In the Middle Ages, in addition to experiments on the creation of a philosopher's stone and a general solvent, alchemists tried to comprehend the secrets of the origin of life and, comparing this with God Himself, create an artificial creature - a homunculus (from the Latin "homunculus" - a man)
Antiquity knew many artificial creatures - from the copper bull Moloch, who swallowed convicts and spewed smoke from his nostrils, to walking statues that guarded the chambers of the royal tombs. However, they were all deprived of the most important quality that makes a thing alive - the soul. One of the first European alchemists, Albertus Magnus, was best known for revitalizing dead matter.
There is evidence of this from his student, the greatest Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Thomas tells how he once visited his teacher. The door was opened for him by an unfamiliar woman, moving in strange slow jerks and speaking just as slowly, with pauses between phrases.
The future philosopher experienced a sense of intense fear in the company of this servant Albert. The fear was so great that Thomas Aquinas attacked her and hit her several times with his staff. The maid fell, and some mechanical parts suddenly spilled out of her. It turned out that the woman was an artificial creature (android), on the creation of which Albertus Magnus had been working for thirty years. At the same time, the Spanish alchemist Arnold de Villanova fought over the creation of an artificial man, whose achievements were later used by Paracelsus, who created a detailed recipe for growing a homunculus.
In his work "On the nature of things" Paracelsus wrote: "There was a lot of controversy around whether nature and science gave us a means by which it would be possible to give birth to a man without the participation of a woman. In my opinion, this does not contradict the laws of nature and is really possible …”Paracelsus's recipe for the production of homunculus is as follows. The first step is to place fresh human sperm in a retort flask, then seal the vessel and bury it in horse dung for forty days.
During the entire period of "maturation" of the homunculus, it is necessary to incessantly pronounce magic spells that should help the embryo to grow into flesh. At the end of this period, the flask is opened and placed in an environment the temperature of which corresponds to the temperature of the horse's intestines. For forty weeks, a small creature born in a flask needs to be fed daily with a small amount of human blood.
Paracelsus assured that if everything is done correctly, a baby will be born, which will then grow to its normal size and will answer the most intimate questions. In the occult literature of that time, there were other recipes for making a homunculus, but they all somehow echoed the teachings of Paracelsus and differed from him only in details. Growing homunculi was considered not only difficult, but also dangerous, because wrong actions could create a terrible monster.
The threat also came from the church, which forbade the production of a person in an unnatural way on pain of death. But the craving for "higher knowledge" for alchemists has always been stronger than church dogmas: every now and then there were brave men who declared that they had conquered inanimate nature.
At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, a legend appeared about Rabbi Yehuda-Lev Ben-Bezalel and about his brainchild, Golem. Yehuda-Lev Ben-Bezalel (also known as Maharal mi-Prah) was born in 1512 in the city of Poznan into a family of immigrants from Worms, who gave many famous Talmudists. After studying at the yeshiva from 1553 to 1573, Yehuda was the district rabbi in Morava and then moved to Prague. Here he founded a well-known yeshiva and a society for the study of the Mishna. He lived in Prague until 1592. His acquaintance with the Czech king and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Rudolf I. From 1597 until the end of his life, Maharal was the chief rabbi of Prague. He died in 1609 and is buried in the Prague cemetery. His grave is well known. To this day, it is a place of worship - and not only for Jews. It should be saidthat the activities of the Maharal had a tremendous impact on the further development of Jewish ethics and philosophy. His most famous works - "Paths of Peace", "Glory of Israel" and "Eternity of Israel" - have not lost their relevance to this day.
In addition to religious works, Rabbi Yehuda-Lev Ben-Bezalel wrote a great many books of non-religious content - on astronomy, alchemy, medicine and mathematics. In general, it should be noted that Maharal was a member of the galaxy of the then European scientists, and his closest friend was the famous Danish astronomer (and astrologer) Tycho Brahe. Bezalel sought a formula for revitalization, relying on the instructions of the Talmud, which says that if the righteous wanted to create the world and man, they could do it by rearranging the letters in the unpronounceable names of God. The search led Bezalel to create an artificial creature named Golem.
Life in the Golem was supported by magic words that have the property of attracting "free stellar current" from the Universe. These words were written on parchment, which was put into the mouth of the Golem during the day, and taken out at night so that life would leave this creature, since after sunset, Bezalel's brainchild became violent. Once, as the legend tells, Bezalel forgot to pull the parchment from the Golem's mouth before the evening prayer, and he rebelled. When they finished reading Psalm 92 in the synagogue, a terrible cry rang out in the street. It was the Golem rushing, killing everyone who got in its way. Bezalel barely caught up with him and tore the parchment that animates the artificial man. The golem immediately turned into a block of clay, which is still shown in the Prague synagogue on Alchemists Street.
Later it was said that the secret formula for reviving the Golem was kept by a certain Eleazar de Worms. It supposedly takes up twenty-three columns of handwritten text and requires knowledge of the 221 gate alphabet, which is used for spells. The legend also tells that the word "emet", meaning "truth", had to be written on the forehead of a clay man. The same word, but with the erased first letter - "mat", translated as "death", turned the Golem into an inanimate object.
The tales of the android, the homunculi of Paracelsus and the Golem were the main topic of discussion in scientific circles in the 18th century. Here and there, new rumors were born about the found way to turn the dead into living. One of these stories tells that the famous physician, botanist and poet Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of the creator of the theory of evolution, kept in his test tube a piece of vermicelli that could move by itself.
The Rosicrucians, who adopted and developed the tradition of alchemy, also showed great interest in such experiments. “In the vessel,” we read in the secret Rosicrucian acts, “the May dew collected at the full moon is mixed, two parts of the male and three parts of the female blood from pure and chaste people. This vessel is placed on a moderate fire, which is why the red earth will be deposited below, while the upper part is separated into a clean bottle and from time to time is poured into the vessel, into which one more grain of tincture from the animal kingdom is poured. After a while, a stamping and whistling sound will be heard in the flask, and you will see in it two living creatures - a man and a woman - absolutely beautiful …
By means of certain manipulations, you can keep them alive throughout the year, and you can learn anything from them, because they will be afraid and honor you. " In 1775, Count von Küfstein from Tyrol entered the stage with his ten "spiritists" in a bottle. The count was a wealthy Austrian landowner who served at the imperial court. His secretary, Kammerer, scrupulously calculating how many thalers it cost the count the voyage to Italy (hotel bills, powder for wigs, gondolas and tips), as if by the way mentions an accidental acquaintance with the Abbot Zheloni, who, like his Excellency, belonged to the Rosicrucian brotherhood. So, quite unexpectedly, amid the mercantile calculations, a more than a fantastic story worthy of Hoffmann's pen was crept in.
For five weeks, spent in the mysterious laboratory of the Austrian castle, the count and the abbot managed to raise several "spiritualists": a king, queen, architect, monk, nun, knight and miner. In addition to them, three completely fantastic characters appeared in the smoked glass: a seraphim and two spirits - red and blue. For each, a two-liter flask with water, tightened with a bovine bubble, was prepared in advance, where they were supposed to live, like fish in an aquarium.
Following the recipe of Paracelsus, the vessels were placed in a dung heap, which the abbot watered every morning with some kind of solution. Intense fermentation soon began, and on the twenty-ninth day the flasks were again on the laboratory bench. Zheloni conjured over them for some time, and finally the delighted count was able to see his pets again. The metamorphoses that happened to them were indeed amazing. The gentlemen managed to grow a beard and mustache in order, and the only lady sparkled with angelic beauty.
In addition to these miracles, the king miraculously acquired a crown and a scepter, a knight - armor and a sword, and a diamond necklace sparkled on Her Majesty's chest. But soon the joy of the great accomplishment was overshadowed by the wayward behavior of the tiny captives. Whenever it was time to feed them, they tried to escape from the glass prison! The abbot even once complained that the insolent monk almost bit off his finger. The crowned prisoner behaved even worse. Having contrived to sneak away during the next meal, he managed to reach the queen's flask and even tore off the wax seal suspended from the bubble.
Obviously, Paracelsus' covenant to renounce a woman did not suit him. Laughter laughter, but it all ended rather badly. The Rosicrucian brothers were very skeptical about Kyufstein's demonstration. Someone even noticed that just "nasty toads" were sitting in the flasks. Only one of the adepts, by the way, a healer, showed a willingness to participate in the experiment by the laying on of hands, but his reputation was already seriously undermined by outright fraud in Leipzig. The long-awaited communication with the homunculi was not happy either. They broadcast, presumably, exclusively through Zheloni. Instead of wise advice and promised secrets, they talked rather unintelligibly about their own affairs. The king was preoccupied with some political problems. The Queen did not even want to think about anything but court etiquette.
The knight constantly cleaned his weapons, and the miner quarreled with invisible gnomes over underground treasures. But the worst thing happened with the monk. As soon as the count tried to ask him about some manuscript of Paracelsus, the absurd monk made such a scandal that the flask fell off the table and shattered to smithereens. The poor man could not be saved.
After the solemn funeral in the same garden bed, another surprise followed. The king went on the run again, smashing almost all the laboratory glassware. Attempts to compensate for the loss of the monk with a more loyal person also ended in failure. The count wanted to get the admiral, but it turned out something like a tadpole. And indeed - "nasty toads". In the end, Kyufstein heeded the pleas of his wife, who was concerned not so much with her husband’s godless pursuits as with the senseless waste of family capital. This is where the secretary’s notes end. One can only guess how and under what circumstances the imperial count parted with his unusual collection and, no less interesting, where did the warlock abbot go …
Some clue to the "miracle" with the Zheloni homunculi is given, oddly enough, by a bull's bubble. In Europe, a rather amusing toy is widespread, which is a glass tube filled with water with a rubber pear at the end; inside the pear floats a devil cast from multi-colored glass, which, if you press on the pear, begins to tumble and move its arms and legs. Among the "spiritualists" there are not only devils, but also knights and ducks, not to mention the naked beauties.
This toy was probably also known in the Middle Ages. And who knows, was it a consequence of the legends about the homunculus or, on the contrary, gave birth to them?
