Rosicrucian Beacon Magazine - 2012-09 - AMORC

The idealised Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Garden of Eden or Paradise: The English word ‘paradise’ comes from an ancient AvestanPersian word for an exceptional kind of garden, pairi-daeza, meaning a ‘walled enclosure’, a retreat from the dangers of the worldforests. Elsewhere, the land can be dangerous and hostileto the unprepared visitor. The Persians, however, saw alatent inner beauty, like that of a jewel encased in rock.They left the countryside for the most part pristine,admiring it for what it was, as nature intended, and sacredas God’s creation. Where land was required for humanhabitation, rather than scarring the earth, they helpedmake it blossom, a refuge not just for themselves, butfor animals and rare plants as well. This was the ancientPersian paradigm.Some people think that the four quadrants of thegarden symbolised the four quadrants of the PersianEmpire.The English word ‘paradise’ comes from an ancientAvestan Persian word for an exceptional kind of garden,pairi-daeza. As a compound word, pairidaeza came tomean a celestial garden, a heavenly paradise on Earth; ineffect a walled garden. The description of the Garden ofEden as a paradise is derived from this Persian idea, andsome say, Eden was located in the northern Iranian ZagrosMountains. Classical Greek writers called Persian gardensparadeisos (plural, paradeisoi.). The Hanging Gardens ofBabylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, weresaid to have been built based on the Median (westernIranian) gardens of the Zagros Mountains.Chāhār BāghThe style of Persian gardens can be both formal andinformal. The formal gardens are the type found in front ofpalaces, and are geometric in their layout. Cyrus’ garden,the Chāhār Bāgh, meaning ‘four gardens’, consisted of foursquares within a square; a quadripartite ground-plan. Inaddition to the various formal gardens in Iran, the gardensof the Taj Mahal in India are also an example of a formalgarden. Examples of informal gardens are the familybāghs found on the outskirts of major Iranian cities suchas Tehrān, Esfahān and Shirāz.In Persian (Fārsi,) the word chāhār means fourand bāgh means garden. Chāhār Bāgh was the formalgarden style used by Cyrus the Great for hispalace gardens at Pasargadae. This garden atPasargadae is the earliest known example of theChāhār Bāgh, a design that became the coredesign for subsequent formal Iranian gardens upto and including the gardens of India’s Mughalemperors. The gardens of Shah Jahan’s Taj Mahal are basedon Cyrus’ Chāhār Bāgh design.Some people think that the four quadrants of thegarden, the four rectangles or squares within a rectangleor square, symbolised the four quadrants of the PersianEmpire. The squares were created by walkways and straightwhite limestone lined water channels that connectedsquare basins or pools placed at regular intervals. Thesewater-courses or aqueducts formed the principle andsecondary axes of the quadripartite layout and are theearliest known record of gravity-fed water rills cascadinginto regularly spaced basins arranged in a geometricsystem. The channels and basins served both a practicalirrigation function and an aesthetic function. Besideswhich, they also modified the climate of the immediatesurroundings.There were two pavilions beside the Pasargadae36The Rosicrucian Beacon -- September 2012