The Barasana yajé ritual described by Reichel-Dolmatoff has a number of
similarities to Huichol peyote ritualism. Ritual adornment, a ceremonial fire,
chanting, music, dancing through the long night, and the synchrony and
coordination of participants are elements common to both ceremonies. These
elements also occur in the following account from tropical West Africa.
Eboka and Bwiti communityBwiti is a new religious movement found among the Fang and Metsogo peoples of
Gabon in equatorial West Africa. This ecstatic, syncretic cult, influenced by the
Bieri ancestral cult and Christian evangelism, has been characterized as a reformative
movement and as a dynamic form of resistance and response to colonialism
(Fernandez 1982). The polymorphous Bwiti religion is spread throughout Fang
territory, but chapels are relatively autonomous, and there is little organization
beyond that found at the level of individual villages (Fernandez 1972). The religion
deals with the maintenance of satisfactory relationships with the dead, and also seeks
to make available to its members experiential knowledge of the transition from the
realm of the living to that of the dead. This experiential knowledge is arrived at
primarily through the initiation rite in which the novice becomes a Banzie,^8 or
member. Bwiti incorporates a number of psychoactive plants, the most esteemed of
which is eboka (prepared from the roots of the shrub Tabernanthe iboga). Eboka, or
eboga, contains many alkaloids, including an unusual psychedelic drug, ibogaine
(Pope 1969). Eboka is used in two distinct ways. First, the powdered roots are taken
in enormous, visionary doses to symbolically ‘break open the head’ in order for one
to become experientially aware of the presence of the Ancestors during intensive,
once-in-a-lifetime initiation rites. Subsequently, smaller quantities of eboka are taken
by Banzie as ceremonial stimulants during periodic all-night rituals, accompanied by
song, dance, and ‘the insistent rhythms of the cult harp (ngombi) and the soft beat
of the bamboo staves (obaka)’ (Fernandez 1972:240).
The lighter regular dosage of two to five teaspoons does not produce
hallucinations, though adepts of Bwiti claim that once a man has ‘met eboga’
and been taken by ‘him’ to the ‘other side’, any subsequent amount will raise
in his mind many of his former experiences. The regular dosage...is taken
primarily to enable the adepts to engage in the arduous all-night ceremonies
without fatigue. Members often say that eboga taken in this way also lightens
their bodies so that they can float through their ritual dances. It enables them
to mingle more effectively with the ancestors at the roof of the chapel. They do
not report visions under the influence of such amounts, only modest change
in body perception and some dissociation.
(Fernandez 1982:475)Fernandez provides an account of a Metsogo Bwiti engosie—an all-night celebration
‘along the path of birth and death’—which was preceded in the mid-afternoon by a
130 DES TRAMACCHI