Angra Mainyu, the Destructive or Hostile Spirit, later called Ahriman, is the principle of evil in Zoroastrianism, the source of death, disease, falsehood and darkness set against the good creation of Ahura Mazda. In the doctrine of the two spirits he chooses the lie, druj, in opposition to truth, asha, and afflicts the world with every corruption, so that the whole of cosmic and human history is the battleground of their conflict. Zoroastrian teaching holds that at the end of time the good will triumph and evil be undone, so that his power, though real, is not eternal. His counter-creation of demons opposes each good thing that Ahura Mazda makes.
Facts
History
Historical NoteZoroastrian teaching holds that at the end of time the good will triumph and evil be wholly undone, so that his power, though real within history, is not eternal. 1 Origins
Origin of the NameAngra Mainyu combines an Avestan word for hostile or destructive with mainyu, spirit, so the name itself states his role as the destructive spirit opposed to Ahura Mazda's own beneficent spirit in the doctrine of the two primordial choices. 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeWhether Angra Mainyu is co-eternal with Ahura Mazda as an independent opposing principle, or a lesser being whose choice of evil makes him its source, the question the Zurvanite school answered by making both spirits offspring of a god of time. 1 Zoroastrian theology itself divided historically on whether Angra Mainyu is co-eternal with Ahura Mazda, opposed to him from the beginning as two independent principles, or a lesser being who chooses evil and so becomes its source, a question the later Zurvanite school answered by making both spirits offspring of a prior god of time, Zurvan, a resolution the older Gathic tradition never taught and that mainstream Zoroastrianism rejected. Attributions
Mythic AssociationEvery act of the Wise Lord's creation is met by a deliberate counter creation of demons and afflictions from Angra Mainyu, a strict opposition running through the whole of the created world. 2 Mythic AssociationIn the doctrine of the two spirits he chooses the lie, druj, in opposition to truth, asha, and his counter-creation of demons opposes each good thing that Ahura Mazda makes. 1 Belief
TheologyDualist: two opposed cosmic principles 1 Attestation
Veneration Today HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1 Sources
Textual NoteThe Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian text of cosmology compiled from older material, describes Angra Mainyu bursting into the sky to attack the newly formed world at the moment of creation, the act that begins the cosmic struggle between good and evil filling all of history. 3 Function
Domain / Function Domain / FunctionDestruction and dissolution 1 Domain / Function Cult
Attributes and IconographyZoroastrian tradition describes Angra Mainyu attacking the good creation in the forms of a serpent, a lizard or a fly, and later Sasanian era seals and reliefs represent him only obliquely, through serpent imagery or a king trampling a demonic figure, since the tradition generally avoided giving the destructive spirit a stable, honored image the way it did the yazatas. 3 Position Profile
Key TextThe Bundahishn, the Zoroastrian book of creation, describes Angra Mainyu's assault on the material world as introducing death, disease and every other evil into what Ahura Mazda had made wholly good, framing cosmic history as the struggle between the two spirits that follows. 3 Learn More
The Hostile Spirit, and the Ethics of Choice
Angra Mainyu, the Destructive or Hostile Spirit, known in later Zoroastrian tradition as Ahriman, is the principle of evil in Zoroastrianism, the source of death, disease, falsehood and darkness, set against the good creation of Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord. He is not, however, best understood as a mere devil in the later Western sense.
In the ancient doctrine of the two spirits, set out in the Gathas attributed to the prophet Zarathustra himself, there are two primal Mainyus, two fundamental dispositions or spirits, one that chooses truth and life, and one that chooses the lie and destruction, and evil enters the world through a choice rather than existing as an eternal given equal to the good. This makes Angra Mainyu the embodiment of the wrong choice, the active will toward ruin, and it places moral decision at the very centre of the cosmos: human beings, like the spirits, must align themselves with truth (asha) against the lie (druj).
A Creation Opposed at Every Point
In the developed cosmology of later texts such as the Bundahishn, the conflict of the two spirits is worked out across the whole of creation and the whole of time. Whatever Ahura Mazda makes good, Angra Mainyu answers with a counter-creation of harm: to life he opposes death, to health disease, to the useful animals the noxious ones, to truth the lie. The history of the world is the battleground of the two, divided into great ages, but the outcome is not in doubt, Zoroastrian teaching is emphatically not a balanced dualism of two equal and eternal powers. In the end the good creation triumphs, evil is defeated and rendered powerless, the dead are raised and the world is made perfect and immortal, a final renovation known as the Frashokereti.
Angra Mainyu's defeat is certain; his role is to be the adversary whose opposition gives the drama of existence its moral stakes. This vision of a cosmic struggle between good and evil moving toward a final victory has been widely discussed by scholars for its possible influence on later religious thought about the devil, judgement and the end of the world.
Correspondences & Relations
Connections
Associated With
The House of Lies is the Zoroastrian hell, standing in Zoroastrian dualism as the domain of Angra Mainyu opposite Ahura Mazda's House of Song.
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Opposes
Angra Mainyu is the Destructive Spirit set against the good creation of Ahura Mazda; the whole of cosmic and human history is the battleground of their conflict.
Source The AvestaAnonymous (Zoroastrian tradition)
Related To
In the doctrine of the two spirits, Angra Mainyu chooses the lie, druj, in opposition to truth, asha.
Source The AvestaAnonymous (Zoroastrian tradition)
Same Figure, Narrative Entry
The Zoroastrian spirit of destruction and falsehood, told here as a narrative figure and, separately, as the object Zoroastrian tradition names against Ahura Mazda.
Worshipped In
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sources
1. A History of Zoroastrianism
2. The Avesta
Anonymous (Zoroastrian tradition)The Gathas: the doctrine of the two spiritsView the Source 3. The Bundahishn: The Zoroastrian Book of Creation
Domenico Agostini and Samuel Thrope, Oxford University Press, 2020
Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Ahriman/Angra Mainyu; Zoroastrian dualism and its limitsView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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