The Gumezishn and the Current Cosmic Era

The Bundahishn: Our Central Astrological Text

Much of the Sasanian Astrological tradition is depends on the Bundahishn, "Primal Creation," a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) compendium of Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology. The fuller of its two surviving versions, the Greater Bundahishn, is the primary source for this page, the version that preserves the planetary contest outcomes and the world's full horoscope in complete detail. Of all the Zoroastrian religious books that survive, it is, in Raffaelli's own words, "the richest in astrological contents" (Raffaelli 2017: 175), the single text where the cosmic assault, the planetary wars, the fixed-star generals, the horoscope of the world, and the shape of history from creation to Restoration are laid out together, in one place, as a connected account rather than scattered references.

The Bundahishn as we have it was compiled by Zoroastrian priests in the 9th–10th centuries CE, under Islamic rule, centuries after the Sasanian Empire itself ended in 651 CE. But its content is Sasanian, not post-Sasanian invention: dated horoscopes survive from within the empire's own lifetime (281 and 381 CE), a specific 6th-century Sasanian military reform is fossilized directly in the text's cardinal-generals structure, and the Dēnkard records the Sasanian court itself sponsoring the translation and integration of astrological material into the religious corpus.

This page follows the Bundahishn's own account, chapter by chapter, from the fashioning of time itself through to the Restoration it points toward.

Two Eternities, One Made Finite

Before anything else, there is only Ohrmazd, in boundless, unmixed light, "endless light," in the Bundahishn's own phrase (translator E.M. West), and, in the opposite reach of the void, Ahriman, in a darkness the text calls, just as directly, "the endlessly dark." But the two are not mirror images. Ohrmazd, through omniscience, knows from the outset that Ahriman exists. Ahriman, "on account of backward knowledge"(transl. E.M. West), does not know Ohrmazd exists at all, he only learns it by blundering upward into the light and being driven back by its brilliance (Bd. I, 3–5, 8–9).

The Bundahishn opens by describing Ohrmazd's own eternal time (zamān ī derang-xwadāy, "the time of long dominion") and that it was never itself interrupted. Instead, Ohrmazd fashioned a second, finite time out of his own infinity, a bounded span set to last exactly 12,000 years, and it is inside this finite span, not instead of eternity, that everything that follows takes place:

"The time of the long-dominion was the first creation, which He fashioned, so that it was limitless before the mixture, the eternity of Ohrmazd. He fashioned from that limitlessness the one having limits... so that from the primeval foundation, when the creation was created, until the end, when the Evil Mind will be powerless, it will last a measure of 12,000 years, which is limited, and then it will merge and turn into limitlessness, so that the creation of Ohrmazd will become eternal with Ohrmazd." (Bd. I, 10; Panaino 2021: 593)

That closing image, the finite span itself eventually merging back into eternity, is where this story ends too, in a great healing.

The First Six Thousand Years: Creation Without Opposition

The 12,000 year period divides into four of 3,000 years each. For the first two of these, the first 6,000 years, Ahriman does not yet know Ohrmazd's light exists. Ohrmazd creates in two stages within this span: first the spiritual creation alone (mēnōg), then the material creation (gētīg), which is fashioned but held motionless, suspended within the spiritual state rather than yet set moving.

Even in this stillness, time itself does not stop, the zodiacal constellations' rule over the millennia (their chronocratoria "time-lordships", a term from Hellenistic astrology applied by scholars of Zoroastrian astrology to this concept) advances in sequence regardless, "despite the apparent absence of motion" (Panaino 2021: 594). This is a world complete, ordered, and entirely unopposed so far.

Ahriman's Assault and the Start of the Mixture

At the exact midpoint of the 12,000 years, year 6,000, at noon on the day Ohrmazd of the month Fravardin, when day and night stood equal, Ahriman breaks through and rushes into the cosmos (Bd. V A, 1; MacKenzie 1964: 513). This is the Gumēzishn itself beginning: light and darkness, order and disorder, good and evil, driven together into a single entangled condition for the first time.

The planets enter with him, each taking up its position against a specific fixed star, documented directly in the Greater Bundahishn (Bd. 5.4, 5a.3, 5b.12–14) and the Škand-Gumānīg Wizār (ŠGW 4.31–36) (Raffaelli 2017: 176). Saturn and Mars win their contests outright; Jupiter and Venus lose theirs and are bound to distribute the goodness that defeated them; Mercury's contest alone ends in a genuine draw, matched against Tishtar exactly. This is the source of the rule astrologers still use for Mercury today: beneficial when conjoined, bounded, or overcome by beneficial planets, malefic when placed the same way among malefic planets. Mercury takes its character from whichever side stands nearest.

Two More Combats: The Nodes and the Comet

Two further conflicts enter with the assault, on a different footing from the above five and relevant to understanding the astrology that derives from this.

The two lunar nodes together form Gōchihr, described as a dragon stretching across the sky, its head and tail six constellations apart, opposing the sun and moon directly, rather than any single planet against any single star (Bd. 5.4, 5a.5; MacKenzie 1964: 513, 515–16). Unlike the five generals, there's no stated victory or defeat here. Instead, both the dark sun and dark moon (the nodes) are described as tied by a cord to the actual chariots of the sun and moon, restrained, but not resolved. Eclipses, in this doctrine, are the moments that binding is felt.

A third and lesser figure, Mush Parīg, "the Rat Sorceress," apparently a tailed comet, is bound the same way, corded to the sun's own chariot. "When it becomes free, it distributes much evil until it is recaptured" (Bd. 5, 5; MacKenzie 1964: 513). Unlike the nodes, Mush Parīg has no fixed, calculable position, it appears and vanishes, which is exactly why it isn't part of an ordinary chart the way the five generals or the nodes are.

Between them, the five generals, the two nodes, and Mush Parīg give the full cast the Bundahishn actually names: five settled outcomes, two ongoing restraints, and one wildcard bound but never fully tamed.

Where We Stand: The Second Half of the Twelve Thousand

Gumezishn names "the period occupying the second half of the 12 millennia of cosmic history, in which the world currently lives" (Raffaelli 2017: 176), years 6,000 to 12,000. Within this second half, a further marker matters for where the tradition places itself now. Raffaelli's analysis of the Bundahishn's own chronology places Zoroaster's birth thirty years before the close of the first post-assault trimillennium, roughly year 8,970, with his defining encounter with Ohrmazd, traditionally dated to his thirtieth year, opening the final trimillennium at year 9,000 (Raffaelli 2017: 179). That final 3,000-year span is the period in which we now live.

Toward Frashegird

The 12,000 years end at frashegird, the Restoration, the "making wonderful" of the world. Ahriman is rendered a-kār, powerless, and the finite time Ohrmazd fashioned at the very beginning does not simply stop, but merges back into the eternity it was drawn from, and Ohrmazd's creation becomes eternal with Ohrmazd. The trap the Mixture represents, a bounded span deliberately set against an enemy who doesn't know he's already lost, closes exactly where it opened.

This is the frame everything in this practice sits inside. Nothing about a chart read through this method is being read at the beginning of the story, and nothing is being read at its unconditioned end either. It's being read in the specific, later stretch of it, after the revelation that named the stakes, before the Restoration that resolves them, which is exactly why the tradition insists your choices inside this stretch are not incidental to how it turns out.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Bundahishn (Bd.), cited by chapter/section. Critical edition: Pakzad, Fazlollah, ed. Bundahišn: Zoroastrische Kosmogonie und Kosmologie, Pt. 1. Tehran, 2005. English translation of chapters 1–3: West, E. W., trans. Sacred Books of the East, vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1897: https://www.avesta.org/mp/bundahis.html.

  • A note on editions: the Bundahishn survives in two recensions, a shorter Indian version (West's translation above covers this fully) and a fuller Iranian version, the Greater Bundahishn, translated by Anklesaria (1956). Much of the specific material on this page, the planetary contest outcomes, the full degree-by-degree horoscope of the world, is preserved in the Greater Bundahishn specifically: https://www.avesta.org/mp/grb.htm.

  • Škand-Gumānīg Wizār (ŠGW), cited by chapter/section: https://www.avesta.org/mp/shkand.html.

Secondary scholarship

  • Hintze, Almut. "FRAŠŌ.KƎRƎTI." Encyclopaedia Iranica. Published December 15, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_1731

  • MacKenzie, D. N. "Zoroastrian Astrology in the Bundahišn." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, 1964, pp. 511–29.

  • Panaino, Antonio. “The ‘Other’ Gumēzišn. About the Final ‘Merger’ of Limited Time with Eternity.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31, no. 3 (2021): 591–97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186321000237.

  • Pingree, David, and Christopher J. Brunner. "Astrology and Astronomy in Iran." Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1987.

  • Raffaelli, Enrico G. "Astrology and Religion in the Zoroastrian Pahlavi Texts." Journal Asiatique 305.2, 2017, pp. 171–90. DOI: 10.2143/JA.305.2.3262802.

  • Raffaelli, Enrico G. L'oroscopo del mondo: Il tema di nascita del mondo e del primo uomo secondo l'astrologia zoroastriana. Milan, 2001.