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The Mandrake

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The Mandrake poster art

Where is the dog?

I ask because the books are unanimous on this point. Wax in the ears, first. Then loosen the earth around the root, tie a cord to the crown of it, tie the other end to a dog, and walk away. Call the dog. The dog comes. The dog pulls. The root comes up howling, and the howl does what the howl does, and you get your mandrake, and the county gets one fewer dog.

That is the method. That is the whole method. Nobody has improved on it in two thousand years.

So I will ask a second time, and I will not ask again.

Where is the dog?

The Mandrake t-shirt
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SKU 31449971

From The Morgue

The mandrake's reputation rests on a root that happens to fork like a little man. Theophrastus was writing about the circles you cut around it before harvest in the fourth century BC; Josephus described a near-identical rite for a plant called baaras, dog and all. Medieval herbals repeat the instruction with illustrations. Underneath the terror it was a real and useful drug — a surgical anaesthetic, an aphrodisiac, and the plant Rachel and Leah quarrel over in Genesis. German folk magic kept its alraun in a box, dressed it, fed it, and expected it to pay rent.

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