Five thousand years of hot chocolate 🍫

Cacao is the last master plant you can legally sit in ceremony with in this country.

The crafty cow got away with it by hiding herself away in confectionery since the 16th century, while the others were scapegoated and rounded up.

It's older than you think

Most people assume cacao starts in Mesoamerica. It doesn't. In 2018 a team publishing in ‘Nature Ecology & Evolution’ found cacao residues on pottery in the Ecuadorian Amazon dating back 5,300 years - a millennium and a half before anyone further north got the kettle on. 🫖

By the time the Maya coined the term ‘kakaw’, it had already been in use for thousands of years. The Aztecs went further and used the beans as currency to buy cat food (that last part is poetic license).

Columbus ran into a canoe full of cacao beans in 1502 and apparently wasn’t into the taste, so it took Europe another century to get involved.

Then in 1753 Linnaeus gave it a name -’Theobroma cacao’ , meaning ‘food of the gods’. Subtlety wasn’t his strong point.

So is it a trip? 😵‍💫

Nope. Psychoactive, not psychedelic. There’s a difference.

There's no purging. No crazy visuals. No bodily drama. Plus you can drive home afterwards.

What people tend to report is a warmth across the chest and a calmer mind - enough to hear yourself think, which is a rare thing for urban rats (self included). In my own experience, you don't need to blast yourself into other dimensions to receive strong insights. The ones cacao's handed me have been as sharp as anything from the heavier plants, ayahuasca included. Minus the flight to Peru and the bucket.

What actually happens in the room

We sit down and drink it together, and then we get out of the way.

There's breathwork, because the breath does the work of getting you out of your head and into your body. There's the gong, because the sound occupies your attention, putting a halt to excessive rumination.

It's four hours end-to-end, including intention setting and sharing either side. It isn't a workshop and there's nowt to learn.

Cacao's back

Saturday 17th October, I'm running a one-off ceremony in Tottenham. Four hours, six seats, £50 a head.

Six is deliberate. I've held cacao for twenty-eight people and it can still land, but a small room does something a big one can't.

If you want the lowdown, get in touch and I'll send it over.

Fred will be holding space with me. He's hypoallergenic. 🐈‍⬛