I offer my sacrifice and homage to thee, the Fire, as a good offering, and an offering with our hail of salvation, even as an offering of praise with benedictions, to thee, the Fire, O Ahura, Mazda’s son!  Meet for sacrifice art thou, and worthy of [our] homage.  And as meet for sacrifice, and thus worthy of our homage, may’st thou be in the houses of men [who worship Mazda].  Salvation be to this man who worships thee in verity and truth, with wood in hand and baresma [sacred twigs] ready, with flesh in hand and holding too the mortar. 2.  And mayst thou be [ever] fed with wood as the prescription orders.  Yea, mayst thou have thy perfume justly, and thy sacred butter without fail, and thine andirons regularly placed.  Be of full age as to thy nourishment, of the canon’s age as to the measure of thy food.  O Fire, Ahura, Mazda’s son! 3.  Be now aflame within this house; be ever without fail in flame; be all ashine within this house:  for long time be thou thus to the furtherance of the heroic [renovation], to the completion of [all] progress, yea, even till the good heroic [millennial] time when that renovation shall have become complete. 4.  Give me, O Fire, Ahura, Mazda’s son! a speedy glory, speedy nourishment and speedy booty and abundant glory, abundant nourishment, abundant booty, an expanded mind, and nimbleness of tongue and soul and understanding, even an understanding continually growing in its largeness, and that never wanders.  Yasna lxii. 1-4:  Translation of L.H.  Mills.

THE GODDESS OF THE WATERS

Offer up a sacrifice unto this spring of mine, Ardvi Sura Anahita (the exalted, mighty, and undefiled, image of the (128) stream celestial), who stands carried forth in the shape of a maid, fair of body, most strong, tall-formed, high-girded, pure, nobly born of a glorious race, wearing a mantle fully embroidered with gold. 129.  Ever holding the baresma in her hand, according to the rules; she wears square golden ear-rings on her ears bored, and a golden necklace around her beautiful neck, she, the nobly born Ardvi Sura Anahita; and she girded her waist tightly, so that her breasts may be well shaped, that they may be tightly pressed. 128.  Upon her head Ardvi Sura Anahita bound a golden crown, with a hundred stars, with eight rays, a fine well-made crown, with fillets streaming down. 129.  She is clothed with garments of beaver, Ardvi Sura Anahita; with the skin of thirty beavers, of those that bear four young ones, that are the finest kind of beavers; for the skin of the beaver that lives in water is the finest colored of all skins, and when worked at the right time it shines to the eye with full sheen of silver and gold.  Yasht v. 126-129:  Translation of J. Darmesteter.

GUARDIAN SPIRITS