On Zoroastrian Duality

Long Before Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, there was an ancient religion in the land of the Persians.

This religion, borne out of a deeper understanding of the rules of the universe, and engendered by the searching spirit of its people, was called Manichaeism, after the Iranian prophet Mani.

At the core of their faith lay the fundamental principle of duality. Everything, the Manichaeans said, was duality: night and day, hot and cold, life and death, good and evil, time itself was divided between the past and the future. With the present acting as a mere platform for the onlooker.

Funny thing but I never did pay too much attention to this fact. Even though these things had been known to me since I was 15 years old.

I never gave it more than a second thought; I took such duality for granted, as most of us do.

Until tonight that is, when I stumbled upon a YouTube video describing the end of time or better said, the end of the universe. Btw, it comes with EN tracks and subtitles.

The cosmos has always fascinated me. Oddly enough, this fascination even compelled me once to try to instill the same scientific awe in my 2-year old daughter, in whose hands I had placed the grand atlas of the universe. That was 16 odd years ago.

Silly father, eh.

But I digress.

So in this YT video, its author came to describe the inner workings of celestial bodies. At one point he started getting into the mechanics of stars.

As we all know or should at least pretend to, stars are gas spheres, that spend their lifespans as nuclear reactors operating under extreme pressures and temperatures.

Their raison d’être: to make lighter Hydrogen atoms into much heavier Helium via nuclear fission. Apropos, stellar alchemy, if you like gold like I know you do, look into how Au came to be. Your mind will be blown away.

The process occurs under immense gravity, whose natural organic tendency is to collapse the star into itself. Luckily for us and any other denizens of the cosmos, the nuclear fusion squeezing hydrogen atoms into helium, operates on the opposite vector, forever trying to escape the binding force of gravity.

And this is how the Sun blesses the Earth and the system with its multitude of rays.

So, there it is you see, within our Sun and every star across the gulf of space, duality lives at the core of that which makes the universe exist.

Duality, that far reaching principle espoused by those keen observers of the celestial spheres, the Manichaeans Persians, is the foundation of everything.

Duality is everything and in everything.

For each action there is a reaction, usually of equal force.

The evil gravity which keeps us in bondage on this planet can be overcome by finding and harnessing the energy source of the Sun, to build machines that break its stranglehold, and allow us to explore the universe.

The Sun is both good and bad because it gives us warmth, but it can also take away our lives. As it did so many times before and as it will, undoubtedly do it again.

And because the Sun is duality, everything else is the same too.

Somehow, I had never made the connection before.

It is an odd feeling that makes me wonder why humans persist in their silly beliefs and heresies that place them at the center of the world, as if that could ever stop the Earth from spinning around our Star.

It is undeniable that one has but to look at the Sun, to glimpse at the Hand of the Creator, He who Made us all in His Image, and who commands our destiny no matter what some of us may think or say or do. Our faith has inherited the duality of Zoroastrians and made it dogma, as well it should. Because duality is not dogmatic. It is organic. It exists because God. Not because Man. Duality was inherent in His Grand Design. It underlines its Master Plan both in that we are all predestined to walk the Path regardless, and that we can always use our Free Will to choose how we go about it.

The Path is there but the speed of advance, the roads, the pitstops, and finally our approach, remains ours alone.

The green flare or artifact or reflection you spotted below the Sun was captured during the latest eclipse (13 August 2026). Internet says and I concur that it is the solar eclipse reflecting off the lens. As you can see the Sun’s eclipse is not visible but one can spot the crescent shape of the eclipse on the Sun dog below. It doesn’t look like a full crescent because the eclipse was 20% off so to speak in my region.