ZOROASTRIANISM

Part of the hidden treasures of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Zoroastrianism. Today almost no one is talking about it or interested in preserving it as a major national and European heritage. Dominant discourse is still on ethno-national and nostalgic politics. Yet Zoroastrianism needs to be revisited. Eric Voegelin, was a German-American political historian of the twentieth century, renowned for his critical analysis of political thought and the crises of modern time. According to Voegelin, a “healthy,” “balanced,” or “well-ordered” consciousness/life is one that accepts the “tensional structure of existence” and mediates successfully between its contrary poles. On the other hand, he argues that turbulences in one’s life or “diseased” or “unbalanced” or “disordered” consciousness affect the perception of experience. When experience and experiencing the world moves towards either one existential pole the movement would cause “disturbances”. Depending on the disorder such consciousness may move either towards imminent or transcendent realm. Transcendental realm is the condition in which “hyper” consciousness, to brow Andy Warhol vocabulary, transcends or hijacks this reality as “metastatic faith” and beliefs in the iminente divine presence. Meanwhile when transcendental realm is no longer option, modernity and modern times is its fertile ground, certain political and social movements arise as the “saviors” of human soul and human consciousness. These movements , according to Voegelin, more and more originate in modern times and are part of existential responses to the collapse of transcendental realm and/or identity thus human builds ideological constructions as a response. He differentiate between ancient and modern “gnosticism.” Modern, according to Voegelin, caries pathological disorders of the spirit arising from “pneumapathological” or imbalanced consciousness, for instance: “activist dreaming, egophantic revolt, metastatic faith, activist mysticism, demonic mendacity, Prometheanism, parousiasm, political religion, social Satanism, magic pneumatism…” though all in unison are product of modern times. Thus, Voegelin sees in zoroastrianism an example of a Spirit grappling to find meaning and order in existence, and as a significant step in the development of human consciousness. Zoroastrianism, with its dualistic framework of good and evil, is presented as a key example of a civilization; thus: what or where is zoroastrianism in Bosnia and Herzegovina?