So why did people take so many risks to go looking for Mandrakes?
Magically speaking, it's special property was that it made things abundant. So you could use it to increase your wealth, sex appeal, even the number of children you had. It's worth bearing this in mind the next time someone tells you that magic has never been used for personal gain! The mandrake was used for little else!
Some surprising plants are closely related to Mandrakes. The tomato, for a start, also the potato and the aubergine. All of them belong to the poisonous nightshade family. The Mandrake is also a close relative of the Tobacco plant.
Now once you find some close relatives, you begin to realise that the Mandrake isn’t really as unique as it first seems. Even most of the rituals for digging out Mandrakes also applied to (of all things!)Peonies.
Nowadays we tend to think of Peonies as being large, pretty globe-like flowers, popular in cottage gardens. But years ago, the Peony was right up there with the mandrake in terms of its magical power.
But back to the mandrake. Even if you could get hold of a Mandrake root, it was just the beginning of your problems. For a start, you couldn’t risk telling friends and neighbours that you had such a treasure; in seventeenth century Germany three women were executed just for keeping Mandrake roots in their homes!
And that's before we've even started to look at the somewhat murderous nature of the Mandrake itself.....
