(Actually, you probably shouldn’t try this at home.)

Last week I posted an article about Frankenstein’s monster and the concept of creating sentient synthetic life.  Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel may have been a game-changer for the horror genre, but the idea of creating artificial human beings has been around since ancient times.

As you know, Victor Frankenstein’s monster turns against him and brings grief and destruction to its creator. In my opinion, the monster (at least the movie version) was able to cause so much mayhem because he was, to say the least, a very big dude. If Victor Frankenstein had made his creation small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble.

Because as the ancient alchemists could have told him, you don’t necessarily have to go Super Size when you make an artificial human being – they also come in Fun Size!

Meet the Homunculus!

Unless you’re well versed in occult lore, you may not know what a homunculus is, or at least you’ve probably never considered making one. So let me explain…

According to the writings of ancient alchemists dating from as early as the 16th century, the Homunculus is a living miniature humanoid being cultivated from human sperm. Scientists of that era speculated that all of a human being’s heredity already existed in miniature size inside the sperm cell – and through the guidance of a trained alchemist, a miniature person could actually be incubated outside the human body.

Occultist Paracelsus wrote in his 1537 volume De Natura Rerum that he had actually accomplished this in his own experiments, creating a tiny being that he considered to be humanoid but incomplete… and he also claimed that it fed on human blood. (Shades of Little Shop of Horrors… I wonder if he named it Audrey?)

Apparently there are three different kinds of homunculi with different magical powers:

Type 1:  Can make the full moon appear on the last day of the month, allow a person to take the form of a cow, a sheep, or even an ape, allow one to walk on water, and to know things that are happening far away.

Type 2: Can enable a person to see demons and spirits as well as converse with them.

Type 3: Can be used to summon rain or produce extremely poisonous snakes.

Detail from Liber Vaccae

The medieval text Liber Vaccae (“Book of the Cow”) actually provides a real “recipe” for making a homunculus of your very own from materials you probably have around the home or maybe could get on Amazon.

Okay, you probably don’t have most of this stuff, and unless you have Amazon Prime, it would cost a lot to ship.

Anyway, it’s really pretty disgusting. And if the movies and literature are correct, it’s not wise to tamper with this sort of thing, as “playing God” usually ends badly… so don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Visit Stuff To Blow Your Mind.com to get the recipe (If you dare!)