The Amesha Spentas

Homage unto the Amesha Spentas, the lordly and shining, the Holy Immortals, that are seven with thee, their father and creator, O Ahura Mazda. These, thy archangels sublime, are the rulers and overseers and protectors of thy creation in both the worlds. May they descend from their celestial heights to lead and guide the erring mankind.

The Amesha Spentas, sing the sacred texts, are all of one thought and one word and one deed. They the seven think and speak and do as but one and see one another's soul. May we be like unto them of one mind to think good thoughts and speak good words and do good deeds. May we be of one heart to live in concord and peace.

The exalted heavenly lords are spirits sublime. Spirit with spirit, they can commune and converse and in one accord they can work in unbroken concord. We thy mortals, thou Spirit of Spirit, are matter and spirit welded into one. Thou hast built us each a beautiful bodily mansion and loaned it for life to the spirit to live its earthly life. The mansion has windows and doors, but the spirit, through senses, sees only what senses can show. The spirit yearns to see the spirit, but the flesh veils the spirit and hides another's spirit from sight. Death will one day break upon the house of clay and, spirit disembodied, will then see the spirit. But grant, O Gracious God, that with Asha Vahishta's blazing fire of righteousness we may scorch and burn the fleshy veil, that the spirit with spirit may meet even while alive.

The flesh, with its numberless forms and colours, divides and keeps man from man apart and aloof. But the spirit is one and the same in us all. May the spirit of men and women and children that inhabit the seven zones of the earth abide in thee and live in fellowship with thee, even as the Amesha Spentas do, O thou the first and father of the seven Holy Immortals.

And now we praise and invoke you, the exalted and shining Holy Immortals of Ahura Mazda. We beseech you to come down from the highest heights of the heavens to our abodes and accept our offerings of the good thoughts of our minds and good words of our mouths and good deeds of our hands. Protect us and guide us and help us to tread, with steady steps, the steep and rugged path of life. With devotion we approach you and with love we lay before you our earthly possessions and our bodies and the very life of our bodies and our souls and all that we call our own in this world. These are our sacrificial offerings unto you, Amesha Spentas. Shed your blessings on our heads, illumine our minds with your light, fill our hearts with your joy, inflame our spirits with your love, ye Archangels of Ahura Mazda.

From this point on, in addition to utilizing poetic symbolism, Dastur Dhalla has also tried to enter the realm of Zoroastrian mythology, to illustrate his symbolisms even more succinctly. It is important not to fall into the trap of literalism, or else we will inevitably move away from the spirit of Zarathushtra's teachings and towards orthodoxy and ritualism.

This page was last updated on Friday, February 11, 2005.