ABSTRACT
At one point, David seemed to want to discourse endlessly on the astral magic of Harran. Harran is the city where the biblical Abraham came from (in Genesis called Paddan-Harran). Once in a while, after I got back to my office, I wrote down some of what he said from memory. There were also one or two occasions when I took along a notebook and made notes even as David spoke. But I found that this interfered with the pleasure I had in listening to him, and I didn’t do it very often. Here are his words:
“I got carried away by the writings of Abu Ma’shar al Balkhi. He was from Balkh in Bactria, 786-886. Ma’shar was interested in the Hurrians. Biblically, Harran, where Abraham came from. In Harran the cult of the moon god Sin was practiced at the Temple of Sin. Incidentally, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus worshipped the moon god. There were many temples in Harran. They practiced lots of astral magic and the temples they built facilitated that.” I interrupted David just to show I was “with it.”
