Ahura Mazda

In Zoroastrian tradition, Ahura Mazda is presented as the supreme source of goodness and wisdom who reveals the 'Good Religion' to the prophet Zoroaster and who creates or commands helper spirits called yazatas. Alternative historical-theological accounts exist: non‑Zurvanist Zoroastrianism treats Ahura Mazda as the highest creator who, in mythic genealogies, is associated with the Spenta Armaiti and the engendering of early progenitors; Zurvanite accounts place Ahura Mazda as a child of the primordial Zurvan. Older Mazdaism sometimes presents Ahura Mazda as one god among others, indicating layered pre‑ and non‑Zoroastrian forms of worship.

Sources give few physical details. In Achaemenid royal practice Ahura Mazda was symbolized at court and on campaign by an empty chariot drawn by white horses; later art from the mid-first millennium BC included pictorial and stone representations that by the Sasanian period were replaced or removed during iconoclastic movements. Zoroastrian tradition recounts a visionary encounter in which an Amesha Spenta (traditionally named Vohu Manah in that account) led Zoroaster to the presence of Ahura Mazda, but the texts supplied do not furnish a detailed anthropomorphic description.

Within Zoroastrian tradition Ahura Mazda functions as the source of all goodness and wisdom, teacher of Zoroaster, creator or authority over the yazatas, and supreme moral force opposing the destructive spirit Angra Mainyu. Ahura Mazda is the primary invoked spirit in liturgy (the Yasna) and was called upon in royal inscriptions and rituals (e.g., Behistun Inscription, Achaemenid military symbolism) for political and protective purposes. Classical authors (e.g., Plutarch) later equated him with light in contrast to darkness, an external interpretative framing rather than an indigenous doctrinal claim.