Amesha Spenta - The Doctrine

The Doctrine

The doctrine of the 'divine sparks', through their connection with creation, unites ethereal and spiritual concepts with material and manifest objects in a "uniquely Zoroastrian" way: Not only as abstract "aspects" of Ahura Mazda, but also worthy of reverence themselves, and personified or represented in all material things.

The relationship between Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spenta is an altogether subtle one. In Yasna 31.11 of the Gathas, Ahura Mazda is said to have created the universe with his "thought". In other passages such as Yasna 45.4, Ahura Mazda is described as the metaphorical "father" of the individual Amesha Spenta, which, even though figurative, suggests a familial closeness. In particular, the relationship between Ahura Mazda and Spenta Mainyu is multifaceted and complex, and "as hard to define as that of Yahweh and the Holy Spirit in Judaism and Christianity."

A veneration for the 'divine sparks' through the living world is still present in modern Zoroastrian tradition and is evident in every religious ceremony where each of the Amesha Spenta is visibly represented by objects of which they are the guardians. In addition, the first seven days of the month of the Zoroastrian calendar are dedicated to the great heptad and to creation, so acknowledging the preeminence of the Amesha Spenta, and so ensuring the inculcation of their doctrine.

Ethical and ontological dualism in the same entity "accounts for the difficulty which some aspects of the doctrine have presented for Western scholars." The reverence of the Amesha Spenta has been frequently attacked as de facto polytheism, not only in modern times, but in the Sassanid era as well. While the "worship of the elements" was a repeated accusation during the 4th and 5th centuries, Christian missionaries (such as John Wilson) in 19th century India specifically targeted the immanence of the Amesha Spenta as indicative of (in their view) Zoroastrian polytheistic tradition.

A frequent target for criticism was the Zoroastrian credo in which the adherent declares: "I profess to be a worshiper of Mazda, follower of the teachings of Zoroaster, ... one who praises and reveres the Amesha Spenta" (the Fravaraneh, Yasna 12.1). Whether one who reveres the Amesha Spenta is, by that definition, a polytheist is subject to interpretation. Zoroastrians themselves note that ethereal spirit and physical manifestation are not separable, and that a reverence of any of Ahura Mazda's creations is ultimately a worship of the Creator.

In the second half of the 19th century, Martin Haug proposed that Zoroaster himself had viewed the Amesha Spenta as philosophical abstractions, and that a personification of the heptad was really a latter-period corruption. The Parsis of Bombay gratefully accepted Haug's premise as a defence against the Christian missionaries, and subsequently disseminated the idea as a Parsi interpretation, so corroborating Haug's theory. The "continuing monotheism" principle eventually became so popular that it is now almost universally accepted as doctrine.