Cyrus The Great was definitely a Zoroastrian!!! ALL of Persia at his time was Zoroastrian.
And his practices in religious and philosophical matters were Zoroastrian too.
As for Mary Boyce, you already know what I think of her. ;-)
Democracy was not practiced anywhere before Iceland in the 10th century. The democracy of the Greeks was strictly limited to a small class of aristocratic men and was consequently an oligocracy and not a democracy.
But the IDEA of democracy began with Zarathushtra as he was interested in the GAIN society achieves as a whole by nurturing differences of opinion. Plurality is therefore a sacred principle in Zoroastrianism. It is consequently the only religion which has stayed together and not separated into lots of tiny little sects. The Greeks picked up on these ideas and launched the concept of "demos-cracia".
The Greeks contributed enormously to the world of philosophy. But they did of course not start philosophy. Greece rather carried on traditions began earlier in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. Just like China and India had philosophical cultures long before Europe.
I'm copying from Mary Boyce's "Zorostrians" book: "Cyrus left only brief inscriptions â€¦ (that) contain no declaration of his religious beliefs". On what grounds can we prove that he was in fact a Zoroastrian, and what was his breed of Zoroastrianism? He was an emperor, a mighty conqueror, for sure not democratically elected.
You've stated many times that democracy was proposed by Zoroaster. That is intriguing me, as a Greek, since at schools in Greece we learn that it was the ancient Athenians that introduced democracy ;-) How come then it was never practiced in antiquity at the home land of Zoroaster? As far as I know there has never been in the East a democratic tradition. I might be wrong, so please someone correct me.
I've said it before, I will repeat it once more: I believe there are a lot of different "levels" of democracy. The term is very vague and covers many regimes (there is direct, representative, islamic and many more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_democracy).
For sure I agree that weave a lot to learn about the tolerance of Cyrus the Great.
--- In Ushta@yahoogroups.com, Alexander Bard
> Dear Zaneta
> The difference is between those who see Zoroastrianism as a dualist faith
> (Panentheism) and those who see Zoroastrianism as a monist ethical system
> (Pantheism). I firmly believe we can encompass both convictions within the
> Zoroastrian community, we always have in the past. But it takes two to tango
> so we'll have to see where this all ends up. To me, difference of opinion is
> often a sacred good and not something to be despised and avoided with any
> means possible. We have a lot to learn here from the tolerance of Cyrus The