‘OE’), which in turn ostensibly originated from Latin: magus (great, all-encompassing [one]). In my own Protolanguage Dictionary, mo-aka (aka being as in aka-retsa: ‘encompass’) – later, mogaka – is indeed cognate with m’agus.
Going even further into Proto-Indo-European (PIE), I associate the term mazda, as in Ahura-Mazda, with masheta in proto-Tswana (great, powerful). Ahura-Mazda, the ‘God of Light’ in Zoroastrianism, I suggest, is actually ‘[He of the] Powerful Aura’, a Master of Light indeed. In our material plane of existence, i.e. Earth, an aura is felt but cannot seen – exactly like ora in Setswana (‘feel the radiance – e.g. ‘heat’ – even from a distance away’). An aura (also called a halo) was well-known in Christian tradition and was routinely depicted as a circle of radiance around Jesus’ head but, as with other once well-used Gnostic terms now deemed ‘occult’ in nature, was later suppressed. This week, we begin to explore whether Bahaullah was indeed a God-sent Master whose coming fulfilled the expectations of many religions. Christians awaited the return of Christ ‘in the glory of the Father’; Zoroastrians the return of Shah Bahram Varjavand; Shi’ite Muslims the return of Imam Husayn (their Third Imam); Sunni Muslims the return of Jesus (Prophet Isa), and Babis (followers of ‘the Bab’, Siyyid Mirza Ali-Muhammad) awaited ‘He whom God shall manifest’.
