Angra Mainyu

Ahura Mazda's world held only two living things: the primal ox Gosh and the first man, Gayomart, who stood together by the river Daiti and withstood the evil that Angra Mainyu was working to spread. Destroying them both was Angra Mainyu's whole purpose from the start. For three thousand years the earth held nothing but Gayomart himself, until Angra Mainyu broke through the sky, buckling the ground into mountains and valleys, and loosed snakes, scorpions and lizards across the world. He heaped disease, hate, pain, hunger and greed onto Gayomart, who held the assault off for thirty years before he collapsed, dead, in the dirt. The ox died in the same onslaught, and Ahura Mazda eased the pain of their dying. Gayomart's last words held that his own death would not be the end: mankind, he said, would be born of him.

His words held true. Where the ox's spilled blood reached the ground, trees, grasses, flowers and fruit sprang up, and its seed flew as high as the moon, so every animal on earth was born from it. Gayomart's own blood fed the soil more slowly. For forty years it lay quiet, until a tall reed grew from the ground, closely joined at first, the seed that was Gayomart becoming the plant that divided into the first humans, male and female. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology names Gayomart the sacrificial victim of Zoroastrianism, killed by Angra Mainyu so that new life could follow from his death.

Angra Mainyu had made himself the author of every evil upon the earth: he marred the happiness Ahura Mazda had given mankind, creating savage beasts and poisonous reptiles and plants, so that evil and good were now mingled everywhere, and the followers of each carried on incessant war. Bulfinch's Age of Fable holds that this could not last forever. At the last turn of creation, human souls will pass through a mass of white-hot molten metal for their punishment and purification, then enter heaven to join those who never needed either, and at that moment the Amesha Spenta will go forth and destroy every one of the fiend's demons.

Ahura Mazda will then annihilate Angra Mainyu himself, and through the power and glory of the faithful, all the troops of the fiend will be smitten. Every soul will remain of one accord in the religion of Ahura Mazda from that day on. The Dictionary of Mythology confirms the same ending in its own words: Angra Mainyu will be defeated at the final battle and confined eternally to the same hell he once dug for himself at the centre of the earth. Ahura Mazda's followers will be victorious everywhere, and Angra Mainyu's own followers consigned to darkness forever.