The Zoroastrian priestesses of Iran

Mobediar Sarbar Talapolevara enters the temple dressed in a long white dress on top of which a white veil is pinned, and sits close to the small but vigorous fire that crackles in the middle of the temple.

Talapolevara’s immaculate threads are transcendentally laundered, flawless white throughout. Her one accessory is the traditional koshti, a long belt which represents the Zoroastrian basic principles of “good thoughts, good words and good actions”.

“My father was a Parsi, that is a Zoroastrian from India,” she says. “I recall him fastening his belt every day before breakfast and telling us about his childhood in India, where Zoroastrians cling to conservative traditions and kids must wear the koshti from the age of eight years old.”

“It was my father who encouraged me the most. At first Indian Parsis opposed the idea of the female priests,” Mobed Talapolevara said. “That’s why I was pleasantly surprised upon my initiation as a priest four years ago to receive messages of support from those same Indian Parsi. They even published articles in Indian newspapers and at the International Congress of Zoroastrians.”

Berhad, a young Zoroastrian disciple, who chants by heart the Avesta, the holy Zoroastrian scriptures, as often as he can, told MEE that “Zoroastrian society maintains a caste system. The Mobeds are the highest caste. After the Arab invasion and the following persecutions, the majority of Mobeds fled to India”.

“They were the most traditional ones, those who apply the Sasanian interpretation of the sacred text, the Avesta. Actually, during the Sasanian time – the last pre-Islamic reign in Iran – the Mobeds took power and mixed religion and politics together, instituting even a kind of Sharia, a law and moral code which gave the precepts and the rules founded on a new reinterpretation of the Zarathustra recitations.”

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