Before we begin a brief disclaimer, Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive subst...
not legal in the United States, can be dangerous when administered improperly and is not appropriate for everyone. The series is not intended as medical advice or an endorsement of treatment. The experience is described by guests reflect their personal accounts, and listeners should conduct extensive research and consult qualified medical professionals before making any
decisions related to Ibogaine or other psychedelic substances. Hi everyone, this is Kite Against, and welcome to the Ibogaine Inquiries, a miniseries from TT Media, exploring one of the most promising, controversial, and misunderstood substances in the world of mental health and addiction recovery. This is Episode 3.
In our last episode, we discussed the science behind Ibogaine, how it works in the brain and body. The mystery of his intelligence, as well as the unexplainable experiences, people have while under its influence. The call into question are current paradigm and understanding of consciousness.
“Is this planned a conscious being that wants to teach us and help us?”
Does it want to heal us? And what would it look like if that healing and help was spread across the world? We've noted that there are serious consequences in Africa to the already rapid increase in demand for Ibogaine.
There the plant Ibogaine from which Ibogaine is derived is absolutely essential to community
and everyday life. It's a teacher, a guide, a living entity that has been used in sacred ceremony for thousands of years. It plays a central role in culture and individual identity. Today, we're going to focus on the roots of Ibogaine and what those who have been
studying it and working with it for hundreds, even thousands of years, no to be true about its mystery. We'll also look at the powerful rituals developed around it. And to do that, we head to the west coast of Africa to the country of Gaban. Gaban sits right on the equator with a population of a little over 2 million people.
It's a small country with a massive history. For Gabanese Ibogaine is sacred, it's the most sacred medicine of Africa for them of Gabo. It's a spirit, it's a living entity. It's the tree of the knowledge of the good and even for them, it's the master tree. It's the best link with God.
This is Jan Guignan. He runs an organization called Blessings of the Forest. Its goal is to conserve and sustain the cultural heritage of the indigenous people of Gaban. And a lot of that work is focused on the preservation of Ibogaine. Jan is also a member of the Buiti tradition, which is a practice of spiritual beliefs native
to Gaban under which Ibogaine has been used for millennia. A vital part of the spiritual practice of Buiti involves something called initiation in which the Ibogaine is consumed in the company of community. Our producer Katherine spoke with Jan more about this, and most notably the way the plant
is never taken for granted.
It's revered. So I'll let them take it from here. It's the best medicine plant. It's very sacred. So the way they care of it, the way they talk about it, the way they harvest it, it's a world
process. The way they plant it, the world process. The place will plant it, it's a science and the way they transform it when they use it.
“It's a world science, it's a world preparation, it's very important.”
I mean, it's the most important initiation for Gabogaine's people. Every single detail of this whole process he describes is important. This knowledge has developed over such a long period of time, and the consumption of the medicine doesn't only apply to the spiritual realm, but also to their sense of community, physical health, and even their education.
It's the way they find their place in the society, it's the way they heal their traumas, it's the way they get connected to their ancestors, it's the way they understand who they are, it's the way they understand the environment around them, it's the way they learn life, it's the biggest university. The very intimate process of initiation involves being connected to community members who
help guide you through your experience with this incredibly powerful medicine.
It's not something you can do randomly or on a whim. It's a long and considered process. The relationship to the person who gives it to you even matters.
“The master gives you this medicine, and Gabogaine becomes as important as your father.”
Throughout this episode, when you hear someone referred to medicine, they're talking about Iboga. Masters are experts in the tradition. You call him daddy, right? Or mommy, if it's a woman who initiates you, because as important as your father, he takes
a huge responsibility on you, like a good father, you know, like a good father and a Christians,
It's in charge of your education, sometimes more than your own father or moth...
responsibility to it's your life, the nature, everything's so, yeah, it's very sacred.
“To really understand the depth of the importance of this plant, we need to learn more about”
the Weedy tradition. Weedy is practiced by at least half of the population in Gabogaine and has been around an extremely long time, potentially dating back to ancient Egypt, that has certainly existed well before Gabogaine was an independent nation. My name is Hapolon, I'm from Gabogaine, I'm a living in Gabogaine in Central Africa, and
we were colonized by the French people, so we speak French, but we have more than 40, something like 50 different languages, local languages. I was put in touch with Apolon because he has been studying the Weedy tradition for many
years, he knows the history of the tradition, as well as the Iboga plant and is very involved
in the Weedy community. Healing Apolon's current understanding of Weedy is now extensive, but his exposure to the
“tradition didn't come until his teenage years.”
The French colonization of Gabogaine played a massive role in Weedy becoming less mainstream and even suppressed in Gabogaine than it had been for centuries prior. Apolon actually initially identified as Catholic. When I was a teenager, I started to ask myself why we have this tradition, I raised it to come from, and then I heard about slavery, colonization and things like that.
I said, "Wow, why people have to practice a religion who came with, I mean, force like, they impose the religion, the reason why in Africa, they practice Muslim or Christianity is because the colonization." Apolon started to question his beliefs after realizing that the only reason he was exposed to them was due to French colonization.
The religion that was imposed upon those who came before him.
“The people in the area Apolon was raised didn't have much exposure to people practicing Weedy.”
It means I'm not coming from a religion or practice of Weedy. In the start, the haste of Gabogaine, we don't have the Weedy. We have, of course, different culture, rituals, but we don't have the Weedy. During the colonization, they tried to stop the tradition and especially the Weedy, for example, the strong tradition, the colonization, they tried to stop and they killed a lot of people
who practiced the tradition. So, not only was new religious practice introduced during this time, but the native Weedy tradition was seen as evil and primitive by colonial powers. French colonization even extended to what languages the French allowed people to speak. People were punished for speaking their mother tongue.
They wanted four people to speak French and if you talk your language. For example, they put bones of animal on your, like a necklace. People in the village, when you speak your mother language, don't move it on. If you put a necklace with the bone, sometimes the bone of the head of an animal, like monkey, and with the tradition, they say you don't practice tradition is not good.
Well, you have the Bible. God is inside the Bible. This is why, after 100 years, people practiced more Christianity. It's not because they didn't want, because many years ago, people say, "Weedy is bad. It's bad.
You have to go to church." So during this time, the centuries-old practice of Weedy was largely banned and vilified. It was forbidden and, as you heard, people were shamed and sometimes even killed. This is how Weedy became marginalized in the Gavenese culture. But after independence in 1960, things began to change.
I realized that before the colonization, we have our own tradition. And then I started my quest to understand what is my tradition, what is my culture, is about what, and things like that, and slowly, slowly, I started to talk with people, and I was in touch with people who practiced the different tradition here in Gaven. And then I started to get initiated to several different rituals and tradition of Gabym.
So Abalon was able to get in touch with those in Gabym, who practiced Weedy, and he immediately felt an inherent connection to the tradition.
And when I practiced a bit for the first time, I kept reading, but really, it was as an
African as companies, it was, wow, it was, wow.
Abalon was blown away by that first initiation.
As we mentioned, initiation and Weedy involves chopping up and ingesting the root of the Ebola plant. The ritual requires time, preparation, community, and trust building in order to access the plants healing effects. And this is the part that diverges completely from how I began as used in the West.
Many of the people you've heard from so far in this series have taken I began with strangers and medical settings, but as Jan from earlier explains, in the Weedy tradition, things take time. They require intimate connections, and the rituals used to guide someone through the psychedelic are tailored to the specific needs of the person being initiated.
You come and get the medicine easily, it's not like you go to a shopping, Gabym, and you say, "I want one gram of you, Gabym, and give you into a plastic bag, it's still about that."
“If you want the medicine, you need to have a consultation, you need to find a village, most”
of the time it's the village from your home tribe, your home community, but it doesn't have to be your family, so you need to find a proper village, and you have to find someone who comes with you, you need to be instructors, you need to be confident, you make a consultation,
then you're observed by your community, who was first before giving you the medicine to analyze,
who you are, and make it to make some treatment on you, because maybe they will see that you have some problems to treat, before giving you the medicine, sometimes you have some witchcraft on you, sometimes what we call in the West, like transgenational traumas, or calmas, you know, that we have to heal, sometimes they will see that you have some health problems to heal first, before taking the medicine, they can see that, for example, that
you are weak, your stomach is weak, or your heart is weak, sometimes you need to make some treatment before, some need to give you medicine to drink, to clean your levers, to clean your stomach, to clean your cities, you have a better experience with the medicine and also
“for you to be confident with the place you're going to do it, because it's very important”
for you to be confident with the people who give you the medicine, going through the process of an Ebola trip isn't something to be taken lightly, he underscores the importance of trust in those around you during the ceremony, it's not just as simple as taking a pill, when you will be eye in the medicine you'll be to be very confident with people around you with the spot with the place around you, so you go through that, and then there are the world
process around, the world reach for around, I saw there's some step to go through the medicine
and go home. We're going to hear some incredible accounts of people's experiences going through
these steps and being initiated, but it's really important to point out that the specifics of these rituals are secret, they are protected knowledge, so you'll hear about the effects these rituals had on the initiates, but not a step-by-step process for how they happened. Part of this is to protect these sacred traditions and the other part is because the experiences may be tailored to the individual needs of each person. In addition to that, there are several different
we-teet traditions that use Ebola, but they're rituals vary. So let's quickly pause here for a moment. Katherine, you spoke to lots of people who've experienced we-teet rituals associated with Ebola, and even though as you described the law, the process is protected knowledge, right, and secret, can you break down some of the common themes that aren't secret? Definitely. So like Yan is saying, most people need to find a community willing to and interested in initiating you. There are many
communities in Gabo and practicing We-teet and several facets of We-teet itself. During the initiation, there are series of songs, dances, and other physical traditions that accompany taking Ebola. It truly is a science down to the colors you're shown during the experience. This took
centuries to perfect, and it's all very critical. Okay, how so? Well from what has been explained to me,
“Iboca is really powerful. You need to be guided and supported. And many people believe that these”
traditions are vital to supporting that journey, that the initiates is going on while under Ebola's influence. In fact, people in the West are starting to realize this, and even returning to Gabo and asking for advice. Every village or a community has their own version of it, so there's not one single "bootie" practice. That's Dr. Martin Polanco again. He's a psychologist who offers Iboca in treatment at a clinic in Mexico, who you heard from an earlier episodes. But he's also
received the medicine of Ebola in a more traditional We-teet ceremony. So he has an understanding of what occurs during the sacred practice and how it differs from his own usage in the West. They take it as a right of passage. It could be the passage from childhood to adulthood. It could be, you know, menopause. It can be processing the loss of a loved one. Sometimes it's taken for healing,
People address physical injuries and diseases with it.
version of it. So there's not one single "bootie" practice, but generally it involves the ingestion of the root bark and pretty large amounts over a period of several days. It's a communal experience. It's not individual. So the community comes around. They play instruments. They hold space for the individual. They do it many times in their life. It's not kind of a one-time thing. What we're so fascinating in learning about different people's experience with Ebola is how
very they are and how personalized their initiation ceremonies were. When we come back, we'll hear from Upland again about his experience taking Ebola and the ways it connected him, more to himself, as well as a greater understanding of the universe. More on that in a minute.
Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for because I want lighter fabrics
pieces that feel good the sake you put them on, and things that can go from work to dinner
“without feeling overdone. That's why I love quents. They focus on high-quality essentials,”
like breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, and beautiful jewelry without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but it's still easy and affordable. There are 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops are the pieces you reach for all summer. They're lightweight, effortless, to style, and start at just 32 dollars. I recently bought the Flonet Breeze short sleeve pillow and it's perfect for going to work or going out on a boat or
to a concert in the park. And the big thing for me is that quents works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middle then, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. I personally love their 100% European linen long-sleeved shirt because in California you go from super hot to super cold and it's perfect for layering an easy to throw in a bag. I also love their 100% European linen high-waisted shorts. They look so good in classic if you're going to the pool or
to the beach or just to a summer barbecue. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quents.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's QU-I-N-C-E.com/tapes for free
“shipping and 365 day returns. Quents.com/tapes. Welcome back. If you remember from earlier in the”
episode, Apalan, a gabinese blitty initiate who explored the tradition after growing up Catholic has quite a powerful description of his journeys describing his initiation ceremony as almost like being in a film. When I did my initiation, it was like being inside a movie. Not only watch, I used to watching movies TV, yes, but during the research, you are inside your movie, the movie of your life and many, many dimensions of things like that. You are inside. I say, wow! It was
more, wow, when I participate the first time to a ceremony of beauty and wow, a big big big big, wow,
when I did the initiation for first time. It was like you have million questions and then you have
access to the answers. You just have to ask for me, which was like that. Maybe it's not the same for everyone. I mean, we are all different and the experience is can be different from me, from you. It can be different. But for me, it was like if I have a question about something in the life, it was like inside a book. I someone turned the page like that and I can read to answer it to my question. Many people have described the medicine in this way that you are able to ask direct questions
and some greater entity gives you the exact answer. It certainly goes beyond our understanding and this was just his first experience. He also underscores the fact that these amazing and unexplained experiences while under the influence is not necessarily the end goal. He sees his effects as more like a launching pad, accelerating your life to a new place, encouraging growth in all areas. It's stuck like that. But it was just a beginning because I used to say to people that, for me,
all is like a process and when you do the initiation, it's just a beginning of like a new chapter, but the new process to change something, not only inside of you, but also outside and with people.
“And this is the most important things. It's not to receive a bogga, for example, or something”
that made sense and say, oh, I see many things. Oh, it's so wonderful. This is the first level.
For people who want to use a bogga, the effect of a bogga is just available after the initiation, you receive the knowledge and you start to practice because for me, which is practice.
When you start to practice, you understand many things.
taking a bogga, then leaving and expecting everything to be changed. It's a process that requires
“intentional practice after the experience. That's the beauty of it all. It still requires your effort”
and life action based on what the medicine has revealed to you. And like a puzzle, you start to put things on the right place to see the picture. So, okay. And it's slowly through that you can receive more and more and more and more. One of the many things a bogga revealed to Apple on has really stuck with me. The medicine seems to have revealed to him a very profound truth about the universe. Time is not only past or present of it. It's all at the same time. At the same time,
time is like a circle. It's like a circle. Past presents and future and future is like, you can see the future, just like that once again, two seconds. But you can be inside the the future also. Like people who can create something from the future. And this is how, for me, how I can explain how people can get access to what I call the collective memory. The collective memory Apple on is talking about is something we've heard many times throughout our
shows. This concept of a universal consciousness or energy that holds all knowledge, past, present and future. It's where many people believe the foundation of reality stems. It's where many believe creativity is born. Then you can receive information from there, like inspiration, progress on for a movie or things like that. You can receive receiving downloads from collective memory. To hear it from Apple on, it's so affirming
because he's showing how Iboga connects you to a universal consciousness that others we've spoken
“to over the years have accessed in different ways. I think the biggest difference is that for”
witty practitioners, this collective consciousness is almost taken for granted. It's a given, not something that needs to be proven. And the idea that the medicine itself or the Iboga is part of this collective consciousness also seems to be common knowledge. Iboga is treated as a conscious guide in and of itself and the witty masters simply need to assist it. As you've heard, this knowledge is also incorporated into the rituals themselves. The community and their experiences
affects the initiate journey in profound ways. And the question really becomes, what happens if this integral part of the story gets lost in Western applications of a Bogos derivative that we're calling Ibogaine. If you simply walk into a doctor's office and take Ibogaine as a pill or injection and have a private, indivisuated experience, what are we losing? Again, the witty who take Iboga
“have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. There's practices and traditions associated”
with taking Ibogaine based on what the witty masters have learned over centuries. And even though
we've heard about incredible healing being done in the Western medical context, what more healing
might be achieved by taking advice from the people of Gabon and incorporating them. And their time-honored practices into the Western adoption of this medicine. When we come back, we're going to take a deep dive into some of the potential origins of this powerful medicine. How it may have started being used in Gabon and how humans may have learned about it initially. More on that in a minute. That's Simone. Catherine talked to him along with an English interpreter who translated from
the French. In this episode, whatever you hear from Simon, you'll be hearing his interpreter. Simon is a deeply respected leader in his community. In Gabon, he's referred to as a witty master. He spent years studying Iboga and the spiritual discipline. I'll let him and Catherine take it from here. I learned enough and I have been consecrated to say that yes, I'm a witty master. There's been a training trust and then there's a consecration. It means there's an act of, okay, you are now a priest or a
master. If we make comparisons with the West, somebody who needs to be who wants to become a doctor, so he's trained, he studies and then he gets to diploma that allows him to practice.
Simone's father was the one who first initiated him into the witty tradition.
My father was already like a master who initiating people already. Here's Simone's interpreter explaining how much experience he has. So he went to school like everybody. He worked in companies and at the same time he was learning the science, what we call the science from his father. So he had his first initiation. When he was seven, he is now 57, so 50 years of practice. He's a witty name, his master,
a common gang. Part of Simone's expertise isn't just in witty rituals and traditions,
Also in their history and origins.
Egypt. We can see that's in Egypt as well in the tombs. So when we look at ancient Egypt
“like scripture, we discover that the priests were drinking a special beverage and we don't know what”
it was. He theorizes that this was a concoction of Ebola based on the depictions and context in which they were drinking it ceremoniously. The ceremonies included music and dance and resembled the same witty initiation practices using Ebola today. We know historically that the earliest people in Gabon, known non-Pajour to Lee as the pygmy people, had contact with ancient Egyptians. The migration of this Pygmy's who moved to Desaria, the only year river, in the area around
today's Gabon. The practice this tradition, which looked very strange to the people here, these bunch of people, adapted to have contacts with the Pygmy's. So they started to discover and to learn the science from the Pygmy's. Here Simone is referring to the science of using Ebola. So all these people then after that came back to their original area, bringing back
“the tradition, which was adapted to the local culture, which means that the witty will end up”
being practiced in eight of the nine areas, or provinces of Gabon. So it became almost an identity, a cultural identity of the country. Apple on explains how this migration of people to and from cities and villages, and the adoption of witty traditions in different places, is why now today there are many different types of witty sex and practices. When people say that, oh, I'd practice witty. It's good to know that in witty, witty is like
something like that. Witty, you are the witty. You are the witty, you are the witty, me soko. And inside of witty, me soko are milba. And go on there. Bu sucha. Same idea, magundi. And after you have a lima bansi, limi lombo. And you are the witty fang. But witty fang, they had the religion like Christianity's inside. They put a little bit of elements of Bible, of the Bible. I asked if in layman's terms, we could compare this to Christianity and it's sex to help me understand.
Yes, it's a little bit like protest and evangelique and feel like a little bit just. I want to return now to my conversation with Dr. Martin Polanco, because I was blown away by something he said. He makes the case that the history of all these very witty traditions might actually originate even deeper in the natural world. Before it's potential usage in ancient Egypt,
that the witty master's assignment described, in fact humans may have first noticed that animals
were eating the roots of the aboga plant. So we have documented use for at least 300 years, but very likely it goes back far deeper into time. In fact, one of the observations is that also animals seek it out, so that they've seen elephants stick up the roots. So potentially humans even learned it from observing animals. Because it's not something that you would just kind of
“grab and put into your mouth. It's a root and you have to scrape off the root bark. And then you”
have to eat a larger amount of it. So it's a pretty intense and laborious process to get the right amount to have an experience. So it's not something that somebody would just casually pick a barrier and eat it. I mean, they've seen elephants seek it and also some gorillas. And then one of the origin myths is that there was a porcupine that was eating it in the hunter. Got it with an arrow. And then when he consumed the porcupine, he hadn't experienced.
So he realized, oh, what was that porcupine eating? So that's one of the origin myths of how humans discovered it. However, they may have originated, Simo makes clear that these ancient traditions have become part of Gabbon's national identity and have instilled values in the culture derived from the planet itself. He looked at, started in a small corner of Gabbon, then widespread everywhere. So he looked at, in fact, participate to the cohesion of the national spirit of Gabbon.
That's the first point. First point is the national cohesion, like the solidarity.
This knowledge is training and the students about fantastic remarkable moral values. For example, the respect of the ancients, respect of nature, respect of the community, values that we need for a strict society, restricted. And their foundation for those points of learning are being threatened as access to the plant is becoming increasingly difficult. People like Yon, who you heard from at the beginning of the episode, are fighting to preserve
access to the plant throughout local communities in Gabbon. Yon is a westerner who experienced the profound healing of Iboga. He married a Gabbonese woman and was adopted into the family. He feels that his responsibility to work to protect what he has been welcomed into. At the end of the day, I'm a westerner who has been healing when the West and then being adopted in Gabbon. And I think I have a response to E.T. at the Y guy, as well as the
French towards Africa in Gabbon.
And so, yeah, my job is to develop that project of sharing, mutual and natural heritage
in a fair way with the West. We help people to get here, of course. We are not against, for example, United States to heal their veterans or drink at E.T. or stuff like that at
“all. Of course, because once again, I'm a westerner who benefited from that, you know?”
What Yon and others in Gabbon want is to be part of the conversation for the process of sharing to be slow and thoughtful. Free from the fast-paced attitude, the West often adopts. We really advocate to make it fairly and systematically. And really, for people to really understand what's going on on the field in Gabbon, what is the perspective of Indigenous communities that have no voice. There is a story between the West and Africa. And we will
like this time to make it the right way, you know? Not in the next active way. And I would say
“racist way, a colonialist way, or, you know, a music way, or naive ways of the diplomacy way.”
Yon is referring here to colonialism and the way that many natural resources from Africa and elsewhere have been taken and exploited by colonizing forces, including Ivana Boga. We're going to talk a lot more about this in the upcoming episodes. So I tried to make that bridge for the benefit itself of everybody, in fact, for not only Gabbon, but for humanity. Here's Apple on again on the matter. We will do something in the away. It's okay. We don't read on mind. And this is why I told you
for African people, even to share our knowledge with foreigners, we don't mind, but we just need
“people respect what we do. And respect the rules, evogates means healing. So if people can”
say people, it's okay. But if they want to say people, please, just one respect, where come from the Iboga and first, give the information of the therapy with Iboga, the people who talk about the possibility to healing people with Iboga is the people of Gabbon. Despite this desire to share knowledge and healing contained in Iboga with others, there is real concern about separating Iboga from Buiti traditions, because while this medicine is undoubtedly powerful, people in Gabbon believe
that it's actually an extracable from the other traditions we've talked about today. The songs,
the dances, the colors, and the community supports surrounding it are critical to its value.
Here's the Buiti master Simon again. What the Western world understands, wrongly, is that it thinks that only Iboga in can be useful, although it's the whole process with the methods with the knowledge, the rest of the knowledge, which is a whole. So Iboga, our Iboga in is just a piece of the whole knowledge. So this is the main thing that people don't understand in the West. It's exactly this space between how people in Gabbon see Iboga as part of a much larger understanding
of consciousness, life, healing, the world, and spirituality, and how the West is beginning to see Iboga that we're going to look at more closely next episode. We'll dive into exactly how Iboga
first found its way to the West, how did it leave Gabbon, and we'll hear about a teenager who's
famous for bringing it to the United States, what happened when he did, and what could go wrong if we try to force its presence in the West too soon. That's next time on the Ibogaine Inquiries. [Music] If you enjoyed this podcast, you'll find even more on the main to lepathy tapes feed, where each week we explore consciousness, human potential, and the mysteries that change are understanding of reality.
