left,Voodoo ceremony

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Slave traders attacked villages in West Africa and bound the captive tribesmen in chains, to be transported and sold as slaves in Haiti. Many of those villagers had never seen the sea and, crammed in the terrible rolling darkness of the ship's hull, they mumbled prayers begging Iemanja, the mother of all spirits and goddess of the sea, to spare their lives.

    Arriving safely on the Haitian shore, the tribesmen were convinced their goddess had delivered them from a watery grave. At night they erected altars in her honor and beat drums in candlelit ceremonies, a practice initially tolerated by their French masters.

    Visiting Catholic priests, however, were determined to wipeout "spiritism" , the worshipping of spirits as gods. In much the same way as the pagan feast days of Europe had been ousted by their Christian counterparts, the slaves were encouraged to worship the saints rather than their own "spirit gods",and the Virgin Mary rather than Iemanja.

The President of Haiti made a determined effort to stamp out the ancient religion of Voodoo. The anti-superstition crusade launched in 1941 was really a form of Inquisition, in which all members of the faithful were required to take an oath never to take part in voodoo ceremonies again.

    Not unnaturally, this caused great indignation among the people - particularly in a region known as the Marbial Valley, where two priests, one French and the other Haitian, persecuted voodoo with ferocious and medieval hatred. With a band of followers, the priests visited every house in their parish, smashing every object that was thought to have an occult significance and cutting down sacred trees - the homes of benevolent spirits.
    The effect was dramatic. Dozens of people became possessed by homeless loa, even in the Catholic Church itself. These people had to be exorcised on the spot. On one occasion, a group of screaming women was dragged before the priests, accused by neighbors of belonging to the feared 'Sisterhood of Werewolves'. They too were exorcised. The priests ordered that all the big crosses in the family burial grounds must be uprooted, since voodoo rituals were held in front of these crosses.

    The wooden crosses were piled in a heap and set on fire, and several people began to twist and turn in a frenzy, screaming that they were possessed by Baron Samedi and the hosts of the dead. No amount of exorcism could drive out the spirits, which mocked the priests and prophesied calamities to come. The following year, the Marbial Valley was hit by the worst drought in living memory.

The battle against the forces of voodoo resulted in a technical victory for the priests and their associates - for a time, at least. Then, in the 1960s, came the anti-Catholic campaigns of the late President Francois Duvalier, the feared "Papa Doc", himself a believer in voodoo. The campaigns were implemented by his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, and ended with the Catholic clergy in Haiti being decimated by exile. Voodoo once again had a stranglehold on the people.

Bwiti

Voodoo

African Witch Doctors

Rastafarianism

Bwiti is the only growing Black African religion. In or about 1000 BC, in the forests of Africa, humankind discovered the Eboga plant and declared it sacred. The plant contains an important medicine now known as Ibogaine.

    In 1996 in Europe and the United States Ibogaine was being tested for its ability to interrupt addiction to heroin, cocaine, methadone, alcohol and nicotine. In Central West Africa (Zaire,Gabon, Cameroon, and the Congo), Eboga is widely used in African religions and as a medicine. The Republic of Gabon is the center of the Bwiti religion and Mbiri medical societies, each use plants containing Ibogaine for healing and psychotherapy.

    Eboga is used as a sacrament in the religion of Bwiti. Bwiti takes on various forms: from the orthodox to the reformed, butits believers include millions of Africans. The first presidentof Gabon, the Honorable Leon Mba, was a member of the Bwiti religion and defended it in the French colonial courts. At the time of Gabonese independence in the 1960s, Gabon contained over 40 distinct ethnic groups, isolated from each other by the tropical rain forest. It was the Bwiti religion that became unifying force for the Gabonese independence movement.The French psychic investigator, noted, "Gabon is to Africa what Tibet is to Asia, the spiritual center of religious initiation " .

    Eboga first reached Europe by the mid 18^th century.The plant was officially named Tabernanthe iboga in 1888 and Ibogaine was first purified from the plant in 1901.

    By the end of the 1960s, Ciba scienticts were performing animal research. Dr. Harris Isbell,the director of the Federal Narcotics Hospital in Lexington, KY gave low doses of Ibogaine to eight Black former morphine addicts. He requested additional supplies of Ibogaine and then all informationon his work vanished into either Department of Defense or CIA files, never to be seen by investigators again.

    The 1960s was a time of drug experimentation. Research onIbogaine was also being conducted by a 19-year-old, Howard Lotsof. Lotsof tested drugs on himself and took notes on others who werealso using drugs. Lotsof's drug experimentation resulted in his becoming a heroin and cocaine addict, but then - as he continued his research, this middle-class Jewish junkie obtained a dose of Africa's sacred drug and was cured of his addiction.

Ibogaine As Drug Treatment

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Drugs: Iboga & the Cult of Bwiti

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