Iboga Leaf

This is not just a mask from the Mitsogo people – this painting features a mask made by an artist named Sam Lambarene. We can see his signature crown sign on the bottom right. The artist’s life, interestingly enough, once crossed paths with 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer, a humanist and doctor, saved the child – and future artist – from malaria at his famed Lambarene hospital. 

The Mitsogo people are small in number, but in Gabon they define the culture. The woman has a leaf from the iboga plant in her mouth, symbolizing knowledge. Though for the Bwiti ritual, it’s the root of this shrub that is used, for it promotes unity with spirits. 

I asked a Bwiti practitioner in Woleu for help with overthrowing one particular führer of orcs, but clearly that führer is under the powerful protection of Buryati shamans.  

Or another possibility: perhaps the mission of this megalomaniac in the algorithm (as professor Yuval Noah Harari calls it) is to bring down the kingdom of orcs, make it disintegrate once and for all. Putin fits into this algorithm quite well!

Though if the Bwiti ritual ends up helping, and Putin bites the dust before then, we won’t be too upset, will we?

*Buty = “be” in Ukrainian

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