1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (E.B.) EB-5:195a-b. (14th Edition.)
THE CHALDAEANS probably first came from Arabia, the supposed original home of the Semitic races, at a very early date along the coast of the Persian Gulf and settled in the neighborhood of UR ('UR of the Chaldees,' Gen xi. 28), whence they began a series of encroachments, partly by warfare and partly by immigration, against the other Semitic Babylonians. These aggressions after many centuries ended in the Chaldaean supremacy of Nabopolassar and his successors (from c. 625), although there is no positive proof that Nabopolassar was purely Chaldaean in blood. The sudden rise of the later Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nabopolassar, must have tended to produce so thorough an amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, who had theretofore been considered as two kindred branches of the same original Semite stock, that in the course of time no perceptible differences existed between them. The language of these Chaldaeans differed in no way from the ordinary Semitic Babylonian idiom which was practically identical with that of Assyria. Consequently, the term 'Chaldaean' came quite naturally to be used in later days as synonymous with 'Babylonian,' and through a misunderstanding the term CHALDEE was subsequently applied to the Aramaic language."
2. EB 11th Ed., 17-557b-c; Schaff-Herzog, VII-§11, 12 [pp. 150-1.] (hereafter referred to as S-H.)
"The foundation of the system is obviously to be sought in Gnosticism, and more particularly in the older type of that doctrine (known from the Serpent symbol as Ophite or Naassene) which obtained in Mesopotamia and further Asia generally. But it is equally plain that the Ophite nucleus has from time to time received very numerous and often curiously perverted accretions from Babylonian Judaism, Oriental Christianity and Parsism, exhibiting a striking example of religious syncretism. In the Gnostic basis itself it is not difficult to recognize the general features of the religion of ancient Babylonia, and thus we are brought nearer a solution of the problem as to the origin of Gnosticism in general." (EB)
"The origins of Mandaean doctrine, it must firmly be maintained, are to be sought in the religion of Babylonia; and Babylonia itself was the place where it arose. A Jewish or Christian source in Palestine is out of the question. Mandaeans are not the descendants of the Disciples of John the Baptist, although he and the Jordan are so frequently mentioned in their writings. The tradition of the people themselves that they arose in Galilee, were persecuted in Jerusalem, and driven thence by the Caliphs is historically worthless. (1)
"They are to be compared with such sects as the Hemerobaptists of the Church Fathers (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV., xxii. 6; NPNF, 2 ser., i. 199; Epiphanius, Haer., xvii.; 'Clementine Recognitions,' 1.54: 'Some even of the disciples of John, who seem to be great ones, have separated themselves from the people and proclaimed their own master as the Christ'; ANF, viii. 92)." (SH)
"...it is true that their baptismal praxis and its interpretation place them in the same religious group with the Hemerobaptists of Eusebius (H. E., iv 22) and Epiphanius (Haer., xvii) or with the sect of disciples of John who remained apart from Christianity. Their reverence for John is of a piece with their whole syncretizing attitude towards the New Testament. Indeed, as has been seen, they appropriate the entire personale of the Bible from Adam, Seth, Abel, Enos and Pharaoh to Jesus and John, a phenomenon which bears witness to the close relations of the Mandaean doctrine both with Judaism and Christianity - not the less close because they were relations of hostility." (EB)
"To connect them with these early sects is no more right than to associate them with the Nazarioi of Epiphanius (Haer., xviii). The mistake arose in the misapprehension of missionaries, of the seventeenth century, who mistook them for a kind of Christians on account of their practise of baptism and related them with the Baptist and with Galilee.
"It is true that during the second and third centuries the religion passed through a period of sympathetic feeling for Christianity and was influenced by its ritual...
"But the Antichristian bias appears in making Moses a false prophet, Jesus the evil planet Mercury, and the Holy Ghost a most devilish evil spirit, as well as in the polemics against Christian monasticism and other Christian institutions. Still more observable is the anti Judaic bias, especially in the utter abhorrence of circumcision." (SH)
"The history of religion presents other examples of the degradation of holy to demonic figures on occasion of religious schism. The use of the word "Jordan" even in the plural, for "sacred water", is precisely similar to that by the Naassenes described in the Philosophumena (v. 7); there denotes the spiritualizing sanctifying fluid which pervades the world of light." (EB)
"Thus the name of the Biblical Jordan was employed in the earliest Gnostic systems, and notably in that of the Peratae (who were in the Euphrates region)...." (SH)
"The notions of the Egyptians and the Read Sea, according to the same work (v. 16), are used by the Peratae much as by the Mandaeans. And the position assigned by the Sethians () to Seth is precisely similar to that given by the Mandaeans to Abel.
"Both alike are merely old Babylonian Divinities in a new Biblical garb. The genesis of Mandaeism and the older Gnosis from the old and elaborate Babylonio-Chaldaean Religion is clearly seen also in the fact that the names of the old pantheon (as for example those of the planetary divinities) are retained, but their holders degraded to the position of demons - a conclusion confirmed by the fact that the Mandaeans, like the allied Ophites, Peratae, and Manichaeans, certainly have their original seat in Mesopotamia and Babylonia." (EB)
"The Mandaean Baptism cannot be derived from the Jewish baptism of proselytes, nor is it Christian baptism taken over and exaggerated; the Mandaean practise is diametrically opposed to both. Christian baptism implies Metanoia, ethical rebirth, and it marks the inauguration of an ethical renewing of the heart after the pattern of the Savior; the Mandaean rite, so frequently repeated, is a theurgic-magical operation (2) and aims at an ever-increasing insight into the secrets of the kingdom of light through the mediation of water, the element of the King of Light." (SH)
"It seems clear that the trinity of ANU, BEL, and EA in the old Babylonian religion has its counterpart in the Mandaean Pira, Ayar, and Mana Rabba. The D'Mutha of Mana is the Damkina, the wife of EA, mentioned by Damaskius as , wife of . Manda d'Hayye and his image Hibil Ziva with his incarnations clearly correspond to the old Babylonian Marduk, Merodach, the 'first-born' son of EA, with his incarnations, the chief divinity of the city of Babylon, the mediator and redeemer in the old religion." (EB)
"The Mandaean light-god Mana Rabba is to be identified with the Babylonian EA, and his emanation Manda d'Hayye or his son Hibil Ziwa with Ea's son Marduk. Ea, the god of profound knowledge, father of the mediator Marduk, enthroned in the world-sea, whose holy element is water, is the EA of the brilliant ocean of heaven, as comes out in the Ayar-Yora and the heavenly Jordan of the Mandaeans." (SH)
"Hibil's contest with darkness has its prototype in Marduk's battle with Chaos, the dragon Tiamat, which (another striking parallel) partially swallows Marduk, just as is related of Hibil and the Manichaean primal man. Other features borrowed by the Mandaean mythology under this head from the well-known Epos of Istar's descensus ad Inferos." (EB)
"...and the seat of EA in the North with the Mandaean direction of worship to that quarter are sufficiently obvious. Similar relationship can be established with Manichaeanism. Mani was in his youth an adherent of the Babylonian Mu'Tasilah ('Baptizers'), an early Babylonian sect. Palestinian Hemerobaptists, Elkesaites, Nazarenes, and Ebionites were sects which propagated in the West under Jewish influences Babylonian ideas, especially those of a mediator and the closely connected rite of Baptism; these sects took form in pre-Christian times and later were hostile to Christianity. John the Baptist gave to the rite of Baptism, thus derived, a new ethical content by connecting with it the Old Testament expectation of a Messiah. Similarly the second sacrament of the Mandaeans, the Eucharist, must be explained upon the usage grounded in nature-religions, in honor paid to the pure elements of nature and its gifts, and not as a perversion of the Christian mystery. The original teaching of Mani could not have been very different in this matter from the common Mandaean-Gnostic doctrine." (SH)
3. Budge, Amulets and Talismans, Chapter IX (pp. 239ff); "Mandaean (Mandaitic) Amulets."
"The Mandaeans (Mandaye), who are also known as Sabaeans (i.e., worshippers of the host of heaven), and Mughtasils(i.e., 'the washers', because of the frequency of their ablutions), and 'Christians of St. John' (because of their tradition that they are descended from the disciples of St. John the Baptist), are a Semitic people who live in Lower Babylonia and on the banks of the Shatt - al - 'Arab, and who speak a dialect similar to that found in the Talmudh Babhli. (3) Their ancestors before the Christian era were pagans, and practised magic, and believed in a form of astrology which seems to have been of Babylonian origin. The Christian Mandaeans clung to the belief in the magic practices of their ancestors, and on it they welded many elements of belief which they derived from the Gnostics, the Jews, the Iranians or Persians, and Christians. They had no Sabbaths, and did not practise circumcision. When they pray they do not turn towards Jerusalem, but towards the north, where are the great mountains from which flow the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The sources of these rivers is the World of Light where the Supreme Life, i.e., God, lives and reigns. In the waters of these they bathe morning and evening, especially on Sundays and days of fasting. They also observe a bathing festival in which whole communities go to the river and bathe ceremonially under the direction of their priests, or according to their private rules. They believe that through these immersions in the 'waters of light' they receive a renewal of life from the Great Life, the Master of the Universe, and all virtues. It would be impossible for them to practise their religion in a region where there are no rivers and streams, and it is due to this fact that they have always lived in the district round about Kurnah, where the Tigris and Euphrates unite to form the Shatt-al-'Arab. One of the names by which they are known, viz., 'Mughtasilin' may be rendered 'Baptists'. Their term for 'baptism' is Masbuta, because with them the ceremony takes place in 'living' i.e. flowing water. They despise the Christian ceremony because they say that it is performed in 'dead', i.e. still water. Their God, 'Life', is the King of Light, and dwells with His angels in a heaven which is high above the heavens or spheres of the stars and planets and Signs of the Zodiac. Below the starry spheres is our earth, which is formed of matter derived from some of the solidified water of the primeval World-Ocean. In some portion of this Black Water dwells a great she-devil called Ruha, and her husband 'Ur, who is also her son, and great armies of evil spirits. 'Ur is the god of Darkness, and is the great antagonist of the God of Light. Here we have a cosmogony derived from the ancient Sumerians, and Tiamat, Kingu, and Marduk under other names, and we may regard the Mandaeans as the representatives of the ancient worshippers of EA, the great Water-God of Eridu.
"One of the books of the Mandaeans, called the Kolasta, contains a series of ill-drawn pictures which are supposed to represent the places at which the souls of the dead alight on their way to heaven, and in one part of it are drawings of the scales in which presumably souls were weighed and the throne of Abatur. (4) These facts seem to suggest that the writer of the work had seen a copy of the Saite recension of the Book of the Dead, and that he copied some of the vignettes of Chapter CLI [151], and a part of the introductory scene of the Psychostasia. On the other hand, the Book Asfar Malwasha, which deals with a system of astrology based on the Signs of the Zodiac, seems to have been derived from the works of the later Persian astronomers, though these in turn were based on the astrological literature of the Babylonians.
"The Language of the Mandaeans is written in an unusual script, one of the great advantages of which is that the vowels are represented by letters, and the reading is not therefore confused by diacritical points. The literature is relatively small, and the three principal works are the Sidra Rabba, or Ginza, and the Sidra D'Yahya or Book of John the Baptist, and the Drashe D'Malke or Discourses of Kings, and the Kolasta, which contains Hymns and Discourses regarding Baptism and the Departure of the Soul from the Body. Some sections of these works are as old as the 1st century A.D., and much of the rest was written before the rise of the Arab Kingdom in Mesopotamia in the VIIth Century. The Mandaeans, like the Babylonians, lived lives of fear because they believed in the existence of myriads of fiends and devils which caused sicknesses and death to themselves and damage to their material property. The priests of the Mandaeans condemned all magical practices, but in spite of this the Mandaeans, like the Syrians and Arabs, possessed a large collection of charms and magical prescriptions, and when written down they formed a real "Book of Magic".... The Mandaeans copied the amuletic scrolls of Western people, Egyptians, Gnostics, Greeks, Syrians, and others."
1. This author might be a friend of Arthur Edward Waite, by the way he dismisses things out of hand like this. Later researches have demonstrated that the Palestinian sources of Mandaean religion are valid. We would state that the Babylonian influence was with it from the beginning, because the Priesthood originated in Mesopotamia, and if we can include our words in the opening section, Southern Arabia as well.
2. Cf. The Magical Baths, prescribed in the Grimoires.
3. I.e., the Babylonian Talmud. This is an important link, as we shall see later on.
4. See Rudolph, GNOSIS, plate 48, facing page 357.