Not only does this post introduce you to the diverse forms of Mihr, it also features passages from TWO Persian astrology books that I'm currently in the process of translating to English (one of them is being translated for the first time ever)!

Wishing everybody a blessed Yaldā and an easy Zamistān! ❄️

Revised hypothetical: *lāžur(d)ag → Ar. al-ʾazraq (Expert opinions are more than welcome)

Wishing everybody a blessed Yaldā and an easy Zamistān! ❄️

I often wonder about the etymology of azraq. This is a long shot, but it might've derived from a hypothetical Middle Iranian *āžurag or *āžulag. MP definitely had *lāžward/*lāžuard (‘lapis lazuli’), a blue stone with golden/yellowish veins. If true: ‘yellowish’ as an additional meaning isn't weird.

Persianists, don't sleep on the voiced palatal fricative [ʝ].

The Hermetic teaching on Will is that it must be free from passion and desire in order for it to be effective.

Astrology podcasters looking to discuss Sasanian Persian astrology, feel free to DM me.

Iranians should bring back the Zagros D: /ð̞/

کیر Starmer

One intriguing element of having a moveable sign rising is that it also means having a double-bodied ninth house... which the Persians of old deemed a mark of inconstancy in one's faith.

Smartly employing the administrative tactics of Cyrus the Great.

Fascinating how the same homonym occurs in both Middle Persian and Arabic: MP. dād (‘age’, ‘tooth’) Ar. sinn (‘age’, ‘tooth’)

Ērān simply means ‘the Aryans’. Ēr (‘Aryan’) + -ān (plural suffix; commonly forms patronymics and ethnonyms)

Fun fact: Mamdani is a Twelver Shia with roots in the Khoja community in Gujarat, India. A significant amount of Gujaratis, namely Parsis (Mazdean Persians) and Shias, are of Iranian descent.

Mihr enthroned. Coin of Kušānšāh Ardašīr.

The Greeks characterized the 2nd place by its axial relation to the 8th, believing the “Gate of Hades” to be the other side of death. I presume this was an attempt to reconcile their eschatology with the astrology that they were developing. In any case, this characterization is wildly misleading.

Every letter in the alphabet carries a specific planetary energy.

The astrological connection between Hōrmazd and large-scale demonstrations is truly a beautiful one to observe.

One of the (many) things that I plan to do with my Patreon is to translate some of my Persian and Arabic sources into English, making them a bit more accessible to anglophones. Would anyone be interested in that?

Magic.

The project is officially on Patreon! 🌞 patreon.com/andarzgar

The Persian way to get through eclipse season, in a nutshell: - Praying. - Keeping away from the noxious rays. - Abstaining from sex. - Avoiding mind-altering substances (incl. alcohol). - Moderating food intake. - Maintaining cleanliness of body, mind, and environment. - Taking it easy.

This all just goes to show you... there's no such thing as a "good" eclipse.

Two major meteor showers will overlap on the tail end of this month, from the 29th–31st of July.

Little bit about the hīlāg: In Middle Persian, hil- or (inf.) *hištan means ‘to release’ or ‘to abandon’. If we combine this verb with -āg, a suffix that forms agent nouns from the present stems of verbs, we get hīlāg (‘releaser’).

Fuck Israel.

Who's to say that reducing a long venerated deity into an abstract Jungian archetype isn't itself a consequence of modern "cultural conditioning"?

One intriguing element of having a moveable sign rising is that it also means having a double-bodied ninth house... which the Persians of old deemed a mark of inconstancy in one's faith.

Thinking: برج What if 7th century Arabs — who had a vowel-impoverished, unpointed script — didn't actually refer to a zodiacal sign as a burj, but were instead calling it a barraj or barrej all along?

This may come as a surprise, but...

Iranophobia is a thing of yesterday.

One of the best (albeit underutilized) functions of astrology is its ability to divulge which philosophies to avoid in life.

This is the coin of a Persian nobleman, known by the name of Tīrībāzu (440–270 BCE). Tīrībāzu was the satrap of Armenia and, later on, of Lydia. Accounts of his eventful life and bittersweet legacy closely intertwine with those of the Achaemenid shah, Artaxerxes II. A fascinating man indeed.

From my family to yours, a blessed Nowruz. 🌞

After Nowruz, Tīr will no longer be Sāl Xwadāy. Some of the most significant events of the past year have coincided with his retrogradation.

The upcoming syzygy

From Middle Persian burzax(w). burz ('high') + axw (place noun suffix; 'realm')

important thread on the origin of the word "Behenian" (as in the 15 Behenian Stars), which I also get into in my Behenian lecture 💅

Stellar thread on the Persianate lineage of the so-called Behenian Stars.

a fascinating thread on the persian origin of the word "Behenian" (which we see all the time in astroculture) 👀

The origin of the word "Behenian" 👇

🧵 The Wahmanine Stars

🧵 The Wahmanine Stars

What a gorgeous piece. You don't see that many Persian reverse-intaglio cameos. It truly breaks my heart that this is sitting in New York.

TIL: There's a horror game named Silent Hill—and in one of the game's little puzzles, the player has to arrange a bookcase so that the planetary glyphs on the spines of the books are aligned in Chaldean order. Who says adolescent nephews are completely useless?

Like the ram, the wild boar was traditionally associated with Vereθragna (Wahrām), a symbol of victory and an immensely popular yazd in late antiquity Iran. Wahrām and his sundry forms feature prominently in Sasanian art.