Posted on 12/28/2009 1:03:16 AM PST by Slings and Arrows
The traditional medicinal practice of smoking dried vulture brains to induce a vision of winning lotto numbers is killing off the bird's population in South Africa, researchers say.
Scelo, a young healer in downturn Johannesburg's market for muti, or traditional medicine, says the birds are becoming more scarce.
"I only have one every three or four months," he said.
"Everybody asks for the brain. You see things that people can't see. For lotto, you dream the numbers."
Rolled into a cigarette or inhaled as vapours, vulture brains can also help at the horse races, boost an exam performance, or lure more clients to a business, according to believers.
Next to snake skins and ostrich feet, as well as donkey fat to chase away bad spirits, Scelo sells a small bottle with just a speck of ground brains for about 50 rand ($7.50).
The entire bird could go for 2,000 rand ($299).
Another traditional healer, speaking on condition of anonymity, says vulture bones or feathers can also be mixed with herbs to make medicines.
"We make the brain dry and mix it with mud and you smoke it like a cigarette or a stick. Then the vision comes," he said.
He prescribes mainly vulture heads, which he says bring visions of the future, endowing users with the bird's excellent vision that helps them fly out of nowhere to descend on carcasses.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
Will canary do?
Vultures? Bird-brained scheme? I thought they were talking about Congress and the “health” bill.
It seems to me that they will have to roll quite a big spliff to smoke the entire bird.
"vulture brains, vulture brains, get your tutsie frutsie vulture brains"
A dead vulture is displayed outside a traditional healer's shop at the Farady market in Johannesburg
It does, but the side-effects are a real b****.
I wondered the same thing about smoked turkey.
This is FR - no Marxists allowed.
Add some computer models, a few hundred-billion in grants, and a “consensus” of tenured mountebanks, and “Cathartidae Neurological Forecasting” becomes a widely-believed fact that only a Flat-Earther would deny.
But then, they'd figure out, after cutting into the first one, that liberals don't have brains...
Well my first thought, this explains a lot regarding the picture Obama is found of while smoking a joint; then I realized this is more than an explanation to life, the clown universe and everything. I see an emerging market, they want vultures well then the smartest people on earth with the correct genetic variance and the right way of doing everything should have vultures in every hut and pot; we can finally give peace a chance…who knew.
Howza ‘bout dem pigeons brains for a glimpse into da future?
This is how Harry and Nancy are so sure that their MengeleCare won’t hurt their party’s re-election prospects in the fall: they’re smoking vulture brains.
But doesn’t that make them cannibals?
“We make the brain dry and mix it with mud and you smoke it like a cigarette or a stick. Then the vision comes,” he said.”
And we were wondering how the Democrats came up with their healthcare bill. ;-)
The free market works.
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