We are indebted to Stales (in "Talismanic Gold") for bringing us the story of the kundela, a sort of psychic Smith & Wesson used by Aussie Aborigines to execute outlaws in their society. Stales explains that the priestly executioners "load" a "pointing bone", a human bone carved to a point like a spear, and, thus "charged with powerful psychic energy", it is aimed at the condemned and discharged with unerring lethal effect. The psychic weapon has been described as a "spear of thought" but, nonetheless, it is "loaded" like a gun so I prefer the term psychic Smith & Wesson. In any case, the real point here is that the subconcious is immensely powerful and science has begun to understand these powers much better of late as a result of the wide-spread use of MRI brain scans in cognitive research. For instance, research recently reported in Scientific American magazine has demonstrated that the so-called placebo effect is a real effect marked by intense activity in certain areas of the brain. Last month, the New York Times published stories on two separate brain studies which cast further light on the shadowy realms of the "terra incognita". Hijacking the Brain Circuits with a Nickel Slot Machine (Feb. 19) which reports "a finding that astonishes many people", namely, that "the brain systems that detect and evaluate [gambler's] rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness." [Dopamine strikes again!] And Penetrating the Mind by Metaphor (February 23) which reports that "focus groups", the dominant technique for devising marketing campaigns, are "a waste of time" because "consumers can't tell you what they think because they just don't know". A Harvard Business School professor has come up with a new patented technique to "uncover people's hidden thoughts" (and sell them more Coke and other consumer products) by inviting people to collect photos from magazines and other sources which "capture" their feelings about the product being studied, for example, Coke. All of this new information about the terra incognita recalls, for me, Columbus' "discovery" of America, a continent inhabited by peoples possessed of a wisdom which was only discovered by Western culture in the last century. Neuroscientists are now proudly proclaiming "discoveries" that have been known by ancient cultures for many hundreds of years, perhaps millennia. The "kundela" killing bone is only one example of this. I remember a quote from an ancient text, perhaps the Kabbala, which reveals an understanding of the unconscious that sounds like break-through cognitive science today. It goes something like this: Thy life is a mirror of the images that form in thy mind. Thinkest thou evil and evil is thine. (Does this remind anyone of the visualization techniques used by most of the top athletes nowadays including Tiger Woods and the U.S. Olympic diver who trained for her gold medal performance by visualizing her dives rather than actually making them because her arm was broken?) The "placebo effect" is now something medicine accepts because it has been "proven" to exist. Yet, for decades, the effect was acknowledged by science but regarded more as a nuisance than a tool. Similarly, we dismiss the kundela effect, if I may call it that, as a sort of primitive voodoo. I believe we need a more respectable term for these voodoo-like practices reflecting the scientific credibility these practices deserve in the light of recent scientific findings. I invite others to propose such a term.