Citizendia

"Mandrake root" redirects here. For the Deep Purple song, see Mandrake Root. " Mandrake Root " is a song by Deep Purple that featured on their debut album Shades of Deep Purple.
"Mandragora" redirects here. For other uses, see Mandragora (disambiguation).
Mandrake
Mandragora officinarum
Mandragora officinarum
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Plantae
Division:Magnoliophyta
Class:Magnoliopsida
Order:Solanales
Family:Solanaceae
Genus:Mandragora
L.
Species

Mandragora autumnalis
Mandragora officinarum
Mandragora turcomanica
Mandragora caulescens

Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Plants are living Organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. The flowering plants or angiosperms ( Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta) are the most widespread group Magnoliopsida is the Botanical name for a class of Flowering plants By definition the class will include the family Magnoliaceae, but its The Solanales are an order of Flowering plants included in the asterid group of Dicotyledons Some older sources used the name Polemoniales The Solanaceae is a family of Flowering plants that contains a number of important agricultural plants as well as many toxic plants Carl Linnaeus (Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as, May 23 new style (13 May old style 1707 who laid the foundations for Mandragora officinarum is a Species of Mandragora (mandrake, which is used medicinally. Plants are living Organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. The Solanaceae is a family of Flowering plants that contains a number of important agricultural plants as well as many toxic plants Because mandrake contains deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids such as 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 neopagan religions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism. The deliriants (or Anticholinergics are a special class of acetylcholine -inhibitor Dissociatives The name comes from their primary effect of inducing The general group of pharmacological agents commonly known as hallucinogens can be divided into three broad categories Psychedelics, Dissociatives Tropane alkaloids, also known as Belladonna alkaloids are a class of Alkaloids and Secondary metabolites that contain a Tropane ring Hyoscyamine, pronounced hi-oh-SYE-uh-meen, is a chemical compound a Tropane alkaloid it is the levo- Isomer to Atropine. Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is a Conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural world (including events objects people and Neopaganism or Neo-Paganism is an Umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements particularly those influenced by historical Germanic Neopaganism, Heathenism or Heathenry is the modern revival of historical Germanic paganism. (It is alleged that magicians would form this root into a crude resemblance to the human figure, by pinching a constriction a little below the top, so as to make a kind of head and neck, and twisting off the upper branches except two, which they leave as arms, and the lower, except two, which they leave as legs. )

The mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, is a plant called by the Arabs luffâh, or beid el-jinn ("djinn's eggs"). Mandragora officinarum is a Species of Mandragora (mandrake, which is used medicinally. GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange was an online service The parsley-shaped 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, 6 to 16 inches long, somewhat resembling those of the tobacco-plant. There spring from the neck a number of one-flowered nodding peduncles, bearing whitish-green flowers, nearly 2 inches broad, which produce globular, succulent, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes, which ripen in late spring. In Botany, a peduncle is a stalk supporting an Inflorescence, or after Fecundation a fruit All parts of the mandrake plant are poisonous. In the context of Biology, poisons are substances that can cause damage, Illness, or Death to Organisms usually by The plant grows natively in southern and central Europe and in lands around the Mediterranean Sea, as well as on Corsica. Corsica (Corse Corsican and Italian: Corsica) is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily

Contents

Hebrew Bible

In Genesis 30, Reuben, the eldest son of Jacob and Leah finds mandrakes in the field. Reuben or Re'uven ( Hebrew: רְאוּבֵן, Standard Rəʾuven Tiberian Rəʾûḇēn Jacob ( Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב, Standard   Yaʿaqov Tiberian   Yaʿăqōḇ; Leah ( "Weary tired" is the first of the four concurrent wives of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, and mother of six of the Twelve Tribes of Israel along Rachel, Jacob's second wife, the sister of Leah, is desirous of the mandrakes and she barters with her sister for them. Rachel (; meaning "ewe" is the second and favorite Wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph and Benjamin, first mentioned in the The trade offered by Rachel is for Leah to spend the next night in Jacob's bed. Soon after this Leah, who previously had had four sons but had ceased to become pregnant for a long while then became pregnant once more and gave birth to a son. There are classical Jewish commentaries which suggest that mandrakes help barren women to conceive a child. Controversy over the beginning of pregnancy usually occurs in the context of the Abortion debate

Mandrake in Hebrew is דודאים (dûdã'im), meaning “love plant”. Among certain Asian cultures, it is believed to ensure conception. Most interpreters hold Mandragora officinarum to be the plant intended in Genesis 30:14 ("love plant") and Song of Songs 7:13 ("the mandrakes send out their fragrance"). A number of other plants have been suggested such as bramble-berries, Zizyphus Lotus, the sidr of the Arabs, the banana, the lily, the citron, and the fig. Bramble refers to thorny plants of the Genus Rubus, in the Rose family ( Rosaceae) For the fruit see Banana. For other meanings see Banana (disambiguation. The citron is a fragrant fruit with the botanical name Citrus medica L Ficus is a Genus of about 850 Species of woody Trees Shrubs Vines Epiphytes and hemi-epiphytes in the family None of these renderings is supported by satisfactory evidence.

Magic, spells and witchcraft

Mandragora, from Tacuinum Sanitatis (1474).
Mandragora, from Tacuinum Sanitatis (1474). The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on wellness based on the Taqwin al‑sihha ar تقوين الصحة ("Tables

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 (c. 37 AD Jerusalem – c. 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.

Extract from Chapter XVI, Witchcraft and Spells: Transcendental Magic its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Levi. Witchcraft, in various historical anthropological religious and mythological contexts is the use of certain kinds of Supernatural or magical powers Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is a Conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural world (including events objects people and Eliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, ( February 8, 1810 - May 31, 1875) was a French Occult author A Complete Translation of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie by Arthur Edward Waite. Arthur Edward Waite ( October 2, 1857 - May 19, 1942) was a scholarly Mystic who wrote extensively on Occult and 1896

. . . we will add a few words about mandragores (mandrakes) and androids, which several writers on magic confound with the waxen image; serving the purposes of bewitchment. The natural mandragore is a filamentous root which, more or less, presents as a whole either the figure of a man, or that of the virile members. It is slightly narcotic, and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Thessalia redirects here For the Butterfly Genus, see Thessalia (butterfly. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin ? We dare not seriously affirm it, but all the same it is certain that man came out of the slime of the earth, and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of nature make this notion necessarily admissible, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth ; this assumption not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, positively supposes, creative will and the providential co-operation of a first cause, which we have reason to call God. Some alchemists, impressed by this idea, speculated on the culture of the mandragore, and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanise the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female. (See: Homunculus) Others, who regarded humanity as the synthesis of animals, despaired about vitalising the mandragore, but they crossed monstrous pairs and projected human seed into animal earth, only for the production of shameful crimes and barren deformities. The concept of a homunculus ( Latin for "little man" plural "homunculi" the diminutive of homo, "man" is often used to illustrate The third method of making the android was by galvanic machinery. Biology, galvanism is the contraction of a Muscle that is stimulated by an electric current. One of these almost intelligent automata was attributed to Albertus Magnus, and it is said that St Thomas (Thomas Aquinas) destroyed it with one blow from a stick because he was perplexed by its answers. This story is an allegory; the android was primitive scholasticism, which was broken by the Summa of St Thomas, the daring innovator who first substituted the absolute law of reason for arbitrary divinity, by formulating that axiom which we cannot repeat too often, since it comes from such a master: " A thing is not just because God wills it, but God wills it because it is just. The real and serious android of the ancients was a secret which they kept hidden from all eyes, and Mesmer was the first who dared to divulge it; it was the extension of the will of the magus into another body, organised and served by an elementary spirit; in more modern and intelligible terms, it was a magnetic subject. Franz Anton Mesmer (born Friedrich Anton Mesmer; May 23, 1734 &ndash March 5, 1815) was a German physician and astrologist who The Magi (singular Magus, from Latin via Greek μάγος; Old English: Mage; from Persian maguš and Kurdish The term's most common usage today refers to a person's sexual attractiveness or raw Charisma.

Mandrake twin roots.
Mandrake twin roots.

It was a common belief in some countries that a mandrake would grow where the semen of a hanged man dripped on to the earth; 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 around a soulless woman conceived from a hanged man's semen, the title referring to this myth of the Mandrake's origins. Alraune (German for Mandrake) is a novel by German novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers published in 1911 Hanns Heinz Ewers ( November 3, 1871, Düsseldorf - June 12, 1943, Berlin) was a German Actor,

Mandragora is also reference to a "little man in a bottle". The following is taken from "Paul Christian". Jean Baptiste Pitois, also known as Jean Baptiste or Paul Christian who wrote The History and Practice of Magic, first published in France in 1870 [1] pp. 402-403, The History and Practice of Magic by Paul Christian. 1963:

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 bryony. The concept of a homunculus ( Latin for "little man" plural "homunculi" the diminutive of homo, "man" is often used to illustrate Paracelsus (11 November or 17 December 1493 in Einsiedeln Switzerland – 24 September 1541 in Salzburg, Austria) was an alchemist, This article is for plants in genus Bryonia See also Black Bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. An equinox is the event of the Sun passing over the Earth's equator in its annual cycle Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For thirty days water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the thirty-first 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. This article is about the plant of genus Verbena. For other plants called "verbenas" see below.

In literature

In Genesis 30:14, Leah gives Rachel mandrakes in exchange for a night of sleeping with their husband. Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin

During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields
and found some mandrake plants,
which he brought to his mother Leah.
Rachel said to Leah, "Please
give me some of your son's mandrakes. "

Song of Songs 7:13 KJV

"The mandrakes send out their fragrance,
and at our door is every delicacy,
both new and old,
that I have stored up for you, my lover. "
". . . 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. "
Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra I. Antony and Cleopatra is a Tragedy by William Shakespeare. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 v
"Shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth. "
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet IV. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the iii
"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan"
King Henry IV part II III. Henry IV Part 2 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed written between 1596 and 1599 ii
Ferdinand "I have this night digged up a mandrake. John Webster (c 1580 &ndash c 1634 was an English Jacobean Dramatist, and a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. . . "
"Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot. John Donne (pronounced like done, dʌn 1572 – 31 March 1631 was a Jacobean poet preacher and a major representative of the Metaphysical poets . . "
(This poem can be heard set to music by John Renbourn [of Pentangle fame] on his eponymous CD [Transatlantic TRA 135, 1965])
"You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away: [. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate . . ]
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves, [. . . ]"

In film

In Videogames

References

  1. ^ pp. 402-403, The History and Practice of Magic by Paul Christian. 1963

External links


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