The Public Domain Review features a remarkable artifact of Zoroastrian folk religion: the Mâr-Nâmeh (“Book of Snakes”), a late-15th-century divination text translated in 1892 by a British surgeon addressing the Bombay Anthropological Society. It lists the thirty days of the Zoroastrian calendar and what encountering a snake on each day portends.
The twist? Zoroastrians considered snakes khrafstar — noxious spawn of Ahriman, the evil principle, to be killed on sight. Believers carried a “snake-killer” stick. The Shahnameh’s demon-king Zahhak has snakes growing from his shoulders, eating human brains. Yet the Mâr-Nâmeh is full of auspicious readings.
- Seeing a snake on the day of Sheherivar: you will find an absent friend
- On the day of Zamyâd: you will obtain justice from the Creator
- Other omens promise the “revolving heavens” will fulfill your wishes
How could a khrafstar bring good fortune? The translator suspected Egyptian influence. Philologist Martina Palladino suggests a more intriguing answer: snakes were not always demonized in Iranian tradition. The positive omens may echo pre-Zoroastrian beliefs, preserved in this obscure text long after orthodoxy had condemned the serpent.
The Mâr-Nâmeh is not elegant literature — even its translator admitted it “can lay no claim to elegance of style or beauty of language.” But as a window into a folk religion that coexisted uneasily with doctrine, into the persistence of older traditions beneath orthodox layers, it is quietly fascinating. Like Hafez divination or Turkish coffee grounds, a snake at the wrong (or right) moment might still offer solace.