Good day dear Hive community, first of all I would like to wish you all a good day and hope you are well! Today I would like to discuss an interesting topic of alchemy and hope you can learn something new.
Here are some artworks that I created with the help of artificial intelligence and are supposed to represent a homunculus. Homunculus is the philosophy of an artificially created human being and the name can be traced back to the Middle Ages, where it has largely influenced the ideas of alchemy. According to ideas, it is an astral entity or a allegory of the human soul which urges to adopt the physical form and in medieval writings it is usually only regarded as a pure soul with human characteristics which even had supernatural abilities. The well-known alchemist Paracelsus also wrote about the homunculus in his work De Natura Rerum and described some steps that would be necessary to create an artificial human and he also described the Homunuculus as a pure soul as well as a kind of intelligence without a body and he went very precisely into the individual steps, which took a few weeks.
The well-known poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) also discussed an experiment in his work Faust II in the section "Laboratory" in which he wrote about the creation of an artificial being and it is said to have even worked and an artificial human was born who also had abilities that go far beyond the normal ones and the Homunculus also often appears in writings as a practising helper and is often associated with occultism. In the Middle Ages it often appears as one of the most important works of the ancient alchemists and is of great importance in addition to the creation of the philosopher's stone and often appears in alchemical drawings and already from times before there were traditions in which it is reported that it has been worked with the help of the elements air and water mixed with blood has been possible to create an artificial human. According to the work De occulta Philosophia by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486 - 1535) it is described how with the help of an egg it should have been possible to have created a human being and this exciting topic was mentioned in the past by many scholars and has far changed the idea of alchemy.
Thanks for taking the time to read through my post and I hope you like it and can learn something new about this interesting topic!