DeConick A.D

338
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
with healing. The therapeutic nature of their ritual waterworks is clear:
it is a religious therapy, dependent on the soul regularly tapping into the
world of light and communing with Hiia, which stimulates its wholesomeness
and its ability to limit the negative influence of the Ruha-like spirit.
The baptismal rehearsal of the soul’s entrance into the world of light is
realized at death, with the performance of another vital ritual, the masiqta
(death mass). According to Lamea Abbas Amara, “There is a person like
me waiting for me [in the world of light]. She is waiting, very happy to
embrace me when I come. Here, on earth, we live only temporarily, as
in a prison. It is a suffering place. But we are going to a beautiful place”
(Buckley 2002, 29–30).
Amara speaks here about the Mandaean view of death: the soul must be
returned to the world of light. Its return is dependent on a complicated
death ritual that works to permanently join the Ruha-like spirit with the
soul. This union must happen to enable the person to be incorporated
into a light world body, the ‘ustuna , and then permanently dwell in one
of the light realms with the Mandaean ancestors. Some Mandaeans think
that this body of light is their dmuta (divine double). It also is described
as a stole of light that they will don upon their arrival in the world of light
(cf. Left Ginza II.5 43.18–44.13).
Three days after death and burial, the twelve-hour masiqta is performed.
The ritual aids the soul of the deceased in its separation from the
body, its unification with the person’s elemental spirit, and the journey
into the light world.
The journey to the door of the world of light takes forty-five days. The
ascent occurs through dangerous demonic regions of purgatory, where
star demons and planetary rulers try to arrest the soul and place it in detention.
But the Mandaean soul is escorted through these purgatories by
angels of light who have come for the soul. Although these angels serve as
guardians and navigators along the way, it is the soul itself that must answer
the interrogations of the dark lords in each of their horrible regions.
The soul must announce its name, its sign, and its blessing—all that it had
received on earth in the living waters of baptism, from Hiia.
At the summit of the ascent through the cosmic realms is the region
of Abathur, Ptahil’s father. Abathur, as punishment for his part in the
creation of the world, serves as the judge of the deceased, weighing on
his scale each person’s soul and spirit, measuring them against the soul of