Zarathustra – Who is he?

Many people heard the name Zarathustra for the first time when they saw Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001. At the time of its making in the 1960’s, the prologue and credits took place in the solar system, zooming between planets. The feeling was new of flying swiftly past a pock-marked planet, then other planets of different texture and hue coming into view, then all of them aligning with each other and with the Sun glinting over the edge of one. The music was from Strauss, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” with ominous trumpets, then great deep drums speeding up faster and faster, then more trumpets rising higher and higher into a final sense of victory.

Some asked, “Who was Zarathustra … and how could anyone speak with that much thunder?” Strauss was referring to the prophet whose voice changed people. In an age without microphones, a prophet could hold large audiences spellbound for hours as the prophet told them of the glories or the horrors of being on the right or wrong side of Divinity. Therefore, trumpets and great booming drums. Have you ever experienced a voice that could carry like that, whose words and even the sounds of the words seemed heaven-scented and heaven-sent?

According to the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the original Zarathustra lived five thousand years before the Trojan War, in the Age of Ancient Persia. Also according to Steiner, whose could give sweeping vistas of great spans of history and relate diverse elements separated by time and space, Zarathustra then reincarnated in a series of lives that spanned six thousand years.

One can scoff – it’s one thing to theorize about reincarnation but quite another to trace one individual soul’s journey through that length of time. How interesting that one of the documents in the Nag Hammadi Library tells this exact story. To remind you, in the first century of this era, many texts were put into a clay jar and buried in the deserts of Egypt near Nag Hammadi. Why did they hide them? Were they fleeing from someone, as were the Essenes who hid the Dead Sea Scrolls from an angry Roman army? Were there other jars filled with ancient wisdom buried in the desert? The Nag Hammadi jar was found in 1945, its contents going this way and that through the black market until finally seeing the light of day and becoming translated. Most of the texts have come to be known as The Gnostic Gospels, the most famous being The Gospel of Thomas, interpreted by Elaine Pagels in a series of books. Another one, a favorite of mine, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, has been interpreted by Jean-Yves Leloup, and for whose commentaries I have written an introduction.

One of those documents, The Apocalypse of Adam, in the masterful hands of Andrew Welburn, as translator and interpreter, tells the story of the incarnations of Zarathustra. All the way up to the moment when the document was written. For astrology and astrosophy, the penultimate incarnation is especially important, Zarathustra in Babylon, under the name Zoroaster (“Golden Star”) or Zaratas or Nazaratos, in the 6th century before the current era. We will discuss the final known incarnation at another time. It’s the penultimate one that interests astrologers.

Zarathustra originated the measurement of the starry heavens as an _expression of the spheres of influences of twelve great spiritual Beings – each with their unique qualities – working from the zodiacal constellations as equal divisions known as the signs of the zodiac. Within each equal-sized zone of the heavens, he perceived thirty qualities or degrees. He communicated his knowledge, based on spiritual vision, to the Babylonian priesthood, who first defined the zodiac scientifically in relation to certain fixed stars as a circle of 12 x 30 = 360 degrees. This is the same system we use today for the division of space: 360 degrees in a circle comprising 12 x 30 degrees – and also of time: a clock-face can be regarded as having 12 divisions, each hour comprising 30 x 2 minutes. We get our clock from this observer of the heavens! It was in the 6th century before the common era (BCE) that Zarathustra, known to the Greeks as Zoroaster, communicated the principles of Star Wisdom to the Babylonians. Many modern astrologers have forgotten this legacy from Zarathustra.

Zarathustra taught the great geometer Pythagoras, the prophet Daniel, and King Cyrus of Persia. He initiated a line of teaching that was passed down from one generation to the next. He had predicted that he would return in five hundred years. His pupils watched and waited, finally seeing pictures in the heavens – a divine woman holding grapes and wheat, who months later gives birth, and other visions. Based on these visions, three stargazing kings of the desert journeyed to the South to meet the reincarnation of their great teacher, Zarathustra. That story of the final incarnation shall be told at another time. For now, the point is that they watched the heavens and saw there pictures unfolding, not connect-the-dots pictures, but living beings revealing some of the celestial dynamics that goes into a manifestation on the Earth.

Zarathustra is thus the originator of astronomy, astrology, and astrosophy. At www.StarWisdom.org , we acknowledge that we are part of his school and his heritage. We use his divisions of the heavens into twelve signs of equal size, each with thirty degrees. As Robert Powell has shown from his recent research into the Babylonian history of astrology, the Eye of the Bull at the star Aldebaran, exactly opposed to the Heart of the Scorpion at the star Antares, became the axis of the heavens. Zarathustra set it as the centers of the central “fixed” signs of Taurus and Scorpio. The other signs grouped around this axis.

Most important perhaps is this indication that the line of Zarathustra could look into the heavens and see pictures. How did they do this? We shall discuss that at a future time, though you can hear the core of our approach in the first CD for the Solar Cross readings.

Zarathustra in an earlier incarnation was the teacher of Hermes, the founder of the Egyptian culture. From that tradition we have the Rule of Hermes, which helps us find the Moment of Conception from the information of the birth date and time. That is discussed in the fourth class of the Foundations of Star Wisdom class.

As father of astronomy – observing and naming the stars –, of astrology – understanding the patterns and their effects on earthly events –, and of astrosophy – seeing the workings of celestial spirits in human spirit, as well as the fundamentals of geometry and time, we owe a great deal to Zarathustra. Modern Zoroastrians emphasize other aspects of this great being’s teachings. For this website, we emphasize the star wisdom that he pioneered for us.

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