(urth) Pike's Ghost

[Larry Miller]

Yeah thats interesting for sure.  I agree with David though. Someone
tried to grow a human being.  The question is who that someone is.
Typhon is a logical choice.  By the way the Axolotl Tanks are revealed
to be the bodies of Tleilaxu females so the vats are wombs. Sorry big
Dune fan so I had to chime in on that.

On 11/28/11, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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.
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