Mandaean religion turns on living water. Baptism in the yardna, the flowing river that mirrors the heavenly Jordan, is not a single initiation but a repeated sacrament, performed on Sundays and festivals, after defilement, at marriage and near death, and every stage of it is voiced by the Qolasta's prayers: the blessing of the banner and the myrtle wreath, the descent into the water, the triple immersion and signing, the crowning, the handclasp of truth, and the sacramental bread and water that follow. The rite restores the laufa, the life-giving connection between the worshipper and the World of Light from which the soul came.
The book's other great sequence serves the masiqta, the mass for the dead, celebrated by priests on the third day after death, when the soul is held to begin its ascent through the matarata, the watch-houses where hostile powers detain the unworthy; the hymns strengthen and accompany the soul stage by stage until it reaches the House of Life. Around these two cores the collection carries the daily prayers said at dawn, noon and evening, the rushuma signing prayers, blessings for oil, bread and water, and the marriage service. The prayers' idiom is the religion in miniature: light against darkness, the great First Life and its emanations, Manda d-Hayyi the personification of saving knowledge, and the soul as an exile remembering its home.