Book One, chapter 6

1Know, may God honour you, that wisdom is exceedingly noble, and attaining it is honour and eminence. Wisdom has ranks, each one a ladder to the next. The perfect human being is the one who encompasses the fruits of wisdom by acquiring it, since he is the one who loves to acquire it. And rightly did they define philosophy, since among the noblest of the definitions they gave it is that it is the preferring of wisdom.

2Whoever falls short of this rank is not counted a human being, even if he has a human shape, because he does not reflect on the reality of his own existence, nor that he is a small world, the counterpart of a great world.

3For his reality is that he is a growing part [reading uncertain: or 'a complete part'], possessing a rational, a vegetative and an animal soul. He alone has all three, and he is set apart from all other animals by the rational one.

4The meaning of 'rational' is 'discerning', because it is the rational soul that brings the crafts about, makes the absent present through thought, composes images, pictures what it has never witnessed, makes existing things and lands present in the mind, and binds what is heard into its faculties and its self; and through it one sees in sleep what takes place in one's day.

5So he is the lesser world, contained within the greater and in harmony with it, because his form is joined to its forms, and all things are found in him together. He shares with all the animals, yet differs from them through the sciences and through ingenuity.

6He has six motions; the bones of his spine run aligned along a straight line [reading uncertain]; he dies by nature and lives by way of accident; his fingers and palm are spread [reading uncertain]; his head is round; he has nails and a gait; he is receptive to the sciences and to writing; he devises crafts; he imitates the animals and they do not imitate him; he laughs and weeps, and with weeping expresses grief.

7In him are a divine power and civic governance. He is an idol whose inside is light: his body is his idol, and its inhabitant is his soul. He is upright in form and distinguishes what harms him from what benefits him. He acts with intent when he plans, resolves by intention, and holds back through theoretical, reflective restraint. He devises subtle crafts and wondrous, marvel-working talismans.

8He retains the forms of the sciences and refrains from everything perceived by the senses [sense uncertain]. God has made him the treasurer of His wisdom, the one who gives expression to Him and to all His creatures [pronoun ambiguous: or 'to himself'], the receiver of His revelation, the keeper of His sciences and the one who conveys them on His behalf. He is the offspring of the greater world and its copy, gathering its meanings in his own creation and composition. Created things are scattered, and he gathers them while they do not gather him; he subjects them and they do not subject him; he imitates their voices, represents their forms with his hand, describes them with his tongue, and tells of their natures.

9No animal is able to change and move away from its created nature, nor to imitate the voice of another: the rooster does not go beyond its crowing, nor the dog its barking, nor the lion its roaring. The human being, on the other hand, changes his voice and his character, takes on whatever likeness he wishes, and governs himself and others.

10He has a dense body and a subtle spirit: part of him is subtle and part dense, part of him subtle and living and part dense and dead. Half of him is in motion and half at rest; half of him is engraved and half blank; half of him is night and half day; half of him darkness and half light; half of him outward and half

11[continuing from p. 43: "half of him outward and half"] inward; half of him perceived by the senses and half grasped by the intellect; half of him bearing and half borne. He is ashamed of what is ugly, he endures, he does what he wishes, and he regrets. He is composed of the subtle and the coarse of substance: in him is some of the coarseness of earth, the subtlety of air, the fineness of fire and the coldness of water. For that reason he became balanced through motion, which is the spirit of life. He knows the heat of fire through the fieriness that is in him potentially, and he knows the coldness of water through the coldness that is in him, and so with the rest of the elements.

12Moreover, his head is like the form of the celestial sphere in its shape and roundness, and in the gathering within it of the subtle faculties and lights: sight, hearing, smell, taste and speech. His eyes are like the two luminaries, his nostrils like the two winds, his ears like the east and the west, his front like day and his back like night. His walking is like the course of the stars, his sitting like their stations, his stepping backward like their descent, and his death like their combustion.

13His inner organs are seven, like the seven planets. In his head are seven bones, like the number of the seven days. In his back are twenty-four vertebrae, by the number of the hours of night and day, and twenty-eight joints, by the number of the mansions of the Moon and the letters of the alphabet. In his belly are intestines by the number of the days of the lunar month [reading uncertain]. In him are three hundred and sixty pulsing vessels and as many still ones, by the number of the days of the year and its nights and the number of the degrees of the sphere. And in him are natures by the number of the seasons of the year.

14His eyes are the spies of the rational faculty, which is like the king; his ears are its bearers of news; the tongue is its interpreter; the heart is the chancery of its knowledge; the stomach is its treasury, and it is the body's cooking-pot; his liver is its [word uncertain]; the gall is its aloe, so that his flesh does not rot, and it is the body's salt and its medicine; the lung is its fan; the hands are its chamberlains; and the feet are its mount.

15The flesh of his body is like soil, his bones like mountains, his hair like plants, his veins like valleys, and his inner organs like mines.

16His body is composed of nine substances, built on nine circles set one inside another, with the enclosing sphere as a wall around them. They are flesh, bones, muscles, sinews, marrow, skin, hair and nails. The marrow is inside the bones; its work is to preserve strength and soften the dryness of the bones. The work of the bones is to hold the flesh and keep it firm upon them. The work of the muscles is to bind the joints and move the limbs. The work of the flesh is to fill the gaps of the body and protect the bones so they do not separate and break. The work of the veins is to gather the blood and carry it to the extremities of the body. The work of the blood is to hold heat, regulate life, balance the temperament and generate motion. The work of the skin is to enclose the whole body and what is in it, like a wall around it. The work of the nails is to secure the extremities, grip them and hold them together so they do not scatter and break.

17In the structure of the body are twelve openings, matching the twelve signs of the zodiac. Since six of the signs are southern and six northern, a human being has six openings on the left side and six on the right, matching them in both quantity and quality.

18Since in the heavens there are seven planets, through which the decrees of the heavens and of generated things run, and through which the order of existing things comes about, so in the human body there are seven active powers spread out from the human soul, through which the body is kept sound. And since these planets have souls, bodies, actions and spiritual powers (rūḥāniyyāt) that act on what appears among existing things (minerals, animals and plants), so in the human body are found bodily powers that do in the body what keeps it alive and sound, supplied by seven other powers of the soul: the retentive, the attractive, the digestive, the expulsive, the nutritive [continues]

19[the expulsive, the nutritive,] the growing and the form-giving. And there are seven spiritual powers matching the spiritual powers of the seven planets. These are the sensing powers, and through them the human being is complete and his actions perfected, just as through the seven planets the heavens are adorned and sustained and the world is set straight and ordered. They are the powers of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, speech and intellect. The five powers resemble the five planets, and two of them resemble the Sun and the Moon: just as the Moon takes its light from the light of the Sun in its twenty-eight mansions, so the power of speech takes the meanings of existing things from the power of intellect and tells them through the twenty-eight letters of the alphabet.

20And since in the heavens there are two nodes, the Head and the Tail, hidden in their essence but manifest in their actions and effects, there are found in the human body two things akin to them: the ill balance of the temperament and its good balance. So too the soul: when it inclines toward its own world, its actions become sound, it is freed from the murk of nature, and it is rightly guided. When it inclines toward nature, its actions are thrown into disorder, it grows distant from its cause, and it is eclipsed, as the Sun and Moon are eclipsed at the node of the Tail. In the same way, ill temperament brings about what it brings about among natural things, and ruin shows itself; through good temperament the rational faculty is sound. And when the structure of the body is whole and runs according to the natural order, the soul becomes clear, and the intellect shines upon it and lights it.

21And since the Sun and Moon are the two lamps of the heavens, so in the body are found the two eyes, which are its lamps. Through them the rational soul perceives the forms of existing things, colours and visible things, by means of the shining of the light of the Sun and Moon, and so it is with the other animals. And as the circle of the heavens and its signs have terms, faces and degrees, so in the joints of the body and the members of the frame there are joints and veins of differing descriptions.

22And just as there spread out from the powers of the universal soul, in the seven planets and the twelve signs, spiritual powers with actions particular to each planet and each sign, which descend to the world with every glance, every hour and minute, and every movement of time, so the human soul, in his body and joints, has works and actions that appear from it and issue from it with every one of his movements, every glance and every breath. So it is with him as long as he exists in himself, until the time his soul parts from his body. In the same way the universal soul is joined to the particular soul, and it remains so for that appointed span and by that governing wisdom.

23Among the wonders of the human being is that he is political by nature, so that he may govern himself, the people of his house, his retinue, his dependants and the people of his realm. A word pleases him until he gives up his kingdom, and a word angers him until he fights and rides into dangers. He puts on clean garments, treats himself, and takes medicines and drugs to balance his temperament and set himself right. He shows friendship and hides enmity, and he makes a brother of his enemy. He is the one who plunges into the air [reading uncertain] and who clings to the earth.

24This is the description of the particular human being, perceived by the senses, perishing in his particular part and not in his universal. For he became a particular human being only through the accidents, changes and comings-to-be that attached to him, and that is why he perishes. The universal human being, grasped by the intellect, endures and exists, whether the particular one grasps him there or is ignorant of him, like an element that perishes and passes away in its particular part and not in its universal. For water, when it changes, becomes fire, then changes into air, then decays and returns to its natural state: it decays by accident and endures by nature. So the particular human being passes away through his dissolution and returns to his universal. That is why the universal exists through the intellect and not through the senses: what is intelligible in him is one, and does not change or alter in itself, and the change that attaches to him runs toward sensible completion.

25I will give you an example for understanding this idea, for it is a strange thing to say. The individual elements each became an element only through the placing of each in its location, and through the accidents that attach to it within the class proper to it in this order. Water has this moist, cold nature only through its place and the attributes that attach to it in the order of generation; but its first existence, prior to its being an element, endures in its universality. These universals exist in themselves, whether a human being grasps and finds them or does not find or grasp them, for their existence belongs to them essentially. So too the universal human being: existence belongs to him essentially. The proof of the truth of what I have told you is that in water there is fire and in fire there is water, and that the elements are interwoven and affected by one another; were it not so, none of them would come to be.

26In the same way, human wills and intentions are bound to the first wills and intentions, and the effects of generated things run upon them, even if this is not evident to the particular human being. For although this person's will and intention are not carried out in all his states and dealings, they are carried out in some; and their being carried out in the whole is not evident to him, unless he is one who has practice and training in the theoretical sciences, for then it becomes evident to him.

27Know that if a person could find fire in its pure form, stripped of the accidents and conditions and everything else that attaches to it when it shares with its sisters, he would find it does not burn. For burning is its particular action, shared with the accidents, the conditions and the place. Do you not see that we find [continues]

28[Do you not see that we find] fire here with us, out of its place, by accident? When it leaves the body and the firewood, it returns to its element and its place above the air. As for its simple, universal action, it is beyond description, and beyond being grasped by speech or uttered by a tongue, for it is a surpassing, mighty power, above the simple and above quality. And so with the rest of the elements.

29The human being runs the same course. This [universal] human being is the one from whom the covenant was taken in pre-eternity, and around him the composite human being turns. His mixing and blending with all the other things that attach to him by way of accident, in the varied conditions and places from which he is never free, is what altered his form, changed him, and gave him a share with the animals, the plants and the elements; and that is why he came to resemble all things. Whenever he knows this much and takes the path of governance by which he rises to the lights of the First Principle (his own essential order, which is his origin), he is more complete in his humanity than others by the measure of his freeing himself. All of this comes through practising the virtues according to his capacity.

30So this is the particular human being: sensible, bodily, corporeal, coarse, composed of soul, particular intellect and body. He is the shared, perishing form which, in this lower world, is an idol and a shell for that universal human being, intellectual, spiritual, noble, subtle, simple and hylic, who is the pure form that is not in a body and that endures in that higher world.

31The form of the universal human being is hidden within the form of the particular human being, and is its simple [ground] and its matter. The form of the particular human being is hidden within the body, and is its simple [ground]. The form of the body is a composite idol and a shell for the form of the particular human being, and the form of the particular human being is a composite idol and a shell for the form [continues]

32[a shell for the form of] the universal human being. The form of the universal human being is an idol and a shell for the form of the universal soul; the universal soul is an idol and a shell for the universal intellect; and the universal intellect is an idol and a shell for the light from which the intellect was originated, and that light is matter for the universal intellect. So it is with everything below: the higher is always matter for what is beneath it, and simple in relation to it, and what is beneath is always a form for what is above it, and composite in relation to it. The human being, in truth, is the composite form of soul that makes use of bodies united with nature.

33Whoever wishes to know this in truth, let him be virtuous, clean in mind and body from defilements, and he will see it and witness it with true witnessing.

34With this discussion, seeker (may God support you with His help), we have not strayed from our intended purpose. It is the very aim of composing this book, since it is the foundation of the science of talismans. If you have trained in the sciences, you will verify it, recognise it, and know that it is plain magic. On this the man excelling in the sciences and foremost in virtue, Plato, built his book called Timaeus. He spoke at great length in it about forms and made this aim clear, but he locked up his speech and placed obscurity in it, as the wise are accustomed to do with their wisdom, to guard it and keep it from the ignorant. And Proclus did the same.

35Obscurity in the sciences, for them, is the subtlety of meanings, so fine that they are hidden and obscure, and whoever would bring that obscurity out needs thought, deliberation and sifting until he distinguishes it from all the evident, apparent matters it is mixed with. For the sciences are of two kinds: one apparent and evident, the other hidden and inward, and the hidden and inward is the obscure. That obscure meaning either needs syllogism and premises, so that the obscure thing is deduced for him, or it needs reflection, inference, thought and deliberation, until the meaning dawns on him, the aim opens out before him, what was locked is opened to him, and he reaches what he sought.

36Inference comes about in many ways. Among them: reasoning from the present to the absent; or referring a branch back to a root through a meaning they share; or building one's reflection on accepted and approved statements from one approved authority or a group of approved authorities, and drawing a conclusion from them, so that the sought meaning appears to him there. In short, the teacher opens a path [subject uncertain], and wherever reflection turns toward it, the learner extends his reflection along that way. By this reflection he obtains the meanings of existing things, and their ranks become clear to him.