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Tribute to Bernadette Rebiénot

In January 2021, the famous healer Bernadette Rebiénot died in Libreville, Gabon, at the age of more than 80 years (Gabon: Décès d’une figure de la médecine traditionnelle).

Twenty years ago I had the opportunity to be initiated by her in the Bwiti ritual in her Center Oyenano, thanks to the intermediation of my friend Dr. Alain le Vigouroux, then medical adviser to the government of Gabon. This extraordinary 5-day experience under the effects of Iboga or bois-sacré (sacred wood), the African equivalent of Amazonian Ayahuasca, profoundly marked my journey. The bond established in this context is almost filial.

Bernadette Rebiénot, round and powerful at the same time, inspired respect, trust and tenderness. She gave herself compassionately to the people she initiated and healed, Gabonese or foreigners, men or women, rich or poor.

In 2001, we invited Bernadette to participate in an international meeting of healers in Takiwasi, the only African representative among 40 Amazonian shamans, and here she dared to drink Ayahuasca. The Gabonese press echoed this adventure (Une guérisseuse gabonaise chez les chamans de l'Amazonie). A very beautiful film that narrates this extraordinary encounter was produced in Takiwasi by Jean-Claude Cheyssial (L'Esprit de l'Ayahuasca) who also made a summary of Bernadette's visit to Peru (Une guérisseuse africaine au Pérou).

Bernadette was a teacher, a Christian, and found herself to be the heir to the healing power of an ancestor after suffering a disease that only initiation into Bwiti could resolve. She later became a reference in Gabon for the Bwiti traditions and also an international figure, representative of traditional medicines and ancestral knowledge. This led her to be part of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers created in 2004 in New York with the aim of meeting each year in the homeland of one of them to discuss traditional medicines. The thirteenth and last meeting took place in 2015 at Bernadette's in Gabon, and this event was depicted by her friend Jean-Claude Cheyssial in the film « Le Dernier Conseil » (The Last Council) which is also her last portrait.

In an affectionate tribute paid to her by Jean-Claude Cheyssial (Hommage à Bernadette Rebiénot), she explains that during trances she is inhabited by her ancestor and it is he who heals through her and she confesses that it "bothers her" to lose control of herself at the time.

This issue is addressed in the book by the Gabonese priest Noël Ngwa Nguema on Bwiti: « Rites Initiatiques Gabonais à la rencontre de l’Evangile » which shows the ambiguity of the relationships between ancestral culture and Christianity, both among those initiated in Bwiti as among the Catholic priests. We have made a brief analysis of this booklet (in French) with some reflections that it raises in us. Here's a conclusion from this modest study:

"This hiatus between tradition and Christianity seems to us that it can only be filled by establishing 'bridges' between ancestral initiation experiences and those of the Christian path. This Christian path can and should benefit from the study of texts in order to approach traditional medicines, but in order for this study to not be limited to abstraction and the elaboration of more or less consistent or imaginary hypotheses, it must rely on the contributions of the clinical experience and confront it, that is, go through a double experience, that of traditional initiation on the one hand and that of the practice of Christian spiritual liberation on the other hand".

We hope that Bernadette is now in the place of resolution of these illusory contradictions, reconciling her Christian faith and her ancestral heritage.

Jacques Mabit