A Russian exhibition of a living homunculus is currently touring the United States, along with skeletal remains of homunculi. \r
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In English it was called, the sacred art. In German it was called die schwarze Kunst. the black arts. One purpose of Alchemy was to transmute metals into gold. But some pritioners sought to create life in their laboratories.\r
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The homunculus is a small but fully-formed human being, given its name by Paracelsus in 1532. According to the theory that the male seed is a little man that grows into a child. When the alchemist raised the same seed artificially, it would grow into a homunculus, and there are historical accounts, that this was done more than once.\r
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The protoscientific method of Paracelcus is to take the sperm of a man and seal it inside a glass jar. Horse manure is used as the incubating medium because it generates its own heat. Keep the jar buried in horse dung forty days, or until it comes alive and begins to move, whichever comes first. It will resemble a miniature transparent human form, and must be fed every day with human blood. After forty weeks, matching the term of a normal human pregnancy, the result will be a small-scale living figure of a man.\r
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An alternate method is to inseminate a chicken egg with human sperm. This is the technique used recently by a Russian man on YouTube in creating his own homunculi, and uploading video of the results. For incubation he uses a plastic container kept warm at room temperature and wrapped in his knitted cap.\r
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In Italy in the year 897 the head of the Catholic church, Pope Formosus had been dead for one year. This did not prevent a new pontiff, Pope Stephen from exhuming the body and putting Formosus on trial for crimes against god. The corpse was dressed in fresh clothes and seated on a throne, to face the music. The former Pope was accused of creating small beings in jars including one with large eyes which was intelligent.\r
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John Dee of England, in 1588 was appointed royal physician to Queen Elizabeth the First. Because of their tiny size, the homunculi which he created could easily hide themselves almost anywhere. Dr. Dees creature did not live long when removed from its glass container. But it would live long enough to spy upon an enemies of the queen, and report back on conversations overheard. \r
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In France another alchemist, Doctor Pierre Borel became royal physician to King Louis the 14th, in 1654. Using an early genetic technique he developed a homunculus from a sample of blood alone. At maturity it cast glowing red beams from its eyes, and it was exhibited before the full court of King Louis.\r
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The Count of Tyrol in Austria, Johann von Kufstein joined forces with Italian mystic and Rosicrucian, Abbe Geloni in 1775, to create ten of the creatures at the same time, kept in glass retorts at a Masonic lodge in Vienna. Each homunculus was about one foot tall and had its own personality. Count von Kufstein gave them names. \r
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The devil, the angel, the king, the queen, the priest, the nun, the artist, the farmhand, the master, and the servant. The Count had tiny suits of clothing made for them, appropriate to their station. They were seen by the local dignitaries Count Max Lamberg and Count Franz von Thun. However the homunculi were not widely shared because their most valuable asset was the ability to foresee the future. \r
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The male desire to reproduce without female partnership continues today as modern scientists rear test-tube babies and experiment with human cloning.\r
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