References to the homunculus do not appear prior to sixteenth-century alchemical writings but alchemists may have been influenced by earlier folk traditions.
These are reputed to have been seen by several people, including local dignitaries. Dr. Emil Besetzny's Masonic handbook, Die Sphinx, devoted an entire chapter to the wahrsagenden Geister (scrying ghosts). In 1775, Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein, together with Abbé Geloni, an Italian cleric, is reputed to have created ten homunculi with the ability to foresee the future, which von Kufstein kept in glass containers at his Masonic lodge in Vienna. Here, the creation of homunculi symbolically represents spiritual regeneration and Christian soteriology. The allegorical text suggests to the reader that the ultimate goal of alchemy is not chrysopoeia, but it is instead the artificial generation of humans. The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616) for example, concludes with the creation of a male and female form identified as Homunculi duo. The homunculus continued to appear in alchemical writings after Paracelsus' time. Some of the alchemists believed that these methods originated somewhere in India or Southeast Asia. One set of instructions for creating animal life found within the Jabirian Kitab al-Tajmi involves finding a vessel shaped like the animal and combining the animal's bodily fluids within it, then placing the vessel at the center of a model of a celestial sphere as heat is applied to it.
#ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR BLOOD FULL#
In the alchemical context, takwin refers to the artificial creation of life, spanning the full range of the chain of being, from minerals to prophets, imitating the function of the demiurge. In Islamic alchemy, takwin ( Arabic: تكوين) was a goal of certain Muslim alchemists, and is frequently found in writings of the Jabirian corpus. In his commentary, Jung equates the homunculus with the Philosopher's Stone, and the "inner person" in parallel with Christ. Zosimos subsequently encounters other anthroparia in his dream but there is no mention of the creation of artificial life. : 60 The Greek word "anthroparion" is similar to "homunculus" – a diminutive form of "person". In the visions, Zosimos encounters a priest who changes into "the opposite of himself, into a mutilated anthroparion". Although the actual word "homunculus" was never used, Carl Jung believed that the concept first appeared in the Visions of Zosimos, written in the third century AD. : 328–329Ĭomparisons have been made with several similar concepts in the writings of earlier alchemists. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body.
That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb, or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. De natura rerum (1537) outlines his method for creating homunculi: The homunculus first appears by name in alchemical writings attributed to Paracelsus (1493–1541). Paracelsus is credited with the first mention of the homunculus in De homunculis (c. 1529–1532), and De natura rerum (1537).
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