Full Frontal Foolishness

One of the things I like best about the prophet of Zoroastrianism is that he was a man. He was not the Son of God sent to Earth to free mankind from themselves. There was no Immaculate Conception, no angels flying in through windows, no magical garden in the sky or anything that far-fetched.

Zarathustra was a simple man. He tended sheep. He had a wife. He had children. Oh, and yes, he had a penis.

The beautiful statue you see here was created by Australian artist Peter Schipperheyn as a metaphor for the dualistic and ever-present struggle we face every day. The image came to him in a dream and after struggling to discern its meaning he stumbled across our ancient prophet. He named the sculpture Zarathustra in homage to the man who first taught of the struggle between good and evil.

Being one of the smallest religious minorities in the world, our community should have been grateful and proud of this artistic recognition. But in an ironic twist, Parsis badgered and bullied the man until he was so confused and upset that he gave in and changed the statue's name! It is now called 'Thus Spake', which to me undermines and detracts from the true meaning of the work and instead pays homage to Nietzsche.

The complaint, it seems, was that the prophet was depicted naked, which people considered insulting and offensive. The community immediately hit the keyboards and started emailing bellicose messages expressing:

"...deep disappointment, sadness and astonishment that you would name this sculpture Zarathushtra, the name of a great Prophet.. The statue is neither a likeness (nor should it be) of the Great, all knowing Prophet but to depict Him nude is both disgusting to our sentiments and offensive... The religion and its peoples have always been open, forward thinking, honest, tolerant and sensitive to all other religions, castes and creeds. I would never encourage or give plaudits to anyone who did it, but I wonder how you would feel if someone were to do depict your God or Prophet inappropriately (i.e. as a full frontal nude)?"

I hate this kind of knee-jerk defensiveness and think it goes really counter to the main teachings of our religion: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. In an attempt at a good deed of my own, I sent a message of support and congratulations to the artist and got back a sweet and thoughtful reply, a portion of which I am pasting here:

"I decided to call my sculpture 'Zarathustra.' This all happened quickly, and as far as the commissioner was concerned I was making a sculpture with a strange sounding name derived from a book by a mad German philosopher that no one really understood.

However the sheer poetry of this beautiful sounding name totally obsessed me, in my heart a mystique was enveloping the sculpture I was to make. As my understanding grew of this book and as I researched more and more the meaning of Nietzsche's book I began to get more and more interested in whom Zarathustra was and then began to research who he was.

When I read about the concept of dualism of the eternal struggle between the forces of light and dark and between good and evil, "He was wise enough to recognize that all the motives of human beings are based on action and reaction" I thought "That is it. I have found the spiritual meaning of the clenched fist and the open hand gesture that I had dreamed all those years ago." It meshed entirely in my mind with what I was trying to express.

The more I researched the more excited I became, to learn of an individual who lived so long ago whose teachings have been woven so tightly into subsequent spiritual traditions including my own [I was raised as a Christian] and yet whose presence has faded from contempory knowledge, in general I have found most people [in the West] know next to nothing of who Zarathustra was let alone the history of their own traditions. I am often saying to people now, "You know the three Magi in the Bible ... you realize they were Zoroastrian Priests."

I don't understand how we could squelch this kind of enthusiasm for our religion? I think it's awful, small-minded and petty. No wonder we're shrinking into obscurity.

I encourage everyone to visit the artist's homepage to see more photos and read the full story behind the sculpture. Until then, here's a sneak preview.