This article examines five inter-connected conjuration spells, found in the sixteenth-century Bijapuri astrological encyclopaedia, the Nujūm al-ʿulūm (The Stars of the Sciences, 1570), each of which is used to summon one of a family of jinn sisters, known as the ‘children of the heart-ravishing houris’. Through an examination of these spells, I direct attention to the ways in which knowledge of the esoteric sciences became a useful skill in courtly society in the Deccan, and intersected with widely shared understandings of both the physical body and the cosmos, which it inhabited. Focusing particularly on the importance of olfactants and olfactory techniques in magical practices, this article will also highlight an oft-forgotten sense – smell – and the practices associated with it in the sixteenth-century Deccan. Finally I also consider the importance of practices of conceptual translations in sixteenth-century courtly culture and statecraft.