The possibility of the direct ascension of man, of his becoming a godlike being in his own right, was never part of the Chaldean worldview. Just as they didn’t strive to synthesize the plethora of gods into a single higher divine being, so they didn’t strive to free man from the confines of his essential nature as a being caught in an eternal struggle between chthonic and celestial forces. The goal of Chaldean magic was to win the battle one day at a time, not to transcend it altogether.
