A Hollywood Actor Says a Babalawo Ritual Helped Him. Here Is What the Tradition Behind It Says About Healing, and What It Can't Prove.

The proof: what was actually reported

Actor Joe Manganiello's memoir Bloodlines was released by Simon & Schuster on October 13, 2026. The publisher describes it as an account of a seven-year health ordeal, with autoimmune-related illnesses affecting his skin, thyroid, eyes, lungs, and digestive system, a life-saving surgery, and a search that took him "beyond medicine" into shamans, pagan rituals, ancient myths, and long-lost family records.

Part of that search, as reported by Latin Times (October 14, 2026), included Santeria. He has described traveling to Ecuador for a ritual in which he sat with a babalawo who, in his words, "became mounted by an African spirit," and he has said: "After the first ritual, I woke up and it was gone." He also described a week-long cleansing ritual in Cuba. He now says his symptoms have been absent for more than three years, while still living with the consequences of his surgeries.

Read the reporting yourself: Latin Times: What Is Santeria? Inside the Afro-Cuban Religion Joe Manganiello Turned to for Help. The publisher's page is here: Bloodlines at Simon & Schuster.

The damaging admission

Manganiello has nothing to do with Osain: The Green Intelligence. He did not write it, review it, or endorse it, and this article does not suggest he knows it exists. He is cited here for one reason: his memoir put a babalawo, an Orisha tradition, and the idea of ancestral healing into a very public conversation this month.

Second, and just as important: nothing in his story proves that a ritual, a spirit, or a plant healed him. By his own account, he spent years with doctors, had major surgery, and pursued psychotherapy and other approaches alongside the spiritual work. The coverage itself is careful on this point: other reported claims in the memoir, such as a practitioner's statement about a curse, appear as his recollection with no independent evidence behind them. A story of recovery is a story. It is not a clinical trial.

If you are sick, see a doctor. That sentence is not decoration. It is the frame for everything below.

Who this is for, and who it is not

This is for you if the Bloodlines coverage made you curious about the tradition behind the word "babalawo," about what Orisha traditions actually say about plants and healing, or about the Orisha of herbs, whom Cuban Lukumi practitioners commonly call Osain.

This is not for you if you want a cure, a treatment plan, a replacement for medical care, or proof that spiritual practice heals disease. This book does not provide any of those, and neither does this article.

The moment the headlines flatten

Picture how a story like this travels. A celebrity memoir excerpt turns into a clip. The clip turns into a caption: "Actor says African spirit ritual cured him." Comment sections split into believers and mockers, and neither group knows what a babalawo is, what an Orisha is, or what the tradition says about illness. The Latin Times piece itself notes the problem: a babalawo has a specific role in divination within Ifa, and the generic word "shaman" often used in celebrity coverage is less precise.

That is the gap. Between "it cured him" and "it's nonsense" there is a third position: what does the tradition itself claim, on its own terms, and how should a careful reader hold it?

What the Osain tradition says

Osain: The Green Intelligence is a Spiritual Reparations Series book written from inside the Ifa and Orisha world. Its subject is the Orisha of leaves and herbs, who in many Yoruba sources is called Osanyin and in Cuban Lukumi practice is commonly spelled Osain.

Here is the shape of the tradition as the book presents it, starting from its table of contents:

• Gurufinda. The book opens with a Congo forest spirit it treats as an origin of plant wisdom.
• Osain as keeper of sacred herbs. He is depicted with one eye, one arm, and one leg, and the book reads that image as a symbol of single-minded focus and rootedness. It also describes him as a firstborn Orisha who holds the secrets of all plants.
• The scattering of the herbs. In a story the book retells, a storm raised by Oya overturns Osain's calabash and scatters his herbs, which is how, in the tradition, other Orisha came to hold plants of their own.
• The seven manifestations. The book describes seven forms of Osain, each tied to different ecosystems and needs.
• The 101 sacred ewe. The ewe, the sacred plants, are matched in the book to Odu and Orisha correspondences.
• Traditions in conversation. Chapters on Congo plant practice, Mayan plant priests, and Ayurveda and Siddha medicine, argued as part of a wider "African root."
• Taboos, offerings, and daily practice. How a devotee relates to Osain in routine and ritual.
• Healing with ewe. The book's account of the Ifa approach to healing.
• Spiritual reparations. The argument that plant knowledge was suppressed and should be restored.

How the tradition frames healing

According to the book, Ifa healing begins with divination, not with a prescription. A babalawo consults the Odu to understand the spiritual, emotional, and physical picture of a person's situation. Treatment then involves ewe, the plants, prepared with prayer and intention, and tied to the person's ori, their personal destiny. In this framework, illness can reflect misalignment as well as physical disease, and the healer is a kind of spiritual physician working alongside the herbalist.

That is the tradition's own logic. You can see why it resonates with people looking for meaning when medicine alone feels incomplete. You can also see why it is not a substitute for diagnosis: a divination reading is not a lab result. The book does not shy away from calling plants "living entities" with ase, or spiritual force. That is a theological claim, and the author makes it as one.

The part that is the book's argument, not settled fact

Several claims in the book go beyond what any reporter or clinician could confirm, and you should know exactly where they are.

The central thesis, in the author's words, is that "plants are the oldest living intelligence on Earth, and indeed, throughout the cosmos," with chlorophyll as a kind of cosmic connective tissue. Part of that is mainstream biology: photosynthesis is foundational to most life on Earth. The step from there to "intelligence" and to a cosmic claim is the author's philosophical and spiritual argument, not a consensus scientific finding.

The book also argues that the Ifa healing tradition "predates all modern science" and that many streams of plant medicine, from Africa to the Maya to India, share an African root. That is a historical thesis that scholars would debate, and the book offers it as its own position.

And the book presents ritual consecrations, offerings, and plant protocols as effective within the tradition. Those are practices inside a religion. They are not tested medical treatments, and nobody should substitute them for medical care or take any herb for a condition without a qualified clinician's guidance.

Finally, the author's own personal accounts, including a visionary encounter he describes with Orunmila, are testimony, not evidence. This article presents them as testimony.

What is solid ground

It would be unfair to the tradition to leave the impression that it has nothing checkable behind it, so here is what is on firmer footing.

Ifa divination is recognized by UNESCO: it was proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005 and inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. UNESCO describes it as using an extensive corpus of texts and mathematical formulas, practiced among Yoruba communities and the African diaspora. That is recognition of a heritage system, not a medical endorsement. See UNESCO: Ifa divination system.

Plant-derived medicine is real in the broadest sense: many modern drugs trace to plants, and ethnobotany is a serious field. That is a general fact about plants and pharmacology, not a validation of any specific claim in the book.

And the sociological facts in the Latin Times coverage are worth noting: Santeria, also called Lukumi or Regla de Ocha-Ifa, grew out of Yoruba traditions carried by enslaved Africans to Cuba, where they survived alongside Catholicism, and the U.S. Supreme Court protected the religion's practice from targeted local bans in 1993 in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. These are history and law, not claims about cures.

Why the green world matters to the Spiritual Reparations argument

The book's reparations lens applies here the same way it does across the series. It argues that African plant knowledge, ritual specialists, and sacred groves were dismissed, suppressed, or exploited, and that restoring respect for that knowledge is part of repairing a larger history. Whether you accept that framing or not, it explains why the author writes about plants as inheritance and not just as ingredients.

It also explains the book's tone. This is not a neutral field guide. It is an advocate's book, written with devotion, and it should be read like one.

What this book will not do

It will not diagnose you. It will not tell you which herb treats which illness in a way you should rely on. It will not prove that the Ecuador ritual in a celebrity memoir had any effect. It will not replace a babalawo you trust or a physician you trust. And it does not claim the endorsement of anyone named in this article.

Reason why now

The timing is simple. In the last two weeks, a widely covered memoir brought a babalawo and an Orisha tradition into mainstream coverage, and the coverage itself said the tradition has a longer history than the headline. If that sent you looking for a long-form, tradition-side account of the Orisha of herbs, the book is positioned to be that, and it is on both major ebook stores.

How to read the story without being fooled in either direction

Hold three things at once. First, take the person's account seriously as an account: he lived it, and he says it mattered. Second, do not turn one person's recovery into proof about a ritual, because recovery has many possible causes and he describes several. Third, treat the tradition as a tradition: it has its own vocabulary, its own authority structure, and its own people who can speak for it far better than a headline can.

If you want the tradition's own long-form account of Osain, the plants, and the idea of green intelligence, the book is below. Read the description and sample first.

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The green world is one half of the Spiritual Reparations story and the sacred twins are the other, so read next Ibeji: The Sacred Twins on Google Play or on Apple Books.