A Witch's Garden: Mandrake

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

Mandrake

Another plant with a narcotic effect, mandrake or the mandragore (Mandragora officinarum L.) was thought to be a potentially lethal herb to harvest from the earth. For this reason, great caution was used in gathering these magical roots.

As early as C.E. 93 the historian Flavius Josephus (C.E. c. 37-c. 100) described the process, stories of which were embellished over the years. Many people believed that the mandrake shrieked when harvested and that anyone hearing the piercing cry would die. To avoid this, dogs were used to gather the root. The dog was starved for several days and then tied to the root, around which a trench had been cut. The owner stood out of earshot and threw a piece of meat, and as the dog leapt for the meat, the mandrake root was pulled from the ground. Some writers actually stated that the dog immediately died. There are also references to the use of a sword to draw three circles around the plant and to the fact the plant could be removed only after sundown (Mendelson & Mello 82).

The root of the mandrake resembles a phallus or a human torso, and for this reason was believed to have occult powers. In some areas of Europe, "possession of the root was punishable by death" (Mendelson & Mello 82).

Medieval witches were said to harvest the root at night beneath gallows trees--trees where unrepentant criminals, evil since birth, were supposed to have died. The root purportedly sprang up from the criminal's body drippings. According to Christian lore, the witch washed the root in wine and wrapped it in silk and velvet. She fed it with sacramental wafers stolen from a church during communion (Guiley 1989 223).

Perhaps because it was believed to spring from such substances as a dead criminal's semen, mandrake root was often used in love potions. The fruits of the plant, also called love apples, were believed to increase fertility (Mendelson & Mello 81).

The crushed root was purported to have caused hallucinations followed by a death-like trance and sleep. The root was also said to have caused insanity (Guiley 1989 223), and was believed to have been used in flying potions (Mendelson & Mello 78).

In Germany, peasants added millet grains for eyes and took great care of their little mandrakes--bathing them, dressing them, tucking them in at night (sometimes in a coffin)--in order to consult them on important questions. In France, they were considered a kind of elf, called the main-de-gloire or magloire. Often they were stashed in secret cupboards, because possessing one could be dangerous on other counts, too: it could expose the owner to the charge of witchcraft. In 1630, three women in Hamburg were executed on this evidence, and in Orleans in 1603 the wife of a Moor was hanged for harboring a "mandrake-fiend," purportedly in the shape of a female monkey (Masello 84).

A hag in Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens says,

I last night lay all alone
On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan;
And plucked him up, though he grew full low,
And, as I had done, the cock did crow (Thiselton-Dyer 64).

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A Witch's Garden is copyright 1997-1998 to Shantell Powell.
The drawing of the Mandragore is adapted from the image on Mandragora (Mandrake).