There is a steve-o or mtv shoot where they visit a tribe of magicians in india, and they basically perform all type of supernatural things. Stuff that would probably blow your mind.
Here's a magic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropa_belladonna
The genus name Atropa comes from Atropos, one of the three Fates in Greek mythology, and the name "bella donna" is derived from Italian and means "beautiful lady" because the herb was used in eye-drops by women to dilate the pupils of the eyes to make them appear seductive.[2][3]
Anyways, can't imagine there is too much magic left in Africa seeing as it's all covered in desert now, but what might have existed there before hand, who only knows? Probably the greenest place on Earth at one point.
Did I post this here yet? That's one of the three active ingredients in belladona.
Anyways, the Bible is pretty interesting, if we substitute Magi, with Magicians, and Magic with Miracles. I'll never be able to translate it, but there are other books equally as interesting with physical geographical proofs to support the "clues".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_riddles
I am wonderful help to women,
The hope of something to come. I harm
No citizen except my slayer.
Rooted I stand on a high bed.
I am shaggy below. Sometimes the beautiful
Peasant's daughter, an eager-armed,
Proud woman grabs my body,
Rushes my red skin, holds me hard,
Claims my head. The curly-haired
Woman who catches me fast will feel
Our meeting. Her eye will be wet.[1]
Trans. by Craig Williamson, A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs (1982)
It is not an onion. It is a nightshade? One second I forget. Mandrake, that;s it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandragoraofficinarum
According to the legend, when the root is dug up, it screams and kills all who hear it. Literature includes complex directions for harvesting a mandrake root in relative safety. For example Josephus (circa 37–100 AD) of Jerusalem gives the following directions for pulling it up:
A furrow must be dug around the root until its lower part is exposed, then a dog is tied to it, after which the person tying the dog must get away. The dog then endeavours to follow him, and so easily pulls up the root, but dies suddenly instead of his master. After this, the root can be handled without fear.[17]
The ground beneath the southern German state of Bavaria is literally perforated with these underground mazes -- and no one knows why.
At least 700 of these chambers have been found in Bavaria alone, along with about 500 in Austria. In the local vernacular, they have fanciful names such as "Schrazelloch" ("goblin hole") or "Alraunenhöhle" ("mandrake cave"). They were supposedly built by elves, and legend has it that gnomes lived inside. According to some sagas, they were parts of long escape tunnels from castles.
It's a contraceptive, to memory, and I don't know the history of the area, but it was either a hot ticket, something you profit from, or simply another ingredient for this stuff.
The following is taken from Paul Christian's The History and Practice of Magic:[6]
Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man's grave. For 30 days, water it with cow's milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the 31st day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of verbena; then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man's winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandragora%28demon%29
In myth, mandragoras are familiar demons who appear in the figures of little men without beards.
So the first full moon day after the equinox.
Harvest the roots and bury them. In a "dead mans" grave. Translation, a working class kolbold?
I don't understand the significance of marinaded bats in milk.
The rest a little wonky, I dunno.
take out the root in the middle of the night
Translation, don't let the cops see you.
dead man's winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere.
WTF... do you think it has anything to do with radioactive cobalt or something?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobold
The name of the element cobalt comes from the creature's name, because medieval miners blamed the sprite for the poisonous and troublesome nature of the typical arsenical ores of this metal (cobaltite and smaltite) which polluted other mined elements.
Kobold = Cobalt = Goblin = Working Class Miner Dead Man (can't imagine they lived too long), sort of deal.