Chaldeans

• favored monogamous marriage

83:6.3The Chaldean tribes rec­og­nized the right of a wife to im­pose a pre­mar­i­tal pledge upon her spouse not to take a sec­ond wife or con­cu­bine; both the Greeks and the Ro­mans fa­vored monog­a­mous mar­riage. An­ces­tor wor­ship has al­ways fos­tered mo­nog­amy, as has the Chris­tian er­ror of re­gard­ing mar­riage as a sacra­ment. Even the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dard of liv­ing has con­sis­tently mil­i­tated against plu­ral wives. By the time of Mi­chael’s ad­vent on Uran­tia prac­ti­cally all of the civ­i­lized world had at­tained the level of the­o­ret­i­cal mo­nog­amy. But this pas­sive mo­nog­amy did not mean that man­kind had be­come ha­bit­u­ated to the prac­tice of real pair mar­riage.

• star cultists; saw stars as cause of suffering

85:5.1The wor­ship of rocks, hills, trees, and an­i­mals nat­u­rally de­vel­oped up through fear­ful ven­er­a­tion of the el­e­ments to the de­ifi­ca­tion of the sun, moon, and stars. In In­dia and else­where the stars were re­garded as the glo­ri­fied souls of great men who had de­parted from the life in the flesh. The Chaldean star cultists con­sid­ered them­selves to be the chil­dren of the sky fa­ther and the earth mother.

85:5.2Moon wor­ship pre­ceded sun wor­ship. Ven­er­a­tion of the moon was at its height dur­ing the hunt­ing era, while sun wor­ship be­came the chief re­li­gious cer­e­mony of the sub­se­quent ag­ri­cul­tural ages. So­lar wor­ship first took ex­ten­sive root in In­dia, and there it per­sisted the longest. In Per­sia sun ven­er­a­tion gave rise to the later Mith­raic cult. Among many peo­ples the sun was re­garded as the an­ces­tor of their kings. The Chaldeans put the sun in the cen­ter of “the seven cir­cles of the uni­verse.” Later civ­i­liza­tions hon­ored the sun by giv­ing its name to the first day of the week.

• among first to abandon human sacrifice

89:6.2Hu­man sac­ri­fice has been vir­tu­ally uni­ver­sal; it per­sisted in the re­li­gious cus­toms of the Chi­nese, Hin­dus, Egyp­tians, He­brews, Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, Greeks, Ro­mans, and many other peo­ples, even on to re­cent times among the back­ward African and Aus­tralian tribes. The later Amer­i­can In­di­ans had a civ­i­liza­tion emerg­ing from can­ni­bal­ism and, there­fore, steeped in hu­man sac­ri­fice, es­pe­cially in Cen­tral and South Amer­ica. The Chaldeans were among the first to aban­don the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans for or­di­nary oc­ca­sions, sub­sti­tut­ing there­for an­i­mals. About two thou­sand years ago a ten­der­hearted Japanese em­peror in­tro­duced clay im­ages to take the place of hu­man sac­ri­fices, but it was less than a thou­sand years ago that these sac­ri­fices died out in north­ern Eu­rope. Among cer­tain back­ward tribes, hu­man sac­ri­fice is still car­ried on by vol­un­teers, a sort of re­li­gious or rit­ual sui­cide. A shaman once or­dered the sac­ri­fice of a much re­spected old man of a cer­tain tribe. The peo­ple re­volted; they re­fused to obey. Where­upon the old man had his own son dis­patch him; the an­cients re­ally be­lieved in this cus­tom.

• star cultists; saw stars as cause of suffering

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

• advanced eastern Semites

96:2.1The Semites of the East were well-or­ga­nized and well-led horse­men who in­vaded the east­ern re­gions of the fer­tile cres­cent and there united with the Baby­lo­ni­ans. The Chaldeans near Ur were among the most ad­vanced of the east­ern Semites. The Phoeni­cians were a su­pe­rior and well-or­ga­nized group of mixed Semites who held the west­ern sec­tion of Pales­tine, along the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. Racially the Semites were among the most blended of Uran­tia peo­ples, con­tain­ing hered­i­tary fac­tors from al­most all of the nine world races.