“James Fernandez writes that after partaking of the eboka root, which is a hallucinogen, the initiate of the Bwiti cult escapes his corporeal reality, becomes light as a bird, sees his dead, and flies high above the crowds of those who have not had the fortune to know eboka. He goes beyond the village of the dead and passes great rivers or crossroads and sometimes changes color as he comes into contact with the great gods.”

—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.