If you hear that a gnostic has gone for some time without eating or drinking, then readily credit the report, for nature holds marvels. Ibn Sīnā supported this by saying: when an ill person’s digestive powers are occupied warding off disease, the food already in his stomach remains undigested for a spell during which he neither eats nor drinks; likewise, when the gnostic’s soul is absorbed in its gnosis, it draws the digestive powers toward itself so that they do not break down the food.

Yet what he has said here and in similar passages is of little substance. People know full well that when the soul is seized by intense joy, great anger, or deep concern, it can neglect food and drink for those very reasons. Such instances, therefore, are neither prophetic miracles nor favors peculiar to the saints.

For this reason, whatever influence they speak of is—by their own admission—tied to the ordinary natural order. In their view, an agent can act upon matter only to the extent that the matter is already receptive. Thus they might say: because air is capable of turning into water, an agent can work upon it until it becomes water and rain descends. But the miracles of the prophets transcend natural laws. An example is the staff that became a serpent and then swallowed the other staffs and ropes; this is beyond both psychic and natural powers, for wood is by no means apt to become a living creature. Within natural forces it is impossible for a staff to turn into a snake—whether by psychic potency, sorcery, or anything else. The sorcerer’s utmost reach is to manipulate accidents, producing illness, death, and similar effects that other human beings can likewise achieve; a person may beat another until he sickens or dies. Thus the sorcerer, the envier, and anyone else who operates through the forces of the soul