Thе Liturgical Daēnā. Speculative Aspects of the Next-of-Kin Unions.

This article, after an wide-ranging analysis of the pertinente sources, investigates the esoteric implications of the Avestan xvaētuuadaθa- marriage (i.e. the consanguineous marriage), showing in particular that any ritually initiated man could perform the role of Ahura Mazdā with his āhūiriš Daēna Māzdaiiasniš (i.e. a sacred union) in the framework of a next-of-kin union. Thus, it is possible that the consanguineous marriages had also a ritual (real or symbolic we are no more in condition to say) correspondent performance in earlier liturgical traditions, where the primordial action played by the supreme god was reproduced by a priest or a member of the community. The hypothesis that an strong impulse to the diffusion of such a matrimonial strategy started from the enormous importance it assumed in the framework of the Mazdean ritual symbolism and its speculative perspectives (aiming at an anticipated “vision” of the “unmixed” [afterlife] dimension), results to be very promising.