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>Having sat in a circle on the floor around the blazing fire, the fire priests joined hands and began saying prayers and hymns taken from the Zend-Avesta. Each one chanted over the voices of his fellow supplicants, without co-ordination or harmony, to produce an enchanting yet discordant babel I had never before experienced in a religious ceremony
>Every so often the priests would pass a small white flower between themselves. It was offered with both hands, which were then grasped by a neighbour's hands. The first priest would then remove his hands to leave behind the flower, before completing the gesture by briefly cupping the second priest's hands with his own. On other occasions all five supplicants would join hands and link with the flame of truth by means of a ritual poker placed in the fire by one of the priests; a connection that seemed essential to the success of the ceremony
>Once in a while members of the audience would reach for their own battered copies of the Zend-Avesta and begin half-heartedly reciting certain gathas, before giving up and talking with their neighbours.
>The Zend-Avesta is the Zoroastrians' most sacred text, but there are other books of equal importance. One of these is the Bundahishn, a sacred text written in the late Persian language of Pahlavi. Among its many themes is a unique creation myth, in which the stalk ofthe sacred rhubarb plant grows and grows until it divides to form two separate human beings - Masya and Masyanag, the father and mother of the mortal race. The couple exist in a state of purity, but are then seduced by Angra Mainyu (the daevas in one account). As a consequence of this seduction, the first couple give worship to him (or them) and not Ahura Mazda, named in the text as 'Ormuzd'. In so doing these first mortals are deprived of their original purity, which neither they, nor any of their descendants, are able to recover unless through the aid of Mithra, the deity who presides over the salvation of the soul
