Ormuzd and Ahriman Are Ever Opposing Powers, Yet Inseparable and Interdependent

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 11 pages

From Lucifer of March 1891, two months before Blavatsky's death, and among the last things she wrote. She calls the Mazdean allegory of the two Brother-Powers the most philosophically profound type in all the world-religions, and the essay is an attempt to say why. Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu — Ormuzd and Ahriman in their modern dress — are both Sons of Boundless Time, Zeruana-Akarana, issued from a Principle above them both; one embodies Good Thought and the other Evil Thought, but they are emanations of the same source.

The point pressed throughout is that this is not the dualism it is usually taken for. Angra Mainyu is born as pure as his elder brother and becomes jealous only afterwards; the two are opposed but inseparable, and neither can be understood without the other. Blavatsky sets the doctrine against its Christian counterpart, where the adversary is external and the opposition absolute, and reads the Persian figures instead as Buddhi and Kama-Manas — the higher and lower poles of one manifested creative power, which builds worlds and thinks through man. Milton stands at the head of the essay, and the extensive footnotes place Ormuzd against Parabrahman and the three Logoi of the Secret Doctrine.

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