Chaldean Oracles - State of The Text

State of The Text

The original poem has not come down to us in any connected form, and is known through quotations in the works of the Neoplatonists.

W. Kroll published an edition arranging all known fragments in order of subject, and this is the basis of most later scholarly work. It does not purport to be a reconstruction of the original poem.

Summaries of the poem (and of the related "Assyrian Oracles", not known from elsewhere) were composed by Psellus, and attempts have been made to arrange the surviving fragments in accordance with these summaries: Westcott's translation (above) is an example of such an attempt. These reconstructions are not generally regarded as having scholarly value, but sometimes surface in theosophical or occult use.

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