Bestiarum Vocabulum: Mandrake

The Bestiarum Vocabulum is the wizard’s encyclopedia of faerie beasties and mundane crossovers living in the lake and forest near Lita’s castle.

Mandrake
Mandrake

mandrake [man drāk] noun, c.1200; Gr < mandragoras  L < OE < ME mandragora; also nightshade, mayapple.

  1. Denizen of the Clockpunk Wizard world.
  2. A vegetable-based homunculus inhabited by a minor demon. Only mandrake plants cultivated in soil underneath gallows and other places of execution will produce inhabitable roots (wizards can find abandoned gallows fields by consulting with the local carrion crows). The mandrake-summoning spell requires a blood sacrifice, which the minor demon claims with a deadly shriek.  The minor demon uses the life energy of the sacrifice to animate the mandrake plant’s human-shaped root.
  3. Personages: Go Fer’s demon in Forever Boy.
  4. See: “Lita’s Magic Show: Mandrakes and Minor Demons” and “Dig Dog, and Die

Leave a comment

I’m Lita

Welcome to the Fantasy Worlds of Lita Burke, my shadow-filled corner of the internet dedicated to curious things and puzzling people. Here, I invite you to join me on a journey of twisty enchantments, sensual magicians, and unsettling places.

62,556 hits

Let’s connect

Enchanters of Sye Books

Wrath by Lita Burke

A retired Enchanter battles a powerful magician to keep a dangerous spell book from falling into the wrong hands.

Tredan's Bane by Lita Burke

A magical oddities dealer hides her kidnapped husband’s dangerous spell book.

Clockpunk Wizard Books

A dog flees his cruel master, befriends a wizard, and discovers his shapeshifting magic.

Ephraim's Curious Device

A wizard seeks a magical thingummy to free his kidnapped familiar.

A wizard faces a dangerous journey to Sir Death’s castle to win a powerful spell book for a love-starved dragon.

Glitter Ponies by Lita Burke

A wizard and Lady Luck’s young daughter discover the cause of a mysterious unicorn illness.

An elf prince’s son teams up with a disgraced wizardling to clear their names with the Magic Guild.

Fantasy Worlds

Step Right Up for the Cirque du Méchant

Evil Circus is a dark carnival filled madness, magic, and grinning clowns.

Steampunk London Fantasy Woman

Steampunk London is a Victorian-styled world powered by steam engines.

Not a Butterfly

Floating Lands are an eerie place of unexpected lighter-than-air denizens and islands in the sky.

Film noir femme fatale

Film Noir is a dreary, crime fiction world filled with down-and-out heroes, cynicism and vice.