The author's preface

1In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

2Praise be to God, from Whose light the veils of the curtains shine forth, from Whose might the wonders of the decrees flow, to Whom the traces come to their end, and by Whose command night and day alternate; He Who brings things out into existence after their non-existence, the Originator of creatures and the Bestower of their bounties. He is the Determiner, the Originator of every being that comes to be. He neither mingles with things nor is He separate from them. Attributes do not contain Him, wrong [sense uncertain] does not pass to Him, descriptions do not exhaust Him, and events that come to be do not befall Him.

3And may God bless the lord of the messengers and the seal of the prophets, upon whom the Book was sent down in a clear Arabic tongue, 'and truly it is in the scriptures of the ancients', and his family, the pious and pure, and grant [them] abundant peace until the Day of Judgment.

4As for what follows: O seeker, eager to plunge into the science of the philosophers, to study their secrets and to search out the wonders of what they left on record in their books, know that the motive which moved me to compose this book, which I have named 'The Goal of the Sage and the More Deserving of the Two Results to Be Put First', is what occurred to me in composing the book which I composed before and named 'The Rank of the Sage'. My composition of this book began in the year three hundred and forty-three, when I had finished revising the book 'The Rank of the Sage', and I completed it at the end of the year three hundred and forty-eight.

5What moved me to compose it was that I saw most of the people of our time searching after the matter of talismans and the arts of the kinds of magic, while they do not know what they seek nor to what path they are heading. Their lives have been spent on a quest from which they have been barred, because the sages concealed it and turned away from disclosing it, on account of the ruin and decay of the world that lies in it; and God refuses that, for the good of His world.

6For that reason they erected the buildings of the temples (barābī) and placed in them engravings of images, as an awakening and a sharpening for the intellect, and they set down what they set down in books with symbols and obscurities, so that none but a sage like themselves would understand them; yet in between that they gave benefit and made the secrets clear to whoever understood them. So I saw fit to disclose to the people and explain to them the obscured path in this result which is called sīmiyā, and to make clear what the sages concealed concerning this magical result, as we did with the result of the craft;

7and I divide this book into four books, as we did in 'The Rank', each book of them bound to a number of chapters. Book One: its chapters are seven, and that is by intention, since the swift-moving planets are seven. The first chapter of it is on the nobility of wisdom. In Book One I mention [some] of the celestial relations, the configurations of the relations of the sphere at the making of talismans, and how the stars cast their rays upon the wandering [planets]; and along with that I set out, at the beginning of the book, obscure meanings which the sages kept hidden out of their niggardliness with them and their avarice over them.

8And the second book is on the celestial images and their actions, and the making clear of what the sages obscured of the secrets of their actions, and specimens of the manner of the borrowing of magic in this world called the world of generation and corruption from the world of the ether, and what the cause is that called Plato to the doctrine of the union of the forms.

9And the third book is on the shares of the planets in the three generated kingdoms, since there is not in the world of generation and corruption anything that receives the work other than them, since the elements are changing, flowing, receiving being acted upon, so nothing remains but they. And I mention the mixture of some of them with others, so that by them the magical works that are sought may be aimed at, through the effect of elemental heat or natural heat; and their vehicle is either a fumigation with which one fumigates, or what is of a nature to reach the stomach, of what is cooked or drunk.

10And the fourth book is on the magic of the Kurds, the Nabataeans and the Abyssinians, and specimens of the works of magical devices, and it is the finest of the kinds of magic. And I complete this purpose as is required, without withholding and without concealment. And God I ask for help in completing what we have set out to do; He is the Master of that, and with His help I begin.