Studies on the Recursive Patterns in the Mazdean Ritualism: the ‘Installation’ and the so-called ‘Disinstallation’ of the high Priestly College

We have certain knowledge of the ceremony of installation of the full Avestan priestly college (a liturgy which takes place in Vr. 3, 1-5, between Y. 11, 8 and 11, 9), thanks to a number of ritual directions and few ceremonial drafts in which the positions of the single assistants are carefully described. This ceremony was regularly held in the framework of the most solemn liturgies, probably not during the normal performance of the Yasna, when the priests were only two (the zaōtar- and probably the ātrauuaxša- or the sraōšāuuarəza-). With reference to Y. 58, 4-8, i.e. to an important portion of the Fšūšō Mąθra, various Avestan mss give additional directions referring to the positions taken by the rāspīg in place of the earlier seven assistant priests and, then, establish the single different textual portions to be recited as their ceremonial substitute in the course of a solemn ceremony. A. Cantera, who was the first to emphasize the importance of these textual and ritual evidences, has recently stated that some of these mss preserve also another draft, which can be directly compared with that of the previous installation as it appears in Vr. 3. Just as the opening ceremony was an “installation”, Cantera has interpreted the following one as a sort of “dis-installation”. The Fšūšō Mąθra is a very important text, because it marks the conclusion of the (animal) sacrifice (true or symbolical), and corresponds to the final consummation of the offering of a piece of meat by the fire. Its chapters 4-8 were recited twice, but only during the first performance the described choreography took place; in fact, when the first recitation of Y. 58, 8 was over, the zōt (Av. zaōtar-) took again the word and started to recite again all the text from Y. 58, 4 to its end (58, 9). The observation of this particular sequence based on a double recitation of the same text, the fact that this ritual did not belong to the Wispered but to the Yasna (so being in evident contrast with the liturgy of the sacerdotal “installation”), as the absence of specific directions concerning an expectable “exit” of the assistants from the ritual area, raise a number of questions and suggest the presence of a more complex symbolism, which does not exactly correspond to the one of a simple (or radical) “dis-installation”. Thus, the present article tries to frame these problems in the light of the theological complexity of the Fšūšō Mąθra and advances a more intriguing ritual interpretation. This ceremony, in fact, seems to mark the occurrence of a separation between the “divine” and the “human”, after a phase of metaphysical union, previously established through the priestly installation, a liturgical event in which the divine dimension (Ahura Mazdā, plus the Aməsha Spəṇtas and Sraōša) and the human one (the zaōtar-, plus the seven assistant priests) joined together, as whether the gods and the priests were coexistent during the meta-temporal dimension of the sacrifice (as it is explicitly stated in some Pahlavi and New Persian sources). With the partial desacralisation of the ritual fire and the conclusion of the first recitation of Y. 58, the ceremony entered into its ritual exodus. The most esoteric union with god and his entities was presently finished, but the assistant priests (or, at least, some of them) were still ready to follow the conclusion of the ceremony and eventually to install a new priestly group.