Voyage visionnaire et errance prophétique: du nomadisme à la fondation

Abstract

In Africa, “travellers” is usually an allusion to sorcerers, who have the ability to be in two places at once and who fly by night to feed on the flesh of others. Those who profit by this type of travel pay, sooner or later, with their own lives. Among the Fang people in Gabon, those initiated into the cult of Bwiti undergo a visionary experience in their journey through the world of Eboga, but their experience is also an ordeal from which they might not return. The prophetic vocation itself is linked to an initial retreat from the world which, on return, draws the chosen into nomadism. For an African prophet, return to the land and one's territory is part of the success and fulfilment of one's enterprise. Finally, the foundation of the “sacred site” is affirmed by the faithful who make pilgrimage to the holy place or to the tomb of the prophet.