Flowers, Plants, Fruits, and Trees-i

In the Jewish Wars , Josephus describes the method of securing the baaras , which he declares emits flashes of lightning and destroys all who seek to touch it, unless they proceed according to certain rules supposedly formulated by King Solomon himself. The occult properties of the mandrake, while little understood, have been responsible for the adoption of the plant as a talisman capable of increasing the value or quantity of anything with which it was associated. As a phallic charm, the mandrake was considered to be an infallible cure for sterility. It was one of the Priapic symbols which the Knights Templars were accused of worshiping. The root of the plant closely resembles a human body and often bore the outlines of the human head, arms, or legs. This striking similarity between the body of man and the mandragora is one of the puzzles of natural science and is the real basis for the veneration in which this plant was held. In Isis Unveiled , Madam Blavatsky notes that the mandragora seems to occupy upon earth the point where the vegetable and animal kingdoms meet, as the zoophites and polypi do in die sea. This thought opens a vast field of speculation concerning the nature of this animal-plant. According to a popular superstition, the mandrake shrank from being touched and, crying out with a human voice, clung desperately to the soil in which it was imbedded. Anyone who heard its cry while plucking it either immediately died or went mad. To circumvent this tragedy, it was customary to dig around the roots of the mandrake until the plant was thoroughly loosened and then to tie one end of a cord about the stalk and fasten the other end to a dog. The dog, obeying his master's call, thereupon dragged the root from the earth and became the victim of the mandragora curse. When once uprooted, the plant could be handled with immunity. During the Middle Ages, mandrake charms brought great prices and an art was evolved by which the resemblance between the mandragora root and the human body was considerably accentuated. Like most superstitions, the belief in the peculiar powers of the mandrake was founded upon an ancient secret doctrine concerning the true nature of the plant. "It is slightly narcotic," says Eliphas Levi, "and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin, as a certain magical mysticism has suggested? We dare not affirm it seriously, but it is true all the same that man issued from the slime of earth and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of Nature compel us to admit the notion, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandrogores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth." (See Transcendental Magic .) The homely onion was revered by the Egyptians as a symbol of the universe because its rings and layers represented the concentric planes into which creation was divided according to the Hermetic Mysteries. It was also regarded as possessing great medicinal virtue. Because of peculiar properties resulting from its pungency, the garlic plant was a powerful agent in transcendental magic. To this day no better medium has been found for the treatment of obsession. Vampirism and certain forms of insanity--especially those resulting from mediumship and the influences of elemental larvæ--respond immediately to the use of garlic. In the Middle Ages, its presence in a house was believed to ward off all evil powers.