Yalda / Khor-Ruz / a Legacy of Ancient Iranshahr — Final Part (5)

Another Indigenous people of the American continent, the Zuni, of whom only around seven thousand are described here as living today near the Mexican border and as descendants of the Pueblo peoples, also celebrate 21 December and the birth of the sun god.

These people believe that their ancestors came to America hundreds of years ago through a secret gateway from another dimension, which they call Shipapu. Their language is said here to bear no relation to other Indigenous languages of the Americas, while their traditions, to which they are deeply attached, are distinctive to them. In the original post, two of their sacred symbols are shown below.

The source also states that in Japan, around the seventh century CE, a celebration was held in honour of Amaterasu-ōmikami (天照大神／天照大御神), the sun goddess whose name is described as meaning “the light that shines in heaven.” She is also regarded as protector of Japan’s imperial family. At the beginning of this essay reference was made to what the source calls the influence of Aryan-origin Ainu upon the earliest known civilizations of Japan. In relation to this claim, Dr Shahab Sotoudeh-Nejad’s The Yamato Dynasty in Japan and Ancient Persian Civilization is described as a comprehensive and noteworthy study.

Before bringing this essay to an end, it may be useful to look once more at the use of the sun symbol in Iranian mythology and deities.
Consider the images below in the original post: the circle is presented as a symbol of the sun, and a ring symbolizing Mithra—simultaneously the deity of love/covenant—is visible in them. What is offered as support for an Iranian/Aryan origin of this symbol, seen in the hands or above the heads of the Faravahar, Mithra, Horus, Vika, and Median Magi, is the antiquity of the symbol among peoples described here as Aryan.

The closest alternative possibility, because of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization, would be that Egyptians first used the symbol and other peoples later adopted it from them. The source argues that this can be rejected because the symbol also appears among the Hittites, described here as Aryan, with a chronology claimed to be older than the Egyptian examples, and because it appears on the tomb of Cyaxares, founder of the Median kingdom, who is described as buried in Kurdistan. This is presented as evidence that the symbol existed among Iranian peoples before the Achaemenids.

Vika, sun deity of Nordic and Germanic peoples, with the ring of Mithra in hand.

The ring of Mithra / sun / covenant in the hands of Mithra—the images are described as having been found mainly in Armenia and Anatolia rather than in representations of Mithra in Roman Mithraism.

Finally, the source proposes that the root of the word Messiah can be traced to the Sanskrit word mi, meaning “friendship,” and that mitr was likewise used with the same meaning, while midh carried the meaning of mediation and intercession. It then connects English words such as mediator, medium, medicine, and media with this semantic field, arguing that the term later appeared in forms such as mishi and misi and ultimately Messiah, and was probably unrelated to the Arabic word mas'h in the sense of being anointed with water or oil.
Pahlavi writings likewise contain forms of Mithra rendered as Mithr, Mihr, and Mir.

The belief in the appearance of a saviour can, in this account, be understood as one of the most deeply rooted beliefs among Iranian peoples, manifested in the festival of Mithra—Yalda—and reflecting for millennia their faith in the final triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, the expulsion of Ahriman from the world, and the victory of monotheism.

The archetype of the birth of the sun and the destruction of darkness can therefore, in the argument of this essay, be understood as deeply rooted among Indo-Iranian peoples and branches that migrated into Europe, and as still symbolically celebrated across this cultural world. The text argues that the power of this archetype was so strong that it even contributed to changing the Christian calendar so that the birth of Christ would coincide with the night of the birth of light.