The Mysterium of Alexander Scriabin

This paper was a part of my college thesis. The current version includes some slight modifications

Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) was an early 20th century Russian composer, pianist, poet, philosopher, and attempted savior for humanity who hoped to destroy and renovate the entire universe by means of his unfinished final work, a theosophical synthesis of all the arts which he called the Mysterium. The essence of the Mysterium can be best demonstrated by a quote from the man himself:

There will be a fusion of all the arts, but not a theatrical one like Wagner's. Art must unite
with philosophy and religion in an indivisible whole to form a new gospel, which will
replace the old gospel we have outlived. I cherish the dream of creating such a 'Mystery'. For
it, it would be necessary to build a special temple - perhaps here, perhaps far away in India.
But mankind is not yet ready for it. Mankind must be preached to, it must be led along new
paths. And I do preach. Once I even preached from a boat, like Christ.

Scriabin is most widely known for his compositions, not only because they are more beautiful than his poems or his ideas, but also because he never went out of his way to publicize his poetry and he never published any philosophical writings, preferring to share his ideas verbally. He was trained as a musician, having undergone no formal study of philosophy, prose or poetry, and recognized that music was his main field of expertise. Nevertheless he took his ideas very seriously, giving them an equally important place in his heart as his music held, and hoped to share them with the entire world. This would be a prerequisite for the creation of the Mysterium.

Neither Scriabin's philosophy nor his messianic ambitions were taken seriously by many, but this seemingly did not diminish his confidence. While the exact mechanics of the Mysterium were never explained, its creation does not seem like such an impossibility in the context of his ideas, revolving around the Mysterium as they do. The idea of a perfect and total synthesis of the arts came from Wagner and his gesamtkunstwerk, while Scriabin's confidence in the unlimited power of his own genius had its roots in Nietzsche's will-to-power. Later, when he came under the influence of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy, he placed his Mysterium within the framework of a Theosophical cyclical cosmology. Yet in essence his ideas were original, for when he drew ideas from various sources he always adapted them to his own schemes and never became too entangled in their original context. Originally the Mysterium was conceived of as a one-man act, a personal creation of Scriabin's, but as time went on he realized the necessity of involving the whole of mankind. For the Mysterium to be created, mankind would need to be both intellectually and spiritually awakened. The Mysterium would, in fact, be essentially religious in character, because to Scriabin all true art was inherently religious. So he preached his ideas, and even though he was always revising the details, the fundamental goal of dissolving the universe in ecstasy through the power of art remained the same.

SCRIABIN'S MUSIC AND IDEAS AND THE RELATION BETWIXT THEM

Before he conceived of the Mysterium, and before he fell under the influence of atheist philosophers, Scriabin was a Christian. His early music from the Christian half of his life is Romantic and has always been described as reminiscent of Chopin. Chopin's music is very beautiful and charming, and it is also robust, passionate, blocky, wavy and congealed. It is like a field of beautiful flowers. Listening to his music is like looking through a window into his soul, and into the parts of your own soul that are like the parts of his soul that are expressed in his music. I don't think his whole soul is expressed in his music, but a lot of it is. And this is also how Scriabin's early music is: it is very beautiful and charming, and it is also robust and passionate, and chunky and wavy. Furthermore, it is giddy and goofy and youthful. It is like a field of beautiful flowers. Scriabin's early music has also been compared to Liszt's music, but I think it is much more similar to Chopin's.

After Scriabin fell away from Christianity his music became increasingly strange and, by the end of his career, atonal (or pan-tonal). His later music is, in my estimation, heavenly –– that is to say, not expressive of Scriabin's human individuality, nor even of anything distinctly human, but instead, of heavenly realities that he encountered during his mystical episodes. And it is not my intention to flatter Scriabin of course–– the same can be said of any other divinely inspired composer or musician whatsoever, though I am certain their experiences of this inspiration were all quite different. What makes Scriabin's case so peculiar is the contrast between his falling away from God and descent into egomaniacal delusion with the simultaneous ascent of his music into the heavenliness.

Scriabin's profoundest music is much too profound to have been the result of his confused ideas, and the relation between his music and his ideas remains quite mysterious to me. His ideas, at least from the point where he conceived of the Mysterium onwards, definitely served as one motive for him to write the music. Another motive was a desire for money and fame. But in reality his music is a transcendentally profound gift from God proceeding from His Beneficence and Genius, and not Scriabin's. And many have said that Scriabin's ideas are reflected in his music, but I myself prefer not to attach too much importance to this for fear of tainting my listening experience; if I regarded them as inseparable, then I would hear blasphemy, confusion, and Scriabin himself in his music instead of beauty, and I would no longer have any reason or justification for listening to it.

I think the relation between Scriabin's ideas and his music can best be explained as the result of the psychological origins of his philosophy. His creative process consumed him and permeated most or all of his mind, and thus his ideas are, to a large degree, a reflection of this creative process rather than the expression of actual knowledge. His music also reflects this creative process, having come into existence through it. So his music and his philosophy have a common origin, and one can observe a parallelism between their development over the course of his life.

In spite of this they are very far apart because Scriabin's music is only causally related to this creative process, while spiritually it rises above and beyond the whole realm of existence in which this process took place. His music came from above in a form of genuine inspiration, whereas his philosophy proceeded from his individuality. His philosophy is confused and garbled and therefore limited to the realm of confused and limited human individuals. If his music "expresses the inexpressible", as he put it, then his philosophy can be said to express his desire to express the inexpressible. But it must be emphasized that this desire could just as well have existed and reached its fullest development without having been thusly expressed in his philosophy, and that therefore his ideas ought to be regarded as completely peripheral to his music.

As for the Mysterium, it was founded on delusions and therefore bound to fail. It could not possibly have been achieved except with divine assistance, the provision of which for such a cause may have seemed a possibility to some during Scriabin's lifetime but certainly seems like it would have been an out-of-character thing for God to do, at least if His character is judged according to any major sacred text. Insofar as the Mysterium is more than a fantasy, it can be regarded as a perverse misunderstanding of Judgment Day, or an unwitting mimicry of the Zoroastrian doctrine of frashokereti, 'the final renovation of the universe'.

SCHOPENHAUER, WAGNER, NIETZSCHE & SCRIABIN'S APOSTASY

The development of Scriabin's original ideas began in his early twenties as he lost his faith in Christianity and in God, and replaced these respectively with philosophy and himself. For the first twenty or so years of his life he was, by his own account, quite religious. He had full faith in the Bible and the priesthood, in Christ and in the Father (Bowers II 138). As time went on he became more fixated on the Father, perhaps a sign of his increasing feeling of God's distance and ineffability. The first event that shook his faith was the hand injury he developed at the age of twenty from practicing the piano too much. (Bowers II 168). At the time of this injury he prayed fervently, but his hope faded away as his hand failed to recover. In a letter to his sweetheart Natalya, he writes,

Oh, if only I could see some light ahead. If it were possible to believe blindly in the future! Then, then can a man take firm and steady steps towards the goal he loves. Then, life unfolds enticingly. Alas, there is too much in life that destroys faith, no matter how much I want to believe. (Bowers II 75)

It was in fact only a matter of years before Scriabin achieved this 'blind faith in the future,' and he would later go on to say, "In general, I live only in and for the future..." (Bowers II 332). When Scriabin overcame this injury he attributed it to his own willpower and his newfound faith in himself. Around the same time, in 1893, Scriabin had his first encounter with philosophy in the form of Schopenhauer. He must have read Schopenhauer's main work, The World as Will and Representation, but it is not known how much of it he read. Schopenhauer's philosophy and aesthetics definitely had an influence on Scriabin, but this influence may have been through Nietzsche and Wagner, who were also greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, more than by a direct assimilation of Schopenhauer's ideas.

Schopenhauer probably had a destructive effect on Scriabin's faith given the non-theistic and extremely pessimistic nature of his ideas. But the ultimate death-blow for Scriabin's Christianity came when he became enamored of Nietzsche's ideas and consequently became an atheist (Schloezer 136, 162, 169). Scriabin was greatly influenced by Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular the idea of the Superman and the idea of God "being dead", which Scriabin would later interpret very literally as he developed a form of pan-deism. Scriabin's conception of ecstasy was also derived, in part at least, from Nietzsche's ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Birth of Tragedy. But before going into Nietzsche's influence on Scriabin I would like to look at the origins in Schopenhauer of Nietzsche's ideas.

Schopenhauer's philosophy revolves around Will and Representation, which are respectively the inner and outer aspects of the world. Will is the force that compels us to live and to struggle, while representation is merely the form that everything takes in our minds. Phenomenal reality is only the objectification, the representation, of the Will. Yet neither can be said to cause the other, for the Will operates outside the laws of time, space and causality. Rather, Will and Representation are the two parallel aspects of the world: every representation is the expression of some will, and every act of will alters the arrangement of the representations.

What makes Schopenhauer's Will so different from God is that it is said to be blind and stupid, struggling against itself and devouring itself as it manifests in the world as so many different beings with conflicting goals. For this reason Schopenhauer advocated the denial of the Will as the only true path to salvation. Perhaps Scriabin was moved by this. In 1895, four years after he discovered Schopenhauer, Scriabin wrote in a letter to his publisher, "I want to renounce everything and live a simple life, but I can't." (Bowers II 206).

In general Scriabin did not like denying his will. This is probably what kept him from embracing Schopenhauer more wholeheartedly, and also a significant factor that led to his apostasy from Christianity. Though Schopenhauer advocates the denial of the will, he rejects the notion of free will, with the result that, in his view, those who deny themselves cannot help but do so because it is in their very nature, and that inversely those who indulge their every lust also cannot do otherwise. The result of all this is a worldview in which almost everything is held to be vain and all activity futile. This apparent nihilism of Schopenhauer's probably did contribute to Scriabin's occasional sentiment that life is meaningless, and it paved the way for him to accept Nietzsche's idea of all meaning being created by man.

Schopenhauer's nihilism is not total, however, because he cherished beauty and art. The third portion of The World as Will and Representation is concerned with aesthetics. Schopenhauer's aesthetics revolve around Platonic Ideas for the most part. In his view all the arts, with the single exception of music, work their magic on us by temporarily making us into pure knowing subjects of Ideas. In this state we are detached from our egos and temporarily liberated from the pain of constant willing. This is likely where Scriabin first encountered the idea of art as a liberating force, only in Scriabin's conception this liberation could be permanent.

Concerning music, Schopenhauer holds that it is "as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are." (Schopenhauer 257). The other arts express the Will through Ideas and Ideas through images and concepts, whereas music is simple and pure. Unlike the other arts, it is direct and has no dependency on the phenomena of the world. Thus music serves as a beautiful parallel or mirror of the whole world. (Schopenhauer 256-264).

It seems plausible that this conception of the world and music as parallel expressions of the same thing could have helped Scriabin reach the conclusion that music has the power to transmogrify or even destroy the world. Just as music is, at least on the level of appearances, contained and produced in the world, one could inversely view the world as being contained and produced in music. This notion accords well with the idea of angelic 'vibrations' being the most primordial level of created existence: the physical vibrations of music could be said to be a lower manifestation of these angelic 'vibrations', and the music we hear with our ears of flesh could be said to be a symbol, of which the music of the heavens (heard with the ears of the heart) is the archetype. Perhaps Scriabin, in his fits of ecstasy, confused the symbol with the symbolized, and felt that by making musical 'images' of things he was actually creating them.

For young Nietzsche, who was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, art was the only true justification for existence: "Only as an esthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity". In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche outlines his own aesthetic theory, which revolves around the Dionysian and Apollonian spirits. These correspond loosely to Schopenhauer's Will and Representation, but they are described through analogy more than logic and described not as the true nature of reality, but as artistic drives. The Apollonian spirit is associated with dreams and is expressed through images, both mental and physical. It is, like Schopenhauer's 'representation', dependent on the principle of individuation, which is said to be symbolized by Apollo. The Dionysian spirit, on the other hand, is associated with intoxication, with harsh or ecstatic reality experienced independently of this principle. Without individuation the logical boundaries between
things fall apart and everything becomes as one, and thus the Dionysian spirit corresponds to Schopenhauer's Will.

The Apollonian spirit is expressed in the plastic arts, while the Dionysian is expressed exclusively in music (Nietzsche 19, 22). These two spirits and the arts expressing them bring two forms of salvation; the Apollonian spirit redeems us in illusion and protects us from the harshness of Dionysiac reality, while the delight of Dionysian ecstasy frees us from the tiresome emptiness of Apollonian illusion (Nietzsche 20-23). Thus Nietzsche took Schopenhauer's idea of liberation through art and expanded it into the supreme and ultimately the only form of salvation. It seems that Nietzsche's contempt for asceticism and lack of faith in religion left art as the only plausible alternative to salvation through self-denial. In Nietzsche's own (translated) words, "Art alone can turn those thoughts of disgust at the horror or absurdity of existence into imaginary constructs which permit living to continue."

The theses of The Birth of Tragedy are that in the ancient Greek tragedies the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits were united, that this Apollonian-Dionysian unity was desirable and produced ideal works of art, and that, thanks to German geniuses such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Beethoven, and Wagner, this ancient and perfect genre of art was being revived. Nietzsche saw Wagner's operas as the beginning of an Apollonian-Dionysian revival, after a long period in which the Socratic, Scientific spirit reigned uncontested.

It is not known to me when Scriabin read The Birth of Tragedy, or if he read it before or after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but he did confess (in Faubion Bowers's paraphrase) his "indebtedness to the book for its elaboration of the Dionysian concept of abandon, pleasure and rapture." He also said that it "strengthened his doctrine." (Bowers III 214-5). It was this Nietzschean influence which led Scriabin to embrace everything in life, both good and evil, pains and pleasures alike (Bowers II 318).

The other character in this somewhat confusing circle of famous people influencing each other is Wagner. He was inspired by Schopenhauer and had a great influence on young Nietzsche, whose ideas in The Birth of Tragedy can be viewed as a synthesis of Wagner's and Schopenhauer's ideas. Wagner, like Nietzsche, was a hellenophile and had an idealized view of the Greek tragedies, though he explained the source of their perfection differently. Rather than attributing their wonderfulness to the union of the Apollonian and Dionysian Spirits, Wagner held that the Greek tragedies were perfect because of the loving, sisterly, communistic harmony between the three 'primeval sister arts' of dance, music and poetry. This artistic harmony was, in his view, only the natural result of the social harmony experienced by the communistic ancient Greeks. For this reason Wagner thought that a social revolution would have to take place for the Greek Tragedies to be revived, in which people would not only become more brotherly and loving, but would also overcome their slavish love of fashion and come to understand the necessity of only patronizing truly worthy art. He called this ideal work of art the Gesamtkunstwerk, meaning total or all-encompassing work of art, and tried to reach this ideal with his own operas while at the same time expressing reservations about the achievability of his goals given the poor taste of the art-going public.

Wagner had a great influence on Scriabin, both musical and intellectual, though the extent to which Scriabin acknowledged this is unclear. Scriabin was well-acquainted with his music, having attended a 'Seminar against Wagner' when he was at the Moscow Conservatory (Bowers II 163), and though he did not read any of Wagner's theoretical writings, he learned of their contents through conversation. Wagner and Chopin were among the only other composers whose music Scriabin expressed any real appreciation of, yet he was known to have discredited Wagner's music on several occasions (Bowers II 163, III 118). On the other hand, Schloezer says that Scriabin held Wagner in high enough esteem that when he read Nietzsche's attacks on Wagner, this caused him to moderate his enthusiasm for Nietzsche (Schloezer 168).

Concerning the desirability and plausibility of creating a gesamtkunstwerk, Scriabin, Wagner and Nietzsche were in agreement. But for Nietzsche and Wagner this gesamtkunstwerk would only be a revival of the ancient Greek tragedies; the idea of it being so powerful as to destroy the entire universe was an original addition of Scriabin's. He also expanded its scope and totality by including every sense, including taste and touch, and a light-show of flashing colors of variegated shapes, and moving architecture. But all these difficult to implement elements remained purely hypothetical. When Scriabin finally began working on the Mysterium in the form of the Prefatory Act, these components were left out.

Scriabin encountered the ideas of other writers as well, sometimes by skimming through their works but more often through conversation. Among them were Vyacheslav Ivanov (Bowers III 239), Jurgis Baltrushaitis (Ibid.), Novalis (Bowers III 58), Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Trubetskoy (Bowers II 319), Dmitri Merezhkovsky (Bowers III, 170, 239), Ernest Renan (Bowers II 165), Wilhelm Wundt (Bowers III 55-6), Georg Hegel (Bowers II 317, III 47), Johann Fichte (Ibid.), and Friedrich Schelling (Ibid.). The symbolist poets had perhaps the greatest influence on Scriabin in the end, but early on in his life he was more moved by Nietzsche and Wagner.

The overall state of Scriabin's philosophy after reading Schopenhauer and Nietzsche can be gauged by looking at the projects he undertook around the turn of the century. Judging from the lyrics of the final movement of Scriabin's first symphony, published in 1899, one gets the impression that he had already encountered The Birth of Tragedy at this point. It is a hymn to art, beginning thusly:

O wonderful image of the Divine,
Harmony’s pure Art!
To you we gladly bring
Praise of that rapturous feeling.
You are life’s bright hope.
And ending thus:
Your spirit, free and mighty,
Man lifted by you
Gloriously conducts the greatest feat.
Come, all peoples of the world,
Let us sing the praises of Art!
Glory to Art,
Glory forever!

The idea of art as an image of the Divine was vital to the later development of Scriabin's doctrine, as he developed the belief that God currently existed only as an image in art, and needed to be resurrected through the Mysterium. But before he fully developed these ideas, he went through a Nietzschean phase in which he was inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra more than The Birth of Tragedy. This influence can be first observed in Scriabin's unfinished opera, and it is also evident in a number of secret journals he wrote from 1903 to 1905.

THE ACT OF THE LAST ATTAINMENT

Scriabin's opera, which he began working on around 1901, was titled The Act of the Last Attainment. Shortly after the birth of this project, or perhaps at the same time, Scriabin first conceived of the Mysterium (Schloezer 162-3). By 1903 he had written a good portion of the opera's libretto and some sketches of the music, but his interest in the project waned over time and, looking back in 1907, he spoke of it as a "preliminary sketch," which was "immature" but not without value (Schloezer 164). The Mysterium was in fact only an expansion of the opera and an attempted actualization of its events.

The libretto is incomplete, but in his book Schloezer fills in a number of details that Scriabin summarized for him in person. The opera begins with a description of a luxurious feast and the beautiful daughter of the King who is present there. The guests lavish praise upon her but she rejects their praise and instead wants freedom through knowledge. Schloezer says that she represents the "Eternal Feminine" and the cosmos (Schloezer 170).

The hero enters now, a philosopher-poet-musician based on Scriabin's ideal image of himself and inspired by Nietzsche's Superman (Schloezer 168), and he enlightens the king's daughter with his wisdom, then elopes with her. The hero represents the "Eternal Masculine," and this consummation symbolizes Scriabin's desire to, as he put it, "take the world as one takes a woman" (Schloezer 131, 168). This cosmic romance would later become more explicit in the Prefatory Act of the Mysterium.

In an unwritten scene related by Schloezer the hero is captured by his foes, who interrogate him as to what his intentions are, and he responds to all their questions with the single word 'freedom!'. The hero then announces to the festive guests his intention to liberate them from all their sufferings through the boundless power of his genius and love. And in the last scene written, the people acknowledge him as their savior as he glorifies himself. The hero was to die in the end, having reached the ultimate summit of victory and beatitude (Schloezer 166).

The reasons for Scriabin's replacement of the opera with the Mysterium may be related to an increasing aversion towards theatricality. He sometimes enjoyed theatrical productions, but disliked theater in general on intellectual and spiritual grounds. He saw theater as a mere masquerade of intoxicating illusions which create false paradises and only serve to distract people from greater spiritual realities. Schloezer describes the Mysterium as an overthrow of all theatricality (Schloezer 186-90). Nevertheless, the symbolic and pantomimic aspects of the Mysterium in its later development could easily be construed as a form of theater; perhaps Scriabin was averse to theater because he feared that the Mysterium, as he tried to actualize it, might be reduced to a mere theatrical spectacle.

But the most likely reason for the abandonment of the opera was Scriabin's desire to live its plot out himself. Instead of theatrically portraying the liberation of all mankind by a 'Superman', Scriabin decided that he was this 'Superman' and would do this liberating himself, in real life. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche posits the Superman as a supreme goal for mankind, by which man would be overcome. This idea is presented in the context of atheistic evolutionism, and it is said to be the next step in evolution. Zarathustra's first words in Thus Spoke Zarathustra are "I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of the great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?"

The Superman is said to be better than man and capable of creating his own goals and values rather than copying the values and fulfilling the goals of others. In Nietzsche's view there are no objective values, there is only will-to-power, so the creation of one's own values is an admirable thing rather than an aberration from the truth. Scriabin's created value was his own philosophy and its final goal, the Mysterium. In accepting these ideas Scriabin finally and completely abandoned Christianity. This is clearly shown in an aria from the opera, sung by the hero:

My reason is free always
And it affirms:
You are alone
You are a slave of cold chance
You in the power of the Universe
Why do you entrust your destiny
To God?
O pitiful mortal
You can and you must of yourself
Bear on your radiant faces
The glorious imprint of victory.

In addition to abandoning God, he also abandoned concrete notions of good and evil and deemphasized the importance of the distinction between pain and pleasure. Sabaneyev, a close friend and biographer of Scriabin, recalls how once Scriabin was arguing that pain could become pleasure, and then went on to say that "there are times in the life of mankind when murder is a virtue and to be murdered the greatest pleasure." (Bowers, I, 318).

This rejection of morality was not merely theoretical. Around the same time Scriabin drifted away from Christianity and became enamored of philosophy, he became an alcoholic (Bowers II 164). He also began to engage in premarital and even adulterous relations with women. He abandoned his first wife for no good reason and adopted a common-law wife in her place. And in his letters to his wives he said some very rude things to them. Moreover, he became a solipsistic egomaniac around the same time he apostatized from Christianity and he would often display a profound arrogance.

SOLIPSISM, PANPSYCHISM AND ECSTASY

Scriabin's opera and the Mysterium were both inspired by his feeling of divinity and desire to conquer all, sentiments that arose in him around the turn of the century as he discovered Nietzsche and apostatized from Christianity (Schloezer 167). In place of his faith in the Father he developed a boundless faith in his own creative power. Whereas his former faith had been supported by the Gospels, this new faith was sustained by a form of megalomaniacal solipsism. In general his music from this period is characterized by an increasing level of dissonance and deviation from the norms of Western classical music.

The nature of his solipsism can be discerned from the secret journals he wrote from 1903 to 1905. In one of the journals, from 1905, he summarizes his understanding of the relation between his consciousness and those of other people:

The growth of human consciousness is the growth of consciousnesses of geniuses. The
consciousnesses of the remaining people are splashes and sparks of the same consciousness.
There is only one consciousness. That is mine.
The genius contains all the play of colors and feelings of other people. He embraces the
consciousness of all those people contemporary to him. (Bowers III 63)

Scriabin was really only half-solipsistic: he believed that the consciousnesses of others were vastly smaller than his and included in his, but that inversely his consciousness was not a part of theirs. This is very reminiscent of monotheistic conceptions of how God's consciousness stands in relation to ours. According to Schloezer, he reached the peak of his solipsism around 1901, when he began working on his opera, and he adds that "solipsistic individualism was to him only the means to an end, not the goal in itself." (Schloezer 120).

Scriabin's feeling that the world was his own creation which he could change or destroy at will was at the root of his confidence in his ability to create the Mysterium. In his initial conception of the Mysterium, it was to be a total and final destruction of the universe, after which there would be nothing but ecstatic, timeless non-being, or absolute unity, the two being identical in Scriabin's view. This was not an imperative from above, nor a necessary consequence of eternal cosmological laws, but a personal decision and goal set by Scriabin (Schloezer 232-3).

His solipsism was extensive enough that he felt that the entire history of the universe, both past and future, was his invention; in 1904 he wrote "with this caprice, this passing wish, I create all history as I create all future." (Bowers III 54-55). He felt that his life and works were the ultimate end and aim of all existence, and at the same time he also felt that his life and works contained the entire history of the cosmos within themselves.

These claims of his gave rise to some humorous anecdotes. For example, once when Scriabin was walking on a bridge with his friend Plekhanov, he stopped, and said "...There are no obstacles to manifesting our wills. The law of gravity does not exist. I can throw myself from this bridge and I will not crack my head on the stones. I will float in the air. Thanks to will power". But when he was asked to demonstrate he declined. On another occasion Plekhanov greeted him and sarcastically thanked him for the wonderful morning, the beautiful sky, and the vast sea. Scriabin got the joke but accepted the thanks "as if he deserved them" (Bowers III 96).

This solipsism was limited and eventually surpassed by an increasing awareness of the distinction between the individual soul and the atman, to borrow a term from Hinduism. This is shown in this journal entry cited by Schloezer: "In time and in space I obey the laws of time and space, but these laws are formulated by my greater 'I'. It seems to me that the only reason events do not follow my wishes is that I am concentrated on my little 'I', which must be subordinated to the laws of time and space created by my greater 'I'." (Schloezer 125).

Scriabin often conflated these two selves with each other however, and the similarity between his declaration 'I am God!' with the Hindu maxim 'atman is brahman' seems less striking when one considers that Scriabin did not concede that anyone or anything other than himself was God. He refused to acknowledge God outside himself. In Scriabin's mind tat tvam asi, 'thou art that', took the form of 'that is thy creation'. This is because Scriabin was, in this period at least, an actualist rather than a substantialist. He held that action alone is real, and considered all action to be creation.

In accordance with this idea, he considered himself to be not only the creator, but also the created, which he held to be only an aspect of his existence, the microcosm of which he was the macrocosm. And as was shown by the above quote concerning his attitude towards the past and future, he felt that it was not his timeless, impersonal, transcendental and unindividuated Self which was responsible for the details of the world, but rather it was his individual self, subject to capriciousness and instability. But these may well have been passing moods more than firm convictions.

In another 1905 journal, Scriabin gives a much more reasonable description of consciousness:

Individual consciousnesses differ only in their contents, but the bearers of these contents are identical. They are beyond space and time. We are faced here not with a multiplicity of conscious states, but with a universal consciousness that experiences a multitude of states of consciousness vertically (in time) and horizontally (in space).

At the present moment, at a given point in space, I am an individual conscious of myself, but
I am also an act defined by my relationship to the external world. But in the absolute, I am
God; I am a consciousness simultaneously experiencing all other consciousnesses (Schloezer, 124).

The universal consciousness is God, whom Scriabin describes as "an all-embracing consciousness, a free creative impulse". But even after his solipsism faded away he still felt that he had been specially chosen by the Divine to bring about the end of the world. He remained an egoist to the end of his life, convinced, it seems, that he was the greatest person in the world, perhaps even the greatest being in the universe, and the only person capable of bringing the Mysterium to fruition (Schloezer 153).

This is clearly related to his unique personal experience of ecstasy, which was for him simultaneously a revelational experience and the ultimate goal of all existence. Scriabin's concept of ecstasy, as has been said, was inspired by Nietzsche's idea of Dionysian ecstasy and perhaps his talk of 'joy wanting eternity' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Ecstasy was the universal state of being that was to be brought about by the Mysterium: a single, eternal moment that would encompass and contain within it the entire past and future. It was his own conception of the absolute, the supreme source of meaning: "All moments of time and all points of space will acquire their truthful definition, their true meaning, at the moment of universal fulfillment." (Schloezer 231).

This was the final ecstasy, the aim of the Mysterium. But Scriabin also experienced 'miniature ecstasies', which were the fount of his inspiration and precursors to the final ecstasy. It was in these moments that he received his music, which he experienced as an omni-sensory transcendental revelation and had to simplify in order to express musically (Schloezer 85-6). He once said of his 5th sonata as he was composing it in 1906-7, "I am but the translator" (Schloezer 86). For him, composition was simultaneously a creative and revelatory experience. His music 'enlightened' him in its omnisensory ecstatic form, and by converting it into
mono-sensory music he was only trying to share his inner experience with the world. In his own words, "The purpose of music is revelation. What a powerful way of knowing it is!"

His creative process was merely a gradual passing-down of musical 'revelations' from his timeless higher Self to his individual composer-self, and through his composer-self to the whole of mankind in a sensible form accessible to everybody.

It was not only his own work which was religious to him; as I have said, to Scriabin all true art was inherently religious, and as such he found the idea of art as a mere amusement to be abhorrent (Schloezer 234). Art was in fact his only religion during the period between his apostasy from Christianity and his adoption of Theosophy, and even after this 'conversion' he adapted Theosophy to his own art-religion.

THEOSOPHY

Scriabin discovered Blavatskian Theosophy in 1905 (Bowers III 52). First he read The Key to Theosophy, and it immediately appealed to him. He went on to read Blavatsky's principal work, The Secret Doctrine, many times, marking the most important parts in pencil (Schloezer 71). He saw a great affinity between his ideas and Theosophy, and, looking past the differences, he adapted his own ideas to Theosophy while at the same time adapting Theosophical ideas to his own. He also read the writings of later Theosophists such as Annie Besant and Leadbeater, but their influence on him seems negligible.

Blavatsky's writings are markedly anti-Christian due to her total rejection of the Personality of the Absolute. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claims to be elucidating the esoteric doctrines of the ancients, of which she says all modern religions are mere misunderstandings. Though this claim is most definitely incorrect, Blavatsky's writings do contain some truth due to their being derived from more authentic doctrines such as those of Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Kabbala. It was through Theosophy that Scriabin became reunited with religion and found again a spiritual terminology and doctrine to ground himself in.

[[The following information on Theosophy is paraphrased from Santucci, James A., "A Brief Overview of Theosophy", Blavatsky Study Center, April 28, 2014 (http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/santuccitheosophy.htm).]]

The central tenets of Theosophy are as follows. The first is the one absolute, infinite, eternal, and utterly ineffable Principle or Reality. The universe is the manifestation of this Principle. All manifestation is cyclical and consists in ebbs and flows. It is also progressive and perpetually evolving, rather than repetitive in nature. Everything in the universe is arranged in groups of seven–– thus the individual is divided into seven parts, and there are seven 'root races' that man evolves through, seven planetary cycles, and so on. Each period of cyclical evolution is called a manvantara, and the period of dissolution and nothingness in between cycles is called a pralaya.All this evolution takes places synchronously.

As for individual beings, there are many different types, and they, rather than the unknowable Supreme Principle, are said to run the universe. Everyone is reborn through karma after death, and progressively advances to higher and higher states of being. But Scriabin probably did not take great interest in this aspect of Theosophy because he had no intention of dying before the Mysterium.

The Mysterium was originally conceived of as an act that would bring about the final consummation and dissolution of everything, after which there would be no more multiplicity and no more cosmos. It was to be an absolutely final and permanent return to blessed unity in nothingness (Schloezer 177, 199). But this clearly contradicts the Theosophical doctrine of endless evolution. So Scriabin conceded that his 'final dissolution' would only end the current seven-cycle period and that there would be no eternal return to nothingness, though according to Schloezer he was not consistent in this and would sometimes in conversation revert to his original faith in the total uniqueness and finality of the Mysterium (Schloezer 199).

Even with this concession made, there remained the fact that according to Theosophy we are currently in the fifth manvantara. There remained the sixth and seventh cycles between Scriabin and his final goal, each of which would have to have their own separate total dissolutions and recreations of the entire cosmos. Scriabin could not accept the idea of his Mysterium being such a small and trivial event, so he held that the cosmic evolution of the universe would be accelerated by the Mysterium, which would cause time to contract. This would be simultaneous with a process of involution in which the seven manvantaras would be repeated again backwards. Thus the Mysterium would contain many epochs within its seven-day span, and the sixth and seventh manvantaras would be precipitated and essentially usurped by the fifth manvantara (Schloezer 215-
16).

Another conflict between Scriabin's and Blavatsky's ideas is highlighted by Schloezer, who pointed out to Scriabin that Blavatsky's ideas were substantialist rather than actualist. Blavatsky held that substances are real, even describing God as a substance, whereas Scriabin asserted that only actions are real. To reconcile this contradiction, Scriabin said that "Blavatsky used the terminology of substantialism only as a concession to the traditional mode of reasoning" (Schloezer 192).

Scriabin also developed a form of pan-deism which reconciled his anthropocentric worldview with Theosophy. He believed that God and man could not exist at the same time. According to his belief, in the process of creation God tore Himself apart and from then on only existed as a memory in the mind of man. This is clearly nonsense, because something that is not made up of parts cannot be divided into them. According to Scriabin, this memory of God is expressed and progressively developed through art, which impresses the image of unity on the mind of man and brings him closer to the ultimate goal of "resurrecting God". This resurrection would be simultaneous with the total dissolution of man in God, who would then exist alone for a period, only to "dissolve Himself" again in order to recreate man (Schloezer 208, 219, 227-9).

In spite of the sheer blasphemy of these ideas, they are a clear sign that Scriabin had, in part at least, grown out of his atheism. In 1910 during his tour of the Volga he exclaimed, upon hearing a church-bell ringing, "O religion! O holy faith! What worlds of beauty and delight lie in such confidence and trust in God!" (Bowers III 214).

It seems worth noting that, according to Schloezer, Scriabin was eventually "driven away" from Theosophy altogether due to his disillusionment with Theosophists and their poor taste in music as well as their lack of appreciation for art in general (Schloezer 68-9). Given the theme of the Mysterium, however, it would seem that this was not entirely the case; perhaps what Schloezer meant is that he had adapted Blavatsky's ideas to his own so thoroughly that they were hardly recognizable.

THE MYSTERIUM

It was only after Scriabin discovered Theosophy that he began to outline the Mysterium in detail. He hoped to finish it within a few years, but its projected time of completion kept getting pushed back. In the meantime he composed a number of momentous works and perfected his harmonic technique, achieving what he called the 'unity of harmony and melody' in his 8th sonata and his last symphonic work, Prometheus. In Prometheus he included a part for the 'light-organ', and this is the only surviving indicator of how the lighting of the Mysterium might have worked. The light-organ part is written in the score on a regular staff, with different notes corresponding to different colors. There are two 'melodies' for the light-organ. The first is a slow part based on the spiritual program of the piece, with the 'spiritual colors' of purple (F♯) and blue (B) descending into the 'earthly colors' green (A), red (C) and brown (F) and then returning again. The second is a faster part which is based on the tonal structure of the piece and circles around the slow part in minor thirds. For the Mysterium Scriabin also wanted to have more complex light effects, such as 'rays', 'clouds', 'lightning', and so on.

Before the Mysterium could take place, its enactors, who would number about two thousand,were to undergo rigorous spiritual and artistic training. This preparation could take place anywhere; Scriabin thought of establishing a school somewhere in Europe and publishing a periodical which would discuss the Mysterium. But the final phase of the Mysterium's preparation would have to take place at the site of the Mysterium itself, which was, in the words of Schloezer, "to be preceded by a series of 'preliminary acts' corresponding to the ancient purification rites. These acts were to include the physical, moral, aesthetic, religious and philosophical training of the participants and also incorporate the landscaping of the area and the building of a temple." (Schloezer 263).

Scriabin also hoped to travel to India and undergo some sort of spiritual training in preparation for the Mysterium, but this never came to pass. He would half-jokingly call himself a 'true Hindu' (Schloezer 281), recognizing the affinity between Hinduism and his own ideas. He even began studying Sanskrit, desiring to 'return to the origin of speech' for the Mysterium, but came to the conclusion that Sanskrit was not sufficiently primordial and instead considered creating his own language, which would be, according to Yuri Engel, "not so much a word-language as a language of cries, sighs and interjections." (Schloezer 259) (Calvocoressi 484).

Scriabin originally intended the Mysterium to take place in the foothills of the Himalayas or in the tropical south of India, but he later decided that any tropical location would do. There was originally only one temple, but Schloezer suggests the possibility of there being many temples. The architecture of the original temple had been sketched out in detail by Scriabin: it would be a hemispherical structure formed of concentric arcs with a high cupola atop it, situated next to a lake so that the temple's reflection in the water would form a full sphere. In the center would be an altar, and around the edges would be balconies. Around the temple Scriabin planned to build terraced gardens (Schloezer 264) (Calvocoressi 494).

He also wanted the architecture to come alive, if not through the power of Orphic enchantment alone then through technology: "In order to realize this 'architectural dance,' as Scriabin phrased it, he envisioned luminous mirages of buildings produced by special projectors. He also imagined fragrant curtains of haze, with pillars of incense rising to the sky, and transparent surfaces made visible by beams of light directed toward them at an angle." (Schloezer 265). The Mysterium was to incorporate every art form, involve every sense, and bring the forces of nature itself into the rite: stones would defy gravity and partake in the Mysterium, the sounds and scents of nature would adapt themselves to the rhythm of the Mysterium, and even the gustatory elements would be contrapuntally intertwined with the whole (Schloezer 255-7, 264, 265).

The audience-performer boundary would be destroyed. Every spectator would be a performer and every performer would be a spectator; if there was a passive element to the Mysterium it belonged not to the people present at the rite, but to the world which was to be transfigured. Nevertheless, because not all of the performers would be equally spiritually advanced, some people would be situated in the balconies or around the edges of the lake, moving from rank to rank but generally not occupying the center (Matlaw).

The subject of the Mysterium was to be the spiritual evolution of man, with the seven days of the Mysterium corresponding to the seven root races of Theosophy. But the exact number of days was uncertain. Schloezer suggests that it might have lasted for any multiple of seven days, and if entire epochs were to transpire within these seven days it is clear that they were not ordinary days (Schloezer 263). The first four days would symbolize the descent of spirit into matter, while the last three would symbolize and then realize the ascent and final dissolution of matter into spirit. The participants were to take on the characteristics of the root races until, on the fifth day, "a symphony of sounds, colors, motions, forms, and caresses was to be raised to the highest possible degree of spontaneity, the finest perfection of design, leading to an ultimate fusion in a
disembodied, phantomlike mirage." (Schloezer 265).

At this point the process of involution would begin and the past would be illumined, beautified, and imbued with the image of oneness. At the same time the sixth and seventh root races would be revealed and passed through "in the shortest possible time" (Schloezer 266). The finale of the Mysterium was to be determined during its performance, and the final result of the Mysterium would be the 'awakening in heaven' of its participants and ultimately the whole of mankind, who would be permeated by the Mysterium and reborn through it even if they weren't present at its performance. The precise nature of this post-Mysterium existence was not clearly articulated by Scriabin because he did not know exactly what it would be like, but only that it would be dramatically better and more beautiful than our current condition. According to Schloezer he "harbored expectations of a new earth, a new heaven," (Schloezer 96), but this seems to contradict Scriabin's idea that "the flesh was something inferior and coarse, something that had to be overcome and eventually discarded." (Schloezer 132).

THE PREFATORY ACT

Around 1913 Scriabin began writing the text for the Mysterium. But this text quickly became the foundation of a much smaller and less ambitious work, the Prefatory Act (Schloezer 291, 332). According to Schloezer this was because Scriabin "had to admit that he was spiritually unprepared for the Mysterium" and "harbored a secret fear that he would not be vouchsafed enough time and strength to achieve the creation of the Mysterium." (Schloezer 332).

This last statement, if true, implies that Scriabin had acquired some vague notion of his fate not being entirely in his own hands, and of there being a gap between the intentions of his fallible individual self and his Divine higher Self. Schloezer says these doubts were detectable through his need for moral support; he would ask Schloezer questions such as:

Does not the fact that this mystery was revealed to me prove conclusively that I, and no one else, have the power to bring about this fulfillment? It is unthinkable that another person would be able to follow my design, to understand my central purpose! I was the first to behold the ultimate vision, and I must be the one to reveal it! (Schloezer 146)

In spite of Scriabin's near-certainty in his ability to create the Mysterium, he never made much progress on it and his predictions as to when he would complete it were always overly optimistic. In 1908 he told his publisher Koussevitksy that he would have it done in at most five years (Calvocoressi 483). It was approximately five years later, during which time he made no progress, that Scriabin began the Prefatory Act.

The Prefatory Act was to be a preliminary rite which would prepare mankind for the Mysterium. It is unclear what the relation between this and the above-mentioned 'series of preliminary acts' was; perhaps this was to precede the other preliminary acts, but more likely it was intended to replace them. The Prefatory Act was essentially an abridged version of the Mysterium, with the more difficult to implement elements removed, the result being something akin to Wagner's operas or, in Schloezer's estimation, a cantata or an oratorio (Schloezer 295). It still had the unique feature of not involving an audience.

Scriabin wrote much of the text for the Prefatory Act and completed a semifinal draft before his death. He also wrote some musical sketches, but they are scattered and fragmentary. At some point Scriabin told his publisher B.P. Jurgenson that he had the music "all ready in his head and could finish it in eight months" (Calvocoressi 496). In all probability he would have finished it before long, but it has also been suggested that he may have given up on developing the sketches into a complete score, and instead wanted to use them as mnemonic cues to aid him as he improvised the music for the Prefatory Act on the spot.

Scriabin's close friend Leonid Sabaneyev, who heard a fairly long (and unwritten) portion of the Prefatory Act, describes his impression of it in his biography:

There were secretive, slow harmonies, full of an unusual sweetness and spice, shifting against a backdrop of standing fifths in the bass.... I listened with a feeling of paralysis. There were several entirely unanticipated transitions and modulations... One might best define its style as being between the first and second Op. 74 Preludes, sometimes the fourth (evidently these small fragments arose from the composition of the big sketches). At times it recalled the "Garlands" from Opus 73, a tender, fragile, sonic fabric, where something mighty, almost painfully heated, sounded. ...It seemed to me that I'd descended into an ocean of new sounds... Much was similar to the aforementioned pieces, but much was entirely new....

For the text, which would seem to be Scriabin's most meritorious work of poetry, he received the advice and apparent approval of his symbolist poet friends Vyacheslav Ivanov and Jurgis Baltrushaitis. It is the only substantial remnant of the Mysterium.

All in all, Scriabin's ideas and works are not terribly important. They have been of great personal value to plenty of people, but their influence on society at large has been much more limited than Scriabin intended. As a musician and composer he was superbly successful, but in his greater ambitions of liberating mankind and destroying the universe he had no success. His ideas and designs were made ineffective when he died because he never systematized them or wrote them down in detail, and nobody carried on his work after him.

As for the ideal of the gesamtkunstwerk, considered independently of the apocalyptic and salvific goals Scriabin associated with it, I think it is unlikely that it will be reached any time soon. Even if there were a substantial amount of people who wanted to create a gesamtkunstwerk, they would probably fail for the very same reasons Wagner thought creating a true gesamtkunstwerk was so improbable: the miserable state of the modern societies in which there exist such conceptions, and the lack of a unified sense of beauty and aesthetics.

===

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bowers, Faubion, Scriabin: A Biography (New York: Dover Publications, 1996)

Bowers, Faubion, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: Dover 1996)

Calvocoressi, M.D. & Abraham, Gerald, Masters of Russian Music (New York: Tudor Publishing Company 1944)

Santucci, James A., "A Brief Overview of Theosophy", Blavatsky Study, April 28, 2014 (http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/santuccitheosophy.htm)

Schloezer, Boris, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), trans. Nicolas
Slominsky

Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation (New York: Dover Publications 1969), trans. E.F.J. Payne

Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy (1871), trans. Ian Johnston

Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals (New York: Doubleday 1956), trans. Francis Golffing

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Middlesex: Penguin Books 1969), trans. R.J. Hollingdale

Matlaw, Ralph, "Scriabin and Russian Symbolism." Comparative Literature 31, No. 1 (1979)

Morrison, Simon, “Skryabin and the Impossible.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 2 (1998)

Robert Rimm, The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight (Hong Kong: Amadeus Press 2002)

Vanechkina, I.L., "THE "LUCE" PART AS A CLUE TO SCRIABIN'S LATER HARMONY", "Prometheus" Institute, 4 May 2014 (http://prometheus.kai.ru/luce_e.htm)

The Gathas Attributed to Spitama Zarathushtra (alayhi salam), and The Task of Translating and Interpreting Them

This is a revised version of one of my thesis papers.

The Gathas of Spitama Zarathushtra are important, being one of the most ancient and perhaps most sacred of the Zoroastrian sacred texts. Most unfortunately, the Gathas are only partially understood even by their most dedicated scholars. Since the Avestan itself is so difficult to understand, it is inevitable that the translations diverge from each other enough that one cannot place full faith in any of them.

I believe this state of affairs to be the result of the general decay of Zoroastrianism and the loss of the greater portion of the Avestas. According to some traditions, the Avestas had 21 Nasks (books) when they were revealed to Zarathushtra, each Nask corresponding to a word of the holiest Zoroastrian prayer, the "blueprint of creation", the Ahunvar. Three of these Nasks are said to have consisted of commentaries and explications of the Gathas. But only the tiniest portion of the original Avesta has been preserved to this day. The rest, including these commentaries, was reportedly lost during the invasions of Alexander the Great and the medieval Arabs. Only the 19th Nask, the Vendidad, is said to have survived completely intact. The content of the lost Nasks has been partially preserved through summaries contained in medieval Pahlavi texts such as the Dinkard and the Bundahishn, but these summaries are of course no substitute for the real thing.

As for the Gathas, they are a part of the Yasnas, which are a part of the 21st Nask. The non-Gathic Yasnas, as well as certain other extant portions of the Avesta, are said to complement and expand on the Gathas. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the three Nasks dedicated to the explication of the Gathas must have been necessary to understanding them properly, because if this were not the case, that would imply that those Nasks were rather superfluous and could have been done without. There are a number of different groups of scholars, as well as non-scholars or 'amateur' scholars who have attempted to translate the Holy Gathas into western languages, each with their own views on the meanings of the Gathas, on the correct way to go about discerning these meanings, and also on the historical realities surrounding the Gathas. Before going into detail on the many matters of disagreement, I will briefly describe these groups in what I believe to be the chronological order. And I will be limiting myself to only those groups whose writings on and translations of the Gathas I have encountered; there may well be a fair amount of work on the Gathas by Hindus and Iranian Muslims which I have no means of access to.

The first group is the Orientalists, beginning with the Frenchman Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, who in the 18th century travelled to India, acquired a large number of Zoroastrian manuscripts from the Parsis, and produced the first western translation of the Avestas. Over the course of the next century or two some more orientalists came along and did some work on the Gathas, noteworthy among them being Arthur Bleeck, Friedrich von Spiegel, and Martin Haug. The second group is 'orthodox' Zoroastrians. These are the inheritors of the Pahlavi traditions, who still care for the entirety of the Avestas and for the diverse rituals, rites and ceremonies associated with them. At some point a new, westernised breed of Zoroastrians came about as the result of the work of western scholars as well as the general Anglicization of the Parsis. They are skeptical towards the so-called traditions and tend to interpret the Gathas in accordance with western ideas; I will call them 'liberal' or 'westernised' Zoroastrians. The next group is the Ilm-e-khshnoom ('science of ecstasy') Zoroastrians. This group was founded in the early 20th century when Behramshah Navroji Shroff began teaching the Parsis of India the mystical doctrines of Ilm-e-kshnoom, which he claimed to have learned from a secluded group of Zoroastrian saints in the mountains of northern Iran. The most recent group to arise is the most recent generation of western scholars, whose work is really only a continuation of the work of their predecessors, but nonetheless the distinction seems worth making.

The first issue I will address is the origins of the Gathas. The consensus of the majority is
that they were authored by (and/or revealed to) Zarathushtra Spitama sometime between 200 B.C.
and 7000 B.C.. Some western scholars, however, have doubted Zarathushtra's very existence.
Others have alleged that some parts of the Gathas were authored by him, while others were not. It
has also been asserted that the name Zarathushtra denotes a collectivity of authors rather than only
one person. Among those who acknowledge that Zarathushtra was a single person and the
author/deliverer of the Gathas, there are some who consider them to be deeply personal prayers
addressed by the prophet to Ahura Mazda, while others say that they are impersonal revelations.

Another prominent issue is how well the Gathas have been preserved. The uncorruptedness of the Gathas has been called into question by a number of western scholars: Stanley Insler, Helmut Humbach, M.L. West, Christian Bartholomae, and Kenneth Guthrie, to name a few. These supposed alterations include changes of grammatical forms, rearrangements of words, and the total reordering of entire hymns. Though I have been unable to determine what the view of the majority of Zoroastrians on the subject is, I have encountered in their writings plenty of support for the idea that the Gathas have been altered somewhat, and even a claim that the extant Gathas are merely 'fragmented and truncated parts of the original'. I don't know if I've ever encountered a claim that the Gathas have been perfectly preserved.

Related to this is the issue of whether the other surviving parts of the Avestas are authentic, and whether they were really authored by (and/or revealed to) Zarathushtra. The majority, or at least a very substantial amount, of western scholars point to linguistic differences between the Gathas and the 'Younger Avesta' as proof that the latter were composed at a later date and not by Zarathushtra. A number of 'liberal' Zoroastrians have taken after them and adopted this opinion as well. But the opinion of less westernised Zoroastrians is that the other surviving portions of the Avestas were indeed authored by Zarathushtra.

The accuracy and reliability of the Pahlavi texts is another important point of disagreement, and I think it can safely be said that in general the people who have faith in the authenticity of the 'Younger Avesta' also have faith in these Pahlavi texts, while the people who consider the 'Younger Avesta' to be younger than the Gathas also cast doubt on the authenticity and reliability of the Pahlavi texts. The reason this is so important, even crucial, to the understanding of the Gathas is that if the non-Gathic Avestas and Pahlavi texts are accepted, then they provide a framework, a detailed religious system, from which the Gathas must be understood. If these texts are rejected, then this framework must be replaced with another, which can invented and based on fantasy, conjecture, and speculation, or it can be informed by the contents of other sacred texts, or some combination of the two.

Though other sacred texts can be used to provide an ideological framework for the Gathas, the Pahlavi texts and 'Younger Avesta' are indispensable from a philological point of view. The Vedas and other Sanskrit texts are also invaluable because of the close relationship between Sanskrit and Avestan. This is the source of another disagreement, which is over which, the Pahlavi texts or Sanskrit, is more reliable in trying to understand the Gathas. And I know this matter to be intimately related to the following issues, but my near-total ignorance of Avestan, Sanskrit and Pahlavi prevents me from going into detail on precisely how.

The vast majority of Western scholars of the Gathas have found them rife with pastoral themes and terms. This is exemplified most clearly by the phrase geush urvan, which these westerners all translate as 'soul of the bull', 'soul of the cow', or some other equivalent, while the Zoroastrians translate it as 'soul of the world', 'soul of mother earth', and other such equivalents, always on a cosmic scale. Both of these interpretations are valid, so the choice between them for a translator must be determined by their overall approach to the Gathas, and in particular their conceptions of the author's intentions.

The sense of scale and magnitude that comes from translating geush urvan as 'soul of the world' is very appropriate given the importance and universality of Zarathushtra's message. Yet there are many pastoral terms such as 'milk', 'butter', 'pasture', and 'herdsman' which seem out of place when gav becomes world. Zoroastrians often translate these terms differently, making them 'prosperity, 'knowledge', 'protector', and so on. This strikes me as sufficient evidence that the Gathas are full of intentional double meanings. Not every scholar and translator would agree with me, however, and some have argued that the pastoral interpretations are the mere inventions of western scholars, while others have asserted the opposite, namely that the pastoral interpretations are correct and that the other meanings of these words are later inventions, or at least figurative and secondary to the pastoral meanings.

An example of this latter view can be found in the introduction to a very recent western translation, that of M.L. West, who writes, "I disagree fundamentally with those modern scholars who claim that the prophet's style is deliberately esoteric and encrypted, full of intentional double or multiple meanings. In my view, where different interpretations of a sentence are possible, it is the job of the translator or commentator to try to determine which one corresponds to the author's intention."

I believe he has scholars like Helmut Humbach in mind, but this view also opposes the common Zoroastrian viewpoint. M.L. West makes the assumption that Zarathushtra intended there to be only one meaning for everything. In my view, where different interpretations of a sentence are possible, it is indeed the job of the translator to try and discern the primary meaning, but it is also desirable to embed or suggest any other valid meanings insofar as this is possible. Unfortunately keeping multiple layers of meaning intact in a single translation is almost impossible.

Radically different from M.L. West's view is that of by K. Navroz Dastoor, a Zoroastrian mystic and writer for the Ilm-e-Kshnoom magazine, Parsi Pukar. K. Navroz Dastoor is openly critical of western scholars for their overconfidence and even arrogance. In particular he is critical of Professor Humbach's translation, which he calls a "highly evolved product" of "a closed system surrounded by 5 main circles", these statements being accompanied by an illustration of the said circles. The outer circle is 19th century science, the result of which is that "any mystical truth or doctrine is taboo". Next is a hunger for academic honors, distinctions, and degrees. The next three circles, Vocabulary, Grammar and Syntax, are each made up of three circles themselves, representing Sanskrit, Pahlavi and Tradition.

And here is where, Dastoor says, preference comes into play: "A scholar will have his syntax according to his personal preference. With these nine circles within the first two outermost circles, the scholars play their academic game. One scholar would emphasize one out of the three foundations and use the other two to support his meaning and interpretation of a passage. If the other two indicate a meaning contrary to what he desires to give, he ignores them or discards them or even criticizes them. There is no particular reason to do so except that he prefers the meaning he has given. It thus becomes a matter of personal preference of each scholar."

Dastoor encourages his fellow Parsis to ignore all these western scholars, and instead turn to the mystical tradition of Ilm-e-Kshnoom, and to rely on the Kshnoomic translation of Dr. Framroze Chiniwalla. But I myself have to doubt the authenticity of the Kshnoomic 'tradition' due to their belief in reincarnation. It seems exceedingly unlikely that this is an authentic Zoroastrian teaching, so in all probability the Ilm-e-Kshnoom is a 20th century invention and does not go back to the time of Zarathushtra as its followers claim.

MY ISLAMIC APPROACH TO THE GATHAS

I, as a Muslim, am obliged and delighted to interpret the Gathas in accordance with my beliefs. In my efforts to comprehend and translate the Gathas, this is my only real advantage, and it is the only thing that I have to offer that is not adequately provided by the other translations.

Unfortunately, even this advantage is severely limited by my newness to Islam; I have not thoroughly studied the Qur'an or the hadith and I don't even know Arabic. Nevertheless, there are obvious problems in most translations of the Gathas that any Muslim with a rudimentary knowledge of our religion can see, such as Ahura Mazda being called the Father of Asha and Armaiti. But first I will outline my views on the Gathas and on the issues discussed in the previous section.

First of all it should be said that Zarathushtra is a Prophet of Islam. This means that insofar as the Gathas and other Zoroastrian texts are authentic and uncorrupted, they are perfectly compatible with the Qur'an and the hadith of Muhammad. That being said, I do not know how authentic and uncorrupted the Gathas or the other Zoroastrian texts are. Because of the great beauty and ideological purity of the Gathas, I am inclined to regard the losses and alterations they have undergone as minor, with the only exception being the attribution of sons and daughters to Ahura Mazda.

As for the 'Younger Avesta' and the Pahlavi texts, I have not had the time to investigate them more than superficially. There are, however, some obvious doctrinal contradictions between them and Islam, which I will mention further on.

One of my main concerns in translating the Gathas is tawhid, which is the absolute, indivisible Oneness and Uniqueness of Ahura Mazda. In most translations of the Gathas there is a noticeable lack of explicit and unambiguous affirmations of tawhid. I am uncertain as to precisely why this is the case, but this has not deterred me from the Gathas, nor has it shaken my conviction that the Gathas are a monotheistic text rather than a polytheistic one. I have encountered, in both secular and Zoroastrian writings, the claim that the religion of the Gathas is neither monotheism nor polytheism. But there is no room for "non-theism" or "between-mono-and-poly-theism" in a proper Qur'anic worldview, so I must regard the Gathic religion as a subtle, unusual and poorly understood expression of monotheism.

Everywhere in the Gathas, the tawhid of Ahura Mazda is implicit. The followers of false gods are
scorned and promised an enduring punishment, while the followers of Ahura Mazda are promised
everlasting bliss. Why would this be the case if the author believed that Ahura Mazda had equals?

While it is easy for me to accept the Gathas as an authentic and well-preserved revelation, many of the other portions of the Avestas are more difficult to accept, and in fact must be rejected if the translations of them that I have seen are accurate. This un-Islamic content is also contained in the Pahlavi texts, so if any of this content is really the result of a misunderstanding on the part of the translators then these misunderstandings must go back many centuries.

As for what this objectionable content actually consists of, I will provide only two examples. In the Vendidad, Angra-Mainyu (often identified with Satan) is described as creating certain animals. This is unacceptable because Ahura Mazda is the sole Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and all that is therein.
Another major problem, which is present in a huge amount of the 'Younger Avesta', is the excessive praise of the angels, or even 'worship' according to some translations. If this really is worship, as plenty of Zoroastrians unhesitatingly call it, then they are committing shirk (polytheism) and these texts can hardly be considered sacred.

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF ZOROASTRIAN COSMOLOGY AND ANGELOLOGY

Before I move on to discussing my efforts to understand and translate the Gathas, I will briefly outline the Zoroastrian cosmology as I understand it. My main sources of information are the Lesser Bundahishn, which is a medieval Pahlavi text, and Henri Corbin's Cycical Time and Ismaili Gnosis.
 
It begins with Ahura Mazda, Lord and Creator of the Universe. He dwells in endless light, in His own omniscience and goodness. This omniscience and goodness is identified with Dîn, 'the eternal religion' or revelation, which is in turn identified with the fravashi. The fravashis are the celestial archetypes/angels which watch over everything and constitute the innermost aspect of every human being, acting as our tutelary angels in this world and becoming fully united with us in the hereafter. They seem to correspond quite closely to Plato's Eternal Ideas, and they also call to mind the angels mentioned in the Qur'an, who record our every deed in the books of our lives which will be presented to us on Judgment Day. Curiously enough, the fravashis are not mentioned at all in the Gathas.

So, Ahura Mazda was being Himself. Meanwhile, Angra Mainyu inhabited an abyss which is endlessly dark, and in place of omniscience and goodness he had misunderstanding and a desire for destruction. He and his abyss seemingly came from nowhere, for no reason, and this is one of the aspects of Zoroastrianism that utterly baffles me. Now Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu both went and created their creations, respectively good and bad, and Angra Mainyu saw that his creations were inferior. And Ahura Mazda decided to allow a period of contest, after which Angra Mainyu would be cast into total destruction and the creation would be renovated and brought to completion and final perfection.

Of the very many details of the Zoroastrian creation myth I have skipped over (contained in the Bundahishn), one is particularly relevant to this paper. It is a story concerning the aforementioned geush urvan. In this myth Angra Mainyu afflicts the whole of creation, including the primeval bull. Ahura-Mazda gives the bull a medicine but it dies anyways. And as it dies its 'vegetable principle' and 'seminal energy' create sixty-seven species of plants. This seed or seminal energy is delivered to the moon, purified by its light, and somehow refracted back upon the earth so as to create two cows, one of each sex, from which proceed two hundred and eighty-two species, the ancestors of all good animals. Thus, according to this myth, the soul of the bull is also the soul of all plant and animal life.

Concerning the angels, it should first be said that in general Zoroastrians are much more fixated on and fascinated by them than Muslims. This love and reverence for the angels is taken to extremes in many non-Gathic texts, whereas in the Gathas it is limited to the Ameshaçpentas, who are in fact among the only celestial beings mentioned in the Gathas. This word, Ameshaçpenta, literally means 'bounteous immortal', and they have also been called 'Essences of God', 'Divine Sparks', 'Divine Attributes', and Archangels. According to Zoroastrian doctrine, Ahura Mazda Himself is an Ameshaçpenta. The term Ameshaçpenta does not appear at all in the Gathas, but I will use it anyways when speaking of them, for lack of a better term.

The Ameshaçpentas are Asha, Armaiti, Kshathra, Haurvetat, Ameretat, Vohu-Mana, and Ahura-Mazda, though I really don't like including Him among them because He is above them. I suppose this is similar to the way Allah is a name, but it is also the supreme and all-encompassing name.

Asha is utterly untranslatable but people often translate it anyways, usually as Truth, Right, or
Righteousness. Other translations include Law, Reality, Good Order, Beauty, Purity, Holiness,
Freedom, Superb Brilliance and Excellence, and Artistic Ingenuity. Asha is, as the Ashem Vohu (the
second most important Zoroastrian prayer) says, the greatest good, and a supreme source of
happiness for all who seek it.

Armaiti is also utterly untranslatable, yet people often translate it anyways. These translations include Faith, Piety, Devotion, Love, Service, Peace, Serenity, Tranquility, Divine Wisdom, and Contemplation.

Kshathra is comparatively easy to translate. It means Dominion, Power, and Sovereignty.
Sometimes it is used to refer to the 'Kingdom of Heaven', sometimes to speak of benevolent
political rulership, and sometimes to speak of a person's benevolent sovereignty over their own self.

Haurvetat means perfection, integrity, completeness and wholeness. It is usually paired with
Ameretat, which means immortality.

Vohu-Mana is also relatively easy to translate. Vohu means good, and Mana has been translated variously as thought, mind, mindedness, thinking, and disposition. One translator has it as Conscience, and others have equated it with reason. René Guénon has identified Vohu-mana with the sufi concept of Universal Man, and I believe this is correct.

The Ameshaçpentas seem to be situated somewhere in between archangels and attributes of Ahura Mazda. On the one hand, they seem to be essential attributes of Ahura-Mazda that he shares with us and with the angels: truth/justice, piety/serenity/love, dominion/might, perfection, immortality, good mindedness... If this approach is taken the ameshaçpentas can be matched up with the Arabic names of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, though some of them would be better described, in Muhammadan terms, with different words depending on whom they are being spoken of in relation to; for example Vohu-mana corresponds to 'aql (reason/intellect), wisdom, or conscience on a human level but it is really only a manifestation of the Divine Names al-'Alim (The Knower), al-Muqsit (The Equitable) al-Hadi (The Guide), Al-Latif (The Subtle, etc.), and so on; Armaiti corresponds to iman (faith), sabr (patience), and love as well as a number of Divine Names such as as-Sabur (The Patient) and al-Wadud (The Loving).

The only problem with this approach is that the Ameshaçpentas are explicitly described as being created, both in the Gathas and in the other Zoroastrian texts. This issue can be addressed by saying that insofar as they can be attained and understood by the human individual, they are created, and insofar as they can be used to describe Ahura Mazda, they must be uncreated because He is uncreated.

Besides the Ameshaçpentas there are countless other angels, the most noteworthy of them
being Sraosha and Mithra, the angels of obedience and light. The Gathas, the Ashem Vohu, and the
Ahunvar are also said to literally be angels, and perhaps this is the case with the entire Avesta
insofar as it has been preserved.

By invoking the angels and striving valiantly to realize and embody the Ameshaçpentas, Zoroastrians participate in the overthrowing of Angra Mainyu and his minions and, according to their doctrine, help usher in the final renovation of the universe. These minions of Angra Mainyu are diverse, but the main category, which is the one most frequently mentioned in the Gathas, is the Daevas. These are false gods who follow and partake in druj (evil/lies). I may be mistaken, but I believe they are exactly the same thing as satans.

Beginning My Translation

Now that all these preliminary matters have been addressed, I will commence with a narration of my efforts to understand and translate the Gathas. The first translation of Gathas I encountered was that of Arthur Bleeck. This was the first English translation of the Gathas, completed in 1864. His translation is based on the German translation of Professor Spiegel, and he also consulted the Avestan original and an esteemed Gujarati translation. Bleeck confesses that his translation is "more literal than elegant", but personally I have found it to be more elegant than most. In fact, I have a such a preference for the archaic, poetic and very formal English of Bleeck's translation that I originally intended to use it as the primary basis for mine. Even now that I no longer have this intention, I still feel compelled to try and mimic its wonderful style.
Besides its aesthetic merits, his translation also has the advantage of leaving many terms untranslated, in particular the names of the Ameshaçpentas (though Bleeck is not entirely consistent in this). This is necessary with the names of the Ameshaçpentas because they have no equivalents in English. I also have the strong impression that Bleeck's translation is closer to the word-order of the original Avestan than any other translation, which is another admirable quality that I desire for my own translation.

When I began my translation, my intention was only to take Bleeck's translation and make it
even prettier while clarifying the unintelligible verses. In order to discern the meaning of the
unintelligible passages I had to consult other translations. And I quickly noticed how different the
other translations were, and soon I found myself consulting more and more, hoping in vain to find a
truly accurate one. It was my hope that this ideal translation might be in agreement with all the
other translations, or that it might illuminate the source of their disagreements, thus demonstrating its own superiority, or that it might encompass their meanings through its own clever wording, or that it might somehow demonstrate them all to be false through its sheer brilliance. I of course have found no such translation, and while some translations are better than others it is impossible for me to say with any certainty that one is more accurate than all the others.

I remain attached to Bleeck's translation, and began to favor others over it only towards the end of my translating endeavor, in which I translated three chapters. Thus, in two of the three Yasnas I have translated thus far, my preference for his translation is quite manifest. Concerning the unintelligible verses, they are not entirely unintelligible. Bleeck says in the introduction that he fears that some verses might be found to be no more intelligible in his translation than in the Avestan original, but this is certainly not the case. Some verses are indeed confusing, but with effort they can be made sense of. To me this occasional lack of clarity in his translation is only a mark of honesty. Ambiguity to the point of near-incomprehensibility is not desirable, but it is no worse than assigning false meanings to poorly understood verses, which is what one inevitably risks in trying to present an easy to understand translation of the Gathas.

Now I will discuss in detail the problems I encountered in translating some of the more and less troublesome stanzas I have dealt with, beginning with this one:

YASNA 29, STANZA 3

ahmâi ashâ nôit sarejâ
advaêshô gavôi paitî-mravat
avaêshãm nôit vîduyê
ýâ shavaitê âdrêñg ereshvånghô
hâtãm hvô aojishtô
ýahmâi zavêñg jimâ keredushâ.

M.L. West
To him Right, no breacher of unity, no enemy of the cow, will answer:
'Of those things there is no knowing. He by whom the upright invigorate the weak
is the mightiest of beings; to his calls I will respond, my ear reaches no further:

Bleeck
Him answered Asha: There is not a lord for the Cow who might be without tormenting.
It is not known to them, what manifestly rejoices the righteous,
He is the mightiest among beings at whose call come the workers.

Jafarey
Righteousness replied:
There is no authority in the world who is free from malice.
Of those yonder, I know none who would activate the noble to help the meek.
Had there been one person strong enough among them, I would have hurried to his call.

Chatterji
To Him replied Asha, "There is, in the world, not a hero who is (himself) free from
arrogance. Of them I know not one, who can make the lowly great. Of these beings, he is the
real worthy, to whom the call duty reaches."

In this stanza it is clear that Asha is replying to the query of the Fashioner of the Cow, who in Stanza 2 asked if a zealous and benevolent guardian could be found for the cow. Almost all of the translators agree on this. But in between ahmâi asha and paitî-mravat ('him asha answered') are four words: nôit sarejâ advaêshô gavôi. Some translators think these words are descriptive of Asha, while others think they are descriptive of the ideal lord of whom Asha is speaking. Both interpretations are perfectly plausible, and perhaps Zarathushtra intended for them both to be understood at once. But for the purpose of translation this level of ambiguity will not do. So now a decision must be made as to the subject of these descriptions, and this matter is inextricably tangled up with the precise meaning of these words, something that is poorly agreed upon.

Gavôi means 'for the cow' (or 'for the world'), and advaêsho means 'free from hatred' as well as 'harmless'. These two meanings of advaêsho must be chosen between because there is no English word that contains both meanings. Other translations for this word include 'without hostility', 'no enemy', and 'without tormenting', but the aforementioned two are the most common and most likely possibilities. Nôit means 'no', 'none', or 'not', and the truly problematic word here is sarejâ. Some translate this word as 'chief', 'lord', 'companion' or 'helper'. I used 'lord' for the previous stanza so that would be a good option. But there is also another group of possible meanings that must be considered: 'slayer/destroyer of the alliance/protection', 'smasher of an association', and 'breacher of unity'. And there are a few other odd translations of sarejâ: 'cruel' and 'head-smasher'.

Possibilities So far: Him answered Asha,
                                  no harmless Lord for the Cow,
                                  no Lord for the Cow who is free from malice
                                  no breacher of unity, no enemy for the cow
                                  no smasher of associations, yet not cruel to the cow

The decision as to the meanings of these words must be made with not only the above mentioned
uncertainty concerning who they apply to in mind, but also with the following phrase in mind: avaêshãm nôit vîduyê ýâ shavaitê âdrêñg ereshvånghô. These words are either the first words being spoken here by Asha, who has just been described, or they are a statement concerning the 'lord' or 'helper' who has just been described by Asha. At this point the stanza becomes impossibly confusing: avaêshãm has been translated as 'this', 'that', and 'amongst them'; and vîduyê is usually translated as 'see' or 'know'. Some take this to be the end of the sentence, in which case the possible meanings include "of those I see none", "of that none knows", and "of those none know", and the subject, if the sentence ends here, can be none other than the hypothetical benevolent lord spoken of in the previous stanza.

Possibilities So far: Him answered Asha,
                                  (there is) no harmless Lord for the Cow,
                                                                    of those none knows.
                                                                    of those I see none.
                                  (there is) no Lord for the Cow who is free from malice
                                                                    of those none knows.
                                                                    of those I see none.
                                  no breacher of unity, no enemy for the cow
                                                                    of those none knows.
                                                                    of those I see none.
                                  no smasher of associations, yet not cruel to the cow
                                                                    of those none knows.
                                                                    of those I see none.

Yâ has been translated as 'who', 'what', 'which', and 'by which'. At this point the phrase could mean "none know who/which/what", or "I see none who/which/what". If this is the beginning of a new sentence, however, 'who' seems to be the only sensible option, with a 'He' in parentheses before it.

Possibilities So far: Him answered Asha,
                                  (there is) no harmless Lord for the Cow,
                                  (there is) no Lord for the Cow who is free from malice
                                  no breacher of unity, no enemy for the cow
                                  no smasher of associations, yet not cruel to the cow
                                                                    of those none knows. (He) who
                                                                    of those I see none who
                                                                    of those none knows who
                                                                    of those none knows what
                                                                    of those none knows that by which

The next word, shavaitê, means to 'drive forth', 'advance', or 'set in motion', and may be related to the horse-racing metaphors M.L. West and Humbach have found in the Gathas. Adrêñg has been given a number of meanings, some of which somewhat contradict each other: 'lowly', 'meek', 'dependent' (noun), 'respected', and 'honorable'. And the last word in this sequence, ereshvånghô, means 'righteous', 'truthful', or 'lofty'. As for the exact relation between these words, there is little agreement. Are the righteous 'driving back' the wicked, smiting them? Are the wicked being advanced to loftiness and rectitude by "(He) who none of those (wicked lords) yonder know of"? Or are the righteous being protected from the wicked by a third party?

Possibilities So far: Him answered Asha,
                              (there is) no harmless Lord for the Cow,
                              (there is) no Lord for the Cow who is free from malice
                              no breacher of unity, no enemy for the cow
                              no smasher of associations, yet not cruel to the cow
                                                             of those none knows. (He) who
                                                             of those I see none who
                                                             of those none know who
                                                             of those none knows what
                                                                            advances the lowly to the righteous,
                                                                            protects the righteous from the lowly,
                                                                            compels the righteous to (uplift) the lowly,
                                                             of those none knows that by which
                                                                            the lowly are advanced to the righteous,
                                                                            the righteous are protected from the lowly,
                                                                            the righteous are compelled to (uplift) the lowly,

The last portion of this stanza is comparatively simple. Hâtãm means 'of/among beings', hvô means 'he', aojishtô means 'mightiest', ýahmâi means 'to whom', zavêñg means 'calls' or 'requests', and jimâ means 'come' or 'go', adding up to "of beings he (is) mightiest to whose calls come". The last word, keredushâ, is another problematic word, its various interpretations being quite disparate from each other: 'send', 'having sent out', 'workers', 'helpers', 'protection', et cetera. The majority view is that Ahura-Mazda or Asha is the one "coming with help".

There are two interpretations of this whole phrase that I have considered: the first is that the mortal to whose call Ahura-Mazda and/or Asha comes becomes the strongest of beings through their divine assistance, and the second is that the speaker, Asha or Zarathustra in this case, is stating that they are at the service of Ahura-Mazda, who is the strongest of beings. The interpretation of this last phrase can of course not be entirely separated from the rest of the stanza, which is a confounding tangle of semantic and grammatical ambiguity. Now instead of choosing between all the options I outlined above, for my translation I ended up reverting to Bleeck's translation out of sheer confoundedness.

Goertzel
Him answered Asha: There is not a lord for the Cow who might be without tormenting.
It is not known to them, what manifestly rejoices the righteous.
He is the mightiest of beings at whose call I come to serve.

I don't see how Bleeck arrived at his translation of the second verse, but this translation is delightfully simple so I decided to keep it. Only the last verse has been changed from Bleeck's translation. This is a novel interpretation of the stanza, and has no equivalents in the other translations, but I feel that it is equally trustworthy. The phrase "there is not a lord for the cow who might be without tormenting" is quite ambiguous, and I can only hope that this ambiguity is a reasonable approximation of the ambiguity intended by Zarathustra, presuming that this verse was intended to be ambiguous. There are two meanings suggested by this phrase. The first is that the cow must be tormented, because suffering is a fundamental part of existence. A 'cow' who cannot bear suffering (and is thus ever discontent) can have no earthly lord of the type it wants, one who can protect it from all adversity; such a cow can also have no true guidance or peace in life (and will thus be rejected by its true Lord Ahura-Mazda). The second meaning is that the only lords who are available for the cow are unjust and therefore must be tormented in Hell.

With many of the stanzas I have translated thus far, I did not have time to look up the meanings given for every Avestan word and instead had to limit myself to combining and modifying the other translations, with guesswork unfortunately but necessarily also being a part of the process. When my only intention in translating the Gathas was to clarify and enhance Bleeck's translation, it did not seem necessary to involve myself with the Avestan so much. Thus, for much of the first two Yasnas I translated (29 and 30), I looked at the Avestan little or not at all. Considering how confusing the Avestan can be, I do not think this was a grave mistake.

YASNA 47, STANZA 1

speñtâ mainyû vahishtâcâ mananghâ
hacâ ashât shyaothanâcâ vacanghâcâ
ahmâi dãn haurvâtâ ameretâtâ
mazdå xshathrâ ârmaitî ahurô

Chatterji
May Ahura Mazda grant us, through Spenta Manyu all six holy institutes, viz. 1. Vahista
Mana (best i.e. broadest Conscience) 2. Along with Asa (rectitude) in deeds and words 3.
Haurvatat (spirituality) 4. Ameretatat (godliness) 5. Kshathra (nonchalance) and 6.
Armaiti (faith).

Azargoshasb
One who is led by Thy Holy Spirit and Thy love, his thought, word and deed are good and in
tune with truth. He shall be granted perfection and eternity by Mazda Ahura through his
strength and love.

Nanavutty
Through Your Spirit of Benediction and Your Supreme Mind
You will grant Perfection and Immortality to him
whose words and deeds are in harmony with Truth,
with the Sovereignty of Mazda and the Devotion of Ahura.

Bleeck
Through this holiest Spirit and through the best-mindedness,
Which springs from purity with words and works,
To us has given fullness and immortality,
Good things and understanding, Mazda-Ahura.

This seems to be one of the less misunderstood stanzas, largely due to the fact that half of the words are the names of the Ameshaçpentas, all of whom are mentioned here. Spenta Mainyu and Vahishta-mana are the sole inhabitants of the first line, and for this reason I am inclined to regard them as a pair here, after the manner of Bleeck and Nanavutty. And I am assuming that Vahishta-mana is identical with Vohu-mana.
The meaning of the next word, hacâ, is quite uncertain to me. My best guess is 'with'. The other possible meanings which I have been able to discern are 'owing to', 'actuated by', and 'through'. The next word after this is some conjugation of Asha, and shyaothanâcâ and vacanghâcâ are deeds and words. Ahmâi means 'him', 'us', or 'one', and Dãn means 'give' or 'grant'. Unfortunately the translators are not in agreement as to what tense this Dãn is in, or should be translated in. Most of them have it in the future tense, some have it in the present tense, and Bleeck alone has it in the past tense.

Possibilities:
Spenta Mainyu and Vahishta-mana
with/because of/through deeds and words (done and spoken with) Asha
(To) him/us/one gives (or is given or has been given) Haurvetat and Ameretat
Mazda Kshathra Armaiti Ahura

The last verse consists of Ahura Mazda's name and two of His Ameshaçpentas. I take this verse to mean that we/him will be (or are or have been) granted Haurvetat and Ameretat through Kshathra and Armaiti and also within them. That is to say, in addition to being granted Haurvetat and Ameretat through Kshathra and Armaiti, we will be granted Kshathra and Armaiti themselves, through themselves but from Ahura Mazda. Unfortunately this interpretation seems impossible to contain in any translation. I have produced three renditions of this stanza:

Goertzel (literal)
Spenta Mainyu and Vahishta-mana,
With Asha in deeds and words,
To him grants Haurvetat and Ameretat
Kshathra of Mazda, Armaiti of Ahura

Goertzel (preferred)
Through Spenta Mainyu and Vahishta-mana,
With Asha in words and works,
To us is granted Haurvetat and Ameretat
By the Kshathra of Mazda and the Armaiti of Ahura

Goertzel (clearer)
Through the Holiest Spirit and Best Mind,
To one with Asha in words and works,
is granted Perfection and Immortality
By the Kshathra of Mazda and the Armaiti of Ahura

This stanza demonstrates well how even when the meanings of most of the words in a stanza are agreed upon, the grammar remains ambiguous. The language of the Gathas is extremely terse, to a degree that cannot be preserved in translations into English without violating the rules of English grammar. 'To', 'through', 'from', 'with', 'by', 'for', and all manner of English particles must be inserted where they are only implied in the Avestan. And with the particles that are present in the Avestan, even when their meaning is agreed upon it is often uncertain what their relation to the words around them is.

The best way to deal with all these ambiguities is, in my estimation, to have as clear a vision as possible of Zarathushtra's overall message, and to approach each Yasna, stanza, and verse with this message in mind, using it as a measure to judge between the different possibilities. Zoroastrians believe this overall message to be Zoroastrianism, I believe it to be Islam, and Western scholars are divided on the matter.

All my work and research of the Gathas thus far has really only been the beginning of what I
hope will be a fruitful lifelong endeavor. Through the process of translating the Gathas, I have
come to a more intimate understanding of them and also of the Ameshaçpentas. But this work has
been of much more benefit to me than to anyone else; I have not yet witnessed anyone developing a
sudden interest in the Gathas or being inspired with a great love and reverence for Ahura Mazda and
the Ameshaçpentas as the result of my translations. In order to do a truly thorough study of the
Gathas and produce a more trustworthy translation, I would need to learn Pahlavi, Sanskrit, Avestan, and Arabic.