But it is quite contrary to his spirit that life should be governed entirely by ritual law. Zarathustra himself was a priest and was favorable to due religious observances.
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No doubt there were germs in the early Iranian religion of a priestly system. Mazdeism was not originally a markedly priestly religion it is thought that it became so when planted in Media. The result in the course of centuries was the Mazdseism of the Avesta. Meanwhile the reformer Zarathushtra appeared and built upon preexisting religious beliefs and practices and attracted the Magi to his side. The conquest of Media by Persia would have introduced the Median forms of theology among the Persian people, though their influence would have been momentarily checked by the overthrow of Gomates and his party, who perhaps would have stood in much the same relation to the Achaemenian aristocracy as the Pharisees did to the Sadducees.
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The simplest way of explaining these anomalies is to suppose that the religious system described by Herodotus was that of the Medes, among whom the Magi were a sort of hereditary priests, like the Levites in Israel and that the religious system of Darius represented the religion of the Persian aristocracy, but that the origin and fundamental principles of the two were the same. So, too, is any reference to the doctrine of a resurrection. 36) is inconsistent with the belief that water was divine,' and in Herodotus's account of Magian religion Avestan dualism is conspicuous by its absence. On the other hand, the scourging of the Hellespont by Xerxes (Herod, vii. No sacrifice could be offered without the presence of a Magus, who accompanied it with a hymn (the Avestan Gatha) and there was neither altar, fire, nor libation. He further ascribes to them the Zoroastrian practices of reverencing the dog and destroying noxious animals (i. Herodotus makes the Magi a Median tribe (L 101),' but he also implies that they were a class of priests (L 140), and he describes certain of them as interpreters of dreams (L 107). In the first Fargard, or chapter, of the Vendidad-the historical chapter, in which are traced the only movements of the Iranic peoples, and which from the geographical point whereat it stops must belong to a time when the Arians had not yet reached Media Magna - the Dualistic belief clearly shows itself. The earliest form of the Median religion is to be found in those sections of the Zendavesta which have been pronounced on internal evidence to be the most ancient portions of that venerable compilation as, for instance, the first Fargard of the Vendidad, and the Gathas, or "Songs," which occur here and there in the Book on Sacrifice. The statements of the earlier classical authorities are not easy to reconcile with the Iranian Avesta, and fresh elements of difficulty have been introduced by the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. The religion of the ancient Medes is one of the most difficult and disputable questions in ancient Oriental history. The Medes had an ancient Iranian religion, a form of pre-Zoroastrian Mazdaism or Mithraism. From this time forward the names of the kings and chiefs of Media and the neighbouring districts mentioned on the Assyrian monuments are Iranian, and in a list of Median princes conquered by Sargon in 714-713 BC there is found the name of Mazdaku, proving that Zoroaster's god Mazda, 'the Wise,' was already worshipped.
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In the 9th century BC the Aryan population had become Iranian, and was settled east of the Zagros mountains, where it was known to the Assyrians as Madft, or Medea, a name also written Amada, like Amardi for Mardi.