Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls

Homunculus

Form Tibetan mysticism into European alchemy-who says we never got any education? The first use of the word "homunculus" occurs in the writings of the alchemist Paracelsus, who claimed that he had manufactured a foot-high humanoid, akin to a golem but not as big. After a few days, the homunculus attacked him and ran away, never to be seen again.
This is one of the problems with homunculi: they don't stick around. Sometimes, if you force them to by imprisoning them, they just up and die. Other homunculus creations live out their entire lives in jars and die if they are removed, as in this weirdo little story taken form Dad's journal:
Got this one from one Emil Besetzny, who published a book in 1873 about homunculi created by John Ferdinand, count of Kueffstein [if there wasn't a place called Kueffstein, someone would have to make it up], in about 1775. Besetzny's sources were apparently Masonic manuscripts and the journal of the count's butler, who went by the name of Kammerer. The count's collaborating alchemist was a Rosicrucian monk by the name of Abbe Geloni:
The bottles were closed with ox-bladders, and with a great magic seal [Solomon's seal?]. The spirits swam about in those bottles, and were about one span long.... They were therefore buried under two cartloads of horse manure, and the pile daily sprinkled with a certain liquor, prepared with great trouble by the two adepts, and made out of some "very disgusting materials".... After the bottles were removed, the "spirits" had grown to be each one about one and a half span long, so that the bottles were almost too small to contain them, and the male homunculi had come into possession of heavy beards, and the nails of their fingers and toes had grown a great deal.... In the bottle of the red and in that of the blue spirit, however, there was nothing to be seen but "clear water"; but whenever the Abbe knocked three times at the seal upon the mouth of the bottles, speaking at the same time some Hebrew words, the water in the bottle began to turn blue (respectively red), and the blue and the red spirits would show their faces, first very small, but growing in proportions until they attained the size of an ordinary human face. The face of the blue sprite was beautiful, like an angel, but the face of the red one bore a horrible expression.
Once every week the water had to be removed, and the bottles filled again with pure rainwater. This change had to be accomplished very rapidly, because during the few moments that the spirits were exposed to the air they closed their eyes, and seemed to become weak and unconscious, as if they were about to die. But the blue spirit was never fed, nor was the water changed; while the red one received once a week a thimbleful of fresh blood of some animal (chicken), and this blood disappeared in the water as soon as it was poured into it....
The spirits gave prophecies about future events that usually proved to be correct. They knew the most secret things, but each of them was only acquainted with such things as belonged to his stations; for instance, the king could talk politics, the monk about religion, the miner about minerals & etc; but the red and blue spirits seemed to know about everything.
By some accident the glass containing the monk fell one day upon the floor and was broken. The poor monk died after a few painful respirations, in spite of all the efforts of the count to save his life, and his body was buried in the garden. An attempt to generate another one, made by the count without the assistance of the Abbe, who had left, resulted in a failure, as it produced only a small thing like a leech, which had very little vitality and soon died.

Interested in making a homunculus? Several recipes have come down through the ages. Paracelsus had the simplest one. Take a bag of bones, sperm, skin fragments, and hair of any animal that you want the homunculus to look like. Bury it, cover in horse manure, remove at forty days. You'll have an embryonic homunculus. Then you just have to feed it, usually by keeping a ready supply of more horse manure around. Yeah, sounds appetizing.
Other recipes involve the addition of mandrake root-a powerful intensifier of magic, and popularly believed to grow on ground used for hangings. The root must be picked before dawn by a black dog (there's that black dog again) and steeped in milk, honey, and blood. This will develop it into a homunculi in chicken eggs in which part of the egg white was replaced with one or more of the ingredients from the other recipes.
Bottom line? We don't recommend you make a homunculus.