The Chaldean Oracles

Who are the Chaldeans?  And what are the Chaldean Oracles?  Anyone who belongs to the Neoplatonist philosophical school of thought has probably heard of them at some point.  They are the first source to mention theurgy as a spiritual practice, and though they belong more to the Middle Platonist school of thought, they were a major influence over the Neoplatonists particularly.

Firstly, lets look at who the Chaldeans are, since it is essential to understand the Oracles.  They are the Dabarim of the Chaldeans, the actual word of them as told through their prophets.  The Chaldeans are most famously the people of Chaldea or Kaldu, a marshy land in Mesopotamia.  It was a dynasty of Chaldeans who ruled over the Babylonian Empire at its highest point before it fell to the Medes and Persians.  But Chaldeans also refers to an order of priests who began in Chaldea but quickly spread to the city of Babylon and west into Aram and Canaan.  The Chaldean priests are the equivalent of the Persian Magi found in the Zoroastrian religion, and the Indian Brahmins found in the Hindu religion.  They live a strict vegetarian diet, serve as spiritual advisers to the king, live a non-violent lifestyle, serve as priests to the gods on behalf of a nation, and are skilled in the science of astrology and the ability to read the stars in heaven.  They pass on their wisdom, usually orally from father to son. 

A Chaldean

So, as we can see, Chaldeans compose of both an ethnic group and a priestly caste which originated among them, as is the case with Levites, Magi, and Brahmins. 

Now, onto the Oracles themselves.  What were they?  And where did they come from?  The Chaldean Oracles were first introduced into the world by two Chaldean prophets from Syria.  Being Chaldeans of the Aramaean creed, they were living and working in the city of Homs.  Homs, along with Tadmor, Dimashqu, and other cities in the land of the Aramaeans of Syria, was thriving with the worship of the god Bel.  This god is the storm-god, the great god Adad.  The great temple of Adad would be a familiar site to those living in the city at this time, during the 1st century AD.  These two Chaldeans were a father and son, and both of them were named Julian. 

At one point, the older Julian served in the Roman army under Emperor Marcus Aurelius' campaign against the Germanic tribes in their lands.  He was a powerful magician and a theurgist, able to call down rain to save the Roman camp from a severe drought.  Because of this, he became famous.

Back in Homs, the older Julian was preparing a ritual.  He was going to use theurgy to contact the shade of the Greek philosopher Platon, who founded the Platonic tradition.  His son, the younger Julian, was going to act as a medium.  The ritual went underway, and at one point the shade of Platon began to contact Julian during a trance.  It was in this state that the Chaldean Oracles were composed.  The Oracles themselves were considered to have divine origin, being revealed from the heavens themselves by the great god Adad.

The god Adad

Why are the Oracles important?  They are important because they bring together several traditions to exist in harmony: the Platonic tradition, the Pythagorean tradition, the Hebrew tradition (especially through the development of Qabalah), and the Zoroastrian tradition.  The Oracles contain the influences of the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians through the Chaldean priests.  In contrast to the philosophical wisdom in writings from Egypt, those from the Chaldeans are from mystery poems or hymns, and not from prose texts.  The Oracles are very important to those of us in the Neoplatonist tradition.  Melek of Tyre referred to them often.  Ya-milku developed his ideas of theurgy relying heavily upon the Chaldean Oracles.

So what do the Oracles contain?  The Oracles posit the idea of there being a First, called the Father.  This is sometimes referred to as Ad (the First, or passive power), which then becomes Adad (the Demiurge, or active power).  You will notice that it is the divine name Adad, and also notice that the passive Father who governs the universe at large while not intervening with it much corresponds to El, while Adad or Baal Hadad is the active power within the world appointed by El to govern over the kingdoms of earth.  The relationship between them is reflected in the Oracles.

Within the Father is a residing Power, a productive power from which Intellect proceeds.  The Intellect of the Father has two functions.  The first is to contemplate the Forms which reside within the intellect of the Father.  These Forms are the Forms spoken of by Platon, through which all creation emanates like a divine architect using Forms found in a manual to create the physical world.  And when the Intellect uses the Forms to craft the physical world from the spiritual, it fulfills its second role and becomes the Demiurge.  But there is a barrier between the physical and spiritual, and this barrier is a female power, called Hekat (the goddess of the Karuwans of Assuwa), who is in the Oracles like Sophia or Chokmah.  She stands between the two divine Fires (Fire being present in Zoroastrian cosmology as divinity manifest): the Fire of the intellectual realm of the Father, and the Fire of the physical world through which it is created.  And she mediates divine influence upon the lower realm.  From her is derived the World Soul, which in turn emanates Nature.  Nature governs the world on the sub-lunar level (meaning that in the cosmology of the seven heavens, anything below the first heaven, where Yarikh dwells is under the influence of Nature).  And from Nature comes Fate, who is capable of enslaving the lower parts of the soul.  Through a life of austerity and contemplation, one can free their soul from Nature and Fate and ascend through the planetary spheres, casting off the layer s of the lower soul until it becomes pure intellect and returns to its divine source.