Iboga, the Men of the Sacred Wood

In Gabon, deep within the dense African equatorial forest, Iboga, known as the “Sacred Wood,” has been growing since ancient times. This master plant, used for divination, initiation, and healing, is central to the Mitsogho people, who inherited it from the Pygmies and around which the Bwiti cult was founded.

This is one of the first times these healing masters have agreed to speak. It is a cry of despair from a people whose existence is fading alongside the destruction of the forest: “Each time a tree is cut down, a medicine dies.” It also asserts the importance of their knowledge, which they feel compelled to pass on—even to “whites” if necessary—knowledge that seems, in some respects, to have been ahead of ours for millennia. Iboga not only brings the unconscious to the surface but also helps eliminate addiction to opioids, cocaine, heroin, methadone, alcohol, and more.

Western medicine has drawn a clear line between the light of science and the darkness of ignorance, with no transitional zone. Today, scientific research is studying these forgotten millennia-old insights. Delving into the past to master the future offers an extraordinary lesson in humility from these civilizations, which some mistakenly label as “primitive.”