Mandrake oil

How to Use It

Witchcraft & Folk Magick

• Love and lust: anoint a red candle or a poppet on a Friday for desire and fertility workings.
• Money: keep a few drops on a coin or a dollar bill in your wallet, after the German custom of keeping coins with a mandrake.
• Curse breaking: dress a white candle and pass it over the body to draw a curse away, then burn it.

Demonology & Black Magick

• Hexing: dress a black poppet or candle when a working needs force and domination.
• Poppet work: anoint a carved root or poppet as the body of the person you are working on.

A Simple Working

• Make or buy a simple cloth poppet.
• Write the name of the person or the curse on a slip of paper and place it inside.
• Anoint the poppet head to foot with Mandrake oil.
• For curse breaking, pass it over yourself and say what you are casting out; for domination, bind it with black thread.
• Burn a black chime candle beside it.
• For curse breaking bury the poppet away from your home; for domination keep it wrapped in black cloth.

Pairs Well With

• A cloth poppet: mandrake roots were the original magickal figures.
• Black thread: for binding.
• A black chime candle: for cursing and curse breaking.
• Uncrossing oil: for the protective side of the work.

What You Receive

Mandrake oil, available in 2 dram, 1 oz and 16 oz sizes.

Origin & Lore

True mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, is a Mediterranean plant whose forked root can look like a human body. It was traditionally used in classical times as a sleeping draught, and became the most legendary root of European magick. In American folk magick the name is also given to the may apple. Mandrake oil is a modern blend named for the root.

Legend said the mandrake shrieked when pulled from the ground, killing anyone who heard it, so the root was tied to a dog, which was made to drag it out.

In Genesis 30, Rachel bargains with Leah for mandrakes, thought to help her conceive. Germans called the root Alraune and believed it grew beneath the gallows where a hanged man’s seed fell; a kept Alraune was said to double coins left beside it overnight. Medieval herbals show a dog harnessed to the root to pull it out.