“If death come at eve, may healing come at daybreak!

“If death come at daybreak, may healing come at night!

“If death come at night, may healing come at dawn!

“Let showers shower down new waters, new earth, new trees, new health, and new healing powers.”

Vendidad xxi. 2:  Translation of J. Darmesteter.

A PRAYER FOR HEALING

Ahura Mazda spake unto Spitama Zoroaster, saying, “I, Ahura Mazda, the Maker of all good things, when I made this mansion, the beautiful, the shining, seen afar (there may I go up, there may I arrive)!”

Then the ruffian looked at me; the ruffian Anra Mainyu, the deadly, wrought against me nine diseases and ninety, and nine hundred, and nine thousand, and nine times ten thousand diseases.  So mayest thou heal me, O Holy Word, thou most glorious one!

Unto thee will I give in return a thousand fleet, swift-running steeds; I offer thee up a sacrifice, O good Saoka, made by Mazda and holy.

Unto thee will I give in return a thousand fleet, high-humped camels; I offer thee up a sacrifice, O good Saoka, made by Mazda and holy.

Unto thee will I give in return a thousand brown faultless oxen; I offer thee up a sacrifice, O good Saoka, made by Mazda and holy.

Unto thee will I give in return a thousand young of all species of small cattle; I offer thee up a sacrifice, O good Saoka, made by Mazda and holy.

And I will bless thee with the fair blessing-spell of the righteous, the friendly blessing-spell of the righteous, that makes the empty swell to fullness and the full to overflowing, that comes to help him who was sickening, and makes the sick man sound again.  Vendidad xxii. 1-5:  Translation of J. Darmesteter.

FRAGMENT

All good thoughts, and all good words, and all good deeds are thought and spoken and done with intelligence; and all evil thoughts and words and deeds are thought and spoken and done with folly.

2.  And let [the men who think and speak and do] all good thoughts and words and deeds inhabit Heaven [as their home].  And let those who think and speak and do evil thoughts and words and deeds abide in Hell.  For to all who think good thoughts, speak good words, and do good deeds, Heaven, the best world, belongs.  And this is evident and as of course.  Avesta, Fragment iii.:  Translation of L.H.  Mills.

AVICEBRON

(1028-? 1058)

Avicebron, or Avicebrol (properly Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol), one of the most famous of Jewish poets, and the most original of Jewish thinkers, was born at Cordova, in Spain, about A.D. 1028.  Of the events of his life we know little; and it was only in 1845 that Munk, in the ‘Literaturblatt des Orient,’ proved the Jewish poet Ibn Gabirol to be one and the same person with Avicebron, so often quoted by the Schoolmen as an Arab philosopher.  He was educated at Saragossa, spent some years at Malaga, and died, hardly thirty years old, about 1058.  His disposition seems to have been rather melancholy.