In cases where the altar was not devoted to maintaining a perpetual fire, it was kindled when necessary with small twigs previously barked and purified, and was subsequently fed with precious woods, preferably cypress or laurel;* care was taken not to quicken the flame by blowing, for the human breath would have desecrated the fire by merely passing over it; death was the punishment for any one who voluntarily committed such a heinous sacrilege. The recognised offering consisted of flowers, bread, fruit, and perfumes, but these were often accompanied, as in all ancient religions, by a bloody sacrifice; the sacrifice of a horse was considered the most efficacious, but an ox, a cow, a sheep, a camel, an ass, or a stag was frequently offered: in certain circumstances, especially when it was desired to conciliate the favour of the god of the underworld, a human victim, probably as a survival of very ancient rites was preferred.**
* Pausanias, who witnessed the cult as practised at
Hierocæsarsea, remarked the curious colour of the ashes
heaped upon the altar.
* Most modern writers deny the authenticity of Herodotus’
account, because a sacrifice of this kind is opposed to the
spirit of the Magian religion, which is undoubtedly the
case, as far as the latest form of the religion is
concerned; but the testimony of Herodotus is so plain that
the fact itself must be considered as indisputable. We may
note that the passage refers to the foundation of a city;
and if we remember how persistent was the custom of human
sacrifice among ancient races at the foundation of
buildings, we shall be led to the conclusion that the
ceremony described by the Greek historian was a survival of
a very ancient usage, which had not yet fallen entirely into
desuetude at the Achæmenian epoch.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the impression of
a Persian intaglio.
The king, whose royal position made him the representative of Ahura-mazdâ on earth, was, in fact, a high priest, and was himself able to officiate at the altar, but no one else could dispense with the mediation of the Magi. The worshippers proceeded in solemn procession to the spot where the ceremony was to take place, and there the priest, wearing the tiara on his head, recited an invocation in a slow and mysterious voice, and implored the blessings of heaven on the king and nation. He then slaughtered the victim by a blow on the head, and divided it into portions, which he gave back to the offerer without reserving any of them, for Ahura-mazdâ required nothing but the soul; in certain cases, the victim was entirely consumed by fire, but more frequently nothing but a little of the fat and some of the entrails were taken to feed and maintain the flame, and sometimes even this was omitted.* Sacrifices were of frequent occurrence. Without mentioning the extraordinary occasions on which a king would have a thousand bulls slain at one time,** the Achæmenian kings killed each day a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags: sacrifice under such circumstances was another name for butchery, the object of which was to furnish the court with a sufficient supply of pure meat. The ceremonial bore resemblance in many ways to that still employed by the modern Zoroastrians of Persia and India.
* A relic of this custom may be discerned in the expiatory
sacrifice decreed in the Vendidad: “He shall sacrifice a
thousand head of small cattle, and he shall place their
entrails devoutly on the fire, with libations.”
** The number 1000 seems to have had some ritualistic
significance, for it often recurs in the penances imposed on
the faithful as expiation for their sins: thus it was
enjoined to slay 1000 serpents, 1000 frogs, 1000 ants who
steal the grain, 1000 head of small cattle, 1000 swift
horses, 1000 camels, 1000 brown oxen.
The officiating priest covered his mouth with the bands which fell from his mitre, to prevent the god from being polluted by his breath; he held in his hand the baresman, or sacred bunch of tamarisk, and prepared the mysterious liquor from the haoma plant.* He was accustomed each morning to celebrate divine service before the sacred fire, not to speak of the periodic festivals in which he shared the offices with all the members of his tribe, such as the feast of Mithra, the feast of the Fravashis,** the feast commemorating the rout of Angrô-mainyus,*** the feast of the Saksea, during which the slaves were masters of the house.****
* The drink mentioned by the author of the De Iside, which
was extracted from the plant Omômi, and which the Magi
offered to the god of the underworld, is certainly the
haoma. The rite mentioned by the Greek author, which appears
to be an incantation against Ahriman, required, it seems, a
potion in which the blood of a wolf was a necessary
ingredient: this questionable draught was then carried to a
place where the sun’s rays never shone, and was there
sprinkled on the ground as a libation.
** Menander speaks of this festival as conducted in his own
times, and tells us that it was called Eurdigan; modern
authorities usually admit that it goes back to the times of
the Achæmenids or even beyond.
*** Agathias says that every worshipper of Ahura-mazdâ is
enjoined to kill the greatest possible number of animals
created by Angrô-mainyus, and bring to the Magi the fruits
of his hunting. Herodotus had already spoken of this
destruction of life as one of the duties incumbent on every
Persian, and this gives probability to the view of modern
writers that the festival went back to the Achæmenian epoch.
**** The festival of the Sakoa is mentioned by Ctesias. It
was also a Babylonian festival, and most modern authorities
conclude from this double use of the name that the festival
was borrowed from the Babylonians by the Persians, but this
point is not so certain as it is made out to be, and at any
rate the borrowing must have taken place very early, for the
festival was already well established in the Achæmenian
period.
All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the priesthood; but those only became apt in the execution of their functions who had been dedicated to them from infancy, and who, having received the necessary instruction, were duly consecrated. These adepts were divided into several classes, of which three at least were never confounded in their functions—the sorcerers, the interpreters of dreams, and the most venerated sages—and from these three classes were chosen the ruling body of the order and its supreme head. Their rule of life was strict and austere, and was encumbered with a thousand observances indispensable to the preservation of perfect purity in their persons, their altars, their victims, and their sacrificial vessels and implements. The Magi of highest rank abstained from every form of living thing as food, and the rest only partook of meat under certain restrictions. Their dress was unpretentious, they wore no jewels, and observed strict fidelity to the marriage vow;* and the virtues with which they were accredited obtained for them, from very early times, unbounded influence over the minds of the common people as well as over those of the nobles: the king himself boasted of being their pupil, and took no serious step in state affairs without consulting Ahura-mazdâ or the other gods by their mediation. The classical writers maintain that the Magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness, and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even then moral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule among them:*** the majority of the Magi faithfully observed the rules of honest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handed down by their ancestors.