preliminary shared meal. Eboga was also eaten in the afternoon, a séance was
performed, and a spirit curse was ‘lifted’ from an afflicted man through an elaborate
ritual. The Bwiti engosie proper commenced around 9 o’clock in the evening, with a
series of long shuffling entrance dances that commenced out in the forest and were
designed to attract lingering spirits into the chapel. These were followed by songs
arranged according to cosmological themes and dances ‘of superb quality and highly
coordinated’ (ibid.:437).
The choreographic highlights of the evening were the ‘amazements’ or akyunge.
Akyunge, sometimes translated as ‘miracles’, refer to things done with ‘such
surpassing skill and subtlety as to amaze and be beyond ordinary understanding and
imitation’ (ibid.:436).^9 The akyunge consisted of highly competent performances of
illusions, for example the appearance of levitating torches and even the ‘miraculous’
appearance of the local French District Administrator (skilfully impersonated by
Bwiti members). These dramatic performances are designed to ‘confound the
ordinary categories of experience... Things are confused, lose their categories—
Metsogo “miracles” make things “amazingly ambiguous”’ (ibid.: 468). Soon after
midnight, the energies of the engosie are channelled into an experience of satisfaction
and communitas. After a brief circumambulation of the surrounding forests,
the membership, following the nima na kombo,^10 enter the chapel and, just
before the central pillar, begin to weave a tighter and tighter circle until they
are compressed, virtually, into one being around the nima na kombo. Raising
their candles above their heads (ideally they should be able to make one flame
out of all candles) they intone bi antô nlem mvôre (now we become one
heart).
(Fernandez 1982:454)One-heartedness is usually followed by a short, highly figurative sermon. The
following five hours are dedicated to the recital of songs drawn from ‘the Path of the
Harp’—a collection of 115 songs relating cosmological events, commencing with
creation ex nihilo. Banzie one-heartedness is again enacted at first light:
this time it does not occur within the chapel but rather before the ancestors’
welcoming hut (ôtunga). And the members, instead of raising the candles in
their right hands raise and bring together the yarn umbilical cords in their left
hands.... They are reaffirming the ‘umbilical linkage’ that binds them to the
departing ancestors. ‘Oneheartedness’ may otherwise be celebrated by men
and women in separate groups in the midst of nearby streams. But midnight
and first light are the two occasions for this celebration in the process of the
engosie. It is a climactic celebration in the engosie.
(Fernandez 1982:454)ENTHEOGENIC DANCE ECSTASIS 131