ZAC Celebrates Meherangan
On the eve of 28th February, 2019, the Zoroastrian Association of California (ZAC) celebrated the Meherangan festival, which was sponsored by Hootoxi and Er. Dr. Ardaeviraf Minocherhomji, and attended by over fifty people.
The evening started with a Jashan performed by Er. Zarrir and Er. Zerkxis Bhandara along with present NAMC President, Dr. Ardaeviraf Minocherhomji and the past NAMC President, Jal Birdy. This was followed by Er. Bhandara speaking on the importance of celebrating Mehrangan which celebrates the victory of good and light over evil and darkness, as the occasion marks the day when Shah Faridun imprisoned the evil king Zohak in the holy Mount Demavand. He urged the congregation to perform at least a Kushti in all 5 different watches/gehs of a day, if not the obligatory prayers, as the Kushti ritual cleans our astral body just like bathing cleans physically. This facilitates absorbing the divine energy from the spirit world which is akin to running an antivirus program in our hard drives to clean up and then download the (spiritual) software. He compared the Avestan/ Pahlavi and Pazand prayers to the HTML language, for which one would need knowledge of coding. Translations without in-depth scholarly and spiritual knowledge tend to diminish the true essence of scriptures, and they would then not seem to make much sense.
The celebration concluded with a delicious Parsi spread prepared by Er. Zerkxis Bhandara and Hootoxi Minochehomji.
