The Mandaeans · the ones still here

The only Gnostic religion that survived continuously into the present: an Aramaic-speaking community of southern Iraq and Iran, with their own scriptures (the Ginza Rabba), their own script, a river-baptism practice at the centre of their life, and John the Baptist as their central prophet. War and displacement since 2003 have scattered them; the community is now small and endangered.

Everything else in this pack is a text. This is a people, with a liturgy, a river and a language, and the pack is careful about the difference — they are not a museum exhibit and did not ask to be an analogy.