The Zend Avesta of Zarathustra is the first encyclopedia of mankind, dating from much farther back in recorded history than ancient Egypt, China or India. It is itself a recapitulation of previous ancient traditions, lost in the mist of history. Those early heliolithic teachings were written only in pictographs-physiograms and ideograms, which often represent a more intensive reality than abstract words formed from alphabets. To explain the Creation of the Universe in a way that would be immediately and instinctively understood, Zarathustra used these pictographs to explain the unexplainable."ASHA" means "the Cosmic Order," which was established through the Creation of the Universe in all its component parts. The ancient Sumerians, followers of Zarathustra, greeted each other with the words "Ashem Vohu," meaning 'the Cosmic Order is the best of all things." With this greeting they stated their belief that we do not live in a capricious universe-that everything is in balance, in harmony, and to the extent that we cooperate with and strengthen this balance and harmony, we form an intrinsic part of ASHA, the Cosmic Order.

According to the Sumerian concept, everything started from a point. They chose this symbol to represent the infinity of the Creator because a point has no width, no length, no thickness, yet it contains within itself, as within each atom, an infinitesimal number of points, universes within themselves, just as our entire known universe is an infinitesimal  part  of innumerable unknown universes. According to their concept, at a time so remote it is impos­sible to imagine, there was a cosmic explosion of a point and this point created Time, Force, Space, and Matter. These are the pictographs used by Zarathustra to tell the story of this tremendous explosion which created our Cosmos.

Sorry, but the text with the above images is still in Dutch! Still, the following description of events will explain sufficiently... Of course, better still, the book can be ordered  from the I.B.S!

The first act of the Creator was to create Time, symbolized by a straight perpendicular line moving upward from the point. The next act of the Creator was the perpendicular line moving downward from the point, representing Force, or Energy. The two lines, one above the point and one below it, represent Time and Force together, the movement of energy in time, or the measurement of force or speed.

In the next act of creation, the point moves to the right in a horizontal line, and this signified Space. The Creator next moved in a straight line to the left from the point, symbolizing Matter. The two horizontal lines representing Space and Matter produced Volume, or Mass.

When the four lines above, below, to the left and to the right of the point were combined into a pictograph, it signified the creating of the universe; in other words, Time, Space, Force and Matter before the appearance of all their modalities. We may say it represents the cosmic nebulae, before the appearance of the solar systems and planets.

When the perpendicular line above the point, symbolizing Time, was multiplied by eight, four lines to the right of the perpendicular line, and four lines to the left of it, these lines represented Time divided into the eight seasons of the year, classified by Zarathustra as spring, spring-summer, summer, summer-fall, fall, fall-winter, winter, winter-spring.

The line symbolizing Force, moving downward from the central point, was also multiplied by eight. The division of Force into eight categories introduced a new idea into their cosmogony. They first divided Force into four cate­gories: the energies coming from the stars, those from the sun, those from the earth, and those inherent in man. But each of these four was divided once again, into good and evil, or to be more correct, light and darkness. Here appears the first idea of duality, the first dualistic philosophy in the history of human thought, represented by those eight           perpendicular lines below the creating point.

When the horizontal line to the right of the point was multiplied by eight, it represented Space divided into the eight cardinal points: east, south-east, south, south-west, west, north-west, north, and north-east.

Matter, became the four elements: air, water, earth and fire, when multiplied by four. These four were then divided into eight, each signifying the good or evil form of the element.

The next movement of the Creator combined the two groups of perpendicular lines, those above and those below the point. Thus the symbols of the eight seasons, combined with the symbols of the eight forces, represented the activity of the positive and negative forces during the eight seasons.

The eight horizontal lines to the left of the point and the eight to the right of it were then made into a pictograph signifying the combination of the eight cardinal points of Space with eight positive and negative elements of Matter. And the final step was to divide these sixty-four squares into good and evil, light and darkness.

This pattern of thirty-two white squares and thirty-two black squares represented to the ancient Sumerians the unity of the universe as it existed around them, in its eight basic aspects of time and space, force and matter, seasons and cardinal points, and their dualities. There could be no simpler way to explain the Creation, yet in its geometric clarity is hidden all the mysteries of the Universe.

According to the ancient Sumerians, there are two aspects-light and darkness-to everything which exists. For instance, light manifests in our bodies as health, and darkness as disease. Light manifests in our minds as har­monious thoughts, darkness as disharmonious thoughts. Light manifests in nature as animals useful to man, such as the cow and the horse; while darkness manifests in creatures harmful to man, such as snakes or jaguars. Everything has two aspects in life, in our bodies, our minds, in human society, on our planet, in the universe, everywhere - there is a constant battle raging between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness. At first, this seems a classic dualistic concept, but in its quintessence, it is more complex. For darkness is only the absence of light, and disease is only the absence of health. Disharmonious thoughts and emotions are only the absence of harmonious thoughts and emotions, and so on. Therefore, this philosophy not only represents dualism, but also monism. And this most ancient of all philosophies found its most profound expression in the exquisite language of the Art of Asha.

Ancient Symbols of the Natural and Cosmic Forces in their Aspects of Light and Darkness Gathered for the Enactment of ASHA on the Sumerian Tapestry of Creation .