Book Two, chapter 1

1Book Two: On the celestial images and their actions, and the disclosure of what the sages concealed of their secrets, and specimens of the manner of borrowing magic into this world called the world of generation and corruption from the world of the ether, by the diffusion of the spiritual powers

2Chapter 1

3The aspirations of those possessed of universal intellects, may God honour you, have never ceased to reach upward towards knowing the secrets of the sages and the wondrous matters that they alluded to in their books by symbol and riddle, and so they attained their aim and their desire; but how should those of deficient intellects attain their desire? May God not deprive us and you, and may He illumine our intellects.

4Among the motives that moved me to investigate the secrets of talismans is that in the prime of youth I saw [it] of the excellent Ptolemy, in his book known as the Fruit, [that he] says that the images that are in the world of composition are obedient to the celestial images; and the speech of the sages testified by consensus that the planets have powers, by the rule of custom, capable [of acting] upon that to which they were naturally disposed [sense uncertain]. So for that reason the masters of talismans drew them at the lodging of the planets in them, for the operations they intended; and they attained, through excellent reflection on the composition of its secrets, toward whatever hopes they wished. And I saw, in the commentary on this section by Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf the Secretary, the story that befell, in the days of Khumārawayh ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn in Egypt, a Rūmī learned man who had settled there; and it required that keen souls not be narrow in their inclination toward the like of that [sense uncertain]. And here is the text of what he related:

5He said: It happened that we were with him one day, and we heard a cry from the side of the house. He asked about it, and it was said: a boy whom a scorpion has stung. So he had a cloth brought in which were seal-impressions over which the smell of frankincense prevailed, and he took one impression from it and ordered that it be ground and the whole of it given [him] to drink. When that was done his crying calmed, and his ailment went away upon his drinking it.

6And I examined the seals and found on each one of them the likeness of a scorpion. So I asked him about what the seals had been stamped with, and he brought out to me a gold ring whose stone was a bezoar, on which was the image of a scorpion. I asked him about the secret of the ring and how it is made, and he mentioned that it is engraved while the Moon is in Scorpio, at the beginning of its second face.

7So I made it, and I continued to seal with it for those who had been stung, and I changed what I sealed upon, fearing that the work might be due to the occult property of the frankincense; and I saw from that the most wondrous wonder. And here his words ended.

8And as for me, because of the engravings I was skilled at in youth, one whom I trust among the people of the mathematical sciences and others took charge with me of observing this relation; and I engraved the image at the time mentioned, and tested the matter of this talisman, and I found from its actions in this respect, many times, what decided for it that it is the wonder; and all who witnessed those wondrous actions found them extraordinary.

9So this was the cause that moved me to research into this science: my perceiving this much and my being aware of it; for perception is the awareness of the soul, and its definition is not established except after knowledge of sensation, which is the change of the temperament of the qualities of the senses from the contact of the sensibles with them; and perception is the awareness of those sensitive faculties of the change of the qualities of the temperaments of the senses.

10And its example is that the visual faculty has its course in the eye, and it lies within the two pupils, in the organ of the eye, from the icy humour; and likewise the rest of the senses. So perception is the awareness of those faculties and the occurrence of knowledge through them.

11And since demonstration is a scientific syllogism by which one arrives at every real object of inquiry completely, by matters proper to that object of inquiry, or by essential, eternal premises through which there is obtained one kind of the kinds of cognitions, which are two kinds, assentive cognitions and conceptual cognitions; and it may also be from accepted, approved statements, and then demonstration is called, in that case, persuasive;

12and what I had seen of the words of Ptolemy was, first, of this [kind of] demonstration; then afterwards I came, by experience, upon what I witnessed of the action of this talisman whose making I have mentioned in the First Treatise; [and] I did not leave off investigating, by question and by search, all the books of the sages on this matter, until I came upon in them what brought me to what was intended by that, and I attained the coolness of certainty.

13And let us return to our purpose. We say that no one attains to knowledge of the manner of the influence of the higher world in the lower world except after mastering all the sciences of philosophy, I mean the mathematical, the natural, and what is after nature; and whoever falls short of this does not attain the reality of what he seeks, because the first principles of his quest are taken from these three sciences. As for the mathematical: number, whoever lacks knowledge of it lacks knowledge of the motions of the higher bodies and of the ways by which the science of geometry is attained, because it has no existence except by the craft of number. And measurement also: whoever lacks it lacks the science of the configuration of the whole, because he does not know the observations nor the celestial measures, whose first principles are taken from the proofs of measurement.

14And the craft of composition also, by knowledge of which agreement and discord are found: whoever lacks it does not know which of the celestial things are most like the earthly things, and which act of some of them is most like which act of these lower ones. And whoever does not know this much, how can he infer from likes to likes?

15And whoever does not know the science of nature does not know the proximate causes of generation and corruption; and whoever does not know that does not know that the higher bodies exert influence on the lower bodies. And whoever does not know the science of what is after nature does not know in which of the lower existing things the effects from the higher bodies come about, and which [of them] the effects from them reach and which they do not reach. So of necessity no one knows this craft in truth except one who knows its first principles, and its first principles are not in truth found without a philosopher; so it necessarily follows that none knows it but the philosopher. So know that.