Editing Homunculus (section)

===Folklore===
References to the homunculus do not appear prior to sixteenth-century alchemical writings{{Citation needed|date=February 2016}} but alchemists may have been influenced by earlier folk traditions. The [[mandrake|mandragora]], known in German as ''Alreona'', ''Alraun'' or ''Alraune'' is one example; [[Jean-Baptiste Pitois]]'s ''The History and Practice of Magic'' makes a direct comparison to the mandragora in one excerpt:

{{blockquote|Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by [[Paracelsus]]? Then find a root of the plant called [[Bryonia alba|bryony]]. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the [[March equinox|vernal equinox]]. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For 30 days, water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the 31st day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of [[verbena]]; then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man's [[shroud|winding-sheet]] and carry it with you everywhere.<ref>pp. 402–403, by Paul Christian. 1963</ref>}}

The homunculus has also been compared to the [[golem]] of [[Jewish folklore]]. Though the specifics outlining the creation of the golem and homunculus are very different, the concepts both metaphorically relate man to the divine, in his construction of life in his own image.<ref>{{cite journal|last = Campbell|first = Mary Baine|title = Artificial Men: Alchemy, Transubstantiation, and the Homunculus|journal = Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts|volume = 1|issue = 2|url = http://rofl.stanford.edu/node/61|access-date = 2013-01-17|archive-date = 2019-10-22|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20191022092741/https://tools.stanford.edu/vhost-frozen/|url-status = dead}}</ref>