History of No Ruz
Noruz is the Iranian New Year, which is celebrated each year at the Spring Equinox, around March 21. It is the most important holiday in the Zoroastrian calendar, and brings with it a wealth of symbolism, history, myth, and joyous festivities. There are many layers of meaning to Noruz: astronomical, mythical, historical, ritual, and spiritual.
The word Noruz, in Persian, means "New Day," and the primal origin of the festival is in the universal rhythms of Earth and nature. In the "temperate" zones of the Northern Hemisphere, including Iran, the spring equinox signals the beginning of warmer weather and the growing season. In ancient Iran, it was the time to begin plowing fields and sowing seeds for crops. The equinox also marks the moment when, in the twenty-four hour round of the day, daylight begins to be longer than night.
From its earliest origins Zoroastrianism has honored these natural rhythms and cycles, both with agricultural festivals and with cosmic commemorations of yearly astronomical events.
The world, fashioned by the Wise Lord, shows forth the divine in all aspects of nature, and that divine Immanence is honored in festivals like Noruz, in which divine symbolism is joined with a celebration of the renewal of the earth in spring.
In Zoroastrianism, light is the great symbol of God and Goodness, whether in the light of the sun or in the sacred fire. The Spring Equinox and the lengthening of the days is thus a symbol of the victory of Light over the cold and darkness of winter. Zoroastrianism has a rich heritage of mythological and astrological symbolism which illustrates the significance of Noruz. This symbolism is especially evident in the great palace and ritual center of Persepolis, built by the Achaemenid kings of the first great Persian Empire (c.600 BC-330 BC). Carved into the walls of Persepolis is the double symbol of the lion attacking the bull. These animals stand for the sun (lion) and the rain (bull, from the constellation of Taurus, ruling during the rainy season). They stand for summer (the lion, or Leo, ruling during the summer) vanquishing the bull, symbol of rains. Other carvings at Persepolis show processions of nobles and representatives of the various peoples of the Persian Empire bringing gifts to the Persian King, during the Noruz festival.
The beginning of spring, the renewal of the earth after barren winter, also symbolizes the "frasho-kereti," or the renewal of the whole world, which Zoroastrians believe will happen at the end of time, when all evil and darkness will be vanquished and all creation will be renewed and purified. Every spring, therefore, for Zoroastrians, is a preview of the cosmic renewal of the universe.
In the Zoroastrian religion, abstract qualities or natural forces are often personified, and are honored on their special days. The day of Noruz honors a personified abstraction - in later concepts, a "guardian spirit" - called Rapithwin. He is the "lord" of the noonday heat, which begins to appear after the spring equinox. During the winter, Rapithwin stays beneath the earth and keeps the waters under the earth warm, so that the roots of plants do not freeze and die. Zoroastrian legends of time place both the Creation and the Renovation of the World at noontime, so that Rapithwin presides over the times of both beginning and end. One modern Zoroastrian, following this mythological logic, has even speculated that the "Big Bang," the modern scientific concept of the beginning of the Universe, happened at Noruz - though, at that original point, there were yet no years or days to measure Noruz by, so every moment was Noruz.
Persian mythology also connects Noruz with the mythical King Yima, or Jamshid, the most famous of the prehistoric kings of Iran. Jamshid was supposed to have instituted the festival of the New Year, and in recent times, Zoroastrians have called the Noruz festival "Jamshedi Noruz," the New Day of Jamshid.
The festival of Noruz, though truly Iranian, has its counterparts in Jewish and Christian celebrations. The Jewish feast of Passover, the commemoration of the liberation of the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt, takes place around the beginning of spring, though the Jewish calendar does not place Passover directly at the Equinox. In Judaism, sacred history connects with the cycles of the earth, so that the renewal of the earth and liberation from winter is compared symbolically with the liberation of the Jewish people from bondage.
The same symbolism exists in the Christian faith. Long before Christ, pagan peoples celebrated the renewal of the earth by worshipping gods that died and were resurrected. In Christianity, the actual event of the martyrdom of Christ, and the honoring of sacred nature, converge. The resurrection of Christ from the dead, which in Christian belief took place around the Passover feast, also parallels the rebirth of the earth in spring. Sacred history, building on the Jewish celebration of Passover and the Christ event, re-creates the old myths in a new light.
Source ~ VoHuman.org
~Around the Web~
A personal account of No Ruz by Samual G. Wilson
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