Gran Bwa

Forest, plants, initiation

Gran Bwa, whose name means Great Wood, is the lwa of the forest and of wild plants in Haitian Vodou. He rules over untamed space, the space that begins where the gardens end, and this sovereignty makes him a lwa of initiation: it is in the woods that one goes to seek what cannot be found in the village. The leaves used in ritual baths and remedies belong to him, and healers greet him before they gather. He is represented as a face emerging from a trunk or as a man covered in foliage. His domain touches that of Papa Loko, lwa of the plants that heal, but Gran Bwa is wilder: he is the forest itself, not the knowledge drawn from it. His colours are green and brown. Served, depending on the house, in the Rada rite or in the Petro rite, he holds a hinge position that his servants readily acknowledge, since the forest belongs wholly neither to gentleness nor to heat.