ALCHEMISTS AND HOMUNCULI

Chemistry it is one of the basic sciences but have you ever wondered how it came into existence? What was the reason for distinguishing so many elements?

 

Well some of us don’t know the story (I guess) BUT CHEMISTY CAME FROM ALCHEMY.

In the years when anything in which god was not concerned was a considered a taboo, a group of men got curious about the most precious metal of that age: GOLD.

 

These people were adamant on creating gold using the cheap and known metals (like tin, lead and bronze) available during that age. In the rigorous experimentation they started discovering a lot of new elements but failed in creating gold. If the gold craze could have been confined in that generation only then may be, we wouldn’t have to study so many elements in periodic table. But it didn’t happen this group of men shared their knowledge with their disciplines, thus increasing gold fandom. So the alchemists started prospering and growing over the eras until it came to a breaking point. It was then that some alchemists realized that gold is a noble metal and cannot be created. This section of alchemists moved away from the aim to create gold and started experimenting with the discovered elements to create new compounds .Thus began our very well known branch of chemistry.

It’s shocking to believe that the modern alchemists i.e. chemists are successful in creating gold in laboratory; it is a radioactive isotope of gold which can only last for few seconds. (but give them some credit, they succeeded right at last).

 

It is not known if the earlier alchemists were successful in creating gold but most of their journals claim that they created a living humanoid creature in a bottle: HOMUNCULI.

 

Unbelievable but true, if the fact was just written in journals then it wouldn’t be so hard to eliminate as rubbish but unfortunately ten of these humanoid creatures were exhibited at the court of King Louis XIV of France (the case is documented in Dr Emil Besetzny’s book “Sphinx”). The humanoids were created by Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein and Abbe Geloni.

Like all homunculi these ten were also grown in sealed jars with manure and water but due to some special solution they were taller than average homunculi. They were about a foot tall.

According to alchemists the culture medium of an homunculi consisted of albumin, sputum, semen, human blood( that in the primitive society was related with vital essence of life) and of course the mysterious element whose formula only alchemists knew ‘arcanum of blood’. Another element that some journals claim is ‘animal tincture’.

Out of the ten recorded homunculus eight were physical manikins while the remaining two were non corporal and all of them looked different from one another. The eight homunculi were given identities like king , queen , knight , monk, nun, seraph, miner and architect.( funny right)

It is so said that homunculi could not live outside their jars , once the king homunculus got out of his own jar and was desperately trying to open the jar of the queen but he soon fainted due to the exposure to air , luckily Count Kufstein noticed him and put him back in his own jar.

Now the question lies isn’t there any scientific explanations about this absurd humanoid creature?

Well there is one an amphibian the African clawed toad that looked vaguely humanoid, could have been brought by travelers and represented as homunculi.

But according to the documentation all the ten homunculi could answer questions concerning the future that came out to be true later. Now toad can’t speak right!

       So what are homunculi actually , are they just myths, caged animals in bottles or actually something more . You see semen contains sperms , what if alchemists with their vast knowledge and uncanny ways were able to create something very similar to a miniature version of test tube babies in a bottle .

 

                                                - blue rose belles

                                                      (Archie )