I.3 "a Plant is, as it were, an Animal"

In Renaissance writings on the mandrake, then, plant and animal are not separate but sympathetic to one another, each conscious of and responsive to the other's existence in a shared vitalist ecology. The smoke of the mandrake's roots produce hallucinations in humans; dried and crushed, it can hypnotize one to the point of zombie-like somnabulism. In short, if the plant participates in animality, its consumer becomes quite literally vegetative, her human subjectivity transformed to plant-like alertness. As hallucinogenic visions alter consciousness, the very boundaries between human and vegetable life begin to dissolve.