Mandrake (plant)

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Mandrake (plant)
"Mandrake root" redirects here. For the Deep Purple song, see Mandrake Root.
"Mandragora" redirects here. For other uses, see Mandragora (disambiguation).
For other uses, see Mandrake.
Mandrake
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Solanales
Family: Solanaceae
Genus: Mandragora
L.
Species
Mandragora officinarum
Mandragora turcomanica
Mandragora caulescens
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora, particularly the species Mandragora
officinarum, belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because mandrake contains deliriant hallucinogenic
tropane alkaloids such as atropine, scopolamine, apoatropine, and hyoscyamine, and the roots sometimes contain
bifurcations causing them to resemble human figures, their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in
contemporary pagan traditions such as Wicca and Odinism.
Mandrake (plant)
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Description
The root is often branched. This root gives off at the surface of the ground a rosette of ovate-oblong to ovate,
wrinkled, crisp, sinuate-dentate to entire leaves, 5 to 40cm (2.0 to 15.7in) long, somewhat resembling those of the
tobacco plant. A number of one-flowered nodding peduncles spring from the neck bearing whitish-green or purple
flowers, nearly 5cm (2.0in) broad, which produce globular, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes. The
only part of the mandrake that is not poisonous is the fruit.
Effects
The alkaloid chemicals contained in the root include atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine. These chemicals
are anticholinergics, hallucinogens, and hypnotics.
Anticholinergic properties can lead to asphyxiation. Ingesting mandrake root is likely to have other adverse
effects such as vomiting and diarrhea. The alkaloid concentration varies between plant samples, and accidental
poisoning is likely to occur.
In the Bible
Two references to (dd'im)literally meaning "love plant"occur in the Jewish scriptures. The Septuagint
translates (dd'im) as (mandragoras), and Vulgate follows Septuagint. A number of later
translations into different languages follow Septuagint (and Vulgate) and use mandrake as the plant as the proper
meaning in both Genesis 30:1416 and Song of Solomon 7:13. Others follow the example of the Luther Bible and
provide a more literal translation.
In Genesis 30:14, Reuben, the eldest son of Jacob and Leah finds mandrake in a field. Rachel, Jacob's infertile
second wife and Leah's sister, is desirous of the and barters with Leah for them. The trade offered by Rachel
is for Leah to spend that night in Jacob's bed in exchange for Leah's . Leah gives away the plant to her barren
sister, but soon after this (Genesis 30:1422), Leah, who had previously had four sons but had been infertile for a
long while, became pregnant once more and in time gave birth to two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun, and a
daughter, Dinah. Only years after this episode of her asking for the mandrakes did Rachel manage to become
pregnant. The predominant traditional Jewish view is that were an ancient folk remedy to help barren women
conceive a child.
[citation needed]
14
And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his
mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.
15
And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away
my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes.
16
And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come
in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.
the Bible,King James Version, Genesis 30:1416
A number of other plants have been suggested by biblical scholars,
[citation needed]
e.g., most notably, ginseng, which
looks similar to the mandrake root and reputedly has fertility enhancing properties, for which it was picked by
Reuben in the Bible; blackberries, Zizyphus lotus, the sidr of the Arabs, the banana, lily, citron, and fig. Sir Thomas
Browne, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ch. VII, suggested the dudai'im of Genesis 30:14 is the opium poppy, because
the word duda'im may be a reference to a woman's breasts.
The final verses of Song of Songs (Song of Songs 7:1213), are:
-

Mandrake (plant)
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12
Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the
pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
13
The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have
laid up for thee, O my beloved.
the Bible,King James Version, Song of Songs 7:1213
Magic and witchcraft
Mandragora, from Tacuinum Sanitatis (1474).
According to the legend, when the root is dug up, it
screams and kills all who hear it. Literature includes
complex directions for harvesting a mandrake root in
relative safety. For example Josephus (circa AD 37
Jerusalem 100) gives the following directions for
pulling it up:
A furrow must be dug around the root until
its lower part is exposed, then a dog is tied
to it, after which the person tying the dog
must get away. The dog then endeavours to
follow him, and so easily pulls up the root,
but dies suddenly instead of his master.
After this, the root can be handled without
fear.
[1]
Excerpt from Chapter XVI, Witchcraft and Spells:
Transcendental Magic its Doctrine and Ritual by
nineteenth-century occultist and ceremonial magician
Eliphas Levi. A Complete Translation of Dogme et
Rituel de la Haute Magie by Arthur Edward Waite. 1896
It was a common folklore in some countries that mandrake would only grow where the semen of a hanged man had
dripped on to the ground; this would appear to be the reason for the methods employed by the alchemists who
"projected human seed into animal earth". In Germany, the plant is known as the Alraune: the novel (later adapted as
a film) Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers is based on a soul-less woman conceived from a hanged man's semen, the
title referring to this myth of the mandrake's origins.
The following is taken from Paul Christian's The History and Practice of Magic:
[2]
Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised
by Paracelsus? Then
Mandrake (plant)
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Mandragora plant
find a root of the plant called bryony. Take
it out of the ground on a Monday (the day
of the moon), a little time after the 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 winding-sheet and carry it with
you everywhere.
In Shakespeare's play (Midsummer Night's Dream), this plant was used to make drops to put on eyelids to produce
"hallucinating effect" for deception. MAYING is a practice connected with usage of this product derivatives to
enhance reproduction or cure erectile dysfunction in men since ancient times. In Elizabethan times, white race and
black or brown race people did not mingle freely. But they did use this "Mandrakes" in maying to create offspring.
Jacob of bible used it when he was separating freckles and other ethnic groups, before he left Laban with his people
to go west.
Mandrakes were used for "selective reproduction" among ancient tribes.
Literature
In its more sinister significance:
Machiavelli wrote in 1518 a play Mandragola (The Mandrake) in which the plot revolves around the use of a
mandrake potion as a ploy to bed a woman.
Shakespeare refers four times to mandrake and twice under the name of mandragora.
"... Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
Shakespeare: Othello III.iii
"Give me to drink mandragora ...
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away."
Mandrake (plant)
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Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra I.v
"Shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth."
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet IV.iii
"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan"
King Henry VI part II III.ii
John Donne refers to it in the second line of his song, 'Go and catch a falling star', as an example of an impossible
task,
"Get with child a mandrake root"
It is in Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, too. "Let's hang ourselves immediately!" "It'd give us an Erection!"
"An Erection!" "With all that followswhere it falls, Mandrakes grow, that's why they shriek when you pull
them up. Did you not know that?"
In Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, mandrakes can be found in the Hogwarts greenhouses. When pulled out of the
earth, they resemble humans, and just as in the mythology, the cry is fatal. The mandrake can also revive those
who have been petrified.
In The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck, Ethan Hawley mentions both the form and legend of the
mandrake root in chapter eight when describing a collection of "worthless family treasures" as follows: "We even
had a mandrake roota perfect little man, sprouted from the death-ejected sperm of a hanged man ..."
In Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, a reference to the mandrake is made, describing a plant that lets out a
supersonic scream when it is uprooted.
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (contained in the Sherlock Homes collection His
Last Bow) a crystalline extract of "Devil's Foot Root", also called mandrake, is at the root, so to speak, of two
bizarre and related murders.
References
[1] A Dictionary of the Bible: Volume III: (Part I: Kir -- Nympha), Volume 3 http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=-WC7UgQHQlcC&
pg=PA234& lpg=PA234
[2] [2] pp. 402-403, by Paul Christian. 1963
Further reading
Heiser, Charles B. Jr (1969). Nightshades, The Paradoxical Plant, 131-136. W. H. Freeman & Co. SBN 7167
0672-5.
Thompson, C. J. S. (reprint 1968). The Mystic Mandrake. University Books.
External links
Erowid Mandrake Vault (http:/ / www. erowid. org/ plants/ mandrake/ )
Mandrake in wildflowers of Israel (http:/ / www. wildflowers. co. il/ english/ plant. asp?ID=10)
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mandrake". Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Translation of Grimm's Saga No. 84 The Mandrake (http:/ / www. fairytalechannel. org/ 2008_07_17_archive.
html)
Article Sources and Contributors
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Article Sources and Contributors
Mandrake (plant) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=606285335 Contributors: 119, A szu, Aamoosavi, Aaron Solomon Adelman, Ahoerstemeier, Aknorals, Alansohn,
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file:Mandrake-roots.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Mandrake-roots.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Original uploader was Spacedive at en.wikipedia
File:Mandragora Tacuinum Sanitatis.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Mandragora_Tacuinum_Sanitatis.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Jarble,
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