Zoroaster lower right corner. The prophet is holding a star-studded globe. Zoroaster Zoroaster (, ; "Zōroastrēs"), (Persian: زرتشت pronounced as Zartusht) also known as Zarathustra (, ; "Zaraθuštra"), Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra, was an ancient Persian prophet, spiritual leader and ethical philosopher who taught a spiritual philosophy of self-realization and realization of the Divine. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and later developed into the religion of Mazdayasna or Zoroastrianism. He inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and lived in the eastern
Zoroaster name Zarathustra which has a significant meaning as he had used the familiar Greek-Latin name in his earlier works. It is believed that Nietzsche invents a characterization of Zarathustra as the mouthpiece for Nietzsche's own ideas against morality. Richard Strauss's Opus 30, inspired by Nietzsche's book, is also called "Also sprach Zarathustra". Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and his wife reportedly claimed to have contacted Zoroaster through "automatic writing". A sculpture of Zoroaster by Edward Clark Potter, representing ancient Persian judicial wisdom and dating to 1896, towers over the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State at East 25th