Zoroaster — "To thee, Ahura Mazda, and to Asha (Truth) and Vohu Manah (Good Mind), I dedicate…"
To thee, Ahura Mazda, and to Asha (Truth) and Vohu Manah (Good Mind), I dedicate my life, my body, and my soul.
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More from Zoroaster
"One day, all of creation will rejoice. And on that day, I hope someone finally figures out how to properly season lamb."
"Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even an elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness."
"The lie-follower is an evil doer, but the truth-follower is a good doer."
"Who made the moon, and the sun, and the stars, which show the path to the believer?"
"May we attain to the state of perfection, O Ahura Mazda."
About Zoroaster (c. 1500-1000 BCE (debated))
Iranian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism, the first major religion of cosmic dualism between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu). Closely associated with The Buddha (near-contemporary Eastern moral-cosmological revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher of 'beyond good and evil' — Nietzsche appropriated Zarathustra's name for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) precisely to invert the original's moral cosmology — the historical Zoroaster founded the good-versus-evil framework Nietzsche's character announces the end of.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This is a personal vow of total commitment. The speaker gives everything they are—their life, their physical self, and their inner spirit—to three things: the supreme god, the principle of truth and cosmic order, and the practice of thinking good thoughts. It's a declaration that ethical living, honest action, and devotion to the divine are not occasional duties but the entire purpose of one's existence.
Relevance to Zoroaster
Zoroaster founded the religion that centers on exactly these three concepts. Ahura Mazda was his revealed supreme deity, and Asha and Vohu Manah are two of the Amesha Spentas, divine attributes he taught followers to internalize. As a priest-prophet who reformed older Iranian polytheism into an ethical monotheism, his own hymns in the Gathas repeatedly pledge body, mind, and breath to truth over deception, making this line a summary of his vocation.
The era
Zoroaster lived in ancient eastern Iran, likely between 1500 and 1000 BCE, among tribal herding societies that worshipped many nature gods through animal sacrifice and ritual intoxication. Raids, cattle theft, and cycles of vengeance defined daily life. His teaching of one wise creator, a cosmic battle between truth and lie, and personal moral choice was radical, offering ordinary people an ethical framework in an era when religion mostly served warriors and priests, not individual conscience.
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