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The Middle Persian Mādīgān ī Yōšt ī Fr(i)yān is considered to be, first and foremost, a literary vision of the Zoroastrian warfare of good versus evil. Secondly, it is a report from an examination resembling van Gennep’s rite de passage. The weapon, used during this religious duel by a pious youth – Yōšt ī Fr(i)yān, and his adversary – the sorcerer Axt, are thirty six enigmas. That is why, we may suppose, that originally Mādīgān ī Yōšt ī Fr(i)-yān was a magical text that was later deprived of this feature. Analysis of the Avesta and some other Middle Persian works leads us to assume that some reasons why this magical nature was removed stem from the fact that the Zoroastrian orthodox clergymen used to
associate magic with the sin. Both heroes mentioned in the Avesta must have played a significant role in the pre-Zoroastrian folklore and their incorporation into Zoroastrianism was possible at the cost of removing some magical features of the myth, at the cost of emphasising the demonic character of Axt and finally, at the cost of shifting the duel from a magical level to a religious one, by changing the spell into a riddle.