In the seasonal Avestan calendar, May 25 marks the festival of haûrvatát. The Avestan term haûrvatát comes from the root haûrva and refers to “integral health, haleness or great health in all parts.”
Haûrvatát is “wholeness of mind/body, good health and freedom from sickness.” In Zoroastrian teachings health, wholeness and wellbeing are divine.
Haûrvatát’s Vedic equivalent is sarvá-tāt “intactness, wholeness” and Greek Hólos. The Latin term salute originally meaning “good health, well-being, safety from disease” comes from the same root.
In Isis and Osiris 46, Plutarch translates Haûrvatát as Πλοῦτος ploutos “Riches, fullness of life” and equates Haûrvatát with “Plutus,” the Greek god of riches.
The translation of Plutarch has a close parallel in the poetic gathas. The term “health with flow of riches/vitality” haûrvatáß draônö occurs in Yasna 33.8, 3rd rhymed verse line and “good, delightful life” hû-jyátöiš is substituted for haûrvatát in Yasna 32.5, 1st rhymed verse line.
The closest connection to haûrvatát’s idea is probably in the Gothic hails, which expresses the notion of “safety from disease, health, spiritual and corporal haleness, integrity, wholeness.”
Old Icelandic heil “good, happy omen,” and heilsa “salute, wishing good health” continue along the same line of thinking.
In runes, we read Wodini hailag translated as “endowed by Wotan with good health, well-being, haleness.”
We also read in the poetic gathas; mazdáv dadát ahûrö haûrvatö ameretátaß-čá; Mazda, the ahûrá, gives health/every cure and immortality, deathlessness; (See Yasna 31.21, 1st rhymed verse line.)
The Avestan haûrvatát teaches the idea that to be intact and “bursting with health and vigorous energy” is divine. By its very nature divinity possesses every formula of “health, well-being” and it bestows this on mortals in the form of great health and by omens of good fortune.”
The Zoroastrian religiosity is rooted in the will to enhance, increase and strengthen life. Zoroastrianism is the religion of healthy mind/spirit and NOT the faith of a sick soul. It is HEALTHY both in spirit and body. It strives for equilibrium, wholeness and wellness in each and every part of being. Great Health permeates the religious life of the ancient Zoroastrian faith.
In Zoroastrianism, there is NO conflict between body and soul. The healthy body is an expression of a vigorous soul.
For this reason, every idea of killing the senses, of asceticism, lies impossibly remote from Zoroastrianism, and appears as an attempt to belie rather than balance nature.
The Mazdyasni vision is that of the spirit/soul which finds health, well-being and spiritual freedom in the material world and in the physical body. Such a good vision comprehends the whole being, the whole world, the whole universe and human life in it, as part of a creative, artistic order.
The furtherance of all growth comes from the Immortals, the prospering of cattle and of the fruits of the fields; the Immortals present mortals “with success, health, children and everything good and beautiful.”
In the Zoroastrian faith, there is a continuous struggle between on the one hand, the divine will of life, growth, prosperity well-being, wholeness, which strives to shape and introduce superb order for the enhancement of every living thing, and a will hostile to excellence; which brings disintegration, distortion, destruction, and decay of every life-force.
The All-Good God Ahûrá Mazdá (Öhrmazd) perpetually battles against the anti-excellence and narrow limitations of the gloomy, beaten spirit añgrö or Ahriman.
I shall conclude by a beautiful verse from the poetic gathas, Yasna 33.10, 1st rhymed verse line; vîspáv-stöi hû-jîtayö “all the good, delightful lives that have been, and those that are, and those that shall come to be are Yours Mazdá.”
ardeshir
