__ _ |\ | /\ | |_ • | \| \/ | |_ • Scratch kinda ruined the quality. I have a zoomed-in version of just the boy and the wolf (press space to toggle back and forth), but I'd REALLY rather you go here: https://horizonpenblade.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/zoroastrianism-religion-art/ for the higher-quality version. So, as I've said, for school I'm doing a project involving illustrations of the mythologies/religions of the ancient civilizations that I've been learning about in class. Most were mythologies, but two--ancient Israel and ancient Persia--are religions. You might wonder what the difference is, but here's what I got: • Mythologies need myths, which are stories about the relationships between gods. Ancient Israelite and Persian beliefs were monotheistic, which means they only believed in one God. • Also, both religions are still, at least in part, believed today. Mythologies are generally extinct. So, this one is for Zoroastrianism, a religion from ancient Persia. It's actually a really interesting/cool religion. So here's the story I did. It's a legend, for this one, about Zoroastrianism's founder/prophet, Zoroaster/Zarasthura. (Zoroaster is the Greek version of his name.) It's specifically based on a story about when he was a baby. He was born glowing, and early in his life these evil forces were trying to kill him/get at him. (A similar sort of thing happened to his mother--she had been born glowing and so her father had gotten convinced that she was a sorceress and sent her away.) Anyways, the evil spirits convinced the leader of Zoroaster's village that the baby prophet was a demon and so the village cheiftain tried to kill him. He (the cheiftan) tried to burn him (the baby), but the fire didn't light. Then he tried to use animals, once by putting the baby in the way of a herd of stampeding oxen and once by putting him in the den? of a wolf whose pups had been killed. Both times the animals protected him instead. The wolf cared for him. The scene that I drew was mainly based on that scene with the wolf. I portrayed him as older than an infant, so it's not exactly accurate, but apparently he was close with animals throughout his early life/did a lot of things where the animals cared for/protected/helped him. So maybe this is later on. But it's based on the wolf. ...And here is a little more explanation. There's no particular reason the two are off-center, that was just the way it turned out when I was drawing the beginning scene on paper, and I wasn't sure how to move it on my mom's kindle. But one thing I was trying to convey with the glows and the sparks was, partly just that Zoroaster's color scheme seemed a little golden, and I could turn the wolf's color symbol... thing... into a more blueish color. And as I worked on it, I thought of, well, maybe he's cheering her up. I mean, she just lost all her pups. She's probably really sad--that's why the village leader person thought she would kill him. So the little glows kind of symbolize him pushing out the sadness, too. ♥ Bibliography: Hartz, Paula R. Zoroastrianism. 3rd ed. New York: Facts On File, 1999. Print. World Religions.
