The Mandaic script exists to carry a body of scripture. The principal books are the Ginza Rabba, the Great Treasure, which is the largest of them; the Book of John; and the Qolasta, the collection of prayers used in the liturgy. Classical Mandaic, written in these letters, is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion.
Mandaeism is a Gnostic tradition of southern Iraq and south-western Iran, and it is the only one of the ancient Gnostic religions with a continuous living community. That community is small, and since the early years of this century it has been scattered by violence and displacement, so that much of it now lives in a diaspora far from where the language was spoken. The script remains in liturgical use.
Two things follow for an entry like this one. The first is that the tradition holds its script to be sacred and its letters to carry creative power, and that copying the scriptures is a priestly act. The atlas records that because the community states it. The second is that what the letters mean within the tradition belongs to a priesthood entered by initiation, and is not open material. It is not described here, and it is not reconstructed here.
Describing a script is not the same as describing a religion, and this atlas keeps the line where the community keeps it.