In our last post regarding “iamamiwhoami,” he, she or they had just designated the plant genus Mandragora as important. In the newest video, released yesterday, we get a species – Officinarum, to be exact.

Mandragora Officinarum is native to Italy and Western Yugoslavia. It blooms in March or April and, in the summer, produces a yellowish fruit which can be poisonous if ingested at too high a level. (via The Explorer’s Garden)

There are four species of Mandragora, of which Officinarum is one. In our previous iamamiwhoami post, we dug into the history of Mandragora as a plant genus. All that jazz about fertility, rebirth and screaming plant men apply to all species of Mandragora. Therefore, I think it’s worth considering why the team behind iamamiwhoami would feel the need to break Mandragora down into a specific species.

Simply taking Mandragora Officinarum in and of itself, you don’t get too much information you didn’t already have from looking into the Mandragora genus. I learned that, in addition to being considered an aphrodisiac, it’ll also get you high, but that’s not so earth shattering.

Instead, I looked into how the various species of Mandragora differed among themselves.

With some light digging, the answer seems fairly obvious – it’s a matter of location. Mandragora Officinarum is native to southern Europe, broadly, and Italy/Yugoslavia, specifically. Other species are located in the Mediterranean and South Asia.

Some more on Mandragora Officinarum:

• Its flower blooms in late winter – perhaps why the woman in the videos emerges from her “cocoon” in the snow?
• It bears fruit in July or August – potential album release date?

But let’s go back to southern Europe. I’m not sure how this fits in with the location given on the iamamiwhoami YouTube page, which designates the South Pacific island of Vanuatu as a country of origin. Vanuatu was divided between England and France in the late 19th century, but that’s the only European connection I could find.

France is in southern Europe, so perhaps that fulfills the criteria laid out by designating Officinarum as the species of Mandragora. Still, the link to Vanuatu – for the time being – seems weak at best.

As with most of the iamamiwhoami mystery, the real mystery seems to be how much of the video is “wow factor” and how much is actually relevant. For example, in the latest video, we’ve got what appears to be some spring-loaded strawberries, which I can’t really make heads or tails of.

Something that does follow from previous videos is the presence of an animal – this time it’s a llama.

From our previous post, in reference to animal symbols from the first four videos:

• Goat could stand for sacrifice.
• Owl could stand for death/rebirth – think of the owl as a guide in the night.
• From animaltotem.com, “Whale reintroduces us to our creative and intuitive energies to show us a talent we’ve forgotten about or haven’t been aware existed.”
• Bee could stand for productivity. (busy as a bee)

and then, today,

• llama, which seems to stand for sure-footedness and a balanced approach to a specific goal.

If this is the case, then llama certainly fits in with the animal progression we went through last time. Death and rebirth, all the way to reinvigorated creativity, productivity and confidence in direction.

In the last post, I jumped on the bandwagon and assumed the artist in play here was Christina Aguilera. She’s been out of the game for awhile and her new album, Bionic, is supposedly “something different.”

The problem is, if we’re assuming Mandragora Officinarum is significant for it’s geography, then we can’t really assume the artist behind this is Christina Aguilera – who is American. Little Boots has been thrown around and she’s British, though I have a hard time believing that she’d reinvent herself with electronica since she’s already doing synthpop … hence, a quandry.

Of course, the alternative is that I’m completely wrong about the significance of Mandragora Officinarum and it stands for something completely different. Take a look at the video below and let me know if you see something I’m missing.

The other alternative is that iamamiwhoami is all mystery and no relevance – in which case, it could still be Christina Aguilera.

One thing that I think may be significant is the fact that our protagonist is getting closer and closer to the little red building. In fact, at the end of this video, she’s right in front of it … perhaps important?

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