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How did the Magi divide animals into beneficent and noxious creatures?

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religious sites of ancient Indo-Iranian peoples — ancient Iranian religion Significant religious sites and sites containing religious artifacts of ancient Indo-Iranian peoples, including those of peoples of adjacent areas and modern Zoroastrians.

In the context of ancient Iranian religion, the Magi—a priestly tribe of Median origin—played a central role in formalizing a dualistic worldview that permeated all aspects of life, including the classification of the natural world.1

Under their influence, the animal kingdom was systematically divided into two distinct categories: beneficent animals and noxious creatures. This classification reflected the broader cosmological dichotomy between chaos and cosmos, as well as the ethical opposition between truth (arta) and falsehood (drug).1

This dualism was so pervasive that it even extended to language, where specific "ahuric" (good) and "daivic" (evil) terms were used to describe the same objects, such as body parts. While the Magi were instrumental in articulating this dualist ideology and emphasizing ritual purity, it is important to note that this system was not Gnostic; it did not posit that evil originated from the corruption or fall of a spiritual being into matter.1