Lucky Charms of Gabon

Gabon is renowned in the history of African art for the Fang and Kota peoples' extraordinary reliquary guardian figures. Fang byeri figures — carved wooden figures placed atop bark containers of ancestral skulls — concentrate ancestral protective power for the living. Kota reliquary figures, covered in sheets of copper and brass, are among the most visually striking protective objects in world art.

The Bwiti initiation ceremony of the Fang, Mitsogo, and other peoples involves consumption of iboga root bark in a nocturnal ceremony that is simultaneously a healing ritual, a communication with the dead, and a powerfully protective initiation. Cowrie shells appear in ceremonial dress throughout the country.