Alraun

An alraun is at once an object and an inhabitant. The word covers the mandrake root and its substitutes — bryony was widely used where true mandrake was unavailable — dug up with elaborate precautions, trimmed or carved into a human figure, and then kept in the house as a possession with a life of its own. The German-speaking traditions that carry most of this material are detailed about the care required: the thing is bathed, clothed in small garments, laid in a box, and given food or drink at set times.

In return it brings money, multiplies what is placed beside it, protects the household, and answers questions — sometimes by movement, sometimes by speech. The relationship is contractual and hazardous. Neglect brings misfortune, and the traditions are emphatic about the difficulty of getting rid of one: it must be sold for less than it was bought, and the last owner in the chain, unable to sell it cheaper, is stuck with it and its consequences.

The digging-up procedures are the most famous part — the root's cry that kills the hearer, the dog tied to it to pull it free — and they belong to a long learned as well as folk tradition. Early modern authorities complained about the trade in forged alrauns carved from ordinary roots, which is a useful indication of how real the market was.

The paragraphs below are extrapolated; no source supports them.

Read as a personality, the alraun comes across as demanding and transactional in a domestic register — a presence in the house that must be attended to on schedule and that repays attention concretely. It reads as neither affectionate nor malicious but exacting: the traditions are much clearer about what it requires than about what it wants. The impossible-to-discard strand gives it something faintly predatory, a thing that is easier to acquire than to be rid of.