Ahura Mazdā and Angra Mainyu

Ahura MazdĀ and Angra Mainyu

AHURA MAZDĀ AND ANGRA MAINYU. Ahura Mazdā (called Lord Wisdom in the Avestan [Av.] and Ōrmazd in the Pahlavi [Pahl.] texts) and Angra Mainyu (Av. Evil Spirit, Pahl. Ahreman) are the names of the two opposed primordial powers that represent good and evil in the dualism of Iran's pre-Islamic religion, Zoroastrianism. In the structural system of the oldest literature, the Gāthās, Angra Mainyu is the destructive force opposed not to Ahura Mazdā directly but to Spenta Mainyu, the "beneficent spirit" representing Ahura Mazdā's creative force. These creative and destructive powers form a primordial pair of mutually exclusive opposites like light and darkness. The creative force (Spenta Mainyu) is negated by the destructive one (Angra Mainyu) in the same way that Ahura Mazdā's other spiritual creations, or Bounteous Immortals (amesha spentas) are negated by an evil opposite: truth (asha) by deceit (druj), good mind (vohu manah) by evil mind (aka manah), and right-mindedness (ārmaiti) by arrogance (tarə̄maiti). This dichotomy is also reflected in the Avestan language insofar as there are special vocabularies for the good, ahuric beings on the one hand, and for the evil, daevic ones, on the other.

Through his creative force, Spenta Mainyu, Ahura Mazdā brought forth life, while the destructive force produced non-life (Y 30.4; Y 44.7).

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