One of the world’s most ancient faiths is also one of the world’s fastest-dwindling, from millions of adherents a millennia ago to about 250,000 today. That’s thanks to rules that say only Persians may belong, and that its priests must come from a certain family line.

MUMBAI, India - For centuries, the Zoroastrian dead have been wrapped in white muslin and left at a leafy funeral ground on downtown Mumbai's Malabar Hill, where they are devoured by vultures. Only then, according to the tenets of the ancient religion, can the soul be freed.

BURR RIDGE, Ill. - In his day job, Kersey H. Antia is a psychologist who

It is one the most poignant images in India. Muslin-wrapped mourners carry the dead up a leafy hill to a temple, conducting an ancient ceremony in modern Mumbai. They reach the Towers of Silence and the bodies are laid on slabs of marble to be devoured by vultures and bleached by the searing heat of the sun. For Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest mass religions in the world, bodies left in this manner will see their soul join the spiritual world.

What does Freddie Mercury have in common with the founder of the Indian nuclear programme or Israel Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta? The answer is that all are or were adherents of Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion that probably exerted a deep influence on Judaism, Mithraism and Christianity. Yet far from belonging to the distant archaeological past, Zoroastrianism is winning new believers and establishing new and active communities all over the world.

CHAK CHAK: Zoroastrians say the sacred spring at Chak Chak, a shrine perched beneath a towering cliff face in the searing desert of central Iran, has lost none of its miraculous healing powers.

N.Va. Temple to Unite Followers of Faith in Which Fire Plays Sacred Role

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