Iboga

Le Bois Sacré:

Ancient Ways of Knowing in Modern Cultural Contexts

Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us, can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that, after all, it what it's really all about.

We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.

-Terence Mckenna

            Culture is arbitrary. I mean to say that, if one identifies herself with a certain set of beliefs about the nature of reality, she is already precluded from believing in the opposite. The world that we perceive is but a tiny fraction of the world that we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world. And so we operate on a very narrow slice of this reality, based upon time- and space- specific cultural conventions, stories, cosmologies, interpretations, and generational perspectives that help construct our identities and ways of relating to the universe.

            In Western Industrial Civilization, and increasingly in other parts of the world, we have developed a reservoir of fundamental beliefs- Robert Anton Wilson calls them ‘reality tunnels’- which have pushed Planet earth to the brink of collapse. Modern technological hubris, while having facilitated the triumph of nature’s temporal and spatial boundaries, continues to be used for the exploitation and pillage of the earth’s ecosystems. Contemporary science and engineering have harnessed nature is ways never before imagined: we cut and splice genes under a microscope, synthesize life in a laboratory, and launch rockets into the outer reaches of the Milky Way galaxy with the touch of a button. And yet this ‘Ascent of Humanity’ has ineluctably resulted in a splintering chasm: between mind and body, spirit and matter (if spirit exists at all), self and other. But this separation did not always exist. Despite the Western mind’s ardent attempts at smothering ways of thinking, being, and relating that differ from its own, other ways of knowing still remain, scattered in delicate pockets of indigenous culture where spirits loom and manifest themselves within the fabric of existence and sunlight drips down through thick, lush layers of primordial forest. In these cultures (mostly hunter-gatherer, before the advent of agriculture), chances are one will find a complex array of botanical knowledge, and more specifically a remarkable sagacity of plants that help the people maneuver the ‘inner space’, where archaic worlds of consciousness and meaning coalesce, ooze, and cascade into awareness, and through which cultural stories and interpretations of reality are born. Preserved in pockets of the undeveloped world, shielded from the rapid ravages of modernization by dense jungles or mountains, it is still possible to encounter intact shamanic cultures. Among these people, plants that induce visions are the center of spiritual life and tradition. They believe that these plants are sentient beings, supernatural emissaries. They ascribe their music and medicine, their cosmology and extensive botanical knowledge to the visions given to them in psychedelic trance. For tribes in Africa, Siberia, North and South America, and many other regions, rejection of the visionary knowledge offered by the botanical world would be a form of insanity (Pinchbeck 2002: 2):

... Hallucinogens have been part and parcel of man's cultural baggage for thousands of years; moreover, as the other contributors to this volume document, hallucinogenic or psychoactive plants have been of great significance in the ideology and religious practices of a wide variety of peoples the world over, and in some traditional cultures continue to play such a role today. The native peoples of the New World, especially those of Middle and South America, alone utilized nearly a hundred different botanical species for their psychoactive properties, not counting scores of plants used for the brewing of alcoholic beverages to induce ritual intoxication. Anthropologist Weston La Barre ... attributes this phenomenon to a kind of cultural programming for personal ecstatic experiences reaching back to the American Indians' ideological roots in the shamanistic religion of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunting and gathering cultures of northeastern Asia. If La Barre is right-and the cumulative evidence tends to support him-this would take the practice and, more important, its philosophical underpinnings back at least fifteen or twenty thousand years ... (Furst 1972: viii)

A Brief History of Iboga, the Sacred Root of Equatorial West Africa

Iboga takes its name from the word boghaga, which in the Tsogo language means, “to care for.” The Tsogo are a Bantu people from the south-central region of Gabon. According to legend, Bantu ethnic groups like the Tsogo were taught the ritualized use of iboga by the Pygmies, who utilized iboga for centuries before revealing its power to the neighboring Bantu- the Pygmies hoped that by divulging the sacred lessons of the plant, the Bantu, who kept attacking and forcing Pygmies further into the interior jungle, would discover their place in the spirit world and lose interest in waging wars (Ravalec and Paicheler 2007: 6; Pinchbeck 19). Iboga is found from Cameroon to the Congo but it is in Gabon that it grows best, in the midst of luxuriant vegetation, in the heat and humidity. It is the exterior surface of the root of the shrub Tabernanthe iboga that one ingests, having first scraped off the bark and shredded it into a fine gray powder. The shrub itself grows five to eight feet high and has large leaves about six inches long with clusters of white flowers tinged with pink, which turn into a bright orange fruit that is sticky, tasteless, and without psychotropic effect (Ravalec and Paicheler 112).

The Tsogo and Pinji ethnic groups reappropriated the first ritualized usage from the Pygmies, after which it spread to other groups like the Sira, Punu, Masango, Vuvi, and most notably in recent times, the Fang and Mitsogho. This transmission of iboga occurred and was accelerated in the melting pot environment of lumber operations during European colonization, by which indigenous groups were forcibly removed from their land and amalgamated to work for companies extracting raw materials from Gabon’s rich, old-growth forests (which in the 18^th century covered 70% of Gabon’s land area) (Ravalec and Paicheler 19). Iboga was thus employed in small doses as a stimulant because of its capacity to enable sustained effort in the work camps by suppressing symptoms of fatigue; this occurred in the early 20^th century as well by German colonial authorities in Cameroon, quite outside any context of religious movement (Fernandez 2001: 237). Colonial controls were pervasive and effective, and many West Africans had the experience of ‘placelessness’, of being uprooted and of being alien in their own land. Colonial and postcolonial administrators, missionaries and the religious elite (Christian priests and pastors), regularly attacked traditional iboga use as an “’addictive religion,’ both in the metaphoric sense, in that its rituals and philosophy were irresistibly attractive and absorbing, and in the literal sense, that iboga was the heart of that addiction” (Fernandez 236). Violent backlash and repression from Christian communities forced Bwiti (ritualized practice of iboga use) members into clandestine operations, however, over time Christianity and Bwiti began to form a syncretic relationship of overlapping premises and seamless integration (the Fang brand of Bwiti is an example of such synthesis). Today, 95% of Gabonese are Christian while 20% are Bwitist, so there is a large space of interaction (Fernandez 1982: 66; Binet 1972: 201; Ravalec and Paicheler 20).

An Overview of the Bwiti Logic: Ideology, Belief, and Culture

“In the west, the real loss is forgetting that inside the body there is spirit.”

 –Mallendi, traditional Bwiti healer

             Bwiti, ebweta, means “to arrive, reach, end up at, or to emerge from one spot into another.” It is the religious or spiritual practice through which different West African ethnic groups construct their own cultural interpretations of the universe, their place and relationship in/to it. Iboga is eaten frequently in Bwiti, during significant seasonal changes and patterns, to mark birth and death, and, most notably to initiate teenagers into the spirit realms of the ‘ethnoscape’, the complex metaphysical matrix of Bwiti thought. Initiation in Bwiti is a voyage of birth toward death and then of rebirth of a new being, following the path of clairvoyance and knowledge of the mysteries of the world. During his (or her, in the healing circles of groups like the Mitsogho) initiatory voyage under the influence of iboga, the initiate undertakes an ascent toward the original world, the world above which is that of the dead and the newly born. He has visions of his present, past, and future. The aim of initiation is to have him be reborn first of all in the world of the dead and then in the lower world in his most perfect form: it is of course a question of creating a new man or woman worthy of being part of the community of Bwitists (Ravalec and Paicheler 61). “Iboga allows the initiate to see more than the ordinary world and to reconsider his present life. Before the stage of visions, iboga provokes questions and answers about oneself. It obliges one to face up to oneself, and the work is of a psychoanalytical nature- an ascent toward the past that helps the subject to discover himself.” For Mallendi, every man or woman has a layer of dark clouds in his or her brain: at the time of initiation, iboga clears away these dark clouds to reach the ‘starry part’, the luminous part of the brain, and to permit seeing across emptiness:

Naitre c'est mourir, mourir c'est naitre, voila bien le premier message de tout scenario initiatique, et puisque tout homme, dans la logique rétrospective du rite, se découvre ((mort-né' )), il ne reste plus, pour faire vivre le cycle qui donne son sens a l'existence, qu'a mourir pour naitre, ce que lui propose en un sens l'initiation. Poser la naissance et la mort comme deux valeurs a la fois opposées et complémentaires, c'est induire du même coup le principe de leur permutation et l'inversion des signes positifs ou négatifs qui s'attachent a ces deux versants de l'existence (Mary 1988 : 236)

Bwiti is a religion, in part animist, because the plants are trees are considered to be inhabited by spirits, but also universalist, since there is no God in human form but an amorphous, abstract power present in the hearts of every person and every thing. It is also a science of nature, a university of the forest: bwiti apprenticeship includes the knowledge of plants and their therapeutic and magical properties. Iboga allows a particular relationship with nature. It makes tangible the direct link that unites people, barefoot on the earth, with the transcendence of places and things charged with spirits. Images, face and body painting, feathers, and animal hides from the forest form the décor of the ceremonies. During his or her initiation, each person receives a name based on a natural element, whether from an animal or the sky, such as lightning or rain.

The Bwiti initiation is carried out over three days, which correspond to birth, death, and rebirth. Initiates are adorned with loin cloths, with necklaces of cowry shells and bracelets of small bells, their bodies painted, and traditional instruments echoing into the night sky (iboga is mostly eaten at night). The neophyte’s head is shaved and powdered with a red wood. He is then led into a special guardship temple where he swallows movengo, a concoction mixed with the grinded root to make him vomit more easily. The initiate vomits into his pail, often until bile first appears, this white liquid that they say is the first milk that the newborn received. The procedure follows in this manner, imbued with the symbolism of female genitalia, rebirth, and ‘seeing what could not previously be seen’ (Ravalec and Paicheler 70), all actualized and manifested through the consumption of this excruciatingly bitter root. Anthropologist Vincent Revalec comments on the taste:

“Why do you think that is [that it tastes so bad]? The first reason is security. If such powerful substances could be swallowed like maple syrup, there would be accidents. And second, knowledge is worth something. It’s always like that. Wherever you go in the world it’s the same. Whatever is called a way of initiation requires effort. Whether it’s in the East, in South America, in Freemasonry or among the Papuans of Papua New Guinea- in order to learn you have to pay. And pay with oneself. It’s the rule” (11)

The path to ‘arriving’ in the Bwiti world, like other indigenous rituals with substances like Peyote and Ayahuasca, is marked by great struggle, exertion, and pain, both physically and psychologically. The process involves spiritual and existential growth; iboga is not a drug nor an entertainment, it is first and foremost a key that gives access to other modes of being, other ‘reality tunnels’ of the world and of consciousness. Plants like iboga are sacred tools for interpreting one’s own existence. As French chemist Robert Goutarel says, “Iboga brings about the visual, tactile, and auditory certainty of the irrefutable existence of the beyond… Physical death loses all meaning because it is nothing but a new life, another existence. It is [the root] that conditions the several existences” (Pinchbeck 34).