Wiccans/Pagans… a question on mandrakes?
Friday, July 15th, 2011 at
14:38
Do you plant them at home/in your garden? What have you experienced so far, with regards to its potents and abilities? What has the legend of shrieking/screaming mandrakes got to do with how it should be harvested? Do they still shriek/scream today as they used to hundreds of years ago or just on ‘occassions’?
Tagged with: hundreds of years • scream
Filed under: Mandrake
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Many of the mandrake roots were seen to be similar to the human form, thus the name and the legend of them shrieking when cut the wrong way.
"(from Wikipedia)
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because their curious bifurcations cause them to have a semblance to the human figure (male and female), 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 mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, is a plant called by the Arabs luffâh, or beid el-jinn (“genie’s eggs”). The parsley-shaped root is often branched. Magicians mould this root into a rude 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.
In legend it is alleged that when the plant is pulled from the ground, it shrieks in pain. Supposedly, this shriek is able to madden, deafen or even kill an unprotected human; the occult literature includes complex directions for harvesting a mandrake root in relative safety.
For example Josephus (c. 37 AD/CE 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."
Of course all of that is pure superstition.
Wasn’t that a plant on Harry Potter??
I could use a planted mandrake right about now.
From your description, you’re talking about the European Mandrake and not the American.
European mandrake roots have the shape of a human torso, and that’s where the legend of it screaming got its start.
I used dried mandrake root for certain types of magic, but I don’t grow it as it’s a foreign species.
American mandrake is also known as may-apple and grows wild all over the place in my state.
Mandrakes don’t really scream when you harvest them – that is just an old myth that developed because the root of the mandrake looks like a little man.
I have never used mandrake before, and have never grown any, either. I hear they are very powerful, used mostly for love/sex charms, but have other uses as well. Below is a website. I would also suggest Scott Cunninghams "Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs."