this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
26 points (81.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

49705 readers
550 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 52 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wise men is a vague translation of "Magi," who were the priestly class of the Persian Zoroastrians.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You could have told me you were describing a new class in DnD and I would have believed you without a second thought

[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Weird linguistic coincidences like that seem less weird when you remember that at its core English is just a strange dialect of German that's been mugging other languages for loose vocabulary for a thousand years or so.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

Oi, 'ands up, and pass over all your djectives, mate.

[–] omega_x3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don't forget the English were ruled by a French bastard for a while so the language ended up with a bunch of words that are spelled a little odd but pronounced like the speaker doesn't have the energy to use half the letters.

[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago

Yes, but at the end of the day, France and England are really more like one people divided by a thousand year old argument over whether German bastardized Latin or Latin bastardized German is the superior language.

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

English: the mother bastard language.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Celtic, West Germanic (Angles, Saxons), Latin, Northern Germanic (Scandinavian), French, whatever. English is a number of languages in a trench coat, pretending to be a language.

[–] Patnou@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not trying to act a dick. But generally curious that could you break down all that like I am five. I know zoroastrians are a religion. Only reason I know that is because I convinced my school to let me go to Iran while the rest went to Europe. I think the only reason they did it was because it was massively cheaper. But the weird part it was about August 2001 and part of the Republic Guard told me that I need to get the fuck out of the middle east. I let it go figuring yea whatever. Then they came to my hotel room and said pack up your leaving NOW. Next thing I know is I was on a flight to Germany. Then well you know what happened in a month.

[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago

Sure, Zoroastrianism, the original state religion of Persia, now Iran before the Arabic conquest. Its still practiced by a small minority in Iran, as well as parts of India, Afghanistan and other places in the region. Famously Freddy Mercury was Zoroastrian. It's a belief system closely related Vedic Hinduism and more distantly related to the polytheistic traditions of ancient Europe (Slavic polytheism, Norse/Germanic Polytheism, etc.). It was the official belief system of King Cyrus the Great, who has been spoken of in recent years due to his conquest of Babylon being the thing that freed the Jews and he was the king who rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. That's prompted comparisons among some with Trump, being the goyim defender of the Jewish state. It was on his orders that the surviving texts of the Jewish Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim (what a Christian would call the Old Testament) were compiled into something recognizable today.

Zoroastrianism believes in a true Creator god (Ahura Mazda, yes like the car, long story) and a Lord of Chaos (Ahreman), with the creator slowly releasing the world he created from the clutches of the jealous lord of chaos who tried to take it. All of the other "gods" (Amesha Spenta) are "Faces" of Ahura Mazda. Some have speculated Zoroastrian influence may have been the thing that finally pushed second temple Judaism to abandon the last vestiges of pre-Babylonian polytheism, though there were trends among the last remaining Jewish communities in that direction prior to the conquest of Babylon. Some have also speculated that some of the gaps in the Jewish tradition were filled in by Zoroastrian beliefs when reconstructing Jewish tradition, and that may be one of the distinct "Voices" in the modern Torah (see JEDP Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis). Interestingly enough concepts like heaven, hell, judgement day, and a messiah at the end of the world may also originate in Zoroastrianism.

The Magi (plural), or Magus (singular), is the Persian word for a Zoroastrian priest and loosely translates as "Wise Man" in English. The words in English like Magic, Mage, Magician, etc. is actually derived from it because their legendary supernatural powers were famous across the ancient world. The Magi were also well known for the practice of Astrology in ancient times and much of modern astrological practice is adapted from Zoroastrian tradition.