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397
EVIL

he will flee into darkness and be fettered in hell in perpetual sorrow.[1] We are informed in another place that when he is thus defeated, he will rush back to hell,[2] and disappear.[3] Still other passages state that he will be repulsed and slain.[4] Ahriman exists in the world so long as he can find his lodgment even in one man in the world, but when, owing to the goodness of men, he will be completely cast out from human bodies, he will be exterminated.[5] He will enter into nothingness.[6]

The final disappearance of evil from the world. With the disappearance of the Father of Evil, goodness will completely rout evil.[7] The great conflict between good and evil will eventually end in perfecting good and in eliminating evil.[8] Moral and physical imperfections will vanish; for vice and impiety, wickedness and sin, demons and fiends, disease and death will be no more.[9] The dual nature of the creatures of good and evil will be supplanted by the single characteristic of goodness. The evil creatures will perish.[10]

Divs

The emissaries of Ahriman. There are six arch-fiends created by Ahriman in exact opposition to the archangels; and there are also other minor demons as their evil confederates.[11] They love evil for its own sake. Hell is the specific habitat assigned to them, and from there they rush to the summit of Mount Arezur to hold their infernal council.[12] The north is believed to be the region of Ahriman and demons, just as the south is that of Ormazd and angels; and darkness is the steadfast quality of this fiendish crew.[13]

Their work. The diabolical host works for procuring success for Ahriman They will do this up to the end of the world.[14]

  1. Dk., vol. 3, p. 150.
  2. Dk., vol. 8, p. 441, 486.
  3. Dd. 37. 71, 122; Dk., vol. 8, p. 436, 445, Jsp. p. 109.
  4. Dk., vol. 9, p. 627, Jsp. p. 120.
  5. Dk., vol. 8, p. 436, vol. 11, bk. 6. 264, p. 102.
  6. Dd. 37. 59, 114, Mkh. 57. 6; Dk, vol. 12, bk. 6. 297, p. 13.
  7. Dk., vol. 5, p. 326.
  8. Dd. 37. 122.
  9. Dd. 37. 120, 121; Mkh. 8. 14, 15.
  10. Bd. 1. 7.
  11. Bd. 28. 12.
  12. Dd. 33. 3, 5.
  13. Dd. 37. 85.
  14. Dd. 37. 59.