What exactly is a mandrake?
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at
17:44
Nothing seems to be going my way at all. Life sucks. A friend of a friend suggests I get a mandrake to change my luck. Tell me something about a mandrake?
Tagged with: friend of a friend • Mandrake
Filed under: Mandrake
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A mandrake is a plant.
Its roots were said to take human form, and to scream as they were pulled from the earth. Rubbish, of course.
As is the idea that mandrake, in any form, will change your luck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_(plant)
A root with hallucinogenic properties from the Mandragora plant. Supposed to be associated with improving fertility after the story of Leah in the Book of Genesis.
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). 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. (It is alleged[who?] 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.)