He created the floating, egg-shaped universe in two parts: first the spiritual (menog) and 3,000 years later, the physical (getig).
[11] While Ahura Mazda created the universe and humankind, Angra Mainyu, whose very nature is to destroy, miscreated demons, evil daevas, and noxious creatures (khrafstar) such as snakes, ants, and flies.
Angra Mainyu invaded the universe through the base of the sky, inflicting Gayomard and the bull with suffering and death.
Humans thus struggle in a two-fold universe of the material and spiritual trapped and in long combat with evil.
The evils of this physical world are not products of an inherent weakness but are the fault of Angra Mainyu's assault on creation.
This assault turned the perfectly flat, peaceful, and daily illuminated world into a mountainous, violent place that is half night.
[11] According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made the ultimate triumph of good against Angra Mainyu evident.
[12] Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail over the evil Angra Mainyu, at which point reality will undergo a cosmic renovation called Frashokereti[13] and limited time will end.
In the final renovation, all of creation—even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to or chose to descend into "darkness"—will be reunited with Ahura Mazda in the Kshatra Vairya (meaning "best dominion"),[14] being resurrected to immortality.
The total sum of all the mentioned loci, starting with the seven continents of the earth and stopping with the Paradise, is of twenty-nineOther descriptions of the cosmos reflect the creations of Ohrmazd.
[28] The exact source for the rope concept is unclear: it could ultimately come from Plato's Timaeus 38a–39a which describes "living bonds" that control the movements of the heavenly bodies.
At some point in late antiquity, these ropes took on an antidemonic role insofar as they were a mechanism by which shooting stars could be directed at and striking demons, a notion shared in Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Mandaean thought.
This mountains peak, called Taēra, lies at the world center of the (flat) Earth, similar to the role played by Mount Meru in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmologies.
[33] Familiarity of the planets, such as Mercury and Venus, is absent from early Iranian and Zoroastrian sources like the Avesta, likely reflecting the disinterest in them or classifying them into astronomical or astrological systems.
[25] By the time of Middle Persian literature, the names of all five (known) planets were documented as a product of Babylonian influence: Anāhīd (Pahlavi for Venus), Tīr (Mercury), Wahrām (Mars), Ohrmazd (Jupiter), and Kēwān (Saturn).