This may look a bit random, but I found myself meeting Zoroastrians earlier this week, in the improbable setting of a magnificent Grade II*-listed Art Deco cinema in Rayners Lane. In fact, it’s no longer a cinema. It’s been converted into a Zoroastrian fire temple, and houses the most important Zoroastrian centre in Europe.
I was there because this is Interfaith Week, and I was taking part in an event. But I was very glad to have got to the Centre. Zoroastrians have intrigued me ever since I was very little, and living in a small town in south west Iran, with the ruins of a fifth-century BC fire temple at the end of our garden. For Zoroastrianism was the ancient religion of Iran, dominant until the arrival of Islam in the seventh century AD. Its adherents still survive there, but fewer in number; persecution over the centuries has driven most of them to resettle in India (where they are known as ‘Parsees’, i.e.‘Persians’; the ‘Parsee’s fountain’ in the Broadwalk in Regent’s Park is the gift of one of them). They call God ‘Ahuramazda’, meaning Lord of Wisdom; he is symbolized by the sacred fire, which must never be allowed to go out. Their earliest sacred writings (The Gathas) are ascribed to Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose date has been variously placed between 1500 and 500 BC. Their teaching is sometimes summed up as “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” It was a pleasure to meet them.
– Anders