256 PARACELSUS 



to become visible again, and to resurrect from its ashes. 

 One of the greatest secrets, however, is the generation of 

 beings like men or women, that were generated without 

 the assistance of a female organism, and which were called 

 Homunculi. Paracelsus speaks about them as follows : — 



HOMUNCULI 



"Human beings may come into existence without 

 natural parents. That is to say, such beings grow 

 without being developed and born by a female organism ; 

 by the art of an experienced spagyricus (alchemist)." 

 — De Natura Beruni^ vol. i. 



"The generatio homunculi has until now been kept 

 very secret, and so little was publicly known about it 

 that the old philosophers have doubted its possibility. 

 But I know that such things may be accomplished by 

 spagyric art assisted by natural processes. If the sperma, 

 enclosed in a hermetically sealed glass, is buried in horse 

 manure for about forty days, and properly ' magnetised,' 

 it begins to live and to move. After such a time it bears 

 the form and resemblance of a human being, but it will 

 be transparent and without a corpus. If it is now arti- 

 ficially fed with the arcanum sanguinis hominis ^ until it 

 is about forty weeks old, and if allowed to remain during 

 that time in the horse-manure in a continually equal 

 temperature, it will grow into a human child, with all 

 its members developed like any other child, such as could 

 have been born by a woman ; only it will be much smaller. 

 We call such a being a homunculus, and it may be raised 

 and educated like any other child, until it grows older 

 and obtains reason and intellect, and is able to take care 

 of itself. This is one of the greatest secrets, and it ought 

 to remain a secret until the days approach when all secrets 

 will be known." ^ 



* Without this arcanum the experiment would not succeed, nor the 

 form become visible. 



^ Paracelsus has been reproached for his belief in the possibility of 

 ^eneratin^ homunculi j but a deeper insight into the processes of Nature 



