MAGIANS. The name of the members of the priestly order among the ancient Medes and Persians. The word is of Indian origin, being derived from mag, which, in the Pehlvi language, signifies priest. In the last half . of the seventh century before Christ, Zoroaster reformed and reorganized the order, and divided the members into three classes or degrees: 1. Herbeds, or Apprentices; 2. Mobecls, or Teacher and Master; 3. Destur Mobeds, or Perfect Master. The Magians claimed to have the gift of prophecy, a super natural wisdom, and power to control the secret forces of nature. They were held in the highest reverence among the people, and no transaction of importance took place without or against their advice. Hence their almost unbounded influence in private as well as in public life; and, quite apart from the education of the young princes being in their hands, they also formed the constant companions of the ruling monarchs. Their mode of life was of the simplest and severest, befitting their station. The food, especially of the lower classes, consisted almost entirely of flour and vege tables; they wore white garments, slept on the ground, and were altogether subjected to the most rigorous discipline.
The initiation consisted of the most imposing and mysterious ceremonies. Purifications of several months duration, and fastings of the severest test, had to precede it; and it was long before the candidate could be led into the realms of the dead, where all is darkness and misery, thence to the higher stages of glory and perpetual life. Gradually, however, their influence, which once had been powerful enough to raise them to the throne itself, began to wane, and in the course of time, its members dwindled down to the number of seven, and finally to extinction. In the seventeenth century an order of Magians was established in Florence, and still later a sub-division of the order of Rosicrucians bore this name. We find, also, the appellation Magus applied to the 8th degree, or the 1st degree of the Grand Mysteries of the Illuminati, to the 9th and last degree of the German, Gold and Rose-Cross, and to the 7th grade of the of the Strict Observance. Thory also mentions a Sovereign Magus of the 5th degree of the Clerical-Cabalistic system.