 The explanation of celestial movement elaborates and alters some of Aristotle’s (and al-Fārābī’s) ideas. Intelligences and souls together explain—as remote and proximate causes respectively—the motion of the spheres, as they are at the root of the influence (taʾaṯṯur ) the spheres have on the sublunary world. Metaphysics explains cosmology—to which it is linked—but also adopts its data. Thus the circular movement of the spheres is explained by Avicenna not directly by means of nature—celestial bodies always leave the spot they have just attained only to return to occupy it again later, whereas through natural movement a body should come to rest in its locus naturalis—but by means of a principle which is both intellectual and psychic (Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 2, 382, 8–383, 13): the motion of the spheres is a reflection of the love and desire (ʿišq and tašawwuq; Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 2, 387, 1–392, 3), common to both intelligences and souls, to resemble their principle (to realize their assimilation—tašabbuh—to it). It is because of this desired resemblance that celestial bodies actualize, by occupying all their possible positions in turn, the only potentiality they have (Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 2, 389, 13–390, 8; Hasnawi 1984; Janos 2011). In other words, celestial souls continuously move the bodies to which they are bound in order to realize this resemblance: each time they have before them the representation of a point they must reach by virtue of which imperfection will, however briefly, be eliminated; in a way that is in part irrational, each time every soul chooses one point rather than another (Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 2, 383, 10–11).