MAZDAZNAN: GOOD THOUGHT, GOOD WORD, GOOD DEED
Book Details + Condition: The Household of Mazda (Lowell, MA). First Edition, 1915. Scarce bound volume of a journal devoted to the Mazdaznan movement. Bound book with marbled endpapers, and includes full year of 12 issues from January – December). Mazdaznan is a neo-Zoroastrian religion, which believed that the Earth should be restored to a garden where humanity can cooperate and converse with God. Founded at the end of the 19th century by Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, born Otto Hanisch, the religion was a revival of 6th-century Mazdakism. [Wikipedia] Mazdaznan claimed to offer 'the Eternal Religion that stands behind all other religions', 'the oldest and most comprehensive system ever devised by man or revealed by God'. It focused on the importance of breath and breathing, with its adherents expected to practice vegetarianism. Contents throughout these original 12 issues includes:
- General Rules on Eats for Health
- Philosophy of Life
- From the Tree of Life
- The Woman of the Future
- What Science Has Done
- Political Christianity
- God, Man and Nature
- Telepathic Waves
- The Economy of Life
- The Holy Mount
- The Food Problem
- The Catholic Church
- Jesus a Prohibitionist
- Insomnia and Sleeplessness
- Zarathushtra
- Count Leo Tolstoi
- The Federation of Nations
- God, Nature and Reason
- Socialization and Adjustment
- Cruelties of a Commonwealth
- And much more.
Firm binding; interior is clean and free of markings, save editorial corrections, which we retained. In the April issue, there are numerous pencilled editorial markings - in German. The movement flourished in Germany at the turn of the century, and was eventually banned by the Nazis.
