Chapter 5
The Onset of War
Zarathustra stepped onto the battlefield where darkness, falsehood, suppression and destruction were to clash with illumination, truth and cultivation. He was prepared, yet from the very beginning he met with a sea of trouble, pestilence and iniquity. However, this flood of evil neither raised the least doubt within Zarathustra’s heart nor did it daunt him. Just as he had once sought the shelter of his haunt to beat out the enigmas of life and of creation with his anvil of thought so too did he now seek the strength with which he hoped to commence his greatest undertaking: a war waged against ignorance, evil and oppression.
His mission was to arouse men in order to cleanse them of the rust which covered their beguiled thoughts. He sought to awaken men to their beliefs and to those beliefs which they were to develop. He undertook to show men the feebleness and futility of their conceptions and to rebuild their faith on the pillars of wisdom, penetration and knowledge. His task was to show men the way of Mazda—a life built upon truth, blessed thoughts and sagacity.
Zarathustra was to toil to make men realize the actuality of the life they presently led that they might see how distanced they had become from the essence of being. He contrived to open their eyes to the gloom, injustice, filth and abomination which assailed their lives. His calling was to unveil to all eyes the fiends to which they paid homage that they might know the truth and comprehend how a mass of polluted wretches profited from their incarceration of mankind.
The Teacher was to oppose the antiquated images of hellfire with the portrayal of paradise where life was founded upon love, friendship, justice and truth.
He had to make men see the marvels of life that they might appreciate those marvels when they wed them with illumination—that state in which there is purity, truth, love, friendship, labour, justice, righteousness, cultivation and fertility. Men were to know that cruelty, injustice, ugliness, evil, destruction, bloodshed, prevarication and greed could not last and that they would one day be weeded out.
Men had to embrace an illuminated, budding and creative manner of thought—they were to stand stoically and wage war on sin. They had to laud virtue. If they could only have faith in their own powers of leadership, strength and honesty they would attain truth. They needed to firmly believe in the balance of universal justice which unerringly rules creation and life and measures out all things in the scale of time prior to announcing a fateful verdict. If men realized the sanctity of this unchanging law which dictated the universe and all existence they would not waver in their goals but fight unrelentingly for victory. They would struggle to raise the brilliant torch of leadership to the level of the immortal ever illuminating sun.
Men needed to be awakened—awakened to the past, the present and to the future: awakened to the just verdict and deliberation of the laws of universal wisdom and creative power. They were to know the balance of that verdict.
The evil ones, the wicked-minded, the karapans and the kavis had begun to rummage for a means of escape. For fear gripped their hearts. Those who had seemed as unyielding as iron, those who had believed their strength and leadership strong enough to be everlasting, those who had eternal faith in their own superiority looked with anxious eyes and quaking breast at the turn events were taking.
They watched with disbelieving eyes whilst the newborn buds of thought burst asunder the age-thickened soil to blossom forth in exquisite bloom as they lifted their virgin heads up to the sun of Zarathustra’s words, thoughts and wisdom. They bloomed with breathtaking haste. Before the eyes of these villainous sorcerers the aged trees of timeworn beliefs rotted, tumbled and turned to dust. The knaves knew that Zarathustra’s wisdom drew the pure, the good, the true and the wise from all corners of the globe to itself—they came to take up arms against evil, darkness, ignorance, suppression and injustice. Daily did the power of the necromancers diminish while that of the pure and the benevolent grew.
The evil ones strove to destroy Zarathustra and his disciples!
How wondrous strange it was that they who had deemed Zarathustra and his blessed followers too insignificant to merit their regard now toiled ceaselessly to undo them. The Teacher shone as brilliant as the sun, wheresoever he turned, he warmed and illuminated the hearts and souls of men.
He perpetually led men to truth in their thoughts, words and deeds. He led them away from the wicked ones and from the vile necromancers thus shaking the foundation of the lives of these unreclaimed beasts.
He would stoically stand before the armies of the evil ones, the sorcerers, the perverted and the wicked to chant forth his fiery anthems:
O Evil Minded Ones,
All those who blindly follow your ways are wicked, gross and proud!
It is thy stealthy ways that have brought thee execration in seven kingdoms!
(Gathas, chapter 32, verse 3)
You have so desecrated the minds of men as to lead them unto the vilest vices.
Men deal in friendship with the perverted!
They flee divine thoughts as they flee divine, wisdom, truth and purity.
(Gathas, chapter 32, verse 2)
O most Evil Minded Ones,
Thus do ye beguile men and rob them of divine immortality
through evil ways, evil thoughts, evil words and evil deeds.
Thus do you herald the sovereignty of the Wicked One.
(Gathas, chapter 32, verse 5)
The wicked may attain joy through their deeds.
They may attain fame.
O Mazda Ahura.
Thou knower of all things,
It is in the light of Thy kingdom—through the acceptance
of Thy true creed that Man may rule!
(Gathas, chapter 32, verse 6)
Amongst these sinners there is none who knows that life
dictates its own shibboleths.
For through labor and trial achievements rise.
O Mazda Ahura,
Thou knoweth the future of men.
(Gathas, chapter 32, verse 7)