“The Mandrake is the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ and the burning love ignited by its pleasure is the origin of the human race.”

− Hugo Rahner

Greek Myths in Christian Meaning (1957)

“And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.”

Genesis 30:14

“shrieks like mandrakes, torn out of the earth,/ That living mortals, hearing them, run mad”

Romeo and Juliet (IV, iii)

“Go, and catch a falling star,                Get with child a mandrake root,       Tell me, where all the past years are, Or who cleft the devil’s foot.”

− John Donne

“Then on the still night air,         The bark of a dog is heard,              A shriek! A groan!                              A human cry. A trumpet sound, The mandrake root lies captive on the ground.”

− Anonymous poem from the Middle Ages

“Or have we eaten on the insane root/ That takes the reason prisoner?”

Macbeth (I, iii)