Mandaeism divides reality sharply. Above stands the World of Light, ruled by a supreme being whose commonest names are the Great Life and the King of Light, surrounded by beings of light called uthras. Below lies the World of Darkness, with its own ruler and its own inhabitants. Between them lies the material world, which is a mixture of the two and which is not regarded as good.
The material world was not made by the supreme being. It was formed by a lower figure, Ptahil, working with material and assistance he did not fully control, so that the result is defective. This places Mandaeism squarely in the pattern usually called gnostic: a flawed creation, a maker who is not the highest god, and a human being who contains a spark of light that does not belong here. The soul is a stranger in the body, and the religious problem is not sin requiring forgiveness but entrapment requiring release.
Release is an ascent. At death the soul travels upward through a series of stations, the matarta or watch-houses, where it is examined and where the unfit are detained. The rituals performed for the dying and the dead, especially the masiqta or raising, are designed to equip the soul for that journey. Mandaean funerary practice is elaborate for exactly this reason: what the priests do at death has consequences for where the soul arrives.
Two names carry particular weight. Manda d-Hayyi, knowledge of life, is the personified saving knowledge sent from the world of light, and the religion's own name derives from manda, knowledge. Hibil Ziwa descends into the world of darkness and returns, a rescue narrative that mirrors what each soul must accomplish.
The literature is old, hymnic and repetitive rather than systematic. The Ginza Rabba, the great treasure, is the principal scripture, divided into a Right Ginza on cosmology and the world of light and a Left Ginza on the descent of the soul and on death. Alongside it stand the Drasha d-Yahya, the book of John, and the Qolasta, the collected liturgical prayers. All of it is written in Mandaic, an eastern Aramaic dialect with its own distinctive script, still in liturgical use.