✨ The Book of Arda Viraf is partly mythology and partly Dantesque Divine Calamity written in the Middle Persian language.

⏳ Sometimes, during the Sasanians Empire, a Zoroastrian priest was sent to the afterlife to bring news from the heavens 🌌 and hells 🔥.

👑 During the reign of the Sasanian King, Ardeshir Papakan, the assembly of Mazdian magi sent a young priest as a messenger to the netherworld to bring back news of the afterlife and what happens after our death. No one expected the visuals to be so shocking when the messenger returned. 😮

📚 The book before you is a revised and illustrated version of the old text. This book also includes several otherworldly stories 🌍 worldwide, including Mesopotamian Etana 🦅, the Egyptian Book of the Dead 🏺, Mohammad's Miraj 🌙, and Dante's Inferno 🔥.

🌤️ Although there's no fire in a Zoroastrian hell, don't convert yet. The heavens are intellectual delights 💡 as the faithful spend time in what they like to do: reading 📖, discussing literature ✍️, poetry 🎶, art 🎨, or just spending time with people 👥 or animals 🐕 they love.

⚖️ But in hell, there are things worse than fire to maintain social control. 😱

📜 In the Horne introduction to the book, we read:

"So profound, even to this day, is the Parsis' faith in the reality of Viraf's vision that when the work is read in their religious assemblies, the men weep 😢, and the women cry out in horror 😨 over its pictures of the damned. It has certainly a powerful influence in restraining the Parsis from sin."