A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

No less the subject of controversy is the problem of the Magi and their relations with Zoroastrianism. They have been regarded, for example, as an aboriginal tribe of sorcerers and necromancers, responsible for the degradation of Zoroastrianism or, on the contrary, as the true disciples of Zarathustra and his missionaries in western Iran. During the period of the Median Empire (seventh century) they seem to have been a hereditary caste of Median priests, comparable to the Levites and the Brahmans.39 Under the Achaemenids they are the preeminent representatives of the sacerdotal class. According to the information transmitted by Herodotus, they interpreted dreams (1. 107 ff.), prophesied in connection with sacrifices of white horses (7. 13), and during the sacrifices chanted a “genealogy of the gods” (1. 132), which indicates that they were the guardians of a tradition of religious poetry.40 In any case, the Magi had adopted a number of Zoroastrian rites and customs and ended by being regarded as disciples of Zarathustra; indeed, certain Greek writers considered him a Magus.