Book Three, chapter 5

1Chapter 5

2Let us return to what we promised, and we say: since we have mentioned what has been allotted to the planets among the existing things that come to be, namely the three generated kingdoms (for the whole world in its entirety is either animal or plant or mineral; the world does not go outside this), know that animals have ranks: the most excellent of them is man, then in the second rank the rest of the animals.

3And animals are of divisions: among them is that which has one sense, like the shellfish; and among them that which has two senses; and among them that which has three; and among them that which has four; and among them that which has five. And man has ten, five outward and five inward, and we have mentioned them.

4And the species of animals are diverse in their attributes: among them is that whose right is a left, so it has two lefts; and among them that whose lip is a beak; and among them that whose night is day; and among them that whose hair is thorns; and among them that whose nails are talons; and among them that which is deprived of the head, with its eye in its chest; and among them that which is slaughtered, like locusts and fish.

5And among them is that which is pinched in the middle, like the ant; and among them those with crowns; and among them those with collars; and among them those with markings; and among them those with scales; and among them the burrowing ones; and among them the swimming ones; and among them the weaving ones; and among them the building ones; and among them the many-legged ones; and among them the legless ones; and among them those with hoof-tips and hooves; and among them are the intermediate animals, and among them the birds of prey, and among them the beasts of prey of the land, and among them that which is close to speech. And just as man is a link between the animals and the angels, so the fish is a link between the birds and the rest of the animals, and the shellfish is a link between the animals and the inanimate; and only two senses are found in it, because of the predominance of earthiness in it, and it resembles the plants.

6And man took from every element equally, so he is the most balanced of the animals; and he is upright of stature, immersed in the air, balanced of temperament.

7If it is said: How is that? then know that every element has a certain animal which is particular to it and cleaves to it: like the birds, which are particular to the air, and the fish to the water, and the fire to the jinn and the rebels (marada), and that is universal fire; and particular fire is singled out for the salamander and its like; and the earth for the minerals and the plants. Even if all share and are acted upon, for the elements are acted upon by one another, yet each element has a certain particularity. So the bird: its life and its will are in flying in the air; and the fish likewise in the water; and the hidden, rebellious animal in the fire; and all heaviness in the earth, which is the lowest of its sisters.

8And perhaps someone will say: And how is it conceived that there are jinn in fire? Then let him know that in the human body there is a model (unmūdhaj) of that. That is, anger and the will to evil and revenge come only from an excess of the burning of the fiery [part] in the body; so when it is in excess, it takes the place of the devils, which our eyes do not perceive; and if it is in balance, it is angels, which are not pictured to our eyes. So the angels are present in us and in the Highest Assembly, which is above the world of generation (kiyān); and likewise the jinn, which are attributed to fire, are present in fire.

9For man is a small world, and there is nothing of what is found in the upper world but its like and its resemblance is found in man; and man in his entirety is a copy of the upper world. We have dealt fully with its noble account [pronoun ambiguous: man or the upper world] in what has gone before. So let us return to where the discourse broke off for us, and we say:

10Know, O you who study [this], that perception is according to preparedness, and preparedness according to will. So let it be known that what is intended by the division of those three generated kingdoms among the wandering planets is their use in the aim on which we are engaged. That is, the Chaldeans of the Nabataeans, and the Copts of the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the Nabataeans who dwell in the land of Syria, and the Abyssinians who neighbour the Copts, and the Kurds, and the Indians, and the Persians who neighbour the Nabataeans, in India and China — all of them, for all their differences, have, in the kinds of magic, and in mixing the parts of the generated kingdoms with one another and using them by putrefaction and otherwise, in fumigations and foods and nawāmīs and marvel-workings (nīranjāt), wondrous things which are found in their books.

11And Abū Bakr ibn Waḥshiyya has related from the Nabataeans, in the book which he entitled al-Filāḥa [the Agriculture], things on which he expatiated, and I shall bring you some of them. And they have, besides that, the wondrous compounds which spread the actions of the planets and their influences in the air after its mixing with the fiery power; then the air pushes the spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) of that compound to the spiritual power hidden in the person sought,

12since the air is a body without which bodies have no life. So it is the intermediary for the occurrence of reception and giving, together with the resolve of the agent and the stripping of his desire from what mixes with it. For the air is more penetrating in power than that the stratagem of the resolute man should penetrate it; and therefore one is not able to turn away what has been worked of these things, because they are celestial, spiritual matters bound to one another.

13And they have operations in incantations (ruqā) composed upon the members of man, from plants and others of the generated kingdoms and by them they move the spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) of a person to whatever they wish; and they have the speech by which they also move the spiritual power, by a fundamental division [sense uncertain]; and they have besides, as we have mentioned, works of talismans whose effects are manifest.

14And I have seen, among the reports of India, by Abū Ghālib Aḥmad ibn 'Abd al-Wāḥid al-Rūzbādī the secretary, in his book which he named 'The Book of the Divisions of the Sciences and the Uncovering of the Hidden', what this is its text: He said: One of the merchants of Khurāsān whom I trust informed me that he met a man from India, a merchant in Nīshāpūr, one of the people of this science; and he spoke with him about it and disputed with him through doubts that had appeared to him.

15So he invited him to see it with his own eyes, and that was what he had been seeking. And there was there a youth from the people of Balkh, wealthy, handsome of form, upon whom laying hold could not be hoped for; and he claimed that he would bring him and lead him to obedience, and to leaving his comfort, and to keeping to my house, until he should release him and free him at my choice. So I demanded of him that he do that, seeking the two benefits together: the benefit of knowledge and the benefit of pleasure.

16So he took the astrolabe and verified the altitude, and drew a zā'irja; then he said: The ascendant is Aries and its lord is Mars, and the seventh is Libra and its lord is Venus. Bakh, bakh! So I said to him: What is this? And he said to me: The ascendant and the seventh have come together agreeing with the matter that you want, because Mars and Venus are among the planets of sexual union and pleasures.

17So he made Mars my significator and Venus his significator, and he looked at their place in the sphere and when they would apply by trine; and there were forty days between us and that time. So he said to me: Within a period of forty days the youth will come to you and be with you. Then he took a piece of magnet stone and ground it fine like powder, and kneaded it with ammoniacum until it became one thing, and made from it an image in my likeness.

18And he took dry garlic and pounded it and kneaded it with wax, and made from it the image of the boy, and dressed it in clothes like his. And he took an earthenware jar and arranged in it seven sticks from the twigs of myrtle, willow, pomegranate, quince, mulberry, laurel and plane, in the middle of the jar, four below and three above, in the shape of the cross.

19And he set my image in the jar first, then followed it with the image of the boy, its back towards me; and he undertook doing that while Venus was in opposition to Mars, and he [Mars] was made fortunate. And he did not cease returning every day at the time at which he had set it, and the image of the boy would incline towards me,

20until, when it was the day of the trine, the face of the image had come round to my image, and its face had stuck to its face. Then he bent it away from my image [sense uncertain], and covered the mouth of the jar, and ordered me to bury it under an oven with a few embers; and he fumigated with a piece of sandarac and said words which I afterwards learned by heart from him, and that was in Indian.

21When he had finished his speech, he said: Get the jar. So I took it out, and the image of the boy had inclined towards me as though it had been made so. Then he took out the two images; and hardly had we settled when the door of the place was opened and the youth came in upon us. And he did not leave us for ten days, while his family were seeking him, and the image was hidden from him under that oven.

22When the Indian saw that, he said: Now we will release him, since you have come to know what I had promised you. Then he took seed of al-faqd and kneaded it with wax, and made of it a wick, and lit it under that oven after taking out the image and after he had separated them; and this was to show me something of the wonder of his work.

23Then he said other words, and that boy was like a drunken man who has woken from his drunkenness: he opened his eyes and said: Do you give me leave to go? So we gave him leave, and he went. And talk arose about that, since he had been absent for days, so we moved away because of that from our place. And this was the most elegant thing I have seen for this purpose. This is the text of what al-Rūzyādī related in his book which we have mentioned. We have mentioned it only for the benefit of your coming to know the manner of this operation, the excellence of its undertaking, and its agreement with what the people [of this art] have set down in their books. So know that.

24And I now take up what we had promised you: the drawing down of the spiritual power (rūḥāniyya), the mixing of the generated things for the establishing of the laws (nawāmīs), and working with fumigations and with feeding in marvel-working (nīranj). And let us put forward before this a piece of counsel:

25O reader, consider where you place this book of mine: in the black of your eye and the hidden store of your secret. And know what toil, hardship and sleeplessness I met with in compiling it, after persevering in the study of the books of the people of this way. Whatever they agreed upon and whose soundness they trusted, that is what I relied upon and set myself to record; and whatever was contrary to that, I paid no attention to.

26And I sought help in composing it from a number of books, two hundred and twenty-four books in number, from the books of the people on this matter. And even so it did not come out clear (no!) nor was its compilation complete except after six years; and then what I had been hoping for was completed for me, and the last of my work was the first of my thought. So know that, O reader.

27And I return to the purpose, and I say, according to the opinion of some of those who came before: as for the manner of drawing down the spiritual power, it is that the one who draws it down should know what the nature is of the planet whose spiritual power and the spreading of whose powers he wishes to draw down, and should know that that nature has what we have already pointed to, of colour, taste and smell. Then he governs the outside of the body by the colour and the smell, by taking that colour as clothing and the smell as perfume; and he governs the inside of his body by the nature and the taste, by taking them as food.

28And that food is to be in addition to the food he had before, since that earlier [food] was preserving the body in the nutritive health that it has, not drawing it toward deviating from it; and the like of this is not hidden from the seeker. Then he continues thus until his stomach accepts that food and he desires nothing else.

29Then he watches for that planet to stand facing its trace [reading uncertain: li-atharihi] in the sphere of the signs, straight, its line not cut by [the line of] another planet contrary to it in nature. And when the line of a planet contrary to it in nature does not cut it, its line going out from it and its coming to the earth are straight, arriving, uninterrupted.

30Then you learn which of the mineral bodies has been allotted to that planet, and you make from them a hollow cross in the observed relation [sense uncertain]. The cross is to be hollow, its bottom and its top open through to the air, and the bottom of the cross divided into two legs.

31Then you mount [it] upon an image [word uncertain: mukarra] of what is sought by the spiritual power, according to what is wanted from it: for example, that you mount it on the image of a lion or a serpent if you want by that warfare and being feared by enemies; or on a bird if you want deliverance from terrors; or [on a figure] seated on a pulpit if you want magnification of standing, might and elevation of rank, and what resembles that.

32And likewise, if you want to abase whomever you wish among creatures and make him like the obedient slave: if it is a human being, you learn the planet that has dominion over him and over his nativity, and you make the image of that human being from a stone that is of the allotment of that planet, and in its hour, and [with the planet] not facing the trace of a planet contrary to its nature, or [such a planet] being with it in the sign in which it is or aspecting it, and not afflicting it; and you make this image the bearer of the first image. And if the operation is to abase all people, or one of them whose planet that has mastery over his nativity you do not know, then we make seven images from the seven stones which are of the portion of the seven planets, namely: antimony (al-ithmid), which is of the portion of Saturn; chrysolite (al-zabarjad), which is of the portion of Jupiter; orpiment (al-zarnīkh), which is of the portion of Mars; al-bazādī, which is of the portion of the Sun; haematite (al-shādana), which is of the portion of Venus; talc (al-ṭalq), which is of the portion of Mercury; and crystal (al-billawr), which is of the portion of the Moon; or what takes the place of these stones from their portion.

33We make from each stone of these stones an image in the hour of the planet of whose portion that stone is, and these seven images are to be carrying the cross whose mention has preceded. We stated that it should be a cross only because we have said that every thing is joined to its [own] shape and is repelled by what is not its shape; and we wish to join the upper spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) to an image of its [own] shape, yet we do not know a shape for the spiritual power, nor do we find a proof that the form of the spiritual power is the form of a man or other than a man.

34And this statement is one of their symbols, because this science is founded, according to them, on images; rather, he pointed to the universal meaning in his work. Then he said: We see that every form of plant differs one from another, and likewise the forms of animals are different from one another, and likewise also the forms of minerals; so how should they know a shape for the spiritual power? For this reason we have shaped it in the shape of the cross, because everything possessing a body falls under its shape, since the exterior of the body is the surface, and that is what has length and breadth, and the shape of length and breadth is the cross. So we adopted it for this cause, so that it should be a shape to which the spiritual power is not averse.

35And this, he said, is among the secrets of this science. And we say that it cannot but be that all people are under the rule of the seven planets mentioned. So when the spiritual power is joined to this image and reaches what it carries, there is for it [pronoun ambiguous: the cross or the operator] might and power over whoever has a carrying image: if a man, then a man; or if other than a man, then other than a man.

36And when we have made this work and completed it as we have mentioned, we then take a censer of the like of the body from which we made the obeyed cross, and there is to be at the top of the dome of the censer a single hole, and there is to be no way for what is deposited in it of incense to go out except from that hole. Then you take, for drawing down the powers of the spiritual spirits, a clean place with no screen between it and the sky, and you spread that place with plants whose nature is like the nature of that planet whose power you wish to attract by similarity, and let there be nothing other than it spread in it, neither near nor far.

37Then you fumigate with an incense whose nature is like the nature of that planet, by placing it in that censer, and the cross at the top of the dome, its hole facing its hole, so that the incense enters at the lower hole and goes out at the upper hole. And let this whole act be in the appointed hour. When you have done all of that, the smoke of the incense made from the portion of the planet is joined [to the planet] all of whose lines going out from it to its trace in the sphere of the signs *** [are] straight to the earth, not cut by the line of another planet differing from it in nature. So when the lower is joined to the higher, it is necessary that the higher be joined to the lower; and the correspondence is sound, and the reception takes place, and the coming-into-being of the benefit occurs.

38And the seeker of this science must know that every planet has a governorship and a deposition, and rulings that abrogate one another. So if some planet has governorship in some matter, the universal ruling in that matter belongs to it, and the particular ruling belongs to another. And the correct course is that one deliberately set about drawing down the spiritual power (rūḥāniyya) of the planet to which that ruling belongs; and if it happens for the one drawing [it] down that that is his own planet, it is more effective for his work and more far-reaching.

39Then he said: And it is not possible for the psychic souls to be joined with the bodily souls except by the like of this operation, and it is among the greatest secrets of this science; so whoever knows and acts by it will see the object of desire.

40Then he said: And when a person knows his nativity, he infers by it the particular time in which his soul was united with his body and joined with it and mingled with it; and he infers by that the planet having mastery over him, the one with whose power that power of his soul was mixed: that planet which has the ruling at that time in which the formation of that native was completed and it moved. So if that planet is unfortunate, that native to which that soul was bound is unfortunate; and if the planet is fortunate, he is fortunate. So know that and understand it thoroughly.