Thursday, July 7, 2011

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 18th 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 20th 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).

Permaculture


Permaculture:
Addressing Ecological Crises and Redefining Human-Earth Identities

           
We are experiencing, as a human race and as a planet, a radical convergence of crises that spans across all aspects of planetary society and species, from economic pitfalls, social upheaval, and political chaos, to desertification, the ubiquitous disappearance of bees, forests, clean air and water, and the acute deterioration of ecosystems’ ability to sustain life. Old stories about who we are as human beings and about how we relate to- and interact with- the world around us are falling apart. History has never witnessed suffering on such a large scale; humanity’s dogmatic efforts to control and manipulate nature, ‘red and tooth in claw’, have culminated in the complexly woven globalized systems of economy, politics, technology, culture and thought we witness today- a vast machine of human cognition that has transformed the planet, fueling a ruthless, anthropocentric exploitation of other life forms to substantiate our own achievement. Despite producing extraordinary marvels like the Internet, technologies that have essentially transfigured and revolutionized the way we move, act, and think on this planet, our audacious attempts to command the universe as ‘lords and possessors of nature’ have pushed the earth’s carrying capacity to the brink of collapse. Many social and environmental activists fail to enact lasting change because they neglect how powerful our existing stories are, and how deeply the psychology of separation (from ourselves, one another, and the planet) has been ingrained within the collective consciousness. 
Permaculture is a fascinating alternative to these conventional paradigms of consumption and exploitation because it seeks to address the physical and metaphysical, the challenges of both ecological imbalance and spiritual, or existential, disharmony. Permaculture, or ‘permanent (agri)culture’, was “developed” (indigenous peoples have been practicing their own forms for thousands of years) by Bill Mollison in 1959 while observing marsupials browsing the floor of a Tanzanian forest, noticing the seamless brilliance of natural ecosystems compared to our contemporary forms of agriculture.1,2 Unlike traditional gardens or farms, Mollison noted, areas like [the Tanzanian forest] were resilient, diverse, productive, and beautiful, representing places where nature does most of the work, but where people are as welcome as the other inhabitants of Earth.1 Contemporary food production is but one microcosm of the broader consciousness that still holds vestiges of the ‘nature as enemy’ mentality; indeed for thousands of years we’ve viewed ‘nature’ as something to be conquered and restrained, something somehow separate from ourselves (Evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers before the inception of agriculture [10,000 years ago] didn’t maintain this self-other duality, but viewed themselves as part of a greater totality.) Permaculture is thus focused on modeling human settlements and agricultural systems on natural ecologies while simultaneously demonstrating the inherent interdependency of all beings on this planet.

In many ways, the fundamental principles of permaculture are in direct opposition to the forces of neoliberal economic/social policies, corporate globalization, and massive industrial agricultural practices. “Permaculture technologies,” says Professor Maria de la Bellacasa, “[represent] a form of concrete political activism… They promote ecological living, local food production, alternative energies, and radical democratic forms of organization.”3 Contrast this description with the spirit of mainstream consumer culture, whereby living systems are fueled by dirty fossil fuels that enslave local economies and disenfranchise communities by making them dependent on large-scale organizations like the IMF or private multinational corporations. Helena Norberg-Hodge’s film Ancient Futures provides a prototypical example while exploring the effects of globalization on the Ladakh people of northern India. A culture rooted deeply in intimate community ties, sustainable living practices, leisure, creativity, peace and happiness was utterly disintegrated as enormous agribusiness corporations seized control of trade and forced Ladakhis into mainstream wage economies; the traditional Ladakh culture collapsed due to the ‘civilizing’ pressures of modernization- a process that continues to affect indigenous groups across the globe. 4 In the Eleuthera Islands, Bahamas, “[locals] have also come to rely on foreign companies for jobs- which helps to explain the 40% unemployment rate- and in the last half-century a great deal of local agricultural know-how has been lost in the rise and fall of the tourism industry.5 Instilled within the ethos of permaculture is an emphasis on downscaling political and economic structures, contracting the modalities of production and consumption, and establishing a communal society based on the relocalization of living systems to preserve culture rather than homogenize it. This idea of relocalization will be discussed later.

What’s wrong with the current agricultural system?
Feeding the world?

Despite our modern agricultural technologies and advanced globalized distribution systems, it is estimated that nearly 800 million people go hungry each day, and that two-fifths of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. Companies like Monsanto claim that low-technology agriculture “will not produce sufficient crop yield increases to feed the world’s burgeoning population,” and thus rely on pesticide-laden, technology-intensive agriculture to produce that maximum output from the land in the shortest amount of time. 5 Yet it is abundance, not scarcity, that best describes the world’s food supply: enough food is grown worldwide to provide 4.3 pounds of food per person per day, despite countries like the United States literally throwing out half of what is produced.6,7 “The industrial system has, over centuries and in virtually every area of the globe, ‘enclosed’ farmland, forcing subsistence peasants off the land, so that is can be used for growing high-priced export crops rather than diverse crops for local populations… removed from their land and means of survival, the ‘landless’ then flock to the newly industrialized cities where they quickly become a class of urban poor competing for low-paying jobs.”6 By 2030, it is estimated that 56% of the developing world will be urban dwellers, fifty percent of which is likely due to forced migration from rural to urban communities. 6

Toxicity, technology, contamination, pesticide use
According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, between 1970 and 1999, food-borne illnesses multiplied tenfold. According to the FDA, at least 53 carcinogenic pesticides are presently applied to support our massive yields, while the synergistic effects (how chemicals interact with one another) of pesticides have not be examined at all.8,9 Consequently, the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA) reports that more than 1 million Americans drink water laced with pesticide runoff from industrial farms. “A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers who used industrial herbicides were six times more likely than non-farmers to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma… exposures to these neurotoxic compounds like PCBs and organophosphate insecticides during critical periods of development can cause permanent, long-term damage to the brain, nervous, and reproductive systems.” 6 Food-borne illnesses have skyrocketed with the introduction of factory farms and antibiotics, while the use of irradiation has been one of many disastrous efforts to engineer technological solutions for fundamentally unsafe agricultural practices to begin with.

Environmental costs: transportation, monoculture, and climate change
The overexploitation of chemicals and machines on industrial farms severely erodes topsoil and damages ecosystems over time. The United States has lost half of its topsoil since 1960, and we continue depleting topsoil 17 times faster than nature can replenish it. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 75% of genetic agricultural diversity has disappeared in this century. The genetically modified organisms engineered in labs by Monsanto and other massive agribusiness corporations are far more susceptible to insects, blights, diseases, and inclement weather than are organic, polyculture farms.6 In the summer of 1969, an epidemic disease of corn that appeared in North America destroyed a substantial part of the 1970 crop because 70% of the U.S. corn was uniformly vulnerable to a new race of southern corn leaf blight. “The hazard to corn,” says biology professor John Jungck, “resulted from advances in agricultural technology that had created the genetic uniformity.” 10 This danger is present whenever food is produced in the monoculture format, lacking the supportive safety net of a diverse array of mutually beneficial organisms. The food on an average American’s plate now travels at least 1,300 miles from the farm to the dinner table, exacerbating carbon emissions and further degrading ecosystems.6

____________
Permaculture: A Biopolitical/Metaphysical Response
It is quite essential to acknowledge, as previously mentioned, that the problems provoked by industrial agriculture are mere products of a certain way of understanding our relationships with the natural world- certain ethical, behavioral, and metaphysical identities that have come to define the way humanity interacts within broader contexts. Changing the way we produce and relate to food is a fundamental point of intervention in exploitative ‘biopolitical’ regimes and predominant social forms; in the past few years, we have witnessed a renewed interest in growing our own food and connecting more deeply and intimately with this important process. This emerging paradigm, sparked within ‘mainstream contexts’ by the organic/local food and urban/community garden movements and perhaps culminating with an extensive relocalization/permaculture framework (developing further upon the inchoate stages of the ‘green’ movement), the broader value system of deep, ecological consciousness is about strengthening the interrelationships of, what de la Bellacasa calls, the ‘three ecologies’: self (body and psyche), collective, and earth. “The ethics of permaculture,” she asserts, “are in dialogue with broader discussion in the world of biopolitics/naturecultures; this requires approaching the ethical as an everyday doing that connects the personal to the collective and de-centers the human…. Naturecultures (her term), imply the inseparability of the natural and cultural, and affirm the breaking down of boundaries of the technological and organic as well as the animal and human… more [people] today envision the material world less from the perspective of defined ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’, but as composed of knots of relations involving humans, non-humans, and physical entanglements of matter and meaning.”3

Permaculture is just as much about practical organic farming design principles as it is about transforming the way we view the earth, and thus has embedded within it one some would call dimensions of spirituality or ‘animist’ value systems. The ecological perception of being part of the earth is one that is felt, as “real dirt under our fingernails” and “our bodies responding to the needs of water because we are water.” De la Bellacasa emphasizes her revitalized relationship with worms:

Becoming able of a caring obligation towards worms is nurtured by hands on dirt, love and curiosity for the needs of an ‘other’, whether this is the people we live with, the animals we care for, the soil we plant in. It is by working with them, by feeding them and gathering their castings as food for plants, that a relationship is created that acknowledges our interdependency: these neglectable sticky beings reappear as quite amazing as well as indispensable – for they take care of our waste, they process it so that it becomes food again.3

Because we are constantly on the move, disconnected from where we live and the flowing ecological patterns that sustain us, we have lost our relationship with place, with our surroundings, our landscape, our communities. Environmentalist and Deep ecologist Gary Snyder says that the most important ecological commitment is to ‘stay in one place’, reviving our connections with the land by relocalizing living systems, culture, and identity. Permaculture asks us to be observant, develop greater awareness of our effect on the world around us, and take mindful actions in caring for the mind, body, and environment. 11,2

A Few Basic Practices in Permaculture
             Instead of the backbreaking labor that goes into tilling, sowing, weeding, and chemically controlling a conventional vegetable garden, a permaculture garden works on totally different principles. It provides its own fertilization, has internal weed suppression and pest-control mechanisms, and manages its internal moisture levels through dry times and wet, functioning as a self-organizing ecology predicated on place.1 Instead of the grassy emptiness that usually defines yards, city parks, curbsides, and parking lots (mirroring a fundamental cosmology of clean, ‘civilized’ aesthetics instead of functional, productive spaces), these areas could be retrofitted to be lush, food-producing, attractive landscapes that aid nature while yielding much for us as well. Ordinary vegetable gardens are usually fragmented: there is an orderly vegetable plot here; flower beds there, a back corner for ‘wildlife’, etc. A vegetable garden doesn’t offer habitat to native insects, birds, and other wildlife (which are traditionally considered unwelcome visitors) and a flower garden can’t feed the gardener. Therefore, permaculture defends the multifunctionality of all species, treating the garden as a complex web or network of mutual relationships rather than isolated elements intended to serve only a single purpose.1 “A yard is a dynamic system, not an unchanging still life. By viewing our landscapes as dynamic ecosystems, rather than as static collections of inert objects, we can create gardens that inherently grow in healthy patterns and directions.”1
One significant feature of permaculture design is the application of mutually beneficial plants that help cultivate diverse species and build the health of the system. For example, if you plant broccoli or roses, aphids will naturally be attracted, which endangers other plants. However, one can scatter these plants among other species that reduce nitrogen in the soil (aphids enjoy nitrogen-rich plants), as well as foster habitats for aphid predators (ladybugs). A rosebush attracts aphids, which lure ladybugs, which lure birds, which leave their droppings to feed microbes and fertilize the rose. In this way, multiple zero-waste feedback loops can be employed to self-regulate gardens through knowledge of nature’s relationships.
Another critical element of nourishing the ecological garden is by building healthy soil. A Latin American farmer is quoted in Gaia’s Garden as saying, “Of course you have terrible soil in your country. What do you expect when you call it dirt?”1 Our heavily fertilized agricultural lands lose up to 60% of calcium (enriching mineral) due to run off, while in a typical North American forest, only 2% is lost. Similarly, worms ‘turn over’ as much as 25 tons of soil per acre per year (the equivalent of one inch of topsoil over Earth’s landmass every ten years), while we struggle to produce short-term bursts in productivity through tilling.1 Nature is very intelligent; by understanding her mechanisms we can work with her and not against her. Healthy compost heaps- using kitchen scraps and other organic materials that would normally go to waste- can be used to nourish the soil and serve as a natural weed-protector.
The management of space, as part of the ecological design process, present yet another way for us to mimic nature’s inherent providence and abundance. Elevated ‘keyhole’ beds and spiraling herb formations (shown below) are simple solutions to maximizing sunlight, water collection, and space while utilizing different plant heights to act as filters or barriers to wind or rodents.






http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/herb-spiral.jpg