Almost ten years ago (2015), I had the honor of witnessing and partaking in the genesis of a global phenomenon that people now call the 'Cacao Ceremony'. Witnessing the surge of that trend in the following years, devastatingly revealed how perfectly intact colonial structures are to this day. And how these structures might heal (yes heal) the planet.
An essay about ceremonies would make some believers happy. Writing solely about Cacao would make foodies happy. Yet most of our brain's capacity isn't occupied by Spiritual or Religious endeavors, not even by food. Our economic model almost entirely revolves around money and most of our brain's processing power is wasted by figuring out how to get or distribute it. This fact demands me to factor the elephant in the room into the cacao-equation. So, take a deep breath into your wallet chakra, and follow me on an initiatic journey into the realms of our nervous system.
Note, If your average income is above 70.000€ a year you're two times more likely to read what I'm about to present than someone whose average income is below 20.000€. The 2013 study "Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function" [1] accurately illustrates that more access to wealth positively impacts your attention span and capacity to process information.
Ceremony - Lake Atitlan#
When arriving in Guatemala ten years ago I would have never thought that cacao would launch me deep into orbits of economic research. I love any scientific exploration, but I'd prefer to learn chemistry before delving into papers about a Socioeconomic Status.
"This plant has a compound called Theobromine," [2] Says Keith, to whom people in the small Guatemalan town of San Marcos on the shores of Lake Atitlan also refer to as 'Keith - the chocolate shaman'. "The compound found in the cacao bean - combined with a meditation opens the heart and centers the mind" he continues. I remember how ten years ago only a few people spoke about an actual ceremony, this fact combined with an old European-looking man sitting on a plastic chair on his porch appeared too humble for a shaman. High from cacao? How? I was clueless. So far I only knew corporate giants like Ferrero or Lidt messing around with the black gold. Eating large quantities of their chocolate would get me fat, or diabetes, but certainly not high. Keith however served the slightly fermented and roasted been dissolved in water, full of its original ingredients. Then he spoke, and we would listen. For hours and hours.
Little did I know that Keith would spark a movement and these gatherings would eventually become a global phenomenon with the invented title "Cacao Ceremony".
Cacao - Meeting Keith#
The moment he spoke, he took us on a journey. The freedom with which he engaged in that luxury of thinking about whatever he wanted, traveling with his mind far into foreign concepts of reality almost seemed unfair. It wasn't just new-age thoughts about transcending the matrix, I felt a genuine approach that explored fringe aspects of our collective consciousness which left me more than curious. I didn't see that clarity and calm in some of the self-proclaimed healers on the Lake and certainly not in the tourists whose nervous systems always seemed on the brink of collapse. I did, however, see the calm and clarity in some of the Mayan Elders. I couldn't quite nail what it was, it was as if they had a wider radius of cognition, independent of their education or knowledge. The awareness I perceived from these individuals seemed undisturbed. But undisturbed by what?
I remember the day when I felt my first high from munching on raw cacao beans. I was already quite frustrated after visiting Keith for the third time and still not really "feeling" anything while my fellow participants seemed to have a blast. That one day, I sat on a little balcony outside the room we rented in an already over-gentrified area with a stunning view of the lake. I had just finished writing an invoice for a job I finished. With a handful of beans, I gazed over the majestic volcanoes. After a cacao bean was well chewed it was shortly followed by another one, and my mind would start to wander further, and further until it wasn't entangled in any worldly subjects like religion, food, or money.
I think the last time I was that carefree was when I was 12 years old. This was the moment I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was legitimately tripping on Cacao for the first time in my life! I was so happy I could scream. Not really knowing where to put all that gratitude I simply directed it to the plant itself, which only amplified the experience. And then something clicked.
Money - Ceremony, Cerebral-money#
It's not a popular drug to talk about, but there is a non-chemical compound that has a far greater impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. The compound works especially on those who were socialized by that roleplaying game we call 'civilization'. The mysterious compound that reduces stress and anxiety. It even calms an overactive amygdala and allows access to the prefrontal cortex. The magical compound I'm referring to is money.
Now that this is out: If you ever find yourself offering Cacao to a larger group of people, I would suggest that it could help if you are not financially involved in any way, neither in buying cacao, nor collecting any sort of donation. Think of a saddhu, a priest, a nun, a witch, a monk, a jester, basically anyone who isn't too involved with the worldly outcome of a situation. Making a living from medicine like Cacao, spreading awareness, and distributing it to more people is great, but it is far, far away from what an actual MC can convey who holds an intact relationship with the sacrament.
What irony it is that cacao was once considered a legitimate currency among the Mexica. There is no historic nor living record that points to anything like a "Cacao Ceremony". Yet it was a sacrament. And yes, I can confirm it's a psychedelic at a high dosage and intoxicating. And there is no doubt that it has been used as such since time immemorial. There is also a very prominent culture of fire ceremonies among the Maya where cacao is used more as an offering, which makes cacao a ceremonial element. But the "Cacao Ceremony" is a rather modern invention practiced mostly by middle-class Americans and Europeans who are cargo-culting parapsychological technologies of the Mesoamerican diaspora.
Acknowledging the perfectly lubricated colonial engine.#
If so many people suffer under the effects of a hyper-dysfunctional economy, how is this not one of the first things addressed in these so-called ceremonies? Healing an abusive relationship that someone has with a plant means talking about countries like the Ivory Coast, which is smaller than Germany and still covers 45% of the global demand for Cacao. Most of which get poisoned with excessive amounts of sugar and hidden behind purple cows, or rabbit-shaped tinfoil. Our actual large-scale cacao ceremonies are now called Christmas, Easter, or Halloween. So every year in which we have not overcome our masturbatory relationship with these plant elders will shorten the lifespan of thousands of children.
Plants have raised us. Both from a Darwinistic and Indigenous worldview. They were there long before we shit our pants. In fact, we didn't even develop a proper digestive tract to produce excrement while plants have already mastered the technology to decelerate photons and create an oxygen-rich atmosphere from the resulting energy that allowed the first vertical space exploration by stacking and structuring multiple cells. They are our great-grandparents and distant relatives in a very literal sense.
The moment we enter an abusive relation with a plant elder, we make a detailed contract with it, down to the molecule, defined by physics and evolution. Tobacco has built empires and infrastructure. It helps focus the mind. It surely asks for a lung or a heart attack as a payment, but it does its work in the short run. Cocaine has built empires, it somatically facilitated the building of roads, skyscrapers, world banks, deals, speeches, music, and culture. But it also asked for genocides, wars, and ecocides.
She lives and feels, in this very moment.#
Once our Anthropocentric worldview is at stake we help ourselves by murdering living cultures with our language when we're calling them ancient or lost; when we decide to murder a living being like the sun or a tree with our tongue by calling it some"thing" rather than someone; when we decide to academically define what's alive and what isn't then we're missing out on a beautiful part of the living reality. No one will punish us for colonizing, for genocide here and there, for some stealing of culture, or for some mass extinctions we cause. No one will judge us, cheer at us, or give us a grade on how well we performed. All These acts are already by themselves the punishment to ourselves.
After the dust of our cosmic victory settled we find ourselves sitting on a throne of pure gold, blood, and bones. The world is perfect, it's silent, and the only little place where entropy can rage, where the tragic battle can be carried out until the end of time, is inside of us.
This is where we are, after all the suffering we caused, colonial pathways remain, but the flag's colors have changed, and we, the white people have again claimed moral superiority, through our surgical language modification, by removing any gender, any color, any form that could offer enough grip to be held accountable. Only that we can continue to ethically dictate, to sterilely force medicate, to legally dominate, invisibly masturbate. Now the only place left where the tangible truth of colonial structures will profoundly express itself is our nervous-systems.
Re relating to the great mother.#
Equipped with that knowledge, we can rinse our nervous-systems with allies like cacao, before it even gets to all the mentioned fatalities. I genuinely believe that this type of rinsing is one tangible way to heal the earth. In Europe, we might have been the first ones to have invented treatments for symptoms of newly created diseases, but we are certainly not the first ones to have discovered and used preventative measures like Cacao. That discovery, I happily attribute to Indigenous people who are just as imperfect as you and me but have statistically much less f*cked our mother earth, and don't even make a big fuzz about it.
Thank you for reading!
Footnotes#
- Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Jiaying Zhao
30 AUGUST 2013 Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function:
https://shorturl.at/mbrjC - Eva Martínez-Pinilla, Ainhoa Oñatibia-Astibia, Rafael Franco
20 FEBRUARY 2015 The relevance of theobromine for the beneficial effects of cocoa consumption:
https://shorturl.at/Dj72H
