Abstrakt
Mandaeans are an endogamous group and a proper performance of a wedding ritual is therefore a very important factor ensuring continuity of the community and strengthening its identity both in Iraq, Iran and in the diaspora. It is this importance of the ritual that forces Mandaean priests toward its reinterpretation, modification and alteration.
The article is based on author's observation of the ritual in the Netherlands in 2006. Particular sequences of the ritual are described: "the baptism" (maṣbuta) of the bride and groom and of the wedding guests in a near-by swimming pool followed by the main wedding ritual (qabin) that continued in a ritual building called Andiruna, proceeding from wedding vows to ritual feast "Blessed Oblation" (zidqa brika) and coronation of the bride and groom.
The bride does not enter Andiruna herself, in most of the ritual acts "the father" acts as a substitute for her, though it does not need to be - and in the ritual the author watched it was not - the biological father of the bride. In the article, the ritual practice is confronted with the ritual scenario and relevant Mandaean commentaries are used to explain particular sequences of the ritual.
On one hand, a wedding ritual is a contract binding man and woman to mutual responsibility in the face of Life (hiia) and other beings of Light as well as in the face of the community to create living conditions for the life of their children. A wedding of an earthly couple is also an imitatio of the wedding of the beings of Light, the Great Shishlam and Ezlat, in a way, it is a ritual dramatization of the Nasorean ideas - unavailable to laymen - about procreation and fertility (nisubta) as creative principle of the universe that draws its dynamic from the reunion of the two complementary princi-ples, male and female.