Book Two, chapter 5

1Chapter 5

2And I saw, from a chief among the ancients in this craft, marvels on this subject which I thought [fit] to relate. Among them is that he divided this science into three parts. Of it is the science of talismans, and he made the Sabians the people most devoted to it; they are the mamālīk of the Nabataeans from among the Kasdānians. And of it is the science of the stars and attending to them with offerings, fumigations and rites; the people of Greece were alone in this second kind, and they excel besides in the root of the two, which is the science of the stars, and it is the foremost, excellent science.

3And of it is the science of the qalfaṭīriyyāt and of incantations by penetrating adjuration of pure earnestness, and the knowledge of the spirits that submit to it, and their being related ‹to› those words by resemblance [reading uncertain]. This science the Indians were alone in and devoted themselves to, and the Sakāsik of Yemen; and the Copts of Egypt are the most deeply rooted in it. And each one of these sciences has a root and premises, theoretical and practical.

4For it is well known and established of the people of India that they have penetrating, efficacious incantations against deadly poisons, without medicine; and they have the speech by which they make [people] fall down, and with the hearing of which they alter the intellect, and they kill by its motion; and among the kinds of music they have an instrument they call the kankala, which has a single string on a single body, with which is imitated whatever one likes of the kinds of sounds and fine metres. And they have, in sexual intercourse, wondrous secrets; among them is that a woman among them conceives without the man touching her, and that is by movements which they cast upon her. And they have the drink that prevents senility, greyness, stooping and natural [reading uncertain: decay], which is theirs particularly, to the exclusion of others.

5So they are the most capable of men in magic and illusions; and they are those who hold that beyond the equator, in the south, there is habitation; and they are those who are alluded to as the jinn and the devils; and they are a subtle world, not seen, who procreate and die; and the religious law agreed with them on that.

6And they claim that their significators in the sphere are Saturn and the Tail. And from the date of one of their sages, according to their claim, he being the one designated as Adam, was the beginning of the [reading uncertain: course] among them, on account of his deviation.

7And this master in this craft claimed that every form in the world of generation and corruption is from the composition of the fixed stars, formed by that kind of composition in the heaven.

8And he claimed that in the heaven there are images which are not on earth, which the learned use through spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) or talismans, by determining known ratios; by a convention of theirs they call them seals, like this image [figure], after joining what is between them with lines; and those lines going out from some of them to others are the beginning of their rays and of their spreading from some to others, until their images particular to them are produced; and that is in the eighth sphere, so it becomes like this image [figure].

9And the people of observation and of spiritual power know it; and for this reason the conjurers, the charm-reciters and the jugglers imitated them, so they imitate them and depict them; but they are not those which are in the heaven from the composition of the fixed stars.

10And this [man] claimed that among the images of the sphere are imaginary images which are not depicted, but are only the signification of that degree taken together. And this wondrous kind: it was not possible for this man to come upon it except from the books of the Indians who are versed in this science; and they hold, along with that, [that one should] use them with those known ratios, by determinations of known times and recognised ascendants.

11And they are the ones who use omens, augury, birds, the shoulder-blade and interpretation, so that their certainty may thereby be strengthened in questions, hidden thoughts and the bringing out of buried treasures; and they seek help from that as they seek help from haloes, sun-rings, the rainbow, shooting stars, the tailed [stars] and the murkiness in the Sun, for knowledge of the upper phenomena. For all of these give help and strengthening to what is intended.

12And they said that in the sphere there are beautiful and ugly images, and they are from the composition of the fixed stars. So when the native is born and the ascendant is a beautiful image and the two luminaries are in beautiful images, it signifies good fortune for that native; and when the native is born and the ascendant is an ugly image and the two luminaries are in an ugly image, it signifies ill fortune for that native; and likewise in revolutions, questions and talismans.

13And they claim that among the configurations of the stars are confused ones, like the confused dreams of sleep, which signify nothing because of their mixture; so one must be on guard and wait for others. And this often occurs in nativities, questions and revolutions.

14And they claim that the science of dreams is from the power of the soul and its connection with the world of the sphere; so it sees there the images of the things which come to be on earth, and they are imprinted in it. And this is the true dream; and its science is associated with the science of the stars, a companion to it and resembling it; therefore they seek help from it.

15And it is from a Mercurial power; and that is because Mercury signifies the power of dreams in nativities when it is strong. And the dream may also be from the talk of the soul and from the humours.

16And know, may God honour you, that the reality of the dream is the representation of individual things stripped of their bearer, and it is the soul's leaving off the use of the senses, and the use of thought. That is, the imaginative faculty combines what it finds with it of the traces of sensible things, and separates some of them from others; and it has a third act, which is imitation. So when the rational soul is in its perfection, the one who has the dream sees the thing, and it comes out as it is; and if the imaginative faculty is more perfect, the dream comes out according to the meaning.

17An example of it in the perfect soul: that he sees as if a dog or a beast of prey were fighting him; then it comes out as it is. And if the imaginative faculty has perfection, that comes out as an officer of the watch or a thief, and that is according to the meaning. If the nature is strong and the soul is occupied with it, because of its strength in [matters of] intercourse and clothing and all that it is occupied with in waking, that comes out in the dream, such as occupation with pleasures and swimming in them; for instance, that he is intent on having intercourse because of the great repletion of his body: then he has a nocturnal emission. If his body is filled with moisture, he sees in his sleep waters and rivers; if cold and dryness prevail over his temperament, he sees terrifying, frightening things; and if his temperament is yellow-bilious and hot, he sees fires and ovens and what is of that kind. So know that.

18Just as the reality of augury is discernment, and that is after reflection upon what one augurs about, either through an image one looks at or through what one hears in the state of reflection and of sending forth the imaginative faculty to consider the knowledge one wants: if his imaginative faculty is strong, that is represented to him, like one who looks into the mirror that is gazed upon [sense uncertain], and he draws help from what he saw and from what he heard, and that leads him to some kind of knowledge; just as the imaginative faculty does when the senses are at rest: it mediates between the sensible thing seen in his waking and joins it with the intelligible, and from the two comes the dream. If it is in proportion, and the body and the humours in it are in balance, it is a true dream; and if it is otherwise, it may be confused jumbles of dreams.

19And know, may God illumine your insight, that soothsaying is an influence from the fifth substance, which is called revelation; and it is a faculty among the faculties of the imaginative soul, because it penetrates into particulars until it mingles with them and is reflected, and so it tells of them, either in his sleep or in his waking. For the imaginative faculty, when it is in its perfection, the particular things are present with him, and those particulars become, as we have said, like the mirror; so they are reflected, and he sees them in their perfections and tells of them.

20But he does not go beyond being perfect in particulars, and therefore he does not attain to perfection in the intelligibles. If he is exclusively in the intelligibles and penetrates into them, he is a sage; and if he penetrates into these and those, he is a prophet. And this is only in the singular ones among men, to whom revelation comes in its perfection from the First Originator; so the Originator reveals to him through the mediation of the Active Intellect.

21So what emanates from God, the Blessed and the Exalted, to the Active Intellect emanates from the Active Intellect to his passive intellect, [and], through the mediation of the acquired intellect, from it to his imaginative faculty. So through what emanates from it to his passive intellect he is a sage, and through what emanates to his imaginative faculty a prophet.

22And this man is in the most perfect of the ranks of humanity and in the highest of the degrees of happiness, which is that for whose sake every good is sought and in which every good ends; for we seek the virtues only in order to be happy, and we attain to that by the reform of character, the reform of the household, and the reform of the community and uniting it upon one word which leads them to happiness; and by the knowledge of existing things, which is the theoretical part, and how they are, and why they are, and for the sake of what they are; and by beginning from the sensible things and ascending from them to the divine matters, according to the capacity of man. This, then, is the one who is happy in reality, and the perfect man. And happiness is the good sought for its own sake, and it is not sought at all, nor at any time of the times, so that something else may be attained by it, since there is nothing beyond happiness more perfect than it.

23And to this Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī pointed in his saying in the treatise which he composed on the result of the craft: Lowly things may be causes for attaining great ones; and the actions by which happiness is attained are the beautiful actions and the volitions from which good things proceed. So the one who arrives at it takes delight in a permanence with which there is no passing away, and a joy with which there is no grief, and a knowledge with which there is no ignorance, and a wealth with which there is no poverty. And to it the Lawgiver, God bless him and grant him peace, pointed: O God, there is no life but the life of the Hereafter. May God cause us and you to attain it, and help us to travel the road leading to it.

24And let us return to our purpose. We say that the Indians claim that the spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) may appear to the spiritual adept [reading al-'ālim al-rūḥānī] like a person, and speak to him, and teach him whatever it wishes [pronoun ambiguous: it or he] of matters; and it may make him beloved to kings and sultans, and bind and loose for him whatever it wishes of operations. And it is this which appears in the temples (barābī) which their ancients made in various images, and it answers the one who calls upon it in whatever he wishes.

25And they claim that talismans are more effective than elections, because they are employed with the nature of the whole, and they are like the miraculous because they employ the natural occult properties. That is because occult properties may do wonders among actions on their own, like the red ruby stone's warding off diseases, plagues and others, from its wearer.

26And this the talisman may do, because it combines election and occult property, as in its warding off gnats, fleas and flies by what has been deposited [in it] of celestial proportion and of materials of bodies from which it is made, which have in the generation of the thing its matter [sense uncertain] ** a natural occult property. And the purpose here in mentioning the occult property is that you know the reality of the quiddity of the talisman, and that we know that everything that is made in this world, of what ought to be made, is a talisman in some respect; and you will see that.