Gaokerena, the white haoma of Zoroastrian tradition, supplies immortality at the world’s renewal. The Bundahishn gives it a distinct role beside the tree of all seeds and describes the fish protecting it from destruction.
The white haoma and its names
Gaokerena is the Avestan name associated with the mythical white haoma; Middle Persian forms include Gokarn, while E. W. West’s older translation of the Bundahishn prints Gokard. Mary Boyce connects this plant with the world river and with the future renewal, Frashokereti. Its significance lies in the religious account of a creation finally freed from death. The passages explain its role as a tree of immortality. [1]
Beside the tree of all seeds
Chapter 9 of the Indian Bundahishn describes an assault on vegetation followed by restoration. Amerodad, associated with plants, mixes crushed vegetation with water, and Tishtar spreads it through rain. A tree containing the germs of plants grows in the cosmic ocean. The Gokard tree is then produced near it, with a different function: overcoming decrepitude and contributing to the world’s perfection. The passage places two trees beside one another. Seed dispersal and the removal of mortality belong to a connected cosmology, but are not interchangeable descriptions of one tree. [2]
The ten fish and the hostile creature
Chapter 18 makes the tree the centre of a sustained contest. The evil spirit creates a creature rendered as a lizard in West’s translation, intending it to injure the hom in the deep water. Ohrmazd creates ten Kar fish that circle the plant, with one always facing the attacker. The fish and their opponent require no ordinary food, and the struggle lasts until renovation. This is a specific account of guardianship, with an explicit number and duration. Modern retellings that vary the creature or the number of fish should identify which text or translation they follow. [3]
A final rite for resurrected humanity
The white haoma’s decisive use appears in Chapter 30, after bodily resurrection and purification. Soshyans and his assistants conduct a ceremony involving the mythical ox Hadhayos. A preparation made from its fat and white hom is given to humanity, conferring lasting immortality. The plant thus participates in a larger sequence: the dead are restored, wrongdoing is addressed, people are reunited and renewed existence becomes possible. The passage concerns transformed bodily life, rather than simply the continued existence of a soul after death. Chapter numbers here follow West’s Indian Bundahishn translation. [4]
Myth and a lived ritual connection
Boyce’s account of Zoroastrian ritual describes actual hom twigs being pounded and strained, with pomegranate and water, and a further preparation incorporating milk. She also records a communal Nowruz observance at Sharifabad near Yazd into the 1960s, in which priests and laypeople shared consecrated parahom. She interprets that observance as anticipating the future white-haoma rite. The observance connects the renewal of the year with the world’s anticipated renewal. [1]
What a botanical picture can show
Dieter Taillieu’s botanical survey discusses the documented use of ephedra by Zoroastrians in Yazd and its supply to communities in India. It also reviews continuing arguments about the plant behind the earliest Indo-Iranian haoma/soma. Those historical botanical questions do not turn the cosmic white haoma into an identified living species. [5] The accompanying 1885 plate depicts Ephedra distachya, with jointed stems and enlarged reproductive details. It helps readers visualize the kind of earthly plant discussed in scholarship; it is neither an ancient image of Gaokerena nor proof that this particular species was used everywhere. [6]
Sources and further reading
- Mary Boyce, Haoma ii. The Rituals, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003, updated 2013; Yasna, communal Nowruz observance and mythical white hom.
- Indian Bundahishn, E. W. West’s English translation (1880), Chapter 9.1–6, reproduced by CAIS: plant restoration, tree of all germs and neighbouring Gokard.
- Indian Bundahishn, translated by E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts I, Sacred Books of the East 5 (1880), Chapter 18.1–9, pp. 65–66: tree, opponent and ten Kar fish.
- Indian Bundahishn, West (1880), Chapter 30, especially 30.20–25, pp. 126–127: purification, reunion and immortalizing preparation.
- Dieter Taillieu, Haoma i. Botany, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003, updated 2013; ephedra in documented practice and debates over early haoma/soma.
- Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (1885), Ephedra distachya plate; public-domain scan, Wikimedia Commons.