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Daena, the Shadow, and Chinvat Bridge

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    We have seen that, according to Zoroastrian mythology, Spenta Armaiti is the mother of Daena. Translated into our own metaphors: our Soul and our Spirit are children, each in their own ontological rank, of the Soul and Spirit of the Earth. This is already found in many different mythologies; in fact, it is a generalized intuition that all of us have when we approach Earth from the perceptual depth of our Tripartite Souls (when we approach Earth from our Xvarnah, the projection link of light or mapping of light of the Soul onto Earth). In the “Path of Beauty”, Daena appears with the Sanskrit name of Purusha, but with the same meaning of “Human Spirit” or “Human Atman”.

    Let me now tell you another episode of Zoroastrian myths: the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge. I'm going to reduce the myth to its fundamental elements. The Chinvat Bridge is the threshold that separates life and death. A quick reminder: as we already know, Soul and Spirit are not the same entity. I hope that little by little this will become clearer, and if not, I will repeat it and clarify it until it is finally understood and assimilated.

    In the archaic Persian tradition, when the Human Soul crosses the threshold of death, one of the seven Great Spirits or Archangels (if you prefer), Amertat, who rules over immortality, weighs the Soul and judges it. This action is identical to the weight of the Souls that the Goddess Maat did in the Egyptian myths. Amertat is the same mythologem (group of myths that narrate very similar actions) as Maat, but it is also an independent development of the concept of Amrita of the Rigveda, linked to Rta or Cosmic Order. Let's go back to the bridge.

    The vision that the Human Soul finds at the entrance to the bridge depends on Amertat's weighing of the Soul. The meeting of our Soul has two possibilities: either we find Daena or we find a terrible apparition. If we find Daena, according to the myth, our Soul crosses the bridge under its own momentum and flies towards the moon, then the sun, and after towards the stars and the Lights of Infinity. If we encounter the terrible apparition, the Soul will need help from other spiritual beings that will mediate Daena's presence.

    The terrible apparition is not Daena, but a mutilated image of Daena. This distorted vision is the one produced by the Xvarnah of the Soul, not by some other entity. The ugliness of the figure is proportional to the type of thought, word, and action that the Soul had during its life. There was a commitment of the Soul, done in Ille Tempore, to contribute to the transformation of the Earth, of the Human earthly reality. If the Soul forgets it and does not manifest it in life, on the Bridge of Chinvat will encounter the horrible apparition, its own shadow. The encounter of Chinvat occurs in the imaginal space, in the specific Mithal space projected by the Soul.

    This horrible apparition, this shadow, is the origin of the Jungian concept of “shadow.”

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