wandking said:
It's a bit off topic but your post made me wonder if Zoroastrianism predates Isis worship in about 2,200 BCE?
A few scholars make the claim that its founding dates from the 3rd millenium, making it a contemporary of Isis worship... but most date it between late 2nd millenium and early 1st. Mary Boyce, who's the recognized expert on the subject, most recently places the founding between 1500 and 1200 BCE. I found a quote by Boyce from
Zoroastrians , 1979: "Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed world-religions, and it has probably had more influence on mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith." Zoroastrianism was the dominant world religion during the Persian empires (559 BCE to 651 CE), and was thus the most powerful world religion at the time of Jesus.
The tricky thing with Isis worship is that it takes so many forms at different points in its span. Most of what we think of as Isis worship is actually derived from the Isis/Osiris mystery cults of Imperial Rome which definitely post-date Zoroastrianism. Depending on the period of the primary text in question, Isis ranges from being a relatively minor deity to one of the pivotal figures of the pantheon... In the same way that Ptah goes form being the supreme being to a sort of distant figure who has little to do with mortals. As a rigid theocracy, ancient Egypt has a very convoluted relationship to its own mythology; after all, there's a God sitting on the throne. Tricky tricky tricky... and lots of contradictory scholarship.
Actually I don't think your question is off topic. This is an especially neglected chunk of spiritual history that had an enormous impact on every occult tradition running. Ever since Levi, people have always eagerly linked Egypt and Tarot, presumably because the locale is exotic and glamorous and still familiar in some ways because of its appearances in Western Lit, but outside of universal archetypes, there is virtually nothing of the Egyptian traditions in Tarot's images or structure. That is not to take away from anyone who finds resonance IN the Egyptian culture, but rather a reminder that the ancient world was wide and rich.
Many of the spiritual ideas embedded within Tarot (and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions) are demonstrably, unquestionably Zoroastrian derived. I'm not even going to get into the Babylonian impact on astronomy/astrology. Europe's distinct idea of a magician could be said to emerge from Zoroaster and the Persian tradition of the Magi. Small wonder... Christianity started as a Roman mystery cult, competing with Mithraism and Isis/Osiris (and Orphic and Cybele and Dionysos) worship for initiates. All of them left fingerprints.
And as to Christianity as an offshoot of Mithraism, I found a terrific snippet at avesta.org that's worth a read: "Christianity (
n.b. and Tarot!) adopted these doctrines from Zoroastrianism: baptism, communion,... guardian angels, the heavenly journey of the soul, worship on Sunday, the celebration of Mithras' birthday on December 25th, celibate priests that mediate between man and God, the Trinity, Zvarnah - the idea that emanations from the sun are collected in the head and radiate in the form of nimbus and rays(
i.e. halos)... The center of the Mithric cult was in Tarsus in Cilicia, Southeast Turkey. This is whence Paul, the founder of the Christian church, came from as a young man. Paul's insight on the road to Damascus was that instead of treating Jesus as a false savior, he could be identified as the true savior if combined with the new idea of "the second coming". That would cure the embarrassing fact that nothing had come of Jesus' time on earth. The rest was simple, Paul identified Jesus with Mithras and taught a modified Mithraism. That got Paul branded as a heretic by the true church and James the brother of Jesus. Eventually it cost Paul his life. However, the Mithraic ideas were so generally attractive that they eventually won out."
Then back to your initial question: I think it
is Levi who starts the ball rolling on magicking the Magician, but I think the Golden Dawn is responsible for actually re-identifying the Bataleur as the Magician, removing the sense of jugglers and mountebanks, introducing the sense of skill that goes beyond duplicity and mastery of the natural
and supernatural. Anybody want to pitch in with GD or Levi references? I have the Dummet and Decker on the way... but not on hand yet.
Juicy stuff...
Scion
