The Classification of Astral Bodies in the framework of an Historical Survey of Iranian traditions

The current paper presents the status of our knowledge about the classification patterns adopted in the earliest phases of the Avestan tradition with regard to the astral bodies and their supposed identity, origin, function and role in the framework of the Mazdean religious tradition. Then, this study underlines the fundamental importance of the single stars in the Zoroastrian cosmology and the forms of distinction, individualization and categorization they were attributed, with particular regard for the determination of some constellations. Remarkably interesting appears the distinction between the stars and the two luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, all of them celestial symbols of the preservation of the correct cosmic order in the heavens as on the earth. Furthermore, the article emphasizes the problem of the subdivision of the heavens in three and more levels, and its origins as well as the following introduction of new categories of stars. Very important is, at least for the earliest periods of the Iranian civilization, the evident absence of the planets (and of the planetary demons), whose clear identification was only a later phenomenon, probably derived by contacts with the Mesopotamian traditions. On the contrary, the Old Iranian people focused on their closer attention on astral bodies whose movement was unpredictable and without regularity, as in the cases of falling stars, bolides, etc. This category of celestial bodies was later associated with the planets and their negative role, as symbols of cosmic disorder, but framed in the new patterns of the astrological tradition, which was completely unknown in the Old Iranian period.