Portal:Zoroastrianism/Article Archive/June 2007

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Atar (ātar, Avestan) is the Zoroastrian concept for "burning and unburning fire" and "visible and invisible fire". In an unrestricted sense, atar is heat - that is, thermal energy, manifest as fire or other luminous source when visible. In this sense, atar is an attribute of sources of heat and light, an adjectival form of nominative singular atarsh (ātarš). In later Zoroastrianism, atar (in middle Persian: ādar or ādur) is iconographically conflated with fire itself, which in middle Persian is ataksh, one of the primary objects of Zoroastrian symbolism. The etymology of atar is unknown. The yazata Atar is not of Indo-Iranian origin.
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