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The Do, an entity of the invisible, manifests itself in the form of masks and sacred objects. It is also an initiatory system and a ritual law which, in various ways, constitutes a cult common to several West African farming societies. Collective and compulsory initiation into the Do establishes links with the two main representatives of the invisible realm (bush spirits and ancestors) and assigns a place to each category of person according to gender and “caste” (socio-professional group). Comparing the Do rituals of the Bwaba and the Seme, this paper shows how and to what extent initiation, while not primarily focused on producing gendered adults, shapes each gender’s relationship to the bush. Bwaba and Seme initiations diverge significantly in their treatment of women, who are associated with male rites in the former, but follow a separate path in the latter. In both cases, however, they are deemed to be less initiated than the men. In the same way, the griots, members of a caste held to be “feminine”, are said to be less initiated or are entirely excluded from initiation. The paper argues that the different places these two societies assign to women and to griots in their initiation rites is related to the ascendancy the Bwaba give to ancestors as opposed to the primacy accorded by the Seme to bush sprits.