Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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Such a resemblance was readily and gratefully found in the mandrake. The mandrake, even in Biblical times, was credited with unique properties, not least, with amatory stimulation.

Mandrake, or mandragore, which is botanically mandragora, mandragora officinarum, is a tuber with purple flowers, dark-leaved. It is native to Palestine, and hence has a Hebrew name, mentioned in Biblical literature. It is called there dudaim, an expression associated etymologically with love.

The peculiarity of mandrake is that it often assumes a human shape, the limbs in particular being formed like human extremities.

From the earliest literary eras mandrake was a customary ingredient in love-potions. Circe, the sorceress who appears in Homer’s Odyssey, was traditionally an adept in concocting brews with mandrake infusions. So intimately was her name linked with this man-shaped plant, that it became known as Circe’s plant.

As later Biblical confirmation of the significance of mandrake, the strange and moving episode of Jacob and Rachel and the employment of the very effective mandrake may be mentioned.