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When pop star Avril Lavigne and the late Pope John Paul II visited Indonesia, a Javanese mystic was called in to work his magic and ensure a rain-free event. INDONESIAN mystic Haryobintoro Tjakra enters a small hut and kneels before the tools of his trade: incense, a bowl of dirt, two black umbrellas and a ceramic burner on which he piles chunks of wood. Bowing his head, he lights the burner, sending fragrant fumes swirling up to the hut’s exhaust fan, and prays in Javanese: the rain must stayaway.
“I pray to the gods via the medium of smoke,” the 69-year-old says, dressed in black pants and matching high-necked traditional shirt. Tjakra seeks blessings from the local spirits inhabiting Java long before Buddhism and Hinduism, and later Islam, arrived. Most Javanese are Muslim but many practise kejawen, a syncretic belief that incorporates the original animist belief system here. But to keep all the deities he can on his side, this Javanese shaman always makes his offerings facing west. Tjakra conducts the simple but well-practised ritual not in a temple or religious building but in a white,pre-fabricated hut in the bustling hub of modern Jakarta, surrounded by gleaming glass skyscrapers. He has been hired to keep the clouds at bay for three afternoons and evenings by a multi-national cigarette company holding an art exhibition and promotion event in the grounds of a major sports stadium. 
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Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local witch doctor, who wafted a bottle of unpleasant-smelling liquid in front of his face, and told him he was about to die and that no one could save him. Back home, Vanders took to his bed and began to deteriorate. Some weeks later, emaciated and near death, he was admitted to the local hospital, where doctors were unable to find a cause for his symptoms or slow his decline. Only then did his wife tell one of the doctors, Drayton Doherty, of the hex.Doherty thought long and hard. The next morning, he called Vanders's family to his bedside. He told them that the previous night he had lured the witch doctor back to the cemetery, where he had choked him against a tree until he explained how the curse worked. The medicine man had, he said, rubbed lizard eggs into Vanders's stomach, which had hatched inside his body. One reptile remained, which was eating Vanders from the inside out.Great ceremonyDoherty then summoned a nurse who had, by prior arrangement, filled a large syringe with a powerful emetic. With great ceremony, he inspected the instrument and injected its contents into Vanders' arm. A few minutes later, Vanders began to gag and vomit uncontrollably. In the midst of it all, unnoticed by everyone in the room, Doherty produced his pièce de résistance - a green lizard he had stashed in his black bag. "Look what has come out of you Vance," he cried. "The voodoo curse is lifted."Vanders did a double take, lurched backwards to the head of the bed, then drifted into a deep sleep. When he woke next day he was alert and ravenous. He quickly regained his strength and was discharged a week later.The facts of this case from 80 years ago were corroborated by four medical professionals. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that Vanders survived. There are numerous documented instances from many parts of the globe of people dying after being cursed.With no medical records and no autopsy results, there's no way to be sure exactly how these people met their end. The common thread in these cases, however, is that a respected figure puts a curse on someone, perhaps by chanting or pointing. 
The notion that something from within our bodies could be considered an illegal substance seems rather odd to me. However, this is very much the case with the powerful drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), active ingredient in the mysterious shamanic ayahuasca tea used by native cultures around the world for vision quests, which also happens to be found in the human body.The catch is that we don’t know exactly where the DMT is created, though pioneering psychedelics researcher Dr. Rick Strassman has suggested that, in theory, the stuff could be produced within the human pineal gland, which Renee Descartes famously proposed “was the point of mediation between the material body and the immaterial soul.” In the realms of both fact and fiction, the pineal gland has occasionally played an important role with regard to man’s supposed innate abilities to “unlock” psychic powers from within, allowing us to perceive distant worlds which, to the naked senses in our typical day-to-day state of mind, remain hidden. H.P. Lovecraft’s maniacal character Crawford Tillinghast from the short story From Beyond described it as such:You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian. That gland is the great sense organ of organs - I have found out. It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it… I mean get most of the evidence from beyond.What poor old Crawford was rambling about, in Lovecraft’s story that is, was that the pineal gland would allow a “normal” person to perceive “evidence from beyond” through the use of a resonating device he had built. This contraption allowed the pineal gland to function in such a way that alien realms became visible when one stood near it. Funny enough, if researchers like Dr. Rick Strassman are correct about DMT production in the brain, Lovecraft may have been closer to home than he could ever have imagined with his notions that the pineal gland might act as a medium for strange phenomenon. (Keep in mind that Lovecraft is often suspected by researchers of the bizarre for having been capable of “tapping into” ancient rites and other realms with some strange mental prowess he possessed, which translated into his fiction).In fact,. 
Charred remains of ancient rainmaking fires are helping to date droughts in Iron Age Africa to within 20 years. After a several years of little or no rainfall, the Bantu people near modern-day Zimbabwe would send a rainmaker tonearby hills. 
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