Mazdaznan is a syncretistic religious health movement based on Zoroastrian and Christian ideas with special focus on breathing exercises, vegetarian diet and body culture. It was founded at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century by Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, born Otto Hanisch. The word Mazdaznan is said to derive from the Persian "Mazda" and "Znan", and is supposed to mean "master thought".[1]
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Mazdaznan is mainly promoted as a dietary (vegetarian) movement with breathing, vowel and glandular exercises for physical, spiritual and mental development. In some ways it is similar to Yogic and Ayurvedic teachings.
Besides emphasizing the importance of the individual decision, it proclaims personal responsibility for one's own fortune. The Cosmology rests upon three historical characters: Ainyahita, Zarathustra and Jehoshua. Ainyahita, daughter of the divinely created couple (may be related to Anahita), lived 9000 years ago and is supposed to be the origin of the white Aryan race, which includes the Jews and therefore Jesus of Nazareth.
The first centers were established in Chicago in 1890 and New York in 1902. Since 1917, Hanisch settled mainly in Los Angeles, California. Several scholars brought his teachings to other countries.
In Europe, Mazdaznan was spread by the former Californian farmers David and Frieda Ammann beginning in about 1907. David Ammann was expelled from Leipzig, Germany in 1914 due to the publication of the book Inner Studies. The main centre for Mazdaznan in Europe was the Lebensschule at Herrliberg near Zurich. One of the most famous European followers of the movement was the abstract painter Johannes Itten, who taught at the Bauhaus, who insisted on shaven heads, crimson robes and colonic irrigation.[2]
In the 1930s, Mrs. Gloria Gasque, a wealthy follower of the movement, went to Bombay intending to restore the "true" message of Zoroaster to the Parsis. Though met with hostility, she remained there for a number of years before she returned to the United States.
The Nazis proscribed Mazdaznan from 1935, a ban that remained in Germany until 1946. Today the movement has several thousand German followers.
In 1980 Mazdaznan's headquarters moved to Encinitas, California, and in 2001 the last manager of the headquarters disappeared and the organized movement ceased to exist in the US, though it is possible that there are still isolated followers or practitioners in the US.
In 2007, the movement was revived in Canada by Peter deBoer.
Mainly Critical: