The sun entered Scorpio on the night of his birth. That night, in a dream, his mother saw that her boy child would be the agent of three betrayals: he would kill his father; he would marry his mother; and he would bring about a disaster so great that it would taint his name and stain the blood of his people for all ages to come.
The father wanted to rid himself of the child, but the woman, desirous not to kill the new-born for fear of committing a sin, convinced her husband to have the boy taken from Cariot in Judea to a far distant land, to avert his maleficent destiny. This is how it came about, that in the night, the child was spirited away and taken by merchants to a community of Diaspora Jews on the Tigris, near Seleucia in Parthia.
This was a quiet, hidden community, peopled by a community of Mandeans, who had brought together the mysteries of the Persians and combined them with the religion of the Hebrews. Within this community, there lived a wealthy, childless couple known to the Jew merchants. They brought the child to this couple who, upon seeing the tiny innocent creature, grew warm with love, exclaiming to one another that here at last was a son delivered to them by God! Gladly, they paid the merchants thirty pieces of silver for him, and raised him as their own.
They named him Judas.
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