Magi

Who were the Magi?

• The word Μάγοι in Greek is a straight loan from Old Persian maguš.
• In Greek sources (Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo, Plutarch), magi were a Median/Persian priestly caste associated with ritual, sacrifice, and dream/divination.
• They were not kings but specialists in cult, astrology, and ritual purification.

By ~1 BCE, “Magi” in the Hellenistic world could mean:

1. Strict sense — Zoroastrian priestly class from Media/Persia.
2. Loose Hellenistic sense — wandering holy men, astrologers, wonder-workers, interpreters of dreams and omens. (Compare Apollonius of Tyana, or the “Chaldaeans” of Babylonia.)

Where were they from?

• Classical testimony places the core Magian priesthood in Media and Persia (northwest Iran).
• But by the 1st c. BCE, the title magos was applied more broadly across the Chaldean/Babylonian tradition (Mesopotamia), Median priesthood, and even Colchian/Pontic ritual specialists (Black Sea coast).
• So the Gospel’s “Magi from the East” (ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν) could plausibly point to a Median/Persian–Babylonian nexus, famous in the Hellenistic imagination for astrology and esoteric wisdom.

What religion did they study?

• At root: Zoroastrianism, or more broadly the Iranian fire cult, centered on Ahura Mazda (Ὠρομάζης in Plutarch).
• Practices: tending sacred fire, chanting ritual hymns (Avestan gāθās), and performing sacrifice with precise purity rules.
• The Chaldaean overlay added: astronomical/astrological calculation, omen lore, dream interpretation.

So the Magi combined Iranian theurgy with Babylonian cosmology — an irresistible aura of wisdom in the Greek imagination.

Esoteric thought for the inner and outer circles

For the priesthood (“those in the know”):

• The cosmos is ordered by a hierarchy of powers (daimones, planetary intelligences, stars) through which the divine fire/light descends.
• Purification rituals, hymns, and drugs/incense allowed ascent through these layers, achieving gnosis and alignment with the divine order.
• Fire and light were theophanies of Ahura Mazda — but also gateways into mystical ascent.
• Astrology was not just fortune-telling, but a map of cosmic necessity and divine order.

For the common folk (“the fools”):

• Fire is sacred — do not pollute it.
• Certain rites bring prosperity, others avert demons.
• The stars tell your fate; Magi can interpret them.
• Offerings secure the gods’ (or daemons’) favor.

In other words: outer teaching = ritual piety and omen-reading, inner teaching = cosmic fire-light metaphysics and ascent of the soul.

Connection to Jesus

• For a 1st c. Mediterranean audience, the arrival of “Magi from the East” in Matthew signals not quaint gift-givers, but the most prestigious priest-astrologers of the known world, bearers of wealth and secret gnosis.
• Their gifts — gold, frankincense, myrrh — are precisely temple-grade materials: gold for cult education (send that kid to magi school), frankincense for fumigation (herbal sacrifice), myrrh for healing (another herbal sacrifice, also fumigation).
• If such priests “funded” a child’s upbringing, it means he was embedded in the same esoteric chain of Median–Chaldean wisdom that fascinated Hellenistic Jews and Greeks alike.