾem, who then took, together with all the light souls of his cycles, the place of the Tenth Intellect, raising the ranks of those above him. Thus each Qāʾem rises to the rank of the Tenth, and gradually all beings of the spiritual and material world rise to the rank of the Second Intellect. None, however, can reach the rank of the First Intellect.

The souls of the opponents of the hierarchy are unable to depart from their dead bodies (according to slightly later doctrine, not yet fully elaborated in Ḥāmedī’s Kanz al-walad; see Ebn Walīd, pp. 125-30). The dark form (ṣūra ẓolmānīya) produced in them by their hatred of the people of the truth and their evil actions leaves their bodies to turn into a demon or wicked jennī inhabiting desolate places and taking possession of ignorant women or young boys. All dark forms are then assembled in the Tail of the Dragon (ḏanab al-tannīn, the southern, descending node of the moon), from which they continue to plague mankind. After undergoing much torment, some whose faults were few may accept the summons of a prophet and evolve, rising through the three realms of generation to attain human shape and be saved. The souls of the opponents, together with their bodies, are first dissolved and then, through transformation (masḵ), reintegrated in ever lower animal, plant, and mineral forms (qomoṣ), in which they suffer torment. At the time of the Qāʾem they will appear in human shape and be slaughtered, consumed by fire from the ether, and placed in Sejjīn, the most solid core of the earth, for the greatest torment, lasting the period of the greatest aeon. Minor offenders may descend only part of this scale and then ascend again to attain human shape and accept the summons to the truth.

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY vii. In Shaikhism

It is in some respects redundant to speak of a “Shaikhi cosmology” distinct from that of Imami Shiʿism as a whole (see v, above). Shaikhi ideas never developed independently of ordinary Shiʿite thought but were either part of it (during the lifetime of Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī; 1166-1241/1753-1826) or in dialogue or conflict with it (during the periods of his successors, from Sayyed Kāẓem Raštī to the present leadership of the school). For this reason, it is extremely difficult to form a picture of Shaikhi doctrine free of apologetic or obfuscation.

Shaikhi cosmology and cosmogony are rooted in the numerous Imami aḵbār (reports) in which the origins and structure of the universe are set forth in detail. The distinctiveness of the Shaikhi worldview lies in a metaphysical interpretation of the standard Imami cosmological doctrines, a heavy emphasis on the role of the imams as creators and sustainers of the universe, and several innovative anthropogenic concepts having a direct bearing on individual eschatology.

Among the earliest charges laid against Aḥsāʾī was tafwīż, imputation of God’s creative activity to the imams as demiurges (for the orthodox criticisms, see Hamadānī, pp. 23ff.; for Aḥsāʾī’s defense against the charge of ḡolūw, exceeding proper boundaries, see 1355-56 Š./1976-77, IV, pp. 59ff.). Using standard Aristotelian terminology, Aḥsāʾī described the imams as the four causes of the universe: the active cause (al-ʿella al-fāʿelīya), in that the world was brought into being through them as the loci of God’s will (or of His actions); the material cause (al-ʿella al-māddīya), in that the universe is constructed from the residue of the rays of their light; the formal cause (al-ʿella al-ṣūrīya), in that God created the forms of all creatures from the lights of their bodies (hayākel); and the final cause (al-ʿella al-ḡāʾīya), in that God created all things for them and will return all to them (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, I, pp. 196-97, II, p. 193, IV, p. 47).

More technically, the material of the world (māddat jamīʿ boldān al-donyā) is composed of all the elements from the residue (fāżel) of the rays emanating from their physical bodies (ajsād). This residue is itself understood to take the form of additional rays, and the ajsād are themselves rays from their spiritual bodies (ajsām). Similarly, the forms of worldly things are created from the residue of the rays emanating from their phantom images (ašbāḥ); these phantom images are shadows or illuminated corporealities (abdān nūrānīya) without spirits. The souls (nofūs) of worldly things are created from the residue of the rays of the souls of their humanity (nofūs bašarīyātehem; Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, I, p. 76). Elsewhere Aḥsāʾī wrote in more conventional terms, describing the material substances (mawādd) of things as having been brought into existence from the light of Moḥammad and their forms from that of ʿAlī (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, I, pp. 39-40). He stressed, however, that the imams were not actually creators, the causes of men’s actions, or sustainers of the world, such epithets being reserved for God (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, IV, p. 57).

According to Aḥsāʾī, existence is entirely good (enna’l-wojūd ḵayr kolloh; Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, p. 185). Nevertheless, a sharp, almost Manichean division between good and evil, truth and falsehood exists. When God created universal reason (al-ʿaql al-kollī), the first of the spiritual existences, He immediately brought its opposite, universal ignorance (al-jahl al-kollī), into being. Aḥsāʾī rejected the view that darkness is merely the absence of light and in itself nonexistence, on the grounds that God had created it (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, p. 181; cf. III, p. 9, on negation, al-nafy, as a created thing).

The imams are created from light, their enemies from darkness, and all others from a mixture of the two (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, p. 68). Man is formed of reason and ignorance, having two “mirrors” within him, one facing reason, the other ignorance (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, p. 18). As representations of good, the imams are in a state of perpetual confrontation with their counterparts, the “imams of error” (aʾemmat al-żalāla; Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, pp. 258, 260, 292). Heaven was created from love of the imams, hell from hatred of them (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, II, p. 273; cf. IV, p. 157). This division of the world between the forces of affirmation and denial came to play a major role in the cosmological system of the Bāb (see babism).

Aḥsāʾī divided the universe in conventional fashion into three principal parts: al-donyā or al-molk (the present world), al-āḵera or al-malakūt (the transcendent world), and an interworld (barzaḵ) between them (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, III, p. 41; idem, n.d., p. 308; in a more elaborate division he added a temporally prior al-ʿālam al-awwal “first world”; Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, IV, p. 201).

Similarly, the periods of the world are three: al-donyā (the present period), al-rajʿa (the time of the return of Moḥammad and the imams), and al-qīāma (the age of universal resurrection; Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, III, p. 183). This periodization corresponds to the parts of the universe, the age of al-donyā being equivalent to the physical realm of al-donyā, the time of the rajʿa to a barzaḵ between al-donyā and al-qīāma, and the age of al-qīāma to al-āḵera (al-rajʿa is sometimes said to correspond to al-āḵera, which is then considered to follow al-donyā immediately, without an interworld; Aḥsāʾī, 1273/1856, “ʿEṣma wa rajʿa,” p. 102). Within these three periods time (zamān) itself is altered, growing more subtle as it moves from a worldly to an otherworldly state (Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, III, pp. 305, 357-58; Hamadānī, p. 340).

The barzaḵ between the spiritual and physical realms is generally referred to in Shaikhi literature as hūrqalyā. The term played an important role in the works of Aḥsāʾī, who claimed to have borrowed it from a Syriac word used by the Sabeans (Mandeans) of Iraq (Aḥsāʾī, n.d., p. 309). Moḥammad Moʿīn, however, has suggested (p. 84) that it was derived from the Hebrew phrase habal qarnaīm (doppelgänger) and that its correct pronunciation is hawarqalyā. Henry Corbin proposed an origin for the concept in the Mandean world of “celestial images” (mšunia kušta), though he admitted some difficulty in finding an etymological connection between the two terms (1971-72, II, p. 310 and n. 440). Aḥsāʾī was not the first Muslim author to use the term. Its earliest occurrence in an Islamic context seems to have been in the writings of Šehāb-al-Dīn Yaḥyā Sohravardī, who used it as an analogue for the celestial realm of similitudes (ʿālam aflāk al-moṯol; Sohravardī, Ketāb al-mašārīʿ wa’l-moṭāraḥāt, cited in Corbin, 1960, p. 195; Moʿīn, pp. 84-85). According to Aḥsāʾī, hūrqalyā is a barzaḵ between the realms of molk (al-donyā) and malakūt; he described it in one place as “another molk” (Aḥsāʾī, n.d., p. 308). Its lowest extension touches the “prime mover,” the outermost of the celestial spheres, “in rank but not in direction.” Images appearing in physical mirrors belong to this level of hūrqalyā (Aḥsāʾī, n.d., p. 309). In temporal terms it stands between the highest point of earthly time (aʿlā al-zamān) and the lowest level of eternity (asfal al-dahr; 1856, I/2, p. 136). Hūrqalyā is situated in the “eighth clime” (al-eqlīm al-ṯāmen), of which it forms the highest part, with the cities of Jābalqā and Jābarsā forming the lower. The earthly paradise (jannat al-donyā) is located in the western part of hūrqalyā and the earthly hell (nār al-donyā) to the east (for an extended account of the Shaikhi concept of hūrqalyā and its antecedents, see Corbin, 1960).

The realm of hūrqalyā plays an important role in Shaikhi eschatology. Although accounts of eschatological events in the works of Aḥsāʾī and later Shaikhi writers are structured on a traditional basis (see Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, III, pp. 54-121; idem, 1856, I/1, pp. 9-14, 38-111), a barrage of orthodox criticism has been leveled at their explanation of physical resurrection. For Aḥsāʾī, personal eschatology was rooted in a concept of man as a being possessed of four distinct “bodies”: two jasad and two jesm. The former denotes “body” as an animate, organic substance, the latter “body” in the sense of something possessing mass and volume. According to Aḥsāʾī, man originally entered the physical realm from the unseen world (ʿālam al-ḡayb). In his essence he consists of a “real self” (al-ensān al-ḥaqīqī, al-jesm al-ḥaqīqī, al-jesm al-aṣlī, referred to here as al-jesm al-ṯānī, or jesm II) made up of five constituent elements: intellect (ʿaql), soul (nafs), essential nature (ṭabīʿa), primal matter (hayūlā), and archetype (meṯāl; Aḥsāʾī, n.d., pp. 109-10; but cf. p. 112; spirit, rūḥ, is added to these five in Aḥsāʾī, 1355-56 Š./1976-77, IV, p. 332). In his descent to al-donyā, this essential self acquired accidental blemishes (aʿrāż). Thus, in the world of similitudes (hūrqalyā), it acquired an accidental counterpart (jesm I), made up of the elements of hūrqalyā; this stage also appears to be the one at which the essential jasad (al-jasad al-bāqī, jasad II) attached itself. At the final level of descent the latter acquired its nonessential counterpart (al-jasad al-ʿonṣorī, jasad I), composed of the elements of al-donyā (Aḥsāʾī, n.d., p. 310).

This process becomes clearer when viewed in reverse. Jasad I is a wholly physical entity composed of the dense elements of this world. It is compared to the garment put on by the real man or to the density that renders silica and potash opaque in their natural state (in contrast to their transparent state when heated and transformed into glass). At death its constituent parts return to their origin in the grave, from which they will not be resurrected. Jasad II, however, is a subtle body composed of the elements of hūrqalyā. It represents the real man, with neither addition (e.g., from food) or depletion (e.g., through loss of limbs), and it will remain intact in the grave after the decomposition of its gross counterpart. It is, of course, invisible to the fleshly eye. At the time of the resurrection a water will fill the earth, causing the limbs of jasad II to be reassembled. Thereupon a trumpet will blow, the spirits of men will rejoin their subtle bodies, and the latter will rise from the grave.

Of the two jesms the grosser, jesm I, provides a vehicle for the spirit on its departure from the physical body. Unlike jasad II (which remains in the grave), jesm I remains with the spirit, accompanying it and the supracelestial body, jesm II, to the earthly paradise (jannat al-donyā) or hell (nār al-donyā), situated, as noted, in the realm of hūrqalyā (from which jesm I originated). Here they will all remain until the first blast of the trumpet of resurrection. At that point the relatively dense form of jesm I will be destroyed, leaving only the original jesm (jesm II), purified of all opacity. At the second blast of the trumpet the spirit and jesm II will descend together into the tomb, where they will penetrate into jasad II as a vehicle for their entry to paradise or hell. Man’s “resurrected body” will therefore consist of a combination of the original jesm and original jasad.

Although this system of four bodies was not retained in either Babism or the Bahai faith (see viii, below), its influence may still be discerned in the allegorized eschatology and spiritual survival detailed in the writings of both groups.

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY viii. In the Bahai faith

Bahai cosmology can be considered to be based on three interrelated statements of Bahāʾ-Allāh. First, the human mind is strictly finite and limited in knowledge and understanding (1984, no. 26, p. 49; tr. p. 62). Second, no absolute knowledge of God or reality or the cosmos is therefore available to man (1984, no. 1, p. 11, no. 26, p. 48, no. 83, p. 110; tr. pp. 3-5, 62, 164-65). Third, from the above it follows that all conceptualizations and attempts by men to portray cosmology are “but a reflection of what has been created within themselves” (1984, no. 148, p. 204; tr. p. 316). Bahai cosmology can therefore be said to be based on a cognitive relativism, the view that all knowledge is relative to conceptual frameworks or cognitive structures.

The Bahai position with regard to the physical world can be summed up by stating that Bahais accept the findings of current science as being the best available interpretation of the physical world at any given time. To oppose current science on nonrational grounds is tantamount to ignorance and superstition (ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ, 1982, pp. 63-64, 107, 128, 161-62, 175-76, 231, 287, 316, 455).

The Bahai position with regard to metaphysics was developed further by ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ (1330, p. 48): Although mankind is capable of manifesting all the names and attributes of God, each individual’s constitution in fact manifests them in different degrees. This mixture then prefigures and determines the manner in which that individual views reality; that is, it provides individuals with the manner in which they interpret reality. Shoghi Effendi confirmed this position and provided the most comprehensive statement of it (p. 2): “[T]he fundamental principle enunciated by Bahāδu’llāḥ … is that religious truth is not absolute but relative.”

The concept of cognitive relativism underlies all Bahai statements on cosmology and cosmogony. On the controversy within Islam between the two schools of waḥdat al-wojūd and waḥdat al-šohūd Bahāʾ-Allāh declared that both are stations or points of view (maqām) within the belief in divine unity (tawḥīd; n.d., pp. 105-16; cf. University of Leiden, ms. Or. 4971). On the origin of the world, Bahāʾ-Allāh stated that both the traditional views (one that the world has a point of origin and will have an end, the other that the world has neither a beginning nor an end) are correct and that the differences arise from variations in men’s hearts (al-afʾeda) and points of view (al-anẓār; 1980, p. 82). Finally, on the controversy within Islam over the attributes of God, whether they are eternal and uncreated or are created in time, ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ provided the analysis referred to above (1330/1912, p. 48).

This relativism has resulted in an important difference between the Bahai faith and both Islam and Christianity. Whereas adherents of these two religions maintain that they have access to a source of absolute truth through Christ or the Koran, Bahai writers maintain that all entities in the phenomenal world are contingent and not enduring. This difference has thus produced a further difference, in definition of the nature of time. In Islam and Christianity time is seen only in relation to particular hieratic irruptions into profane time, such as the advent of Christ or Moḥammad and the Day of Judgment. In the period between these two events time in effect stands still, for it does not matter whether one lives one hundred or one thousand years after Christ or Moḥammad; everything has the same relations backward to the revelatory event in the past and forward to the apocalyptic event in the future. In the Bahai view, however, human society evolves and develops. The religious teachings of the major prophets are therefore not absolute and for all time but are, rather, relevant to a particular time and have aspects that may be subject to a decline in relevance over the course of centuries (1984, no. 38, p. 63; tr. p. 87-88).

Finally, it remains to consider the consequences of this metaphysical relativism in the Bahai faith. First, much religious debate and conflict in other religions has revolved around metaphysical questions. In the Bahai faith, however, as noted above, all metaphysical points of view, and therefore dogmatic positions, are considered ultimately to be purely relative to a particular individual or society for a particular time and therefore without universal validity. There must therefore be a change of emphasis in what is considered important in religion, and the doctrinal and soteriological importance of metaphysics is considerably less. Interest is no longer primarily in the structures of metaphysics but rather in relationships. That is, the focus of interest is no longer primarily on knowledge of what reality is but on the practical consequences of the individual’s relationship with reality. It has shifted from structures to relationships, and ethics and social action are thus the prime considerations. This focus is what would be expected and is in fact found in the Bahai faith, where questions of metaphysics and dogmatic theology have been little considered. There is almost no literature on the subject, though there is much discussion and writing on social and ethical issues.