Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism in

“Las ruinas circulares”

Mac Williams

Mind, which is the keenest of all things incorporeal, has for

its body fire, the keenest of all the material elements. Mind
is the maker of things, and in making things it uses fire as
its instrument.
Corpus Hermeticum, ca. 3rd-4th century AD

H ans Georg Gadamer says “we can understand a text only

when we’ve understood the question to which it is an an-
swer” (370). Borges first published his short story, “Las ruinas cir-
culares,” in Sur (no. 75) in Buenos Aires in December, 1940. It was
later included in El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan (1941) and
finally in Ficciones (1944). “Las ruinas” tells the story of a magi-
cian who arrives at an abandoned temple and sets about the task
of dreaming up a son. The story refers to the temple as belong-
ing to a god that “no recibe honor de los hombres” (OC 1: 451).
The fire God grants the magician’s wish with the caveat that the
magician’s son be given to the fire God so that “alguna voz” will
glorify him in another temple (453). The magician agrees to the
fire God’s terms, yet he worries that the son’s apparent imper-
viousness to fire will be the key to the son’s realization that he
does not exist like other men, for no mother gave birth to him.
He exists as the dream of another, and although he seemingly
thinks and acts independently of his father the magician, his be-
ing depends on his father’s dream and an investment in him by
a long-forgotten deity. After the son’s departure, the magician sees
that fire approaches to consume the temple and him with it. Yet,

Variaciones Borges 25 (2008)

116 Mac Williams

instead of fleeing from the fire, he does not move and is shocked
to find that the flames do not devour him but caress him. At this
moment he realizes that he too is the dream of another.
As a starting point from which to examine the historicity of the
text, I open with the principal reference to Zoroastrianism:
[…] pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno
venía del Sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que
están aguas arriba, en el flanco violento de la montaña, donde el
idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente
la lepra. (451)

The “idioma zend” spoken by the magician refers to the ancient

Zend language of the Zoroastrians in which they recorded their
religious beliefs about their creator God, Ahura Mazda (some-
times written, “Ormuzd”), in sacred texts known as the Zend-
Avesta. The story takes its cues from the ancient Zoroastrian faith,
particularly the predestination-tinged so-called Zurvanite Heresy,
contextualizing Zoroastrian free will doctrines along with possi-
ble doubts about the nature of their existence as creations of their
God, Ahura Mazda. The story constitutes a broad encapsulation
of both faith in God and the nagging fear, doubt, and skepticism
surrounding individual existence inherent in all mankind.
The presence of Zoroastrian symbolism in the text allows for
(at least) two possible readings. One interpretation relies on the
story’s Zoroastrian subtext to construct a deft parable of skepti-
cism concerning the nature of human existence. It addresses the
underlying existential dilemmas of the magician protagonist,
which are the eternal questions of whether each individual owes
his or her existence and actions to a higher power, of whether the
independence of individual free will is illusory or not. The other
interpretation offered herein will investigate how the story consti-
tutes an epistle to the Zoroastrian faithful that there is more to life
than acting out the capriciousness of a detached creator—that hu-
man life has meaning and purpose beyond biological imperatives
for species survival, that faith in God (Ahura Mazda) is necessary
to accomplish God’s will and find happiness in mortality and the
afterlife. This analysis will not try to prove one interpretation over
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 117

another, nor will it privilege or upbraid either one. Rather, it will

show that the text lends itself well to both readings, and that by
virtue of its themes, the text is truly inexhaustible.
The only instances of scholars approximating a possible
Zoroastrian subtext in “Las ruinas circulares” are in the “Notas”
section of Emir Rodríguez Monegal’s Borges anthology, Ficciona-
rio, and in Didier Jaén’s book, Borges’s Esoteric Library. Jaén only
makes reference to a Zend language in passing; he notes that its
presence in the text “attests to its remoteness in northeast Persia
or Old Iran” (56) and he takes pains to mention the many belief
systems practiced by the inhabitants of these lands through the
millennia, including fire worship, Dravidian, Vedic, and Zoroas-
trian beliefs. He concludes his examination of the text’s religious
symbolism by saying that these symbols give the story “a remote
and ancient context” and he moves on to explore other symbolism
which “all contribute to Borges’s essential purpose of undermin-
ing the importance of the individual self or personality” (59).
Emir Rodríguez Monegal sees the story as being inspired by
the same philosophical fiction that Nietzsche used in Also Sprach
Zarathushtra (Ficcionario 449). Rodríguez Monegal hints at the
Persian aspects of the story, but he never elaborates on how they
might pertain to Zoroastrianism when he says:
Borges cuenta aquí la historia de un hombre que quiere inventar un
hijo, y del horror con que descubre que él también fue inventado
por un tercero. Al aprovechar un ambiente estilizadamente persa
y la doctrina de la adoración del fuego, Borges crea una suerte de
fantasía arqueológica que disimula un horror primordial a la pater-
nidad que lo persigue desde su infancia. (449-50)

However, in another article titled “Symbols in Borges’s Work,”

Rodríguez Monegal deemphasizes the Persian details of the story
and writes, “a magician from India decides to dream a man in
order to insert him into reality,” and thereafter focuses on the re-
lationship of this story to Borges’s two poems “Ajedrez” and “El
Golem” (138). The change from Persia to India invokes an entirely
different pantheon of gods and completely changes the symbol-
ism of the story when taken from a non-dualistic polytheistic
point of view.
118 Mac Williams

“Las ruinas” has been of particular interest to Borges scholars

concerned with topics such as human nature, ontology, the golem
legend, and the Cabbala. Stephen Soud, for example, claims
“there is general scholarly agreement that ‘The Circular Ruins’
represents a recasting of the golem legend” (742). His view of the
story is that the magician’s creation of a son puts the magician in
direct competition with the deity because it “re-enacts the primal
moment of divine creation” (742). Donald Shaw views the story as
a “parable of skepticism” and a further installment of the theme
of the impossible task in Borges (26, 29). He writes that the story
embraces the idea that reality is an illusion, yet unlike Calderón’s
La vida es sueño and Unamuno’s Niebla, which “postulate ... a true
reality (the divine mind) behind the illusion which we call the
real, Borges leaves no such doorway open” (26). Finally Saúl Sos-
nowski sees the story as demonstrating that “el poder creativo
que le es adjudicado al lenguaje, implica que su utilización entra-
ña riesgos de vida o muerte,” something that the magician finds
out at the story’s end (89).
Zoroastrianism, as a complex and ancient religion, may seem
mysterious because of its unfamiliarity and relative obscurity to
many contemporary readers. This strangeness may, in fact, be
part of Borges’s intent in choosing Zoroastrianism as a frame of
reference instead of other, more familiar religious creeds and my-
thologies. However, to appreciate the parallels and to understand
Borges’s references to Zoroastrian mythology more fully demands
some cursory knowledge of the history and tenets of the religion.
The following section will touch upon the history and mytholo-
gies of Zoroastrianism in order to provide the context out of which
the subsequent analysis of Borges’s stories is derived.
Zoroastrianism
Scholarly consensus suggests that Zoroastrianism originated on
the Asian steppes between 1400-1200 BC among Indo-Iranian
peoples and flourished for centuries in the lands surrounding the
Caspian Sea region (Boyce 3). Previous to its founding, the Indo-
Iranian peoples had long revered fire as a life giver. Zoroastrian-
ism evolved from these cultic beliefs into a creed-based religion
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 119

that Zoroaster claimed to have received from Ahura Mazda, the

supreme benevolent creator. Its adherents believe that fire rep-
resents the essence of Ahura Mazda, and they venerate it as his
earthly symbol. As other cultures have come into contact with Zo-
roastrians, many have incorrectly assumed that this veneration
signifies adoration. However, fire is not worshipped. Fire is not
Ahura Mazda; fire is his proxy, his symbol, a representation of his
power and goodness.
The ancestral homeland of Zoroastrians, especially the petro-
leum-rich Baku Springs region of modern Azerbaijan, has numer-
ous combustible petroleum and natural gas deposits near the
surface of the ground. Anciently, due to various causes (e.g., light-
ning) these springs could become ignited. When this happened,
given the vast fuel reservoirs underground, the flames burned
unquenchably. The ancients saw these fires as the reification of
Ahura Mazda’s qualities. It is not hard to imagine how people
could marvel at and venerate an endless flame that needed no
fuel. This veneration evolved into ritual, and fire temples, typical-
ly built in a circle, were constructed around these natural furnaces
as a way to revere Ahura Mazda by protecting the sacred flame
from impurities (Aliyev 22).
In the fourth century B.C. the Zoroastrian faith enjoyed power
and spiritual authority in the Achaemenian Empire, but in 311 B.C.
Alexander the Great invaded Asia Minor (Boyce 78). Alexander’s
armies looted the fire temples, killed many of their priests, and
spread Hellenistic culture over the entire region. The narrator’s
mention that the Zend language was not contaminated by Greek
implies that the story takes place during the Seleucid Empire.
During this two and a half century foreign occupation, the fire
temples fell into ruin, just like the one the magician finds when he
exits his canoe and steps into the “fango sagrado.” Obviously, the
Macedonian conquerors brought with them the cultural contami-
nation of their language and their gods. Yet, from clues in the text
of “Las ruinas circulares” one may assume that the priest hails
from a rugged isolated place where the invaders’ pagan culture
could not infect his faith. While there was never any direct in-
 
Thinking of the narrator’s description of the mage’s home as the “flanco violento
120 Mac Williams

teraction between native Zend speakers and the Greeks, we may

intuit that the reference to Greek contamination stems more from
Greek cultural concepts and religion than from actual linguistic
corruption. It is noteworthy that the story takes place in a space
untainted by Greek influences, yet seems to mimic the concept
of the Platonic—or Great—Year, a cyclical measurement of time
constituting around 25,000 years, with even periods of ascending
and descending civilization, light and dark ages (Cruttenden xix-
xx). This corresponds with the decaying ruins (dark age) and the
creation of the son (light age). The opening paragraph of the text
references all of this information, thus engendering a rich historic-
ity on which partly to base an interpretation.
The relationship between Fire, father, and son in “Las ruinas”
parallels the doctrines of Zurvanite Zoroastrianism. The Avesta
tells that Ahura Mazda (creator god) and Anra Mainyu (Ahriman,
the god of evil) were twins. Sometime during the Achaemenian
Empire (559 BC-330 BC) the magi (the Zoroastrian priestly class)
began to speculate that if Ahura Mazda and Anra Mainyu were
twins, this would necessitate a father. By the time the Sassanid
Empire (226 AD-651 AD) came to power this belief had evolved
into a hypostatized father of the twins called Zurvan (Duchesne
98). Zurvan, meaning “time” in Avestan, was Time personified and
the Zurvanites believed that Zurvan “did not merely provide the
framework for events but was actually in control of them, hence
a sentient being” (Boyce 68). Mary Boyce, the foremost Western
scholar of Zoroastrianism, explains the most common version of
the procreation of the twins by Zurvan as follows:
Before Ahuramazda was born Zurvan began to doubt his own pow-
ers to beget a worthy son, and from this doubt Anra Mainyu (Ahri-
man) was engendered and came first into the world, a black and hid-
eous creature who horrified his sire. Naturally this myth gave scope

de la montaña” applied to the meaning of Zagros, the possible root of the name
is the Greek word “Zagreus” meaning “stormy.” In the ancient Avestan language
the name “Za-G’R’” means “great land.” The present day Zoroastrian stronghold
of Yazd in Iran is an example of the isolated mountain home that invading armies
ignored.
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 121

for further elaboration (in whose womb, for instance, had the twins
been conceived?). The heresy also opened the way for philosophical
reflections on the power of time and hence on predestination. (68)

Other sources indicate that for one thousand years Zurvan of-
fered sacrifices to have a son who would be the world’s creator,
and when he pondered whether he would be successful, he en-
gendered both of the twins, meaning that merely thinking about
them created them (Boyd and Crosby 569-70). Modern Zoroastri-
ans call this belief a heresy because of the emphatic statements
by Zoroaster that Ahura Mazda was the Supreme Deity, self-ex-
istent and eternal (Boyce, “Orthodoxy” 15). However great the
extent and reach of this claim, it did not create a schism in the
religion, because aside from the belief that Zurvan was the creator
of Ahura Mazda, all other doctrines were similar, and believers
on both sides of the debate would have used the same scriptures,
worshipped in the same fire temples, and uttered the same oaths
and prayers (15-16). Nevertheless, in Zoroastrianism the notions
of free will (Ahura Mazda) and divine control (Zurvan) existed
previous to the great Occidental debates, with both sides using
scripture and reason to argue their sides.
Fire in the story is a spherical God, alluded to as “ese múltiple
dios [que] le reveló que su nombre terrenal era Fuego” (OC 1: 453).
Zoroastrians hold strict beliefs about keeping all fire pure; they
keep one continuously burning in order to symbolize the eternal
nature of Ahura Mazda (Writer 62; Carnoy 17). Boyce explains
that Ahura Mazda forms a heptad with six other Amesha Spentas
(“Holy Immortals,” including the God of fire, Asha Vahishta) and
other lesser Yazata spirits (“Beings worthy of worship”). These he
created so that they would in turn help him with the creation of the
Earth—the Amesha Spentas’ relationship with Ahura Mazda has
been described as a torch lighting six other torches (Boyce 21).

 
It must be noted that fire itself is not worshipped, but it is merely an object of
veneration much like a Catholic crucifix. It represents the thing being worshipped
which cannot be seen, barring theophany, a visible manifestation of a deity.
122 Mac Williams

Zoroastrians believe that “man himself with his intelligence

and power of choice, belongs especially to Ahura Mazda” (Boyce
23-24). Zoroaster had his first vision of Ahura Mazda one spring
morning as he went to fetch some water from a river for a cer-
emony. By wading into the river, he had made himself ritually
pure, “emerging from the pure element water in the freshness of
a spring dawn,” and therefore worthy to enter the presence of
Ahura Mazda and lesser gods “before whom ‘he did not see his
shadow upon the earth, owing to their great light’” (19). In an
interesting parallel, at the beginning of “Las ruinas”, the magician
emerges, we may assume purified, from a river next to a burned-
out temple dedicated to the God of fire. Later on, the magician
protagonist shares a similar experience with Zoroaster, when he is
encircled by a fire which does not cause him pain, for he stands in
the presence of the “great light” that is the fire God Asha Vahishta,
who is in turn a symbol and creation of Ahura Mazda:
The doctrine of the six Holy Immortals is fundamental to Zoroaster’s
teachings, and has far-reaching spiritual and ethical consequences,
since these Beings hypostatize qualities or attributes of Ahura Ma-
zda himself, and can in their turn (if rightly sought and venerated)
bestow these upon men. (Boyce 22)
When the magician pays proper homage to the most frequently
mentioned Amesha Spenta in the Zend-Avesta, Asha Vahishta,
who “pervades the other creations, and through the sun, controls
the seasons,” he is endowed with the power of Ahura Mazda to
create life—a divine attribute accessible to him via Asha Vahishta
and his reverence and respect of fire (23).
By nature of this transfer of divine power to a mortal, fire plays
a pivotal role in the story, for the magician enlists the fire God’s
help to quicken his son. His dreaming formulates the idea, but
the fire God places the breath of life in the son. He now shares a
hand in the creation of life and with this awesome power comes a
further responsibility, for every Zoroastrian:
Has the duty not only to cherish the six lesser creations, but also to
watch over his own physical and moral well-being, and to care for
his fellow-men, since each of them is likewise the special creature
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 123

of God. He is the chief of the creations, but he is bound to the other

six by the link of a shared purpose, for all Spenta creation is striving
for a common goal, man consciously, the rest by instinct or nature,
for all were brought into existence for this one end, namely the utter
defeat of evil. (Boyce 24)

The most obvious way that man has been given the power to cre-
ate life is through procreation, a practice given quotidian holiness
through a very sarcastic filter in Borges’s story “La secta del fé-
nix.” The reluctance of the magician in “Las ruinas” to employ his
mortal power of procreation according to the rites of the Cult of
the Phoenix strikes the reader as odd, for the magician apparently
lacks this ability or refuses to use it. This reluctance only serves to
further mark his doubtable free will and existence.
In “Las ruinas” procreation suffers from the absence of the
female to such an extent that it exists without pleasure, merely
as a procreative act, a means to an end. The mother, the woman,
does not exist, and this absence addresses the religious view of
sex as sinful; neither the woman, nor the magician, may enjoy
sex, because to do so trivializes the sacred and divine nature of
the creation of life—a seriousness that the story fully embraces
(Woscoboinik 55). The mother’s absence echoes the Zurvanite
problematic regarding who bore Ahura Mazda and Anra Mainyu
if Zurvan were the only god in existence (Boyce 68).
Holiness and purity of sacred things form a key aspect of
Zoroastrian worship. Water, dirt, air and fire are pure and should
be kept pure at all costs. In fact, water is so considered so pure
that something unclean should first be thoroughly washed in cow
urine before allowing any contact with regular water. Fire how-
ever is revered as the purest thing of all; it may not be used for
burning trash or purifying any unclean thing. Rather, only clean


In Borges’s story “Ulrica” we find a sexual encounter between two people that
occurs in a dream. “Sex is a worthy pursuit, Borges appears to be saying, so long
as it occurs in a dream” (Carter 18).
 
Even though many religions, especially Abrahamic ones, do not necessarily re-
quire a womb in order to accomplish divine creation, the Zurvanites often ques-
tioned in whose womb the twins gestated. For example, according to all three
major branches of Abrahamic religions, Adam was born ex pulvis.
124 Mac Williams

dry wood or tinder may be placed in flames (Boyce 43-46). These

purity laws allow the believer to focus on striving towards the
elimination of the unclean creations of Anra Mainyu from the
world. The earth too is holy and the “fango sagrado” mentioned
in the opening paragraph of the story conjures images of clay and
dust present in the menog, or unorganized matter, of Zoroastrian
and Jewish (chaos) creation myths. The veneration of dust and
clay in these myths also manifests itself in the Zoroastrian practice
of not allowing the corruptible dead flesh to come into contact
with the holy creative substance of the earth. Herodotus wrote
that the Persians (Zoroastrians) did not bury their dead, but ex-
posed their bodies to the elements and eventually buried their
bones in ossuaries; this they did in order to keep the earth pure
for the procreation of future generations, a belief still practiced
by the Zoroastrian Parsees of Mumbai, India, on their Towers of
Silence (Boyce 63).
Circles in the text advert to a central tenet of Zoroastrianism,
the “…doctrine of the Three Times—Creation, Mixture, Separa-
tion—[which] makes history in a sense cyclical…” (Boyce 26).
When Ahura Mazda accomplished creation, he did it in two phas-
es. The first time he brought all things into being in a disembodied
state called “menog” or “spiritual, immaterial.” Then he gave it
all physical or “getig” existence (25). The getig state gave a cre-
ation a solid and sentient form, but it also brought about hardship
because a getig existence allowed attacks by Anra Mainyu. This is
called the Mixture, when the perfect creation was sullied by evil.
Zoroastrians believe that mankind is still in the Mixture, and only
at the Separation will evil be utterly destroyed, restoring all to its
perfect state. In a like manner, the circular shape of the temple
parallels not only the actions and existence of the magician, but
also the form and organization of the story. The narrator tells the
story in a cyclical way, with different phases used to show the
repeating hand of fate on the magician (Shaw 28).
“Las ruinas” mimes the Three Times doctrine via the narra-
tor’s division of the story into three cyclical phases: Creation/
youth, Mixture/maturity, and Separation/death. The opening
phase consists of the magician’s attempts to create a son. He does
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 125

not know how to accomplish his goal, he only knows that he has
the desire to do so. Initially, he fails in his task, a common occur-
rence in youth due to inexperience. Next, he dreams of a room
full of students, but they are just vague faces that never challenge
his teachings and have no true thoughts of their own; this again
refers to youth and immaturity. This disappointment with his
creations reminds one of Zurvan’s disappointment after he sees
Anra Mainyu instead of the son he had hoped to engender, Ahura
Mazda. The story’s beginning mimics the Creation division of the
Three Times doctrine (Boyce 68).
The magician then forgets his failures through insomnia (for
they are dreams) just as Zurvan destroys his initial failed creation.
This marks the second phase of the story, Mixture/maturity. He
decides to purify himself and devote himself anew after making
offerings to planetary gods and by pronouncing “las sílabas lícitas
de un nombre poderoso” and then going to sleep (453). His prayer
to the “dioses planetarios” may have been the words to Yasna 16:4
from the Avesta:
Yea, we worship the Creator Ahura Mazda and the Fire, Ahura
Mazda’s son, and the good waters which are Mazda-made and
holy, and the resplendent sun of the swift horses, and the moon with
the seed of cattle (in his beams); and we worship the star Tishtrya, the
lustrous and glorious. (Darmesteter 256) [my emphasis]

Tishtrya is the God of rain, agriculture, and victory over witches.

Rain brings life and Tishtrya is a life giver (Boyce 73). Fire burns
the steppes, opens seeds, rejuvenates the soil by releasing nutri-
ents biologically locked in inedible plant life, and coupled with
rain, makes the steppes green again. It would only be natural for
a Zoroastrian to beseech both Fire and Rain’s help because they
work symbiotically. The irony in the invocation of various gods is
that the magician would thereby depend on the involvement of
multiple gods to accomplish his goal. He thus further dilutes his
adoration of one deity and simultaneously depends on the inter-
est in him and his son by all of them, making his task all the more
logistically difficult. However, the God that answers his prayers is
Fire, and apparently not the planetary gods.
126 Mac Williams

Now wiser and more mature after having tried and failed, be-
fore starting his new project he purifies himself (again) in the river
before getting down to the heart of the matter. Instead of focusing
on the whole, the magician turns his attention to the parts. He
spends a month visualizing every single atom of his son’s heart.
Once he achieves perfection, he sets about dreaming the other or-
gans—with the individual hairs being the most daunting of all the
body parts to flesh out. After finishing, he invokes the power of
the God of fire to bring his son to life; the magician has fulfilled
his procreative quest. Once the child awakens, the magician en-
ters the third and final stage of life, the phase in which everything
that he has believed and created begins to crumble before him.
His son leaves, and he receives news that a man, impervious to
fire, is gaining fame in a place to the North. Ultimately he realizes
that he is being dreamed by someone else, and that his passage
through the Three Times—creation, mixture, and separation—has
already occurred.

Faith and Doubt

Zoroastrianism has no salvation for someone without faith (Boyce
35-36). While the magician in “Las ruinas” might not possess the
gnosis of how and why the universe functions, his faith in Ahura
Mazda should be sufficient to merit a minimum of divine med-
dling or influence in his affairs. The magician keeps his son in-
stead of destroying him, because the magician deems him to be
a good creation, possessed of the divine spark, capable of faith.
At work here is a commentary on the role of faith for a mortal
creation, and the completion of divine promises. However, faith
can be a stumbling block for it is unprovable and carries with it
blessings, promises, problems, and doubts.
Filiberto, in Carlos Fuentes’s short story “Chac Mool,” pur-
chases what he thinks is a statue of the Mayan god Chac, not re-
alizing that he has purchased and brought home the Chac. That
story would argue that any representation of Chac is part of Chac.
On the contrary, striking a match and seeing a flame does not
constitute a theophany to a Zoroastrian, but a way of invoking
Ahura Mazda’s power. In “Las ruinas” the God of fire never ap-
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 127

pears to the magician while he is awake, indicative of the rare

occurrence of theophany and the faith requirement found in so
many religions. Faith is the firm belief in something which is un-
proven, even unprovable. Because seeing God in the flesh would
constitute actual knowledge of the existence of God, if one has
knowledge, there can be no faith, which Zoroastrianism requires
(Hinnells 63-65).
The magician creates a son through his faith in the fire God,
and then later bequeaths him as a Nazarite-type child to convert
others to glorify the power of Fire. Two things attest to the asser-
tion that the magician has faith in the fire God and not knowledge:
1) the fire God only speaks to the magician in dreams, he never
appears to him when he is awake; and 2) Zoroastrianism teaches
of a life previous to this one in which all souls were spirits. Yasnas
44 & 45 of the Zend-Avesta hint that no soul would remember hav-
ing been with Ahura Mazda previous to this life as a condition
of coming to this world; therefore, the magician’s knowledge of
his own existence remains tenuous because his vision is clouded,
just as he removed the knowledge of his two years tutelage from
his son’s memory. The fire God is the one entity who knows the
secret to the mystery of the son’s life and only the fire God could
reveal the true nature of the magician’s thaumaturgical creation,
and presumably of the magician’s own creation. The mage would
therefore be functioning off hope and faith in the fire God rather
than any knowledge.
Worshippers who prostrate themselves before and sacrifice to
an unseen deity epitomize faith in divinity. The faith requirement
of religion can be problematic to a non-believer. Typically, a reli-
gion requires that practitioners offer sacrifices which produce few,
if any, tangible benefits to the devotee. In return for their sacrifice,
what they often receive are intangible spiritual gifts. Like any per-
son of faith, the magician struggles between venerating the God
5
Yasna 44 contains a series of questions by Zarathustra to Ahura Mazda and
Yasna 45 contains Ahura Mazda’s answers. While the forgetting of the pre-earthly
life is never explicitly mentioned, the questions that Zarathustra asks clearly indi-
cate that he has forgotten any memory of his life previous to this one (Taraporewala).
128 Mac Williams

that he never sees while awake, and doubting his own existence
and relevance in reality. Sometimes the very faithful are blessed
with miracles, but that still falls far short of theophany. Therefore,
the stumbling block of faith is that the typical believer must wait
until death to know if the effort was in vain.
Faith requires sacrifice, and the magician clearly shows great
faith in the fire God, because his son was brought to life. His sac-
rifice is sending his son far off to proselytize for the fire God. He
then sacrifices his life to the fire God when the flames come. This
idea is reminiscent of the end of the one page story by Borges from
Elogio de la sombra called “His End and His Beginning.” The nar-
rator briefly relates how the protagonist begins to perceive that
people at his office seem to know that he is dead; slowly, the real-
ity of his world begins to crumble:
Las voces que había oído eran ecos; los rostros, máscaras; los dedos
de su mano eran sombras, vagas e insustanciales sin duda, pero
también queridas y conocidas. (OC 2: 393)

Much like the magician’s realization that he owes his existence

to God, the man in “His End” comes to realize that all of the hor-
ror he feels is merely a reflection of the new state of his reality.
Ultimately he realizes that “desde su muerte había estado siem-
pre en el cielo” and in spite of his terror he realizes “con alivio”
that someone else created him, that he can trust heaven more than
mortality because he has awakened to the reality of his station
and accepted it (393).
Another demonstration of the magician’s sufficient faith in the
fire God is when “el incendio concéntrico” comes to destroy the
temple yet again; we read:
Las ruinas del santuario del dios del fuego fueron destruidas por
el fuego. En un alba sin pájaros el mago vio cernirse contra los mu-
ros el incendio concéntrico. Por un instante, pensó refugiarse en las
aguas, pero luego comprendió que la muerte venía a coronar su ve-
jez y a absolverlo de sus trabajos. Caminó contra los jirones de fue-
go. Éstos no mordieron su carne, éstos lo acariciaron y lo inundaron
sin calor y sin combustión. (454-55)
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 129

That the flames caress him without heat or burning him could be
argued to evoke the salvation and eternal rest in the afterlife that
awaits the Zoroastrian who seeks to be righteous in this life and
abhors evil in all of its forms. Since fire symbolizes Ahura Mazda,
some of the strictest Zoroastrian commandments concern show-
ing reverence for and maintaining the purity of fire. Therefore,
when the magician chooses not to run to the river when the flames
come, he indicates that he finds himself pure enough to enter the
fire; he shows his faith that his presence will not sully his God’s
essence. In short, he is pure, worthy, and righteous.
People who have faith in any creator God (in this case, Fire)
have to come to terms with the belief that they too owe their exis-
tence to the work of another. However, the nature of this existen-
tial debt is the source of endless debate. For example, one could
argue that just because the magician created his son by thinking
of him, he does not need to think for his son. He has to teach him
how to behave, but the son is still able to think for himself, espe-
cially since he leaves his father with all recollection of his two year
pupilage wiped clean from his memory.
The magician learns that his son has achieved renown for his
apparent imperviousness to fire, meaning that fire, an emanation
of divinity, holds the key by which his son may learn the nature
of his own vicarious creation and lack of independent existence.
If Fire created the son, then the son is beholden to Fire for his ex-
istence, whether he realizes or even acknowledges that debt. The
magician worries that his son will discover his true nature, all the
while never supposing that he too suffers the same fate. The fire
God destroys the ruins at the end of the story just as he had done
at some unknown point previous to the magician’s arrival, as evi-
denced in the quote “ese redondel es un templo que devoraron los
incendios antiguos” (OC 1: 451). Thus, Fire is the means by which
the magician becomes aware of his own lack of existence because
the flames at the end do not consume him. Paradoxically then, the
very God the magician adores, worships, and sacrifices to is also
the selfsame annihilator of the magician.
Dio Chrysostom described a secret myth about Zoroaster
taught to the magi:
130 Mac Williams

This man [Zoroaster], according to the account of the Persians,

through the zeal for wisdom and righteousness withdrew from
the rest of men to live by himself in a certain mountain; a great
fire then fell down from heaven and set the mountain on fire so
that it burned continuously. Accordingly, the king accompanied
by the most notable of the Persians, drew near to it prompted
by a desire to pray to the God. The man came out of the fire
unscathed and appeared before them and graciously bade them
be of good cheer and to offer certain sacrifices since the God had
come to that place. (qtd. in Rose 46)
This myth is suggestive of the final scene of the story when the
magician is surrounded by the flames, but is not harmed because of
his unexpressed faith in the fire God who had “come to that place.”
The mage’s faith wavers for a brief moment when he thinks about
seeking refuge in the water, but his faith conquers his fear, and he
is taken into the embrace (the flames “lo acariciaron”) of his God
(455). Although he owes his existence to Ahura Mazda dreaming
him up, he does seem to control himself as a human entity with
free agency over his own actions. He could have run to the water,
yet he chooses not to do so. Whereas his free will appears to be il-
lusory at the end of the story as he begins to realize the true nature
of his existence, at the moment that the flames consume him, just
prior to his realization, he seems able to make a choice. Whether
that choice was made for him by an “otro” or of his own volition
creates a perfect ending to the story, but not an end to the debate
surrounding the nature of individual existence.
It would be appropriate to say that a human being is Ahura
Mazda’s most potent weapon in the struggle against evil. By that
standard, the magician’s efforts to create a son are righteous deeds.
If he has free will, he chooses to create a son in dreams with su-
pernatural help. However, in a Zurvanite reading, when he says,
“Ese proyecto mágico había agotado el espacio entero de su alma;
si alguien le hubiera preguntado su propio nombre o cualquier
rasgo de su vida anterior, no habría acertado a responder,” he can-
not explain why he feels compelled to “soñar un hombre” (451).
As Zurvan controls him, he is an automaton, a cogito vacío, acting
out a plan that his God Zurvan, in the style of Calvin’s conception
of free will, has predetermined for him.
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 131

According to Zoroastrian theology, Ahura Mazda created man-

kind and gave us all free will and the ability to decide our own fate
(Boyce 25-27). This belief contrasts starkly with the skeptics’ view
of the magician’s apparently illusory free will. To the skeptic, since
the mage exists only as the dream of another, his actions, thoughts,
beliefs, and even dreams, are not his own, even if they actually take
place in the magician’s perceived reality. Similarly, Borges doubts
his own free will in “Una oración” from Elogio de la sombra (1969)
when he writes, “La libertad de mi libre albedrío es tal vez iluso-
ria, pero puedo dar o soñar que doy,” alluding to the truth that he
can give courage and hope to others, through his writing, when he
doesn’t necessarily possess those qualities himself (OC 2: 392).
The mage has no way of knowing whether or not his life would
be preserved if he ran to the river, but he makes the decision to
walk into the flames in which he has his horrific and alleviating
epiphany that “otro estaba soñándolo” (455). Although the ante-
cedent of “lo” is apparently the magician himself, a distinction
can be made between “soñándolo” and for example, “soñándolo
y todas sus acciones también.” If he is being controlled by the per-
son dreaming him, then his free will and faith are illusory and
therefore do not exist. The dreamer then has foreknowledge of
his actions and as Ana María Barrenechea has said:
si todo está presente y simultáneo en la mente divina aun las cosas
posibles e imposibles, no hay gesto por nimio que sea que no se halle
previsto, lo cual nos convierte en autómatas y nos desrealiza. (122)


From the newspaper, La Prensa, Buenos Aires, August 3, 1986. In an interview with
Amelia Barili, Borges says: “estaba releyendo la Divina Comedia, y usted recordará
que en el Primer Canto, Dante se encuentra con dos o tres animales, y uno de ellos
es un leopardo. Luego el editor hace notar que llevaron a Florencia un leopardo en
tal fecha, y que Dante habría visto ese leopardo, como todo ciudadano de Florencia,
y por eso puso un leopardo en el Primer Canto del Infierno. Entonces, yo imagino
que a ese leopardo un sueño revela que él ha sido creado para que Dante lo vea y
lo use en su poema. El leopardo en el sueño entiende eso, pero cuando despierta,
naturalmente ¿cómo va a entender que él existe para que un hombre escriba un
poema? Y luego yo digo que si a Dante le hubiera sido revelado por qué él ha es-
crito la Comedia, él podría entenderlo en un sueño, pero al despertar, no. Sería tan
complicada la razón, como la otra para el leopardo”. (Textos recobrados 378)
132 Mac Williams

However, if his creation by the “otro” is limited to the mere act of

his own physical creation, but his actions are his own decisions,
much like those of the son that he creates, then he does have a
nominal free agency and can choose to do as he wishes, indepen-
dent of the dreamer’s ideas.
The magician very well could be the same “otro” that dreams
him up, and all of this could be his own dream about himself just
as happens in Twain’s “Mysterious Stranger” and Paul Verho-
even’s Total Recall, itself an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s story
“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” Individuals are ca-
pable of dreaming that they were themselves doing some grand
thing in their dream not normally present in their waking mo-
ments. These dreams typically end with the dreamer realizing that
they are dreaming and awaking with a vivid recollection of their
other’s accomplishments—though in this scenario, the dreamer
could still be the creation of another.
If he has free will, his faith is absolute, proven by his choosing
death over life when the temple is destroyed by the very deity
that he worships. If he has no free will then his death is incon-
sequential to the entity dreaming him. According to the Avestan
Scriptures, the magician is free to choose to follow Ahura Mazda
in his attempt to create and promulgate good and in doing so be-
comes an ally and member of the cause of good:
If people choose rightly and strive to acquire Ahura Mazda’s spiri-
tual creations (Bounteous Immortals, Amesha Spentas), they both ful-
fill the purpose for which they were created and become his friends
and co-workers, and thus strengthen both him and his cause. How-
ever, they do have free choice and may choose to become supporters
of evil. Thus, as a result of their intellectual capacities, human be-
ings have freedom to choose, ‘man for man,’ as it says in the Gathas,
must make up his or her own mind and decide whether or not to
support Ahura Mazda. (Hintze 148)

The Zoroastrian texts affirm that the magician was created by

Ahura Mazda to aid him in his fight against evil and further affirm
that the magician has free will to choose good or evil. However,
the text of the story would seem to support more the Zurvanite
conception of Zurvan creating the framework and being in con-
 Zoroastrian and Zurvanite Symbolism 133

trol of all actions that take place, meaning that the magician only
thought he was in control of his own deeds. The symbolism, when
applied to the story, categorically indicts the magician’s free will.
On the one hand, if Zurvan is controlling him via Ahura Mazda
and Asha Vahishta, even though he is on the side of good, he is
a mere puppet of Zurvan. On the other hand, if Ahura Mazda is
the Supreme Deity, then the magician’s Scriptures promise that he
has some form of free will and that he will take his place by Ahura
Mazda’s side after his life is over. The story does not choose sides,
but masterfully takes the middle road between Zoroastrian ortho-
doxy and unorthodoxy and lets the reader decide for herself the
true nature of the magician’s existence.
The reader may come to this story perhaps more than a little
vexed by the philosophical problems posed by the three stories
that precede it in Ficciones: “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius,” “El acer-
camiento a Almotásim,” and “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote.”
The last page falls like a bombshell on the reader as any relation-
ship to the previously solid Cartesian foundation of “cogito ergo
sum” seems less sturdy in the light of this new problem. Noted
skeptic Anthony Cascardi feels that:
There is no proof, no guarantee, that our most firmly held beliefs
will correspond to the facts; there are no final assurances, even
where our knowledge is underwritten by courageous convictions;
nor is there “certainty” of the sort the skeptic denies or the episte-
mologist seeks to find. There are times when our knowledge cannot
be described within rational bounds. (28)

Seemingly then, the skepticism inherent in the ending of the story

stifles Gadamer’s belief that all understanding of a text depends on
understanding the question it answers. However, the references to
Zoroastrianism and the inherent Zoroastrian faith in a supreme cre-
ator God that will redeem all humanity attempt to soften the sting of
mortality. The magician’s fate, inside of his text, hinges on his faith.
If Ahura Mazda exists, he is saved, according to the promises of his
Scriptures. If Ahura Mazda does not exist, then neither does he.
The narrator in “Las ruinas circulares” dazzles his readers with
shocking claims about the magician and his son. The doubt that
steeps in the mind of the reader mitigates the sensationalism of
134 Mac Williams

the narrator and allows one to focus on the references in the text as
a way to better understand those details about the magician that
the narrator does not see fit to share. We may view “Las ruinas”
as either a faith promoting missive or as a secular skeptical experi-
ment. Either of these two options sufficiently demonstrates the
universality of the existential dilemma of the magician: to whom
(if anyone) does humanity owe its creation and existence? To be
sure, the text tacitly uses the symbols of the Zoroastrian faith to
quell the fears of this existential dilemma, but in so doing it refer-
ences abstruse concepts which have gone unnoticed previously.
In my opinion, “Las ruinas circulares” perfectly encapsulates all
sides of the nagging doubt and skepticism surrounding individu-
al existence that is inherent to humanity.

Mac Williams
Coker College

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