(urth) Pike's Ghost

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/28/2011 6:43 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> From: Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
> ...
>
>> Leaving the question of Typhon's alien nature aside for now, the Mandragora
>> seems
>> almost indisputable proof of Typhon's potential to be cloned or downloaded
>> into a
>> new body in some manner. There is nothing dragon-like about the fetus in the
>> bottle.
>> What possible reason is there for Wolfe to call it "Mandragora" if not
>> to refer to
>> Typhon, the only other reference to a man-dragon there is.
> ...
>
> Oddly enough, a possible answer is at Wikipedia.
>
> "Some alchemists, impressed by this idea, speculated on the culture of the mandragore, and experimented in the artificial reproduction of a soil sufficiently fruitful and a sun sufficiently active to humanise the said root, and thus create men without the concurrence of the female."  A Wikipedia editor has added, "(See: Homunculus)."
>
> > From /Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual/ by Éliphas Lévi, translated by Arthur Edward Waite.  The book is at
> http://books.google.com/books?id=e0GcOrh-xNAC&pg=PA323
>
> There's a little more on plant-animal hybridization in the full passage, and perhaps people will find other points of interest.
>
> So this may be saying that someone has taken a mandrake root and humanized it, creating a homunculus.
>
> No doubt there's much more to say about this, but this margin is too small.
>
> Jerry Friedman

Awesome. My guess is that it indicates someone tried to grow a human in 
a vat, as in Dune, vs surgically placing it in a womb, as done by Blood.