Dr Strangelove & Other Innuendo

A fun post...while I drive myself nuts tackling Mulholland Drive.

The mandragora officinarum, or mandrake, is accredited with possessing the most remarkable magical powers. Its narcotic properties were recognized by the Greeks, who employed it to deaden pain during surgical operations, and it has been identified also with baaras, the mystic herb used by the Jews for casting out demons. 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 (of, relating to, or resembling a phallus) 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.

 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 (potions). 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.)

"I think maybe he did it to himself"  (choked himself)