unicorns and religious references in HP (was checking out the library book

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Neri wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1891 :

<< Granted, JKR has the sharp divide between Light and Dark which is
indeed more a Christian concept than of any other religion/culture, >>

I am amazed that no one pointed out that the sharp divide and big
battle between good and evil, called Light and Dark, was originated by
the Zoroastrian religion (as reported by ewe2 in her post snipped
below), whose adherents are called Parsees, which is a clue that it
was the religion of the great Persian empire of Darius and Cyrus and
Xerxes. 

As such, Zoroastrianism had some influence on some Jewish thinkers
when Judaea was under the Persian empire and rather more influence on
some Classical Greek thinkers when the Greek cities of Asia Minor were
under the Persian empire, and some influence on that whole Middle East
and Central Asia which would pass from the Persian empire to
Alexander's empire and Hellenism. Thus accounting for the presence of
Hell and the Devil (the latter a Zoroastrian word) in Gnosticism,
Christianity and Islam.

Stop me before I go on to explain Manichaeanism.

ewe2 wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1907 :

<< I sometimes wonder what the religious landscape would look like
without the influence of Zoroastrianism, that either/or dualism from
which Christianity and other religions derive both their strength and
weakness from. The strength is that force gained with focus, the
weakness the inability to tolerate difference. >>

But Cyrus the Great, a sufficiently devout Zoroastrian (pace, Kneasy,
that doesn't have to be *very* devout) to (pay for workmen to) carve
huge stone inscriptions thanking Ahura Mazda for giving him all these
victories and conqering an empire, was sufficiently tolerant of
differences that he let all the ethnic groups conquered by the
Babylonian empire go back to their homelands and rebuild their temples
to their miscellaneous gods. The Jews wrote in their Bible (in the
third part, the miscellaneous writings) that their God, the Lord, had
sent Cyrus to free them from Babylonian captivity. 

Joseph Campbell, in THE MASKS OF GOD, IIRC volume 3, listed examples
of other ([paleo-]pagan) nations who left inscriptions praising their
own gods for sending Cyrus to free them from Babylon. 

Neri wrote in 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/1885 :

<< The Hebrew word re'em refers to the Arabian Oryx, an antelope with
(of course) two long straight horns, which was common in Israel in
biblical times, and finally hunted to near extinction in the 19th
century. I personally had the privilege to do some volunteer work in a
reservation in the Arava desert:

http://www.geocities.com/jelbaum/haibar.html
http://redseadesert.com/html/060haibar.html

where they reintroduce these beautiful animals into the wild. This was
a very interesting and exciting work, not to mention slightly
dangerous. One of the females very nearly skewered me when I captured
her newly-born fawn for marking. >>

Cool! I remember seeing those oryxes (oryces?) in the San Diego Zoo
when (according to their plaque) the re-introduction had only just
begun ... I think that must have been 30+ years ago, as that was a
visit to the zoo with my late father... Anyway, an oryx was pacing in
a wide-diameter circle, giving us good views from all angles to
photograph, and I saw him in profile and said: "That's a unicorn!"

P.S. JKR has included the re'em in Fantastic Beasts as a different
creature from the unicorn.