WHILE the Elkesaites form a connecting link in the Johannite Tradition that proved its value in our inquiry, they weren't called by the name of Johannites. This, too, is important, because at the time the Legend of the Templars would have been circulated, there would have to be something connecting the name of Saint John with a particular sect. A sect of Sabians of St. John, or Christians of St. John, for example .
The Elkesaites, Essenes, and Ebionites were little known in the 18th Century. Practically all that was known about them was that they were sects which the heresiologists didn't understand, therefore they were condemned outright as either inventions, or as heathen sects. They were not known as Johannites, properly speaking. (1) Of these, the Elkesaites alone bore the designation of Sabian. But there is an older sect, which answers, at least in the European reports about them, to the name "Christians of St. John." These are the Mandaeans, the Mandai Iyahi, or the Wise Men of John.
This is perhaps the most mysterious sect that has ever existed. Its very existence spits in the face of "traditional" orthodox religions. That is the key to their longevity and their ability to survive despite the great odds against their doing so. The evidence we possess suggests that they are the oldest surviving sect from antiquity. Zoroastrianism is out, since what exists of it is based upon the Sassanid Magi Cultus. Judaism is out, since what we have in Judaism is based on the Rabbinic cultus, or Rabbanim, which at best can be traced only as far back as the end of the Second Temple. Christianity and Islam are out, for obvious reasons. Buddhism and Hinduism are good competitors, but even there, what we have in either of these groups today, does not possess any direct ancestry, at least in the same manner as the Mandaeans do.
In short, it is in the Mandaean religion that we see a cultus which defies time itself. (2)
EnKi, we have seen, instituted the first Order of Scientists, called the Wise Men, (3) at least 88,000 years ago according to The Code of the Eternal . (4) Over time, the priesthood in Sumer, at Eridu and elsewhere survived. When the Sumerian empire collapsed circa 2000 B. C. E., the Nefilim sought a safer haven. Although we shall deal with this important phase in the history of ideas in another place, (5) it is important here, to briefly comment upon it.
According to the story unfolded in The Earth Chronicles, (6) and indeed in the texts upon which the Earth Chronicles is based, Enki's lands were in the African continent. To Enki belonged Ethiopia. To Marduk, Egypt proper. To DuMuZi, Nubia. To Ninagal, the area coinciding to that reaching from Kenya to Lake Nyasaland. Gibil received Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, and surrounding areas. To Nergal was given the southernmost region, where he and his consort Ereshkigal built the Palace of the Underworld. This is where the idea of the Underworld came from in the first place. All lands below a certain line, south of the equator, were known as the Underworld, or the Lower World, because the main area of operation was in the middle region, and the lands of the Gods were always in the upper region, or Upper World. It is as simple as that, even though we are still told to accept pie in the sky explanations.
The Mandaeans claim their ancestors came to Southern Babylonia from Africa. (7) More specifically, 60,000 saints came out of "the land of Pharaoh", two hundred and forty years after the appearance of the true Messiah.
In the Mandaean cultus, we see a survival of the Chaldean Magi, modified by some Jewish, some Persian, and some Ophite beliefs and practices. We must qualify this, because there are those who will say that this is mere nonsense.
The Jewish priesthood as we know it to exist at the time of the Second Temple, received all or most of its material, not from the Desert Tabernacle, but from the Priesthood at Babylon. At that time, the Chaldeans had taken over the Priesthood at Babylon.
The Chaldeans came to Babylonia from Southern Arabia, in what is known as Saba. This is where the name Sabaean originally derives.
Also, the Jewish priesthood derived all or most of its dualism from the Persians.
A mixture between the Chaldean cultus, the Persian cultus, and the Hebrew cultus resulted in the Jewish Priesthood.
By the time that the Jewish Priesthood split up, and one group withdrew to the desert region, in the Transjordan area, a lot of schismatic sects arose, and flourished, well past the destruction of the Second Temple at or around 70 c.e.
It is known that many of these groups evolved into the Elkesaites, Sampsaeans, and Ebionites, as we have demonstrated in a previous section.
It is also known that while the Ophite Gnosis for the most part came from Asia Minor, Syria, and Samaria (aka "Little Sumer"), a great deal of it fused together with some of these schismatic Jewish sects.
After all, these sects held that it was the fault of the Jews for being so obstinate, that they lost Jerusalem. Therefore, Jehovah and the Jews became symbols of the enemy to these heretical Jewish Sects, and to all the other Gnostic sects as well. The "maguffin" in this case was not in being recognized as the true and authentic, orthodox version of the reality presented to this race's collective nervous system. The "maguffin" was that small, embattled, and highly contested piece of prize real estate we know as Jerusalem, and the Priesthood responsible for communicating with God, directly, during the festival known as the Day of Atonement, and the land surrounding it. It is still contested today.
By the time the Mandaeans came into being as a distinct movement, it would only be natural for them to view Moses and Jesus as false prophets, since their missions had not been fulfilled, and only led to more bloodshed and misery.
Also, to hail the Pharaoh and the Egyptians who were drowned in the Red Sea as saints, shows that the Mandaean priests responsible for developing their literature had a vitriolic sense of humor, the same kind of vitriolic sense of humor that the people responsible for creating the Ophite stories possessed. And, too, the same sort of vitriolic sense of humor any and all true saints possess.
The Chaldeans migrated to Babylonia from Southern Arabia sometime in the 9th to 8th Centuries b.c.e.
The Mandaeans were called by the Muslims "Sabians" after the fact that the former were a baptist sect. Could there be any connection between the Sabian Mandaeans and the Sabaeans? (8)
Yes, because the Chaldeans migrated from Saba. Now we get to another hot potato. (9) One of the texts in the Necronomicon , which does, in fact, bear some resemblance to some characteristics in the Mandaean religion as described by the Encyclopaedists and by scholars like Rudolph, is called "The Magan Text ."
Although Magan is traditionally associated (these days) with the Sinai Peninsula, it was not so a long time ago. Magan was once referred to Arabia Fœlix, where the Sabaeans existed.
"The verses here following come from the secret text of some of the priests of a cult which is all that is left of the Old Faith that existed before Babylon was built..." (10)
If this is an authentic text, and the Book's efficacy proves it is more than a mere pipe dream of H. P. Lovecraft, then it might have been taken down by the Mad Arab, or someone like him, at the time stated.
Certainly, as we have mentioned previously, there are indications that books of this sort existed or were fabled to have existed, at Damascus, and at other key places, at the time in question.
Also interesting is the fact that the planets play an important part in the rituals in the Necro. The Mandaeans consider the planetary spirits to be evil spirits, leading their people away from the true God, while the author(s) of the Necro. regard the planetary deities as important entities worthy of worship. This might seem contradictory, but it is evident that there are similarities too close to be simply dismissed.
The evil entities, and, too, the concept of evil, in both the Necro., and in the Mandaean Mythos are so similar, that we can only say that they derive from the same source. We're not simply talking about Serpents and Goat headed men with horns, or she-devils. We are speaking of the concept of pure evil. The force that is the exact reverse of all that is truly beautiful and good, and just, which is personified best in Egyptian deities like Hathor, and in Sumerian deities like EnKi, Ninharsag, and to some extent, love goddesses like Inanna.
Sixty years ago, the hell creatures were brought forth from the pit in which they had been chained for many centuries, and the two major competing Ideologies of the 20th century were foisted upon humankind as a result.
We are speaking, of course, of both Nazism and Communism, at least the Communism of Stalin, the ugliness that Soviet Russia really was, and all Soviet Bloc countries; and the utter ugliness that Nazi Germany was. Unfortunately it wasn't capped and contained like it should have been, it was recruited by the United States. But that is for a different story.
We might be considered pedestrian for dealing with a text like the Necro., along with our reliance upon works such as Sitchin's writings and Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, but... there is much more to the story than wishing it would go away.
Recently, Picknett and Prince produced a work on the U. S. Military uses of Psi, during the 1970s c.e., [The Stargate Conspiracy] and this came under fire by various persons. These conspiracies don't exist, goes the logic. Perhaps not, but the links and connections exist, and that cannot be denied. The players might be dead or retired, or insane by now, but the links in the causal chain are there, and they have caused their effects to be felt.
So, by our relying on materials produced by so-called popular sources, or seemingly dubious sources, so called, we are only compounding the error. Perhaps we should just explain everything away using a Joseph Campbell style model, that everything is a part of the psyche and nothing more. Balderdash to that! The historical connections exist, and we are here to lay them before the reader, or at least drop a few hints.
When we are told that the Mad Arab was in Damascus, it reminds us of the statement that Christian Rosencreuz travelled to Damascus in order to seek the wisdom of the Wise Men of Damkar.
People have often mistaken Damkar to be Damascus, and still do to this day. In fact, the eminent Jocelyn Godwin, in a paper we saw on the Internet, quoting her, makes this error. It is a real error, because Damkar was (and still is) a real place on the map. Damkar is to be found on an Abraham Ortelius map, and its location is near Sa'na in Saba. Damkar was, then, in Saba, where Magan was. And the material in the Necronomicon corresponds to the R+C grade hierarchy, if one studies it.
The Magan Text contains variant forms of some of the most important ceremonial myths acted out each year by the Priests. (See, for example, our pieces, Akitu , and Duku and Atonement .) The Book of the Fifty Names is but a continuation of the Enuma Elish from the Magan Text , in grimoire format. The Descent of Inanna is perhaps the ancestor of all Initiation schema that exist or have existed on this planet.
It is unfortunate that the editors of the Necronomicon have labored to tie the book with the Yezidis. Not that the Yezidis aren't important. We shall get to them later on in this work.
If a connection were to exist between the Necro ., and the Yezidis, an even closer one exists in the case of the Mandaeans. Be that as it may, the close connection is not close enough. It is likely that the compilers read up on the subject matter that was available. See the Bibliography in the introductory section of that work to see what I mean.
The Chaldaean Magi are the originators of the Magick Book. From them came the Nergal Priests of Cutha, (11) and the Priests of Opis, on the Tigris. This last named group, migrated northwest, at the time of the Persian Conquest, settling first in Phrygia, then Pergamum, then Rome, ultimately transferring the powers of their Priesthood to the Roman State Religion, at or around 133 B.C.E.
The Nergals and their fellow Priests and Magi brought the antique Johannite Tradition to Palestine, when they colonized Samaria, for that is where the first usage of the name shows up, not as John, but as Dosti, or Dostai, which later became known as Dositheos, Greek for Jonathan. It can also be found as al-Dustan. We have amply discussed the etymology of the name John (and the real name on which it is based, i.e., Jonathan) in the Qadosh section above.
The Gnosis got a firm footing first in Samaria, and, in Asia Minor, most notably in Phrygia. This is why. No other factor can satisfactorily explain it. The only other acceptable explanation is that both areas witnessed a huge influx of exiled Hebrews. The 10 Tribes of Israel, in Samaria, as the Northern Kingdom. Later, at the time of their exile, a lot of them travelled to Asia Minor, and settled in Phrygia and other countries.
So, we have, from the Chaldaean Magi, three distinct groupings:
1. The Samaritan Current (DOSITHEOS, SIMON, etc.)
2. The Phrygian Current (Naassenes, Ophites, even the Roman State Religion)
3. The Sabaeans, the Mandaeans (and related groups), the Yezidis and the Harranians.
It has been necessary to dwell a little upon the roots of the Mandaeans, because we shall see that not only are they a faithful survival of certain important Gnostic currents, but also of the Chaldaean Magi. (12) They are an Ancestor Cultus.
In them we can see traces of what the Gnosis was, before it became the Gnosis.
While the Portuguese missionaries who encountered them tried to identify them with John the Baptist, on account of their Baptismal rites, and the name of John the Baptist in their sacred texts, we are convinced that the origins of the Baptist sect which John originally belonged to are to be found in this Johannite sect. That is, the origin of the Mandaean cultus goes back farther than most people care to go. The name John, as we have seen, is a much older name, and is, as we have also seen, connected to EnKi:
Enki / Ea / U-An / Oannes / Iannes / Ioannes / John / Jon.
Enki / Ea / Iyahi / Yahyah / John / Jon.
Jon / Jonathan / Dositheos / Dostai / al-Dustan.
Picknett and Prince, in The Templar Revelation show how the transmission from the Dositheos cultus to the Mandaean Johannites might have taken place, but the purist academics don't want us to take them seriously. They bring up several valid points, though. We shall get to them later in another part of the work.
The Mandaeans are said to pay special reverence to EnKi on account of the fact that EnKi was regarded by the Babylonians as the Lord of the Waters. Life came from the Waters, they hold, and this would be an embarrassment to all the fundamentalists who labor to teach the Book of Genesis as if it were literal history. All true religious and scientific systems hold this view, that Life came from the Waters. Only the false cults consider it to a heresy, like they once considered the Earth (minus the upper case "e") to be the center of the Universe, and to be flat, and if one went too close to the edge (i.e., got too far away from the authorities) one would just fall off the edge where "there bee dragons."
[In this initial publication, some of the following sections are not presently available. Those that are, are highlighted by links to the appropriate sections. More is coming in the future, and the entire article shall be published by the final updating of AntiqIllum version 2.0.]
In this section of the Work (as a whole) we are presenting data on the Mandaeans. Not only our own views, and conclusions, but data that we have found.
FIRST, we shall give the historical background, and labor to establish the context for their inclusion in this work, namely that they are a connection between the Sumerian Traditions of the past, and the Johannite tradition which is the main subject of this Work.
SECOND, we shall present some key elements of the Mythos. At least, enough of it to have an idea of how the transmission of ideas from old to new took place.
THIRD, Mandaean ideas in re Chronology and Eschatology are to be explored, because in them we see some influence from the Ophite Gnosis, and some influence rubbed off on the Isma'ilis and the Babylonian Jews who were responsible for formulating the earliest Kabbalah.
FOURTH, we shall give a delineation of the Mandaean Priesthood and give an account of the Festivals.
FIFTH, we will show the influences the Mandaeans had on the West, and on other cultures which had a greater influence on the west, than even the Mandaeans had.
SIXTH, we present our conclusions and show where this is leading.
SEVENTH, at the end of the article proper we have a section entitled "READINGS." This section presents the documentary material that we quote at length.
EIGHTH, we present our sources, and also a listing of MANDAEAN Resources on the Web.
1. We wrote this at a time when we had not yet gotten access to the wealth of information that exists on the Internet. It seems that the Mandaeans, as well as the Isma'ili and Yezidi communities, have a strong presence on the World Wide Web. For proof of this see our special links collection. Also, the research that is available online, written by Mandaean scholars, tends to support our own conclusions, to a point, but not entirely. When we say Mandaean scholars, we are not referring to pioneers like Lady E. S. Drower or Kurt Rudolph, but to actual Mandaeans, who find their culture threatened by trends in Modernization. These brave souls have to get this material out, and make it available, because so many Mandaeans live in the West these days, particularly since their native homeland seems to be in the area of Iraq hit most savagely by the United States' own Military manoeuvres.
2. We apologize to all Mandaeans who might happen to read this. We understand the disgust true Mandaeans feel towards "outsiders" who write about them, or who try to connect outside cults with the Sabians, Sabaeans, Nasoreans, Nazaraeans, whether of Basra, Bosra, Bostra, or Bussora! Our work is not intended to offend you. It is an attempt at understanding what really happened in the past, rather than trying to tie the past to our own low-rent pedigree! We hold that no one sect possesses any direct Duranki lineage, like the Jews, Moslems, and Christians would have us believe. Rather, we hold that it is a characteristic peculiar to certain types of people, whether racial characteristics, genetic characteristics, or by belief pattern association, crossing all racial barriers, all barriers of belief, politics, nationality.
3. After the works of Zecharia Sitchin. Some purists may sneer at us for choosing the works of Z. Sitchin and the series of books by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, or, for that matter, the works of Aleister Crowley. But, then, we can sneer back with as much, or more, contempt at the drivel some people consider to be legitimate. We've not merely accepted this material blindly, we have tested it, as best we can, and we have found that the main reason why these authors are considered to be crackpots is because what they reveal has a great deal more truth value in it than comfortable safe scholars so-called want to admit.
4. And, originally, to Sitchin's The Wars of Gods and Men.
5. I.e., in Readings In The Authentic Tradition - 1: Indian Survivals of the Wise Ones.
6. The Title of the series of works by Z. Sitchin, encompassing six volumes: The 12th Planet , The Stairway to Heaven , The Wars of Gods and Men , The Lost Realms , When Time Began , and The Cosmic Code.
7. For our research, see the list of sources, to be furnished at the end of this section. At the time this was written we were relying primarily on the articles in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (ERE ), in the 11th Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (by far the best Edition of the EB for scholars, today's version is a mere joke by comparison.); the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia ; and a few other sources. As we rewrite this, we shall be incorporating the materials we have taken from the Web, and works like Kurt Rudolph's GNOSIS .
8. It is worth mentioning here that in the website Mandaean World, http://www.geocities.com/mandaeans/Sabians6.html - the Mandaean author demonstrates a complete hatred for the Sabians of Harran, or Harranians. The fact that the Harranians took the name of Sabians in order to escape persecution is a badge of disgrace, to him. We would probably agree, to some extent, if we were Mandaean, but, it is necessary to recognize, at least to we Westerners, (and hence, "outsiders") that not only do the Mandaeans provide us with a key to how the Authentic Tradition survived during the Dark Ages, but that certain Isma'ili groups, which we shall examine in another section, and the Sabians of Harran, or Harranians, are also to be counted on our list of ancestors as well. This is much more like the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys. It is like the conflict between the Jews and the Moslems, too. The Harranians influenced Western Esoterica much more than any of the other groups, it cannot be denied. We cannot condemn them, because to do so would be to admit to ignorance. But, we cannot condemn the other groups either, because they too provide us with keys to our past, and to the belief systems and practices which we cherish today, and which have had a great influence upon Modern Society.
9. Which is to say, the dreaded book, The Necronomicon . It matters nothing to us that the book could be a put-up job, because the magick in there really works, for one thing, and the lore upon which it is based really does possess an antiquity, hence, a pedigree. Of course, it is the Simon edition we hold to be authentic over the vastly overrated and highly contrived Turner edition. In this connection, too, it might be worth mentioning that H. P. Lovecraft states in his "History of the Necronomicon " article, that Abdul Alhazred was "a mad poet of Sanaa, in Yemen." It is highly likely, or at least possible, because this is where the Wise Men of Damkar existed, as we shall see later. At any rate, either Lovecraft or E. Hoffman Price are to be credited for initiated research on their part.
10. The Necronomicon , Simon Edition, Part 10, "The Magan Text," Introduction. (Page 153 in the paperback edition.)
11. See below, in another part of this work, (not yet completed). The Nergals had the Magical Book of Kings , the Mandaeans had the Recitations of the Kings , or the Book of John . Similarly, the Mandaeans had the Ginza Rabba while the early Kabbalists had the Raza Rabba , and it is possible that some of these early Magical Books could be related at least partially.
12. Now, there might be disagreement with this, that is to be expected. But, we can trace this development in what materials we possess, and what we have seen.