An Unpopular Response to an Uncomfortable Question
It started, as most uncomfortable conversations do, with someone trying to be cruel.
A user posted in the Zoroastrian community forum last week. No greeting. No context. Just this:
“Why are you wasting your time with a dead religion? Zoroastrianism has 140,000 followers worldwide. Buddhism has 500 million. Islam has 1.8 billion. You are building a website for a religion that will be clinically extinct before your grandchildren are born. Explain yourself.”
This was my response:
“You want me to explain myself. Alright.
Let’s start with your numbers. 140,000 Zoroastrians. You’re proud of that statistic. You found it somewhere, wrote it down, and decided it meant something. Let me tell you what it actually means: nothing. Or more precisely — it measures the wrong thing entirely.
You are counting the people who fill out ‘Zoroastrian’ on a census form. Fine. Count them. While you’re at it, count the 2.4 billion Christians who say ‘paradise’ every Sunday without knowing it’s a Persian word. Count the billion Muslims who pray five times a day toward light — a practice that existed in the fire temples of Persia before Muhammad was born. Count the Jews who speak of angels, of Satan as a cosmic adversary, of resurrection and judgment day — concepts that appear nowhere in pre-Exile Hebrew scripture and everywhere in the Avesta.
You didn’t count those people. Because they don’t put Zoroastrian on their census form. But the fire of Zarathustra is burning in their theology whether they know it or not. Whether you know it or not.
Now. You called it a dying religion. Let me tell you something about dying.
The sacred flame of Yazd has been burning without interruption since the Sassanid Empire. Some of those fires have not gone out in over 1,500 years. In that time, the Arab Caliphate rose and fell. The Mongol Empire rose and fell. The Ottoman Empire rose and fell. The British Empire rose and fell. Every single one of those powers looked at the Persian fire and said: this is finished. And every single one of them is now a history chapter.
The flame is still burning.
I know how this looks from the outside. I know what people say about this website. I’ve heard it. ‘He’s building a platform for a religion nobody practices.’ ‘He thinks he’s going to bring back ancient Persia.’ ‘This is a vanity project for a dead civilization.’ I’ve read it. It doesn’t bother me — and I’ll tell you exactly why it doesn’t bother me.
Because I am not building this for today’s audience. I am building this for the audience that is coming.
Right now, inside Iran — inside the Islamic Republic, the country that supposedly finished Zoroastrianism off for good — there are millions of young Persians naming their children Cyrus. Darius. Rostam. Arash. Pre-Islamic names. Persian names. Names that carry 3,000 years of civilization in them. They are not doing this randomly. They are doing it because something in them is reaching backward through the centuries toward an identity that was taken from them. You cannot see it from the outside because the Islamic Republic controls the narrative. But the fire is burning underneath. I can feel it from here.
Watch the way Persians celebrate Nowruz. Not the sanitized, regime-approved version — the real one. The one where they jump over fire at Chaharshanbe Suri and scream at the flames to take their sickness and give them warmth. That ritual is 3,000 years old. The mullahs have tried to ban it, mock it, reframe it as superstition for 40 years. And every year, more Persians do it louder. With more fire. With more defiance. Because you cannot tell a people to stop jumping over fire when fire is in their soul.
You say I’m stupid. You say this is a waste of time. You say Zoroastrianism is dying.
I say you are reading the wrong data.
I say you are counting the candles while I am measuring the heat of the underground fire.
And I say this with complete certainty — not arrogance, certainty — because Asha does not lie: there is coming a moment in our lifetimes when the Persian people will have to choose who they are. The Islamic Republic will not last forever. No lie lasts forever. That is the first law of Asha — truth outlasts the lie. Always. Without exception. Not sometimes. Always.
When that moment comes — when the regime cracks, when the streets fill, when the question of Persian identity becomes the most urgent question on earth — the people will need a place to come to. They will need the theology. They will need the history. They will need the language of Asha and Druj and Frashokereti and the Saoshyant. They will need to understand what was stolen from them and why it matters and what they are actually fighting for.
That is what I am is building. Right now. In 2020. When nobody is watching. When people like you are telling me I’m stupid.
This is exactly when it needs to be built. Not after. Now. Because when the moment comes there will be no time to build it. It will need to already exist. The library needs to be stocked before the students arrive.
You asked me to explain myself. That is my explanation.
The Magi were astronomer-priests. They did not react to events. They read the patterns of the cosmos long before events arrived and they positioned themselves accordingly. When the star appeared over Bethlehem — or wherever the astronomical event actually occurred — the Magi were not scrambling. They were already on their way. Because they had been watching. Because they had been reading. Because they had been preparing while everyone else was sleeping.
That is what I am doing. I am watching. I am reading. I am preparing.
You think I’m writing on a website for a dying religion.
I think I’m lighting a signal fire for a civilization that is about to wake up.
One of us is right. And I’ll tell you something else — I am completely at peace waiting for history to decide which one.”
The Reaction
The response did not go over well in certain corners of the internet.
Within 24 hours it had been shared into several Iranian political forums where it was mocked extensively. A popular Twitter account with a large Iranian diaspora following quote-tweeted it with the caption: “Someone tell this guy the Achaemenid Empire ended 2,300 years ago.” A Reddit thread titled “Zoroastrian guy thinks he’s going to restore ancient Persia lmao” accumulated several hundred comments, the majority of which were not kind.
A self-described religious scholar posted a lengthy response calling Diesel the Magus “historically illiterate” and “dangerously romantic about a tradition that the Persian people themselves moved on from centuries ago.” He cited demographic projections, interfaith marriage rates within Zoroastrian communities, and the declining number of functioning fire temples in Iran as evidence that the religion had no meaningful future.
“This is what happens,” the scholar concluded, “when people confuse personal passion with historical reality. Zoroastrianism is a beautiful tradition. It deserves respect. But dressing it up in revolutionary language and pretending it is on the verge of some grand civilizational comeback is not respect. It is delusion.”
Several commenters on the internet post itself were more direct.
“Nobody in Iran cares about this.”
“My family is Persian and we are Muslim and proud of it. Stop trying to tell us who we are.”
“This article gets 3 visitors a month. The Vatican has 20,000 visitors a day. Maybe that tells you something.”
“Diesel the Magus sounds like a guy who read too many fantasy novels and decided to start a religion.”
One comment, buried near the bottom, simply said:
“Keep building. Some of us are listening…”
Comments (47)
PersianLion1979: This guy is living in a fantasy. Zoroastrianism is over. Has been for 1,400 years. Respect the history, accept the reality.
AshaBurns: I’m a third generation Persian American and I cried reading this. I don’t know why. I just did.
SkepticalScholar: The linguistic arguments about “paradise” etc are real but hugely overstated. Cultural borrowing doesn’t equal theological survival.
TehranVoice: Easy to romanticize Persia from a laptop in the West. Come live here and then tell me about the sacred flame.
DieselTheMagus: To TehranVoice — you are right. I cannot feel what you feel from inside. But I can hear you from out here. And I am building something for the day you don’t have to whisper anymore.
ZoroasterWasRight: The Bundahishn says the lie will crack before the truth. We are watching it crack. Slowly. But it’s cracking.
JustAPersianKid: My grandfather used to say Cyrus the Great sleeps and will wake when Persia needs him. I used to think that was just an old man’s story. I’m not so sure anymore.
RationalIranian: I respect the passion but this is historical cosplay. Iran is an Islamic country. That’s the reality. Build something for the actual present.
DieselTheMagus: To RationalIranian — I am building something for the actual present. The present just hasn’t arrived yet.
Home of the Magi June 14, 2020 Humata — Hukhta — Hvarshta Good Thoughts — Good Words — Good Deeds Asha — Truth — The Eternal Flame of Persia
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