The Guardian Self That Chose to Fight

The fravashi is Zoroastrianism's idea of a pre-existent, immortal spirit belonging to each being, to human persons and, in the fuller teaching, even to Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas. It exists before a person is born and survives after death: the higher, guardian aspect of the self. A striking strand of the tradition pictures the fravashis as souls who freely agreed to descend into the material world in order to take up the struggle for the good creation against the assault of evil, so that embodied life is itself a kind of enlistment.

The fravashis of the righteous dead receive particular honour. They are believed to watch over their living descendants, to uphold the order of the world, and to be welcomed back among their families at the great festival held at the turn of the year. In venerating them the Zoroastrian community affirms that its members, the living and the departed alike, are fellow soldiers in Ahura Mazda's cause.