—this Baron had … actually produced ten homunculi which he called his “prophesying spirits” … a king, a queen, a knight, a monk, a nun, an architect, a miner, a seraph, and finally a blue spirit and a red one!… As the Baron was anxious for them to grow to a greater size, we helped him bury them in several cartloads of horse manure … The manure began to steam as if heated by a subterranean fire … Once every three days the Abbé and the Baron spent the whole night praying and fumigating the midden with incense. When at last the Baron deemed this process complete the bottles were carefully removed and returned to the laboratory shelves. All the homunculi had grown in size to such an extent that the bottles were now hardly big enough for them … They had a kind of beautiful obscenity floating there with an expression on their faces such as I have only seen once before—on the face of a Peruvian pickled head!… The blue spirit was as beautiful as any angel, but the red wore a truly terrifying expression.

—Lawrence Durrell, CLEA

Refuse the evil. Choose the good.

—anonymous