Anthony Testa - The Key of the Abyss.pdf

Friar Bacon was credited with one such Homunculus; so was Albertus
Magnus 157 , and, I think, Paracelsus 158 .
…
"But other magicians sought to make this Homunculus in a way closer
to nature. In all these cases they had held that environment could be
modified at will by the application of telesmata or sympathetic figures.
For example, a nine-pointed star would attract the influence which
they called Luna -- not meaning the actual moon, but an idea similar
to the poets' ideas of her. By surrounding an object with such stars,
with similarly-disposed herbs, perfumes, metals, talismans, and so on,
and by carefully keeping off all other influences by parallel methods,
they hoped to invest the original object so treated with the Lunar
qualities, and no others. (I am giving the briefest outline of an
immense subject.) Now then they proceeded to try to make the
Homunculus on very curious lines.
…
"I may conclude this little sketch by saying that the idea has been
almost universal in one form or another; the wish has always been for
a Messiah or Superman, and the method some attempt to produce man
by artificial or at least abnormal means. Greek and Roman legend is
full of stories in which this mystery is thinly veiled; they seem mostly to
derive from Asia Minor and Syria. Here exogamic principles have
been pushed to an amusing extreme. I need not remind you of the
Persian formula for producing a magician, or of the Egyptian routine
in the matter of Pharaoh, or of the Mohammedan device for
inaugurating the Millennium. I did remind Brother Cyril, by the way,
of this last point, and he did need it; but it did him no good, for here
we are at the threshold of a Great Experiment on yet another false
track!"
…
"Now I'm going to bring all this to a point," went on the old mystic.
"The Greeks, as you know, practiced a kind of eugenics. (Of course,
all tribal marriage laws are primarily eugenic in intention). But like
157 see especially Paracelsus, Archidoxes of Magic Of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature etc
158 Known as Albert the Great; scientist, philosopher, and theologian- a reputed wizard, many
pseudepigraphical works have been written on “Natural Magic” etc.
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