EDITION NO. 3 · April 2021
01 CHOOSE TO BE IN CEREMONY
02 Cacao Flowers
03 RITUALS FOR Connection
04 THE LIMINALITY OF SPRING
05 EARTH DAY · RESTORE OUR EARTH
06 OUR EARTH SCHOOL
07 RETURNING HOME
CHOOSe TO BE IN CEREMONY WITH CACAO
Text by SERAP Kara · Picture by Grit Siwonia
Many souls are drawn to the ancient practice of Cacao in sacred Ceremony. The ceremony introduces a whole new level; different from what we may have known of chocolate. The Cacao Spirit calls into a worldview where everything is alive, connected and sacred.
With the first contact, questions arise. What is ceremonial cacao and how is it different from regular chocolate? How do I prepare a ceremonial cacao? How do I enter the space where everything vibrates? What if I do anything wrong?
Let's look at what cacao has embodied for many of us so far.
Manufacturers have labeled chocolate with qualities such as sensuality, love or friendship; only a meaningful spiritual dimension isn't alive here. A revival and connection to 'chocolate as medicine' takes place in superfood circles. Cacao should be eaten fresh, gently dried or heated to a maximum of 42°. And although Cacao as a superfood is very close to the source, its spiritual importance is not always acknowledged.
The ceremony brings a new level to consciousness and we're allowed to experience the alchemical union of the material and spiritual dimensions.
A mind trained to see through the lens of "superfoods" wants to analyse, often looking for individual components that might explain this alchemical connection. Only, the spiritual essence of cacao is simple and complex at the same time; yet it cannot be reduced to one component. It offers a worldview.
WITHIN YOUR DAILY ROUTINE YOU HEARD MAMA CACAO CALLING YOU.
Whether in dreams or in Ceremony, the Cacao Spirit has come to you. It is valuable to find out what wisdom your encounter holds and how you can evolve with each other. In every class or training, I ask my students:
Why did you choose Cacao and why did Cacao choose you?
Imagine that you dedicate your ceremony to Cacao herself, bringing her medicine to the centre of the experience and celebrate her gifts in ever-new ways.
There is something intimate in this approach. We learn to acknowledge her essence and message and allow our medicines to blend. Unique alchemy is created liberating us from what other people say or believe.
Trust. Choose to be in ceremony and communion with our beloved Elder Plant Spirit and witness your medicines evolving into new levels of understanding and consciousness.
It is here, in presence that we receive the powerful medicine and messages of the Cacao Intelligence for the times ahead.
A CACAO TRIBE
According to traditional sources, you'll find that Cacao is regarded as a feminine force. Some others refer to Cacao as slightly male. Both are true depending on the point of view. Yet Cacao is not one single aspect, but many aspects that form one Spirit. And this Spirit holds sustaining, healing, nurturing, and educational qualities.
Because what we know as the Cacao Spirit is a group consciousness. It's a tribe. Many vibrations form one coherent energy. We may connect with one aspect, yet we cannot look at this aspect isolated from its tribe. This tribe is dedicated to sustaining life. Everything that was, is, and will be is stored within this consciousness.
CACAO ALCHEMY
The Cacao Mother is unique in her alchemy and works through the heart and intuition differently with everyone. Cacao opens the layers of consciousness in a gentle, loving way. Sometimes she envelopes you, opens your heart, and leads you into radiant landscapes. Sometimes she is a teacher helping you to see things more clearly. Sometimes she is a friend who tells you when it's time to let go, to surrender, or to fly off.
Her energy can be healing, soothing, connecting, deepening, releasing, or creative. But Cacao always teaches you about balance, living a heart-centred life, and the universal laws of Nature.
We asked Cacao Mama students to share their favourite Ritual for connection. Enjoy three different perspectives on ritual presented by Sandrine from London, Camille from Milano & Miriam from Vienna.
ON DAILY & CEREMONIAL RITUALS BY SANDRINE
Text by Sandrine Giacobino · Picture by Rita
Everything in our lives is a ritual whether we are aware of it or not. In the morning when we wake up, we tend to do things a certain way and it sets the tone for our day.
Personally, I start with water, connect with my breath and try to remember what I am grateful for before lighting a candle and drawing a card.
This way I connect with the elements and I am reminded that I am given another day.
IN CEREMONY
When sitting in ceremonies I like to start with a blessing so we mark the transition between mundane life and ceremonial space. We affirm that we take time for ourselves and we drop from the head to the heart. Each one of us brings an object that they place on the altar so they are charged with our energies coming together.
We then drink cacao setting our personal intentions around what we need to let go off and what we want to invite in. Passing around the talking stick we speak our hearts and bring our presences in the circle, lighting our own candles.
In a women’s circle, I invite each sister to place their hands on their womb space, connect with the vast space beneath their fingers, and realise their universal connection through this center.
Depending on the circle one ritual is to sit with another and look at each other without speaking but really dropping into the stillness and the truth of our sisterhood, allowing ourselves to be seen and held.
We come together at the end of journeying by holding hands, listening to a song that brings us together reminding ourselves to be in our light. The circle has then come to full completion. Aho.
Loving music from Sandrine - Listen on Soundcloud
About SANDRINE GIACOBINO
Sandrine is a yoga teacher and bodyworker whose focus lies on women’s health. Over the last years, she explored more of the feminine and the heart qualities of cacao medicine, bringing them together through women’s circles and other events. Sandrine is based in London, England, and works all over the world. Visit www.sandrinegiacobino.info
ROSE HEART UNION RITUAL with Camille
Text by Camille Barrios · Picture by Bobysbk
Roses are the flowers with the highest vibration on Earth. Together with Cacao this ritual weaves into your heart and honours the divine feminine energy.
Before you prepare your Cacao, bring beauty into your sacred space. Place a rose (or rose petals) in your altar and/or rose quartz. Be sure also to have a comfortable nesting place with cushions and blankets around you.
THE INGREDIENTS
- 10-20 gr Ceremonial Cacao
- 5/6 drops of Rosewater and Rose Petal
- Water
Mix ingredients well. Connect to your intention. While preparing hum or sing a love song into your cup.
THE RITUAL
Sit with your Cacao and place the cup on your chest/heart space. Feel its warmth and the earthy smell enveloping your senses, feel how it starts to soften your body. Let the body move gently in waves if it wants to, especially your torso. This is a great way to unblock energies.
Drink and remember that you are held and that you can fall back into fullness, into love, into trust. Feel your heart open like a blooming flower. Petal by petal. Surrender to gravity and let the Earth (feminine energy) hold you and take care of you. Let it cradle you and soften your edges. Feel the softness around you, let go and receive yourself. Feel your body opening. Let Cacao do its magic.
To close the ritual, thank the divine feminine and Earth in you, around you, and below you. If you can, place some petals into the Earth as a final offering.
Loving music for this ritual - Listen on Spotify
About Camille BARRIOS
Camille is a Movement Medicine Teacher, Embodied Brand Coach, and Cacao Ceremonialist. She holds transformative and nurturing spaces to help others reconnect to their intuition and life purpose. Camille is based in Milan, Italy. Visit www.camillebarrios.com
LIQUID LOVE with Miriam · A cacao ritual to ignite flow. For two people who share love in whatever way
Text by Miriam S. Koller · Picture by .Sarah Brow & Content Pixie
THE Setting
Create a space that feels nurturing for both. Have four candles set up in a circle, some smudging ingredients, paper & pencils, and music at hand.
Prepare the ceremonial cacao together. Alternate whisking, add your favourite ingredients such as pounded rose leaves, cardamom, cinnamon, or tonka.
Light the candles and invite the four directions into your space: the east with the element air for new beginnings, the south with fire for challenges, the west for moving emotions through water and the north for centering our need for safety. Then smudge the space.
Ceremony is my form of communication. We come together as individuals, responsible for our experiences and emotions – intending to witness and support each other.
THE RITUAL
Slowly arrive in your presence. Softly press your hands on your closed eyes, take some deep belly breaths. When you release your hands, exhale with a relieving sound.
Feeling safe and connected, raise the energy of the Cacao by verbalising an intention. With what visions would you like to enrich this liquid love together, before pouring each other a cup?
As hearts open, go into sharing. Each of you describes what is alive for you right now. How does it feel to be you? While listening to the other person sharing, be fully present, without your own story. Mirror, acknowledge, empathise.
Empower each other in a next share. Taking turns, tell each other what you lovingly see in each layer of the other's being. Cherish the outside. Appreciate the other’s feelings. Tell them about their energy. What you like about their mind. On a soul level, explore what is connecting you.
Then, place one hand on each other’s heart, the other hand on your own belly. Whilst looking into each other’s eyes, breathe deeply into your hearts.
Manifest the Flow.
Write affirmations.
Draw a picture together.
Meditate, dance or embody in some way.
Close the ceremony by thanking each other. Give thanks to the four directions and blow out the candles.
As the smoke fades, integrate what you created into your everyday lives. Make your life a ritual.
About MIRIAM S. KOLLER
Cacao Guardian Miriam S. Koller is an experience and communication designer. She inspires the individual and collective to empathy through creative impulses. Based in Vienna, with a heart outside the box. Visit www.aspacetoamaze.com
THE LIMINALITY OF SPRING
Text by Lena Brandt · Pictures by different Artists
Throughout history, rituals were and still are implemented in certain rites of passage, in moments of transition from one point to another. In these moments we oftentimes experience an “in-between“ state, a state of liminality. Where we are not quite what we were, and not quite what we’re going to become, either. Everything seems still kind of unclear, unknown, vague, ambiguous, sometimes even standing still. Yet here they are — new impulses coming in, that set us in motion. Slowly, but steady.
Especially in the Spring Time, I often experience this liminal state of Nature. We can sense and see the first signs of Spring outside, but it hasn’t yet fully arrived. We already experience
sunny days full of warmth and light, and also might be facing cold days with the last snow of the season and different shades of grey. Or even multiple weather patterns in just one day.
The liminality of Spring brings an invitation to cross from one season to another — from a world of hibernating silence to one of awakened action and the planting of seeds for new forms. This
crossing sometimes feels challenging to me. While wanting to burst forth with joy and eager for newness, I sense that it’s not time yet. Wait, just a little longer, Mother Nature says. And
reminds me that in my personal life it’s often the same.
I’ve experienced these liminal states myself off and on as I’ve moved from career to career, from one relationship to another, or in my personal development. Periods of waxing and waning, and
waiting. But also: Trusting, in the potential. With a little bit of discomforting fear, and a whole lot of eager anticipation. As I lean into these in-between moments in my life, I perceive a
deeper relation to the inherent rhythms of the Earth and feel gratitude for this connection.
So, although it might be grey and chilly outside these days, crocuses and daffodils are starting to dot the brown-green yards and fields around me. There is an air of movement which invigorates
me and gives me a sense of wonderful possibility.
EARTH DAY · RESTORE OUR EARTH
Text by LENA BRANDT · Picture by shane rouncE
April 22nd marks Earth Day, an international event celebrated around the world to pledge support for environmental protection. It is a day to appreciate, protect and restore our beloved Mother Earth, to raise awareness, to reflect on our consumerism behaviour, to stir conversations, and to take action.
What started as a spontaneous student movement in the US in 1970, initiated by Senator Gaylord Nelson to give a voice to an emerging public consciousness about the state of our planet, is now a global movement celebrated annually in over 192 countries worldwide with the aim to mobilise people for transformative action for our planet.
The theme of this year's Earth Day is 'Restore Our Earth'. Once again, countless companies, associations, initiatives, organisations, and individuals are participating in the campaign.
EARTHDAY.ORG is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in nearly 192 countries to build environmental democracy. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. Visit www.earthday.org
On Thursday, April 22, 2021 we will offer a Meditation for Pachamama on zoom. Visit www.cacaomama.com/offerings
OUR EARTH SCHOOL
Text by Nina Weid · Picture BY JAQUELINE LOUAN
How do you feel about celebrating Mother Earth every single day of the year, recognising and admiring the change of the seasons, the blooming, and the abundance that is offered to us?
This is what we learn in our earth school as we follow the wheel of the year, remembering nature’s festivities, reconnecting to the roots of the earth, and celebrating life in all its forms.
The earth school was founded in 2017 by Serap Kara as the speaking heart of Cacao Mama. Since 2019 we have been dreaming and feeling into the earth school, contemplating what the earth school would like to be and express.
At the Autumn Equinox in 2020, we launched the website www.earthschool.love, following the European Medicine Wheel, and sharing the idea to feel the rhythm and guidance of Mother Earth, the sun and the moon, the plant kin, and all living beings and spirits that accompany us throughout our lives. We notice and ponder on the seasons and changes of nature and our lives accordingly to find back to our own rhythm and roots.
We invite you to journey with us through the year, to get inspired by ancient and modern rituals, by different voices and experiences, myths and stories, and most of all to be inspired by yourself and your own experiences within the circle of life. Visit: www.earthschool.love
RETURNING TO THE REMEMBERED HOME OF OUR SACRED GROVES
Text by Katie Kleinjans · Picture by maximilian Jaenicke
Listen here, hear the words trickling onto the page gathering their essence of what wants to come pouring out of the sacred cup, sipping on the sacred Cacao…
A journey to enter a thick deep forest on a dark starry night. Beckoned by the wild returning song that plays out across the land. The deep earth beat drum calls her to the Sacred Grove.
She meets a procession of dancing wild ones… They move with bare feet on undulating ground traversing into the depths of the forest. Singing songs of belonging, bones, and hearts ringing with the rhythms of our ancient song.
The forest is thick with darkness and heavy with the awakening scent of the blossoming season. The air is warm and moist as she is guided through the undergrowth of the forest.
Her feet grow familiar with the contours of the earth beneath as if she has been here before. Dancing through the forest of her shadow to the heartbeat of the land, she melts and merges into unknown realms. She flows melodically through the gateway into the mystery of the Sacred Grove.
The wild ones are gathering, she smells the purity of the lichen alive on ancient stone, hears the trickling of the running spring and the wild air she breaths as she feels the protecting presence of the standing ones, encircling in the clearing. Grounded and connected, remembering her roots, she feels called to the large stone glistening with minerals.
As she touches the ancient rock she feels a deep timeless presence. She breaths in a deeper connection that aligns her with the spirit of this place.
She hears the soft voices of the maidens calling her to drink from the spring of life. Cupped palms she consumes the sacred nourishment of the earth.
They whisper ‘take care of the water and the water takes care of you’
With their lanterns flickering they bring fire from their hearts that sets the night alight, brings all the elements together as they dance themselves awake once more into connection.
This is the place for mending memories. We will find the lost pieces, all that we need is here. The old sacred ways will find us, listen, the stories of our ancient ones are calling.
Following the star in our hearts, weaving the tales alive, we are the folk of the land. They're stories buried deep in this grove of hidden treasure.
She feels the presence of protection from the gnarly oak tree, she slows the dance and rests her body at the roots, and melts.
Her roots go deeper into rest as she spirals down into the deep earth’s core to feel the seeds that are ready to sprout from the thawing lands….
She takes a small step back into the dance. High vibrations root down into the earth as they pulse together in this moment connecting to original time.
In this ritual of connecting to sacred place, our land, and our bodies, the wild ones bless this Grove with gratitude, love, and honouring our Spirits and Guardians of Nature.
Before we burn away the traces of the path we stop - a moment of presence and knowing deep in our bodies, I understand nature and nature understands me. Soon the chime calls me home...
We weave the stories of yesterday, a deep enchanted part of us to be passed on. Connection to the land, the original place. The remembered home of our earth drum, our mother's heartbeat in the womb, the remembered home within.
Cacao travels through time and place and unifies us. Just as we have traveled and migrated like the birds have done for all of time. Re-connect with the earth. Cultivate sacred place. We are of the land. Tread lightly. Listen…
ABOUT KATIE KLEINJANS
Katie is a storyteller, textile alchemist, and Cacao Guardian. She is passionate about re-awakening deep feminine earth-based wisdom through folklore and embodied ceremony which inspires her creative process. She loves to hand stitch story quilts and dolls with wild dyed natural cloth imbued with the earth's pigments. Katie is based in York, England. Visit www.instagram.com/katiekleinjans
EDITION NO. 4 · AVAILABLE IN May 2021
In CEREMONY · CREATIVE DESIGN SERAP KARA · CONTENT LENA BRANDT & SERAP KARA © CACAO MAMA · MAIL
We at Cacao Mama witness people opening to LIFE IN CEREMONY. The Cacao Spirit forms a centre around which one can feel this particularly magic moment when everything connects and comes alive. Feelings of compassion arise, a deep connection to Pachamama and a coming home to the Self. We have entered the present moment and feel the invisible harmony that surrounds us. In the 12 editions to come, we open Cacao Mama's apothecary and invite you to be in Ceremony with us. Together with our plant family, we weave rituals, stories, songs and recipes to offer a soothing medicine for you to connect with Pachamama and her powerful allies. Our land is Europe, and we weave the Cacao intelligence along with the European medicine wheel, while we tend to our roots, the land and its wisdom keepers.