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Zoroastrianism is a religion that takes its name from the late second millennium BCE Iranian prophet Zarathustra, traditionally called Zoroaster (see Zoroaster) by people in the West. Believing that he had spoken to the ancient Iranian high god Ahura Mazda (see Ahura Mazda), Zoroaster undertook a reform of the old Indo-Iranian religion (see Vedism, Mazdaism) of the Aryan (see Aryans) invaders of India and Iran. At the center of his reformation is an essential dualism, which opposes the good Ahura Mazda and his heavenly followers, the assures (see Asuras), to the evil Angra Mainyu (see Angra Mainyu) and the daevas, who in their old Indo-Iranian context were not particularly evil but who in Zoroastrianism become demons, bent on war and destruction (see Zoroastrian Mythology, Zoroastrian Cosmogony). After long years of struggle against the followers of the old religion, Zoroastrianism became the state religion of Iran under Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BCE and remained so until the rise of Islam (see Islam) in the seventh century CE. Important aspects of Zoroastrianism are the belief in the prophet (Zoroaster), a past and future savior (see Saoshyant), an afterlife (see Zoroastrian Afterlife), a Last Judgment (see Zoroastrian Apocalypse, Zoroastrian Flood), and the resurrection of the body. An important aspect of Zoroastrian ritual is fire and fire temples (see Zoroastrian Apocalypse, Parsis), an aspect that dates back to ancient Indo-Iranian roots (see Vedic Mythology) and the centrality of fire sacrifice. An offshoot or ?heresy? of Zoroastrianism is Zurvanism (see Zurvan), in which Zurvan, or Time, supplants Ahura Mazda as ultimate reality.
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