Words To Know Volume 6: More Homunculi
Remember a while back when I started Words to Know? The first links I provided were on things like the golem, and the homunculus.
Well, thanks to Fulguritus, the first WTK of 2007 (volume #7, no less!) is going to feature some more curiousities of alchemical and religious histories. Since I consider this a landmark, lucky Words to Know, we’ll make this one extra verbose! Not just Wiki links here, folks! Read on. :)The link chain begins with the Jaquet-Droz automata, a set of curious dolls created in the 1700s. The first thing I thought of when I saw the photos on the Wikipedia article was: “Rozen Maiden!”
For those who don’t know, Rozen Maiden is a manga and an anime about a set of living dolls created by a master dollmaker and their life with a young boy named Jun. (Without Spoilers / WITH Spoilers (but more info) - See Also: Desu [nsfw])
Reading up about these automata made me curious, so I started digging around in that article. An automaton is defined, in brief, as “a self-operating machine.” That definition immediately brings to mind two things: 1 - The Uncanny Valley and 2 - Man’s unnending attempt to synthesize life. Not just “create” life - since any horny, unchecked teenager is pretty likely to “create” life - but to actually synthesize life using methods that would generally be considered non-standard.
One item in the automaton page stuck out: the description of and his coded Book of Stones. Cryptography is interesting in and of itself, but the ties to alchemy were what compelled me to read more. Down near the bottom of the article Geber is mention of the possibility that the term “gibberish” is derived from his name. Which is both plausible (were it not for contradicting evidence) and amusing, seeing as all his alchemy-related writings were encoded and therefore not able to be read normally.
As it turns out, Geber’s alchemic goals appeared to point towards Takwin. As it states in the article, the reason for his experiments towards this end is translated as “The purpose is to baffle and lead into error everyone except those whom God loves and provides for!”
This immediately reminded me of the golem and his role in Jewish mythos as a living protector created from mud.
Jinkies! Just a hop-skip and a jump to get me to come back to one of my first Words to Know research topics. From French robot dolls to ancient magic mud men in only a bajillion links! ;)
I could go off on these and more tangents for a while, but I’ll save it for another time.
Until next time, happy reading!
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