The sould of women in the Zoroastrian Afterlife

This article deals with the destiny of women in the Zoroastrian afterlife according to various Mazdean sources in Avestan and Pahlavi. It demonstrates that the representation of the meeting of the uruuan- (the masculine soul) with the daênâ- (the feminine soul) corresponds to a masculine perception of the final eschatological prize in the post mortem, seen after a masculine sexual drive. But in spite of these facts, the work also shows that there is no compelling identification of the "uruuan-" with a dead man, so that the meeting of the two animical components is just a hierogamy between two animical parts, but not between two individuals. In other terms, we have a dramatic meeting, where the uruuan- finds in the image of the daênâ- a mirror of his own thoughts, words and deeds (the daênâ- in fact appears beautiful or horrible, according to the human moral behaviour in life of the dead person [not of a dead man only]), and this dynamics corresponds to a masculine vision, but there are also different elements supporting the attribution of a daênâ- to women too. Practically, the union of the two components of the soul was the same for men and women, but its sexually oriented implications (in strictly masculine terms) were strongly emphasized. For this reason, the uruuan- appeared as an alter ego of a dead man, while in reality it was only the representation of any dead persona, male of female.