Zoroastrianism

Tradition·Founded c. 1200 BCE·est. 100–200 thousand worldwide

Zoroastrianism

Branch
Core tenet of Zoroastrianism

The Bridge of the Separator.

Three days after death the soul comes to a bridge, which widens for the good and narrows to a blade's edge for the wicked. The thoughts, words and deeds are weighed by Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu, and the soul meets its own conscience — beautiful or hideous, depending on what it has been doing.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The Chinvat Bridge, the Bridge of the Separator, is where the individual judgment happens on the dawn of the fourth day after death. Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu weigh the person's thoughts, words and deeds. The bridge is described as widening for the righteous and narrowing to a razor's edge for the wicked, who fall into the house of the lie. The most vivid element is the encounter with the daena — the soul's own conscience or religion, personified — which meets the righteous as a beautiful young woman of fifteen and the wicked as a hideous hag, and which explains that she is what he made her. Zoroastrian eschatology thus operates on two levels at once: an individual judgment immediately after death and a universal resurrection and renovation at the end of time, with the interim spent in a provisional heaven or hell. The doubling has obvious parallels in later Jewish, Christian and Islamic schemes.

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