Paradise

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Paradise evokes thoughts of sublime perfection in beauty in the hearts of most spiritual people. The word is used particularly used in faiths that share the Abrahamic connexion. For other faiths, paradise is often found to translate perfectly similar concepts.

[edit] Roots of the garden

There is a consensus that paradise is a Persian word. It seems to have originally meant a walled garden, and here is the beginning of its secrecy — the joy of pushing an overgrown garden gate to be embraced by an unexpected paradise.

The Avestan (the sacred language of Zoroastrianism) word pairidaeza, can be broken down as pairi, 'around', and daeza, 'wall' or 'brick'.

[edit] Components of a paradise

It seems that the old Persian paradise was a rectangle of cultivated and irrigated land with a central pool, which was also rectangular. Irrigation canals would run through the garden: from a spring into the pool, and from the pool through the whole garden and beyond. A fruit tree might stand over the spring's opening — the tree and water of life. The garden would be filled with many fruit trees and scented plants, and plane trees would be used to give more structure to the design. A slightly raised platform, often bearing a pavilion, would be used for viewing the garden.

[edit] Eden

There are many of the aspects of biblical Eden that reflect the paradise tradition.

[edit] Built paradise

The Taj Mahal and Alhambra are examples of paradise that still stand.

[edit] Dante's Divine Comedy

The third part of Dante's Divine Comedy is entitled Paradiso. In it Dante is guided by Beatrice through the nine spheres of heaven, which correspond to theories of the universe of Aristotle and Ptolomy.

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Paradise. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the Religion-wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.