Why the name 'Sabian'?

The Sabian Symbol story is embedded in the ancient cultures of the Middle East. Marc Edmund Jones felt that there was an "unseen agency" - an external, esoteric mind-set at work in the birthing of the Sabian Symbols. Connection was made through a 'Brother', a member of the ancient Mesopotamian brotherhood, the Sabian Brotherhood. He believed that they were the 'voices' that were spiritually behind Elsie Wheeler, delivering the messages that became the Symbols.

The Sabian people were an ancient race of alchemists, living in Harran, a city on the banks of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, where astrology is said to have originated. Harran existed from the third millennium BC to the thirteenth century AD. It was the repository for the philosophy of the ancient Chaldeans, who were among the founders of astrology. The Sabians were alchemists who were into talismanic magic and hermeticism. Michael Baigent in his book 'From the Omens of Babylon' describes talismanic magic as "the magic whereby a deity's power is attracted or coerced down to be concentrated into a physical object.... It is, perhaps, analogous to a huge spiritual lens which might magnify and concentrate the powers from above."

In early Babylonia the moon-cult was the national religion: the name Chaldeans means 'moon-worshippers'. As the religion was gradually wiped out elsewhere, the Sabian people maintained and developed the tradition of Chaldean astrology. They built temples to planets and their rather sophisticated system of alchemy linked the 7 planets (as were known then) with metals, colors and numbers. They worked with talismans, oracles and magic. The last temple that was left standing was a moon temple, destroyed by the Tartars in AD 1032. The sect itself disappeared during Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, when its water supply was diverted to a neighboring town.