The Word Spoken Before Creation

The Ahuna Vairya, known from its first words Yatha ahu vairyo, is the most important formula of Zoroastrianism, held in the tradition to have been uttered by Ahura Mazda before creation and to rout evil when it is spoken. It is very short, twenty-one words, and in Gathic Avestan, the archaic language of Zoroaster's own hymns, which makes its exact translation difficult and long-contested even among specialists such as those who have edited the Gathas. Its general sense concerns the choosing of a rightful lord and the alignment of one's actions with truth (asha) and with care for the poor.

The prayer is recited constantly: before and after other prayers, on waking and washing, at the tying of the sacred cord (kusti), and at the thresholds of ritual. Zoroastrian cosmology gives it a foundational role, it is spoken of as the primal utterance that patterns the good creation and puts the hostile spirit to flight, so that a formula whose literal meaning is genuinely obscure carries an enormous doctrinal and protective weight. It stands with the Ashem Vohu as one of the two formulas every Zoroastrian knows, the compressed sound of the religion itself.