More on the history of Iran: Mani

Intrigued by all these religions I'm reading about. Zoroastrianism still exists today, but Mithraism doesn't. The Wikipedia article linked mentioned they are mystery religions.

Read about Manichaeism. "Manichaeism was quickly successful and spread far through Aramaic-speaking regions. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to early Christianity in the competition to replace classical polytheism before the spread of Islam. Under the Roman Dominate, Manichaeism was persecuted by the Roman state and was eventually stamped out in the Roman Empire."

They believed in secret knowledge from personal direct experiences with the divine. In 240 Mani received from the divine the message not to eat meat, drink wine, or sleep with women. He was influenced by Zurvanism. (Source: Axworthy History of Iran)

Manichaeism seems anti-copulation and had an elaborate metaphysic to support misogyny. "...his ideas were complex, varied, and innovative and not all bad." (Axworthy History of Iran p. 51)

Though it influenced Islam, Mohammed said all faiths would be saved except Manichaeism. 

Their prophet was Mani (216-277). He was born south of Baghdad, in Mesopotamia during the Parthian empire, born into a Elcesaites family. Elcesaites is a sect of Christian Judaism, later seen as heretical. 

Imagine Mani accompanying generals in war, Mani on the Sassanid side, Plotinus on the Roman side. 

Supposedly Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was originally Manichaeism and smuggled a lot of ideas into Christianity. 

P52-53 quote Axworthy:

"As pursued later by the Western Christian church in medieval Europe, the full grim panoply of Manichaean/Augustinian formulae emerged to blight milions of lives, and they are still exerting their sad effect today--the distaste for the human body, the disgust for and guilt about sexuality, the misogyny, the determinism (and the tendency toward irresponsibility that emerges from it), the obsessive idealization of the spirit, the disdain for the material—all distant indeed from the original teachings of Jesus. One could argue that the extreme Manichaean duality of evil materiality versus good spiritualion emerged most strongly in heresies like those of the Cathars and the Bogomils that the church pursued most energetically (the same Bogomils from whom the English language acquired the term "bugger"). The great scholar and Persianist Bausani (from whom I have taken much of my account of Manichaean beliefs) doubted the connection with these Western heresies, but many of their beliefs and practices showed a close identity with those of Manichaeism, which is not easily discounted. The ferocity of the medieval church's persecution of the Cathars and others derived really from the dangerous similarity between the heretics doctrines and the orthodox ones— they had merely carried orthodox doctrine to its logical extreme. The church was trying to destroy its own ugly shadow. The Eastern Orthodox Church, sensibly, never embraced Augustinian theology to the same extent."

That's a pretty strong statement.

I suppose I've evolved to the place where I don't want to eat meat, I don't want to drink, and I'm alone but open to being with someone, and I can see how this is a kind of awful strain, and I sort of believe that people should develop their own spirituality and way of being, and only follow others for inspiration, not enforced by morality police.