There are uncreated lights and created lights. There [in Airyana Vaêjô, where Vara is built], the stars, the moon, and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a day [and night].[664]
This is a clear reference to the “Land of the Gods” or the (now) Polar Regions. Moreover another hint is contained in this verse, a distinct allusion to the “uncreated lights” which enlighten man within—his “principles.” Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura Mazda's answer which is forthwith followed by the words:
Every fortieth year, to every couple [hermaphrodite] two are born, a male and female.[665]
The latter is a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which says:
At the expiration of every forty [annual] Suns, at the end of every fortieth Day, the double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the first and second and the third....
This is clear, since every “Sun” meant a whole year, the latter being composed of one Day then, as in the Arctic Circle it is now composed of six months. According to the old teaching, the axis of the Earth gradually changes its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the period referred to, this inclination was such that a polar Day lasted during the whole period of the Earth's revolution about the Sun, when a kind of twilight of very short duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position directly under the solar rays. This may be contrary to Astronomy as now taught and understood; but who can say that changes in the motion of the Earth, which do not take place now, did not occur millions of years back?
Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the Man of the Fourth Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the Moon, and even Noah's Ark, if one will so have it—this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura Mazda and Zarathushtra. Thus when the latter asks:
O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is he who brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?
Ahura Mazda answered: “It was the bird Karshipta, O holy Zarathushtra!”[666]
And the note explains: