Ahura Mazda vs Angra Mainyu

The Wise Lord, uncreated creator of the good world in Zoroastrianism, addressed by Zarathushtra in the Gathas and credited by the Achaemenid kings with their rule; opposed by the Hostile Spirit, Angra Mainyu.

Uncreated in orthodox Zoroastrianism. In the Sasanian-era Zurvanite current, known mainly from Christian and Armenian polemic, Ohrmazd and Ahriman are twin sons of Zurvan, Infinite Time.

Zarathushtra's hymns address Ahura Mazda as the creator who established the earth below and held up the sky, who ordered the paths of sun and stars, and who is the father of the good powers: Truth (*Asha*), Good Mind (*Vohu Manah*), and Devotion (*Armaiti*), whom one hymn calls his daughter. The Gathas are hymns of questioning and devotion rather than narratives; they present a world in which every being must choose between truth and the lie, and in which the Wise Lord will judge by that choice.

The Hostile Spirit of Zoroastrianism, source of death, lies, and every plague, who in the Vendidad 'counter-creates' an evil against each good land Ahura Mazda makes, and who will be defeated at the end of time.

In the Gathas one of two primal spirits, called twins (Yasna 30.3); in the Zurvanite myth the elder of Zurvan's twin sons, born of his father's doubt.

The opening chapter of the Vendidad lists sixteen good lands created by Ahura Mazda and, against each, a plague created by Angra Mainyu, 'who is all death': the serpent and winter, the locust, plunder, doubt, witchcraft, and more. The pattern of creation and counter-creation is the core of his character: he makes nothing good, only corruption of what is good.