“Finally, and to return again to the nazars, Zaratus is mentioned by Pliny in the following words: “He was Zoroaster and Nazaret”. As Zoroaster is called princeps of the Magi, and nazar signifies separated or consecrated, is it not a Hebrew rendering of mag? Volney believes so. The Persian word Na-zaruan means millions of years and refers to the Chaldean “Ancient of Days”. Hence the name of the Nazars or Nazarenes, who were consecrated to the service of the Supreme One God, the kabalistic En-soph, or the Ancient of Days, the “Aged of the aged”.
But the word nazar may also be found in India. In Hindustani nazar is sight, internal or supernatural vision; nazar band-i means fascination, a mesmeric or magical spell; and nazaran is the word for sightseeing or vision. Professor Wilder thinks that as the word Zeruana is nowhere to be found in the Avesta, but only in the later Parsi books, it came from the Magians, who composed the Persian sacred caste in the Sassan period but were originally Assyrians. “Turan, of the poets”, he says, “I consider to be Aturia, or Assyria; and that Zohak, (Az-dahaka, Dei-okes, or Astyages, the Serpent-king, was Assyrian, Median, and Babylonian – when those countries were united.”
This opinion does not, however, in the least implicate our statement that the secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, or the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth, or Hermes, and of the adepts of whatever age and nationality, including the Chaldean kabalists and the Jewish nazars, were identical from the beginning.
When we use the term Buddhists, we do not mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism instituted by the followers of Gautama-Buddha, nor the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret philosophy of Sakyamuni, which in its essence is certainly identical with the ancient wisdom-religion of the sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism. The “schism” of Zoroaster, as it is called, is a direct proof of it. For it was no schism, strictly speaking, but merely a partially-public exposition of strictly monotheistic religious truths, hitherto taught only in the sanctuaries, and that he had learned from the Brahmans.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 