Please enter the tent and feel the warmth of the fire.

If you are reading this, you are part of the very first digital circle of Quinta KAKAW, and our heart is incredibly full to have you here.

For a long time, this project lived only in our hearts, in the warmth of a ceremonial cacao cup, in late-night talks, and in a deep, cellular calling to return to the basics. Today, those whispers have found their anchor in the raw, sun-drenched hills of central Portugal.

Listening to the Land

Quinta KAKAW is not just a piece of land; it is a living entity that called us 2 years ago. Back then it was an abandoned place, invaded by brambles, where there was a century-old stone ruin. Now, we have made this our home, transmuted the land, and revived the old house.

Our vision here is simple yet profound: to build a sanctuary for profound reconnection. An animist refuge where we learn to slow down, listen to the seasons, and remember how to live in reciprocity with the Earth.

We are building it with our own hands, with patience, and intention.

What We Are Creating For You (Early 2027)

We are currently in the process of shaping:

• The Cacao & Ceremony Space: A beautiful bell tent dedicated to sacred cacao medicine, sound, and community gatherings, here in central Portugal.

• The Slow Cabin: A cozy wooden nest designed for travelers, seekers, and sisters who need to unplug from the noise of the world and rest deeply.

• The Nomad Anchor: Welcoming spaces for vans and slow travelers (which will eventually be listed on Park4night) to park, breathe, and share the magic of the land. Actually, you can already rent our Camper for tours in the region via Yescapa, check it out.

You can follow all the process on our Instagram.

Follow our journey

Why Substack?

I chose this platform because social media algorithms are often too fast, too loud, and too fleeting for the slow stories I want to tell.

Here, I want to take you behind the scenes of this adventure. I will share the raw updates, and transmissions about ceremonial cacao, and animist living.

You will receive our newsletter each month.

Also, because you are not all in Portugal, and i want to give you, far souls, a glimpse of what I – Johanna – can offer you with my voice and my medicine. And one day – surely – we will meet in person at Quinta KAKAW.

Subscribe now

If you missed out, know that you can already find content about those topics on my Insight Timer profile, for guided meditations, songs, and sound healing. (listening is free, you can simply skip the subscription offer).

Join the Inner Circle

By hitting the “Subscribe” button today, you are stepping into the inner circle here on Substack, and you will also receive the link to our Whatsapp group for events & community shares.

Subscribe now

Because we believe in slow, intimate community, our future bookings (Airbnb, Yescapa, Park4night) and local events will be shared here first. Substack subscribers and our WhatsApp group will always get early-bird access to reserve their stays and ceremonies before they are opened to socials.

Thank you for walking this path with me. Grab a cup of cacao, settle in, and welcome to the hills.

With grounding love,
Johanna & Kevin

Before starting shamanic practices or rituals of subtle connection, there’s a foundational understanding without which nothing else really holds up: animism, this idea that every object, every plant, every thing has a soul, that life, light, the creative fire, universal consciousness, are present in all things.

I came to it through cacao, actually, without looking for it. The first time I really felt its presence, even before drinking it, something in me recognized a being rather than an ingredient. In the Mesoamerican traditions it comes from, people don’t talk about a plant you consume, but a spirit you enter into relationship with, sometimes called Mama Cacao, or associated with the goddess Ixcacao. I’ve felt this presence as sometimes feminine, sometimes masculine, but it’s most often a maternal energy that reveals itself first, at least that’s what happened for me. And this spirit of cacao accompanied me, without my even knowing it yet, on my entire journey of reconnecting with my ancestors: it opened the door, even before I understood what I was learning.

This worldview, common to all the traditional cultures I’ve encountered along my path, helped me find my place again in the great circle of the living, to finally feel connected to something bigger than myself.

In the West, we’ve largely lost these notions and practices, but elsewhere they remain very much alive: in China, in Indonesia, there’s still an altar to the deities and ancestors in homes, and you may have already noticed the small shrine placed at the entrance of many Asian restaurants. All traditional societies worked, and still work, hand in hand with these invisible forces.

What exactly is animism

Animism is a way of approaching life that emphasizes relationship. You see the world as filled with persons, human and non-human, and you try to live consciously and respectfully with all of them. These “others” can be animals, plants and trees, mountains and stones, fire, rivers and oceans, the spirits of the wind, deities, ancestors of all lineages, the guardians of a place. The spirit of cacao is part of that family, for me: it’s one of these “others” I’ve learned to dialogue with.

It’s not a religion in itself. You can very well be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and at the same time be deeply animist in your relationship with the living world. In many ancestral traditions, the Earth is honored as a living, teaching being, a relationship the spirit of cacao personally helped me rediscover, almost in spite of myself.

A spectrum, not a box

I don’t really like the idea that you’re either animist or you’re not. I prefer to think of it as a spectrum, where your position simply depends on how wide your relational field with the living world is.

On one end of the spectrum, nature is mostly seen as a resource, and the relational circle stops at humans who resemble us. The further along you go, the more that circle widens: you start appreciating humans in all their diversity, connecting with animals, respecting wild beings as intelligent beings in their own right. And at the other end, you bond deeply with other forms of life, you dialogue with plants, you feel the invisible forces of nature, you honor the cycles and seasons without even thinking about it, it just becomes obvious.

Simply sitting with the spirit of cacao, speaking to it inwardly, asking for its help before a meditation, before a ritual, is already a real step on this spectrum. It was mine, in any case.

The connection with ancestors

Almost every culture on Earth has kept some form of reverence for their ancestors. And I’ve noticed, digging into my own path, that learning to connect with your family ancestors is often the best starting point for understanding animism as a whole. Our lineage ancestors are, in a way, the guardians of our families, and there are necessarily, somewhere in our lineages, ancestors who were deeply respectful of the Earth. Connecting with them gives a strength I find hard to describe other than through what I’ve lived: a support, a vitality, something that really helps us move forward in what we came here to do.

And the spirits of the place where you live

Beyond the work with blood ancestors, there’s also all the living world around us every day, in our homes, on our land. Our most ancient ancestors were, out of necessity, people deeply connected to their environment: they dialogued with the animals of their territory, the plants that healed and fed them, the rivers, the seasons, all the forces their survival literally depended on. This reconnection felt, to me too, surprisingly accessible once I started engaging with it. I go deeper into this in the article Ancestors of the Land: Why Connect With the Guardians of a Place, where I explore this relationship with the spirits inhabiting the place where we live.

For your first connection

Prepare your sacred cacao, or simply settle into stillness near your altar. Take a moment to welcome the presence of its spirit before bringing it to your lips, then, if you wish, use this prayer to open your space:

I invite my healed, wise, and healthy ancestors to be with me now. I ask for their presence and support as I strengthen my connection with them. Thank you so much for being here with me on this journey of life. I am deeply grateful.

Then, take out your journal, and let whatever needs to be written come through. What was new for you in all of this? Are there things in your life that suddenly make a little more sense? And on this spectrum we just talked about, where do you feel you stand today?

In daily life

It doesn’t need to be complicated. Greeting the trees during a walk, thanking your food before eating it, speaking gently to your plants, noticing the changing seasons and the small synchronicities that show up, all of that already counts for so much. You can go further by meditating outside, building an altar with natural elements found around you, tuning into lunar cycles, or simply making it a habit to thank the Earth each morning, a cup of cacao in hand.

Animism isn’t some exotic belief from elsewhere, it’s a return to our most natural way of being in relationship with the world. And finding my way back to this vision, for me, has been a real way of healing this feeling of separation I’d been carrying for a long time, without even knowing it.

A large bell tent is taking shape on our land, designed for cacao ceremonies & wellness gatherings. Right next to it, we’re building a wooden cabin, for those who’d like to come slow down here with us, even if just for a few nights.

So, depending on where you are, here’s how to stay close to what’s happening.

Are you nearby, or planning a trip to Portugal? Follow me on Instagram, that’s where I’ll be sharing ceremonies and cabin availability.

Are you further away? You’ll find me on the Insight Timer app, with meditations, sacred chants, and cacao journeys, wherever you are in the world.

See you soon,
Johanna

Have you ever properly greeted the ancestors of the land where you live? The invisible guardians of a place can shape the atmosphere of our daily lives, even when we are not consciously aware of them. Connecting with them brings us back into relationship with our surroundings and can transform the energy of our home.

The ancestral work I share is not about resurrecting the past. It is about reconciliation: hearing what has been carried, acknowledging what came before, and allowing those older voices to illuminate the path we are walking now.

Who Are the Ancestors of the Land?

The ancestors of the land include the Indigenous peoples who lived here before us, the keepers of knowledge passed from generation to generation, the nature spirits particular to the region, the elemental beings who watch over the place, and local ancestral guides who care for the territory.

Every living being leaves an imprint in the earth’s subtle web. During life, through presence and relationship; after death, through bones and ashes returning to the soil. The land holds these traces. Its atmosphere is shaped by all those who have walked it, tended it, loved it and suffered upon it.

Why This Connection Matters

When the beings and peoples of a territory are ignored or treated without respect, the home can feel unsettled: relationships may become strained, the atmosphere difficult to clear, and unexplained tiredness or disturbed sleep may appear. Honouring the land does not promise a life without difficulty, but it can help bring the energy of a house into greater alignment, turning it into a place of refuge, healing and harmony.

This relationship can also restore belonging. When we are disconnected from the place we inhabit, it may be hard to feel rooted within ourselves, within our community, or within the natural world. Learning to meet the land’s memory deepens our bond with nature and reminds us that we are participating in a long story rather than standing outside it.

The guardians of a place may offer a guidance specific to that environment, a sense of energetic protection, and a wisdom shaped by the seasons, history and living systems around us. In time, this can support the healing of our relationships with one another and with the wider community of life.

Every cell of your body remembers the stories, emotions, traumas and triumphs of your ancestors, even when your conscious mind does not.

Learning the Names of the First Peoples

If you know the names of the Indigenous peoples whose land you are living on, greet them by name. Naming is a simple but meaningful act of respect. Native-Land.ca can help you begin that research. If you are Indigenous yourself, do not assume that ancestry alone completes the relationship; greeting and honouring the land’s guardians remains an important practice.

A Ritual to Honour the Ancestors of the Land

Choose a quiet, natural place that you wish to honour. This may be your garden, the land immediately around your home, a nearby park or another place that calls you. As a guide, the area within roughly one to five kilometres of your home can be approached as the immediate territory; your village or town can open the relationship to the wider land.

Preparing Yourself

Bring your sincere presence, a journal and something to sit on. If it feels right, prepare a respectful offering such as pure water, local flowers, honey, tobacco, a prayer or a song. Sit down, feel your feet touch the earth, breathe the air of this place and let your senses open to what is already here.

Remembering the Land

Close your eyes and imagine this land before its current development and colonisation: its original beauty, its waterways, plants and animals, and the first people who lived in relationship with it. You do not need to force an image. Simply allow yourself to sense that the ground carries memory.

Greeting and Introducing Yourself

To the ancestors of this land, [name them if you know their name], I greet you. My name is [your name], and I come from the lineages of [name the people and places that shaped you]. I am humble and deeply honoured to walk upon this sacred land.

If you do not know the specific names, “ancestors of this land” is enough. What matters is that the words are spoken with care, not performance.

Naming Your Intention

My intention is to give back, because you have already given me so much. My intention is to be in communion with you, and to support your healing and wellbeing. I intend to respect you and to understand how I may be of service to you and to all life. Thank you for allowing me to be here. I do not take this lightly, and I am truly grateful.

Asking for Guidance

I want to deepen my relationship with you. Please guide me as I share prayers, offerings and songs with you. Let me know if there are particular gifts you would welcome. I am here with an open heart, willing to serve in whatever ways I can. I am grateful for this relationship. I am open, and I am listening. Thank you.

Silence, Listening and Closing

Remain quiet for a few moments. Feel the earth beneath you. Notice sensations, images, dreams, thoughts or small shifts in the atmosphere, without needing to interpret them immediately. Write down what you experienced. When you feel ready, offer your thanks.

Thank you for allowing me to be here. I honour you and the wisdom you hold. I look forward to deepening our relationship. May this connection continue to grow in mutual respect and love.

Let the Relationship Continue

After the ritual, note your feelings and observe whether the energy of your home feels different. Stay attentive to dreams and synchronicities, but do not turn every coincidence into a message. A first greeting is only a beginning. Return to the land, learn its local history, notice its natural cycles, and take part in protecting the environment around you.

An altar dedicated to the territory can support this relationship. You might create a separate space, or add local stones, plants, photographs or other respectful representations to an existing ancestral altar. If you take something from nature, ask first and receive only what is freely offered.

Offerings are not transactions. We do not make offerings to demand help in return. We offer because something has already been given.

If this article resonated with you, I invite you to keep walking this path of ancestral reconnection with me.

Follow us on Instagram and discover my guided meditations and sound journeys on Insight Timer.

Blessings,
Johanna

We were staying temporarily in another part of the property, while my altar remained in a different house. That small separation revealed something essential. Without my altar, I felt lost, unanchored, as though I were floating through an undefined space and time. I realised that my altar is home, and that my home is an extension of it.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. — Kahlil Gibran

An Altar Is More Than Decoration

An altar is a meeting place between the material and spiritual realms. It can hold the energies, guides, elements or ancestors with whom we are in relationship. In this sense, it is a spiritual technology: a physical doorway that helps an invisible relationship become present in ordinary life.

For me, creating an altar is not only about making something beautiful. It is the physical expression of a commitment. Each time I sit before it, I strengthen a current of attention and energy. Over time, that current moves through the rest of my life, making the sacred less abstract and more intimate.

By connecting with our ancestors, we open the way to our own healing and to the healing of our lineages. — Nancy Hendrickson

An altar may become an interface through which teachings arrive: through direct impressions, dreams, synchronicities or the quiet clarity that follows a regular practice. It can also offer a sense of belonging to a lineage and an energetic anchor in the place where you live. This work is not a guarantee or a shortcut; it is a way of showing up.

What Kind of Altar Are You Creating?

You may dedicate an altar to your family lineage and the healing of inherited memories; to the ancestors of the land, so that you can honour the guardians of the place where you live; to the elements; or to a particular medicine. I have, for example, created an altar for the spirit of sacred cacao before ceremonies. Let your intention lead before aesthetics do.

Before you begin, ask yourself which energies or guides you wish to meet, what commitment you are genuinely able to make, how this relationship might enter your daily life, and what intention you want to place at its centre.

Finding the Place

Your altar can rest on the floor upon a dedicated cloth, on a low table, in a basket you bring out for practice, on a dresser, beside your bed, or inside a box or pouch that travels with you. Choose somewhere quiet, intimate, stable and easy to visit. If possible, an eastern orientation can offer a gentle relationship with the rising sun, but respect and accessibility matter more than perfection.

Choosing What Belongs There

Begin simply. A candle and incense can already form an altar. You do not need to fill the space with fashionable spiritual objects or imitate photographs online. Your altar should carry a personal history, not just a pleasing appearance.

For family ancestors, you might bring photographs of loved ones living or departed, a hand-drawn family tree, family albums, inherited objects, a familiar scent, something they loved to eat or drink, or a handwritten prayer. For the ancestors of the land, consider a local stone, seed, plant, fallen stick, shed antler or photograph of a meaningful place. Ask respectfully before taking anything from nature.

Saints, deities, animals, symbols and objects connected to your culture may also have a place, provided you understand your relationship with them. Fresh flowers, food, pure water, sacred alcohol, tobacco, plants, honey or a temporarily offered piece of jewellery can become gestures of care. You may also work with the elements: water in a bowl or shell, fire through a candle or volcanic stone, earth through a stone, crystal or plant, air through incense, a feather or bell, and ether through open space.

Follow your intuition, including when it leads somewhere unexpected. A family spoon, knife, medal, lock of hair, tooth or bone may carry a meaning that no guidebook could prescribe. If a particular object connects you to a loved one and feels respectful, that personal connection is reason enough.

What to Leave Out, and How to Care for It

Do not place objects whose meaning you do not understand, symbols that feel negative to you, deities from unfamiliar traditions without permission or relationship, masks, mirrors, sacrificial tools or anything that brings an energy you do not wish to invite. Keep the space clean. Do not allow food, flowers or water to decay unnoticed; return offerings to the earth respectfully when appropriate, dust the altar with gratitude, and renew what has become stale.

Your altar is an extension of you. Caring for it is not about maintaining an image; it is about tending the relationship it represents.

Activating the Altar

When you create the altar, clean the space physically and energetically. Speak your intention clearly. Place each object with awareness and gratitude, then light a candle or incense if appropriate. Invite your ancestors to bless the space.

Beloved ancestors, I create this sacred space in your honour. May it become a doorway between our worlds, a place of communion and guidance. Bless this altar and guide me in my daily practice. Thank you for your loving presence.

Making It Part of Daily Life

If you can, spend fifteen minutes with your altar each day. In the morning, greet your ancestors and ask for guidance. In the evening, offer gratitude and reflect on the day. At other times, sit in meditation or prayer when you feel called. The power of the altar grows through presence, not through its number of objects.

You can also set yourself a small, living challenge: gather one meaningful object connected to each of your grandparents, or create a poem, song or piece of art inspired by your ancestors. Let the altar evolve with the seasons. Spring may bring flowers and seeds, summer fruit and bright colours, autumn leaves and harvest, and winter branches, candlelight and inwardness.

A Nomadic Altar

If you travel, make a portable version with a small dedicated cloth, a tea light, a protected photograph, a personal stone and a small prayer notebook. An altar does not have to be permanent. A basket or pouch that you open each day can hold the same intention. What matters is the relationship, not the furniture.

A Few Gentle Reminders

You do not need photographs to begin. Write the names of your ancestors, draw a family tree, or choose objects that evoke your origins. You do not have to photograph your altar or display it publicly; sacred intimacy is worth protecting. And you do not have to feel something dramatic at once. Start with sincerity, and let the connection reveal itself in its own time.

Walk proudly, as if three hundred of your ancestors were standing beside you.

Creating an ancestor altar is not a spiritual obligation. It is a choice of love and connection. Over time, it may become the spiritual heart of your home: a constant bridge between the visible and invisible worlds, and a place where a simple cup of cacao can open into listening.

If this article resonated with you, I invite you to keep walking this path of ancestral reconnection with me.

Follow me on Instagram and discover my guided meditations and sound journeys on Insight Timer.

Until our next journey of reconnection,
Johanna

Our ancestors are the result of millions of years of continuous evolution within their natural environments, whether they were human or non-human. In this article, I want to try to bring some clarity to the many forms they can take.

Ancestors are not only the people in our family line. They are all those who came before us, whether they walked this earth as humans or as other-than-human beings. They are elevated energies operating in the light, on high frequencies, when we are speaking of benevolent, healed and supportive ancestors. They include everyone who contributed to creating the DNA sequence with which we arrived here—right back to the first single-celled life to appear on this planet.

We carry within us all these earthly forms of existence. We are them and they are us. Their wisdom is still alive in the depths of our DNA, accessible if we are willing to turn away from the mind and return to our body’s natural ways of learning, to turn towards our ancestral body and bring this wisdom back to life. Nature is not outside us; we are Nature, born from the same stardust as every other species. – Hazel Marie Volk

This is a journey into the heart of the invisible living world: lineages, family memories and forgotten wisdom. Ancestral work does not seek to resurrect the past, but to reconcile with it—to hear its voice more clearly, so that it may illuminate our own path.

The six types of ancestors who accompany us

Primordial ancestors: the foundations of all life

DNA as the first ancestor

DNA can be understood as the first Ancestor of all life on Earth. We have all been shaped by this same unique “component”—at once chemical, quantum and informational. In many civilisations, the double helix of DNA appears in paintings, sculptures, temples and esoteric texts.

Celestial elements

The celestial influence upon this planet and upon ourselves reaches very far back, even before the formation of Earth. The cosmos is our parent and our ancestor.

Primordial elements

Water, air, fire and earth—the fundamental elements of physical life, the elemental forces—are intrinsically part of us. They have been present everywhere since the beginning of life on this planet.

Prehistoric ancestors: the first earthly kingdoms

Long before life appeared on Earth as we know it, countless single-celled organisms, plants, minerals and small animals began to evolve within an environment that was both chaotic and harmonious, intelligent in its own way. We are connected to these predecessors because we were shaped through their evolution. They are in our bones, and can therefore also be considered our ancestors.

These first kingdoms walked upon, nourished and built the soil of the Earth before us. They have an understanding of harmony, evolution, survival and perseverance to pass on.

The plant kingdom

Have you ever called a great, centuries-old tree an Ancestor? These ancestors offer deep protection and healing. They are guardians of knowledge and, for some of us, connect us to the multidimensional nature of the universe. I am thinking, of course, of master plants such as ayahuasca, and of certain mushrooms, which can be true spiritual teachers.

The mineral kingdom

Dolmens, standing stones and rock formations or mountains are highly evolved consciousnesses. They can be guardians of a place and can transmit great wisdom, particularly concerning cycles, but also strength and stability.

The animal kingdom

Here we might think of power animals, or of evolved consciousnesses such as the great cetaceans. Whales, for example, are sometimes described as guardians of the Akashic records. They, too, came before us.

Ancestors of place and territory

Here we are speaking of all those who lived in the place where you live: your neighbourhood, your town, your region. In the Caribbean, and on the island of Saint Martin where I lived, there were the Indigenous Arawak and Carib peoples, followed by French, English, Spanish and Dutch colonists, privateers, enslaved people brought from Africa and pirates. And long before all of this, when the Earth had another face, there were the Atlanteans.

Aggregated forms of energy and egregores

These are energies fed by inhabitants over generations, energies that permeate a place. Imagine a property with a manor house or a small castle where one family has followed another for several generations. Or think of places heavily charged by events or revelations: Fátima, Lourdes, medieval castles, catacombs. The people and events connected to such places can leave behind a collective energetic form.

Tutelary spirits and energies of a place

These are the guardians and protectors of a place. In geobiology, one might include here draconic energies, elementals and nature spirits—presences assigned to a particular location and involved in maintaining the harmony of that space.

Ancestors of tradition: saints, deities and ascended masters

These differ according to our beliefs and origins.

Canonised saints

Most saints canonised by the Church are believed to have existed in flesh and blood. Within this monotheistic tradition, it is common to draw close to them in relation to earthly concerns. For Christians, this may include Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Anthony or Saint Christopher.

Ascended masters

This category may include Saint Germain, Merlin, Buddha, Padre Pio, White Buffalo Woman or No Eyes.

Patron saints of a place

Tutelary saints charged with protecting a city, a village or even a small locality form an interesting category, because the worship of a place and the devotion to a saint meet there.

In Marseille, for example, Notre-Dame de la Garde is one of the forms of the Virgin Mary and is considered the protector of the people of Marseille, particularly sailors. The cathedral was apparently built on the site of an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Artemis, who was herself a protective patron of Massilia.

Blood ancestors and the family lineage

Most of the time, when we speak of ancestors, we are referring to our family line: those to whom we are connected through blood and genetic inheritance, on our father’s and our mother’s sides. This is especially the definition of Ancestors that brings many of us to ancestral work, and it is primarily with them that we will seek contact—not exclusively, however, which is why the other types matter too. From these family ancestors we have received memories held within our cells.

The lineage of incarnations: our past lives

There is a second ancestral lineage that it is important not to forget: the lineage of our incarnations, whose existence we so often overlook.

Our incarnation lineage is us, many times over. In our DNA, we carry the information of all the incarnations we have already lived.

To make this easier for the mind to understand, we can call them our past lives, even though time is only linear here on Earth and everything is happening simultaneously within the quantum field. This succession of lives and bodies is also a lineage that precedes us, and from which we have inherited memories.

All of this has remained in our quantum DNA. We can therefore say that we have two lineages: our blood lineage and our incarnation lineage. They are not separate rooms, but two currents flowing through the same inner landscape.

Our ancestors from the great civilisations

Your bloodline contains thousands upon thousands of forebears, reaching across aeons. If we follow this principle, your lineage ancestors also include beings who lived in the time of Egypt, Atlantis or Lemuria.

These great civilisations are in our blood too. They hold many kinds of knowledge we have lost, but which we may bring back to the surface by searching within ourselves.

And if we go even further back, before Lemuria, then our ancestors may also have come from the stars. They, too, belong to our genetic lineage and to our incarnation lineage, because perhaps not all of us have had earthly incarnations.

Ancestors who form your spiritual team: guides

These ancestors do not necessarily have a specific link to you, but they share affinities with you. They carry a high vibration and have chosen to accompany us during this incarnation, because this also allows them to evolve on other planes. This team may change over time, and its members may come from any of the groups described above.

Healed ancestors and unhealed ancestors: a crucial distinction

Healed, or blessed, ancestors

These ancestors—whom we might also call well, elevated or wise—have reached notable levels of spiritual awareness during their incarnations. They have accomplished beneficial things, and have been beings of compassion and love, filled with wisdom.

They may be blood ancestors, directly connected to your family line and sharing your DNA; the tools for approaching them include genealogy and family history. They may be ancestors of the territory, connected to the place where you live and sharing a spiritual bond with the land, expressed through local culture, traditions and the energies of the place. Or they may be spiritual ancestors, connected to you through past incarnations or affinity, as guides whose influence arrives through inspiration, guidance, support and messages.

Unhealed ancestors

These ancestors have not lived a luminous life, or have suffered too greatly to be able to support us. They may have experienced cruel or unexpected deaths and remain “bound to the earthly plane”, without having completed the natural process that follows death.

In safe ancestral work, we connect only with healed ancestors. Those who are suffering require a different approach and the support of experienced practitioners. Through our actions and the resolutions we bring into matter, supported by luminous guides and ancestors and by a high-vibration energetic field, we can heal ourselves—and, through ourselves, help to heal the chain and the wounded ancestors within it.

The wounded ancestors: archetypes of unhealed pain

The following is not an exhaustive inventory, and no archetype should ever be used to flatten a real person into a label. Each situation is unique. The exiled ancestor, for example, may carry the wound of betrayal through banishment, but also rejection, humiliation or injustice. A person who died by suicide may belong to any of these families; what matters is the reason and the pain that led them there, not simply the fact that they took their own life.

Authority, violence and the misuse of power

Some lineages carry the imprint of the violent father, the perverse one, the murderer, the enslaver or the deviant who used power without conscience. These figures may represent fear, domination, sexual violation, cruelty or the normalisation of violence. Alongside them, the saboteur can embody a quieter form of aggression: the part of the family system that undermines what is growing because freedom, success or change feels dangerous.

Abandonment, displacement and the wound of not belonging

The orphan, the long-lost brother or sister and the exiled ancestor each carry a story of separation. The displaced or deported elder may hold the terror of being uprooted from home, while the cursed one may have been cast outside the circle through shame, rejection or an accusation that followed them across generations. In these stories, the wound may be betrayal, injustice, humiliation or the feeling that there is nowhere safe to return to.

Hunger, deprivation and the impossible burden of survival

The ancestor who died of hunger speaks of a body deprived of what it needed to live. This family of wounds also includes the old woman filled with resentment, whose bitterness may have grown from years of scarcity, and the man-child, who was never allowed—or never able—to mature into his own responsibility. Their memories can leave behind a nervous system that expects lack, hoards resources or struggles to trust that there will be enough.

Addiction, compulsion and escape

The drug addict is the clearest figure in this family, but addiction is not only about a substance. It can be any compulsive refuge used to flee unbearable pain. The wounded ancestor may have sought oblivion because no other form of relief was available, leaving descendants with patterns of excess, avoidance or a confusing relationship with pleasure and self-soothing.

Silence, grief and the unacknowledged dead

The ungrieved father and the ungrieved mother are ancestors whose deaths were not fully mourned, perhaps because grief was forbidden, because the family had to keep moving, or because no one knew how to speak their name. Their absence can remain strangely present. The family may carry an unnamed sorrow, a fear of attachment, or a sense that to love someone is to risk losing them without ceremony or farewell.

Perfection, sacrifice and the loss of the true self

The perfect child may have been loved for obedience, achievement or the ability to carry the hopes of an entire family. The martyr may have made suffering into a duty, believing that love must be earned through self-denial. The uninitiated one may have been denied the rituals, teachings or passageways that would have helped them become who they were. Together, these figures speak of lives shaped around expectation rather than inner truth.

Otherness, exclusion and the child outside the norm

The “possessed child”—which may include the changeling or a child with a disability—can represent a person treated as strange, frightening or less than fully human because they did not fit the expectations of their time. The wild child carries another aspect of this wound: a child raised outside the structures of society, or a part of the lineage that refused to be domesticated. These ancestors invite us to look carefully at the places where difference was punished, hidden or misunderstood.

Religious violence and violated resting places

Victims of religious sacrifice or martyrdom carry memories of devotion turned into violence. The ancestors whose burial sites were desecrated bear another form of violation: even death did not bring them safety or dignity. These wounds may touch the relationship between body and spirit, faith and fear, the right to rest, and the right to remain connected to one’s land and name.

In all ancestral work, the intention is not to open ourselves indiscriminately to suffering. We create a healthy energetic boundary and invite only our healed ancestors to come close. The wounded are held with compassion, but they are not asked to guide us before the conditions for safety and appropriate support are present.

Understanding the causes of ancestral blocks

To recognise unhealed ancestors within your lineage, it can help to understand the main causes that create transgenerational blocks.

Conflicts between family lines

You are the result of two “clans” that welcomed you—or did not. Your parents came from different backgrounds, loved one another and conceived you. They may have come from different cultures, social classes, countries or languages. Their religions or financial circumstances may also have differed.

Was their union truly welcomed on both sides of the family? If your ancestors are still, in some sense, “at war” in the afterlife, then they are not in harmony with one another—and you may not feel fully at peace within yourself either.

Limiting beliefs from another time

Your ancestors lived in eras when certain limiting thoughts seemed simply to belong to the order of things. Strong beliefs can become embedded from one generation to the next: “That’s just how it is.” “We have to work hard for everything.” “We will never be able to reach this or that.” “We must suffer.” “We will never have enough.”

Collective trauma and persecution

Your ancestors may have lived through genocides or other large-scale catastrophes. An impression of insecurity, of fear in the face of life and death, can then reverberate into the present without any obvious explanation. They may also have experienced persecution, leaving the feeling that one is never truly safe.

The oppression of the ancestral feminine

This is still recent in our history, but the role imposed upon women is a major source of ancestral blockage. Women of earlier generations lived with oppression and a lack of freedom; they were expected to remain silent and obedient. These restrictions continue to influence our relationship with the masculine and the feminine today.

Conflict between family mission and personal purpose

Sometimes what you choose to live today contradicts the mission one of your lineages had taken on. These may have been values and missions held with such intensity that they remained anchored from one generation to the next.

Perhaps your family carried a particular coat of arms representing certain values, and today you have decided not to follow them. By separating yourself from this “energetic seal”, you may create an inner conflict that becomes a blockage in daily life. This does not mean you must obey the past. It means that becoming free may require you to recognise what you are leaving behind.

A few questions for self-reflection

What was the story of your ancestors, and how might it be affecting your life today? What was the relationship between men and women in your lineages? Do you feel conflicts between your own values and those of your family?

A practical exercise: write to your future descendants

Write a letter to your future descendants, or to the future descendants of this Earth. Explain why you are committing yourself to this journey of ancestral healing and connection. Here, we are speaking to those who come after us. Let the letter become a small offering forward through time.

A practical exercise: identify your unhealed ancestors

Take a close look at the ancestors within approximately four generations of you and consider which wounds may correspond to whom. Notice the patterns and dynamics that emerge. If you work with a pendulum, you may use it to ask clear, closed questions to which it can answer yes or no. This may help you sense what needs attention and what your unhealed ancestors may require.

If you have begun building your family tree or genogram, you can place an additional transparent layer over it and add these observations. Do so gently, without forcing a story to appear where the facts are not known.

Continue your ancestral journey

This classification offers a broad view of the different ancestral lineages that accompany you. Each type of ancestor brings its own wisdom and teachings. What matters is not to hold these categories too tightly, but to let them open your perception of the living world around and within you.

When I return to cacao, to the warmth of the cup and the quiet of the land, I feel this web of relationship becoming tangible again. Ancestral connection is not a performance or a race towards extraordinary experiences. It can begin with listening, with respect, and with the simple decision to remember that we did not arrive here alone.

If you would like to follow the projects taking root on the land, you can find me on Instagram. At Quinta Kakaw, the bell tent welcomes cacao ceremonies & wellness events, while the cabin is currently being built so that, one day, you can come and stay here and experience the place more fully.

For guided audio journeys and meditations, you can join me on Insight Timer.

May the ancestors who are healed, wise and benevolent walk beside you—and may your own healing become a gentle gift to those who come after you.

Johanna

It all began at the end of 2020, when I learned I was going through early menopause, at thirty-six. In the sudden emptiness that followed, losing that rhythm my body had always kept, I felt a real need to fill the space it left behind with something else. That’s where a spiritual search began, one that would lead me to sacred cacao in a way I never could have predicted.

The first signs showed up as synchronicities, around the rhythm of the earth, the rhythm of the mother, and what a medicine drum’s vibrations could offer. I’d had a vague pull toward a shamanic drum for a while, but this time it felt different, almost visceral, as if it were the lost rhythm of my own body calling it in.

Following one synchronicity after another, I found my way to Daniel, a drum maker whose work I connected with immediately, and we started working together remotely on the birth of my drum. Strangely enough, Daniel sent me meditations, visualizations, and ancestral lineage work to do first, so he could understand who I was before deciding what drum he would make. That work turned out to be a revelation. Visions came, along with a name for my drum.

Around the same time, I started a tarot challenge focused on reconnecting with ancestors, the very subject that would, years later, become the center of everything I teach. The cards were unsettling, and they kept lining up with what was coming through the drum work. My ancestors, it turned out, were really there, around me.

The Spirit of Cacao Appears

Around that same time, the spirit of cacao started showing up too, again through signs and synchronicities. I was getting used to receiving information this way by then. Sacred cacao kept appearing around me, more and more, almost daily, and since I was still deep in my ancestral research, I started to wonder if the two were connected.

They were. My family research kept pointing me toward the Caribbean and Central America, the birthplace of this sacred plant. My cycle ending, the tarot messages, the pull toward a drum, the ancestors, our travels, the land, the plants, the cacao — it was all part of the same thread.

I still didn’t fully understand what this chocolate drink was that people online seemed to revere so much, until I read a few surprising accounts, in English, and placed my first order with Keith’s Cacao. My husband and I chose a quiet moment to try it together, and that first sip is a memory I’ll carry forever. Something between deep calm, total relaxation, euphoria, and a strange kind of high — I couldn’t quite place it. We’ve been in love with this plant, and its spirit, ever since. It has walked with us daily, and changed more of our life than I ever expected.

The Ancestors of Caribbean Lands

As I reconnected with my ancestors, I started to feel the call of the native peoples of the Caribbean archipel, the Arawaks and the Kalinago, themselves descended from Mesoamerican civilizations who had once taken to the sea. I followed that thread for days, tracing it back through Central and South America, until I understood: this was where cacao, in its most original form, came from.

The Maya, the Olmecs, the Toltecs, and the Aztecs all drank sacred cacao, a gift they believed came from the gods. Cacao trees still grow across the caribbean today, since these civilizations had once settled the islands, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, whose waterfalls and volcanoes turn out to be ideal ground for cacao trees thriving in the jungle.

The Arawaks and the Kalinago, native to the Antillean arc, would have followed the traditions of their ancestral lands and known this medicine plant, honoring it in ceremony and ritual. But that knowledge was forgotten, erased over time. I think that might be exactly what I was hearing: the call of the Arawak.

My Mission: Bringing the Medicine Back to Life

Through sacred cacao, I felt the ancestors of this land asking me to bring these traditions back to life on the islands, the way they once were, especially in Saint-Martin, where I lived. To remind people that cacao is a healing plant, a messenger from the ancestors. To remind them that the ancestors are still here, only waiting for us to listen.

This world, in the middle of so much transition, needs these ancestral wisdoms to come back to life, needs us to reconnect with the EARTH and with our ANCESTORS. I followed what the spirit of cacao was asking of me, with love, the same voice that had been quietly guiding me since my menopause began.

Four Years of Teaching

For nearly four years, I shared this medicine through group and online ceremonies in Saint-Martin, an initiatory ebook, and various spiritual collaborations. I held countless sacred spaces, and was taught in turn by mentors, native guardians, and cacao priestesses along the way.

I also traveled, more than once, to the lands where this medicine had lived for generations, to meet it, to speak with it, and to keep growing on my own path: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Saint-Martin, Mexico. At the top of the Tepozteco pyramid in Tepoztlán, Mexico, I felt the beginning of the end of one chapter with Mama Cacao.

📍 At the top of the Tepozteco pyramid, Tepoztlán, Mexico.

Mama Cacao’s Birthday Gift

On April 5, 2023, my birthday, I was walking down a street in Marigot I’d known for fifteen years. I turned my head, and there it was: a tree full of pods. A cacao tree. Fifteen years I’d walked past it without ever seeing it. Four years I’d spent looking for cacao trees on the island, always told by locals that the hurricanes had wiped them all out. And there it was, appearing on my birthday, of all days.

After a moment of hesitation, I asked the Antillean woman who owned the property if I could take a pod. Her son ended up selling me five, and gifting me two more. I was overjoyed. Mama Cacao couldn’t have given me a more meaningful gift. I kept a few dried pods for my altars, and saved the fresh beans to plant.

That’s when I understood: the mission the ancestors had given me was reaching its end. I had brought this medicine back to the island, helped heal hearts, brought the old rituals back to life, and planted new cacao trees in the ground. The circle had closed.

2024: Travel and Transformation

After that, we decided to leave, with no return date, in the summer of 2024. We’d been dreaming of this camper-van trip across Europe with our children for a long time, and even then, it was the spirit of cacao and our ancestors guiding us into it.

All through 2024, though, my relationship with cacao grew chaotic, a mirror of everything shifting inside me. Even as I felt aligned with our choices as a family, I felt strangely far from my own medicine: preparations that kept going wrong, fewer and fewer messages coming through, real questions about what this relationship even was anymore. In the end, it wasn’t really about cacao at all. It was about my relationship with myself. Even so, cacao carried us through more than one moment when we felt completely lost.

2025: Renewal in Portugal

As I write this, we’re settling into life in Portugal, and I haven’t found that same strong thread back to the spirit of cacao. (Update: things have shifted since I first wrote this!) It feels like its energy didn’t fully follow me across the ocean, this far from the land it grows in. But I’m not ready to let it go. Maybe that distance is really just a reflection of my own confusion right now: until I find my own footing, I won’t quite find my way back to it either.

What’s interesting is that my husband’s relationship with this medicine has shifted instead. These days, it’s him who prepares the brew, and holds the sacred space. Almost like something passed from me to him.

Coming Full Circle

That thread I thought I’d lost found its way back to me. Since landing in Portugal, cacao and I have found each other again, slower this time, and quieter, but real. And it’s showing up again right when it matters most: with the house finally behind us, our home is becoming the ground for everything I keep passing on.

A large bell tent is taking shape on the land, meant for cacao ceremonies, sound healing, and small wellness gatherings held in person. Alongside it, we’re building a wooden cabin, for anyone who wants to come stay and slow down here with us, even just for a few nights.

So depending on where you are, here’s how to stay close to what’s coming next.

Nearby, or planning a trip to Portugal? Follow me on Instagram, that’s where I’ll be sharing the ceremonies, and the cabin’s availability.

Further away? Insight Timer app is where you’ll find me instead, with meditations, sacred chants, and cacao journeys, wherever you are in the world.

See you soon,
Johanna

In this piece, I want to show you what these rainbow bubbles mean spiritually, and how they connect to theobromine, the sacred molecule of ancestral cacao.

→ New to sacred cacao? Start with my introduction to this medicine.

A Morning of Reconnection

This morning, for the first time in months, I finally sat down and made myself a cup of sacred cacao, alone. I’d been wanting to for a while, questioning where I stood with this medicine. Because honestly, for two years now, it’s been a kind of platonic love. These past few weeks, I’ve felt a real pull to reconnect with it more fully, the way I used to, back when I was holding ceremonies, teaching, running programs.

This break from you, Mama Cacao, has gone on long enough, I remember thinking. Now that I’m finding some real ground here, settled into this slower life in Portugal, I think that was exactly what had been missing, what I needed before I could show up fully with cacao again.

So this morning, I made the sacred brew as if it were the (second) first time, and I was welcomed by the most beautiful cup, filled with rainbow bubbles arranged in perfect structure, aligned like the heart of a sunflower, like the center of a flower, with its own sacred geometry and divine colors. I was full of emotion.

I thanked cacao for staying with me, even through the stretch when I thought it had left completely. I thanked it for this cup, which mirrored exactly this new bond, this new first time between us, and I praised it, once again, for the sheer expressiveness of its language, its bubbles, its formations, its richness, its scent, the way it carries information. And that’s how this piece came to be, one I’d been meaning to write for a while, on the magic of rainbow bubbles in your cup. This morning turned out to be the perfect moment to finally write it.

What Do Rainbow Bubbles Mean in Your Sacred Cacao?

You’ll see it often on social media: the more rainbow bubbles in a cup of sacred cacao, the more “grammable” it looks. It’s become a way of signaling to the community that the cacao shown is genuinely ceremonial grade.

When you blend Cacao, small bubbles appear on the surface. On these, you can see all colours of the rainbow. — Cacao Mama

These bubbles act as a mirror, both of our inner state and of our relationship with this medicine. And since the medicine reflects our inner state right back at us, we become something like the ouroboros, that mythic creature swallowing its own tail.

Is there enough color in your life right now? That’s the question cacao seemed to be asking me, through this message and through this morning’s photo. Cacao, more than a drink, acts like a teacher, inviting us to bring more color into daily life, and not only in the literal sense.

Cacao as "Rainbow Medicine"

The Cacao Spirit is a keeper of ancient, sacred wisdom. The spiritual dimension is described as a medicine of the Soul, a medicine of Peace and as a Rainbow Medicine. — Cacao Mama

We often talk about sacred cacao as rainbow medicine. What do these bubbles point us back toward?

They confirm that divine light truly lives inside cacao, and from that light comes the visible spectrum, and the reach of its cosmic rays. They point to our own color too, our ethnic origins, reminding us that every color deserves to be represented and honored, that we’re all many, even though we rose from the very same source of light. They speak to the color of our aura, which reveals our emotions and where we stand spiritually, shaping our pull, our capacity to attract and to rise. And they speak of music, since there are seven colors and seven musical notes, and, in my own repeated experience, these bubbles also tend to appear when you sing to your cacao.

They bring us back to childhood too, to carefree joy, to blowing soap bubbles and marveling at these small, pretty creations. These colorful bubbles reflect our inner freedom, whatever restrictions we place on ourselves. Their quantity and quality also reveal how rich your cacao is in theobromine, the molecule essential to forming rainbow bubbles in the first place. This compound acts almost like a revealer, sharpening the mystical, healing effect of your brew.

These colorful bubbles reflect our inner freedom, regardless of the restrictions we impose on ourselves.

The Science Behind the Bubbles: Theobromine

Ceremonial cacao contains between 0.5% and 2.7% theobromine, the natural compound responsible for cacao’s energetic, spiritual, and psychoactive properties.

Theobromine widens the cardiovascular system, allowing up to 40% more oxygen to reach the body, sharper focus, a clearer mind. It’s especially effective when paired with breathwork, such as coherent breathing. It also triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine, our natural feel-good hormones.

The name "Theobroma Cacao" was given by the scientist Carl von Linnaeus in 1753, from the Greek θεός βρῶμα, meaning food of the gods.
θεός (theos) → God
βρῶμα (broma) → Food

“Cacao” itself comes from the Maya word “Ka’Kau,” while our word “chocolate” likely derives from the Maya verb “Chocol’ha,” meaning to drink cacao, combined with the Aztec word for water, “atl,” a blend the Spanish likely created during their conquest of Central America, one that’s stayed in our language ever since, even though it describes something quite far from the original, raw drink.

More rainbow bubbles generally means the cacao’s medicine is especially active and present, which is exactly why they get shown off so often online. To brew a cup rich in rainbow bubbles, it helps to know a few preparation secrets, along with the importance of choosing quality cacao with the right theobromine content.

Reading Your Bubbles

Just as some read tea leaves, you can read your cacao’s bubbles too, treating your cup as a kind of oracle. These readings are personal, and I’d encourage you to trust your own intuition here, especially since cacao is such a strong tool for opening up your extrasensory channels. That said, here are a few observations that tend to hold true:

• Perfect alignment: your connection with cacao is in harmony

• Geometric patterns: cacao is teaching you about cosmic order

• Bright, vivid colors: the spirit of cacao is strongly present

• Scattered bubbles: an invitation to recenter your intention

• Tiny bubbles: you come from the stars, you are divine

Sometimes, it’s the combination of bubbles and shapes in your cup together that carries the real message. I still remember the time my own cup formed the shape of Africa.

What Each Color Means

Each color in your bubbles carries its own specific medicine. Interpretation can vary based on what you personally feel, but here are a few starting points, rooted in traditional color therapy:

• Red: grounding, vitality, connection to the earth

• Orange: creativity, joy, sacred sexual energy

• Yellow: self-confidence, personal power, inner sunlight

• Green: heart healing, compassion, connection to nature

• Blue: honest communication, truth, inner peace

• Purple: spirituality, transformation, connection to the divine

We call them rainbow bubbles because, most of the time, all seven colors show up together. But sometimes, one color takes over, and that’s worth paying attention to. In the photo for this post, it was blue.

Trust your intuition above all, and keep track of your own associations with whatever colors you notice. And reach for high-quality ceremonial cacao when you can: a fully ceremonial-grade paste, ethically sourced, with theobromine in the 0.5–2.7% range, naturally fermented with no additives or added sugar, from a true heirloom variety like Criollo, grown with real intention and gratitude.

The Sacred Preparation Technique

To get those beautiful rainbow bubbles, the whisking technique matters most. You can get there with a milk frother, a traditional molinillo, or even a blender.

Yes, really: the element of air is what creates your bubbles. Which means your finished cup ends up carrying all four primordial elements: water, part of your base mixture; earth, represented by the cacao paste itself, since cacao is a fruit grown from the ground; fire, the heat warming your brew, the same fire that once roasted your beans and, before that, the sun that dried them and fed the tree; and finally, air, the moment you whisk everything together after uniting water and earth over fire.

Every ceremonial cacao variety carries its own medicine, and so its own color. And every cup of cacao brings you exactly the medicine you need in that moment, and so, its own particular color. Each variety shows up for you right when you need that specific color medicine.

Bringing Rainbow Medicine Into Your Practice

Before drinking your cacao, take a few minutes to observe the formations with curiosity and wonder, notice which colors stand out and what they might mean, feel the energy the bubbles seem to carry, receive whatever message Mama Cacao is sending you, and take a moment to express gratitude for this quiet, subtle kind of communication.

Keep a journal of what you notice: the date and intention behind the ceremony, the bubble formations you saw, the colors that stood out, any messages you received, and your emotional state before and after.

This kind of practice sharpens your sensitivity to cacao’s own language, and deepens your relationship with this sacred medicine over time.

Honoring Mama Cacao’s Wisdom

The rainbow bubbles in your sacred cacao aren’t just a physical phenomenon, they’re the colorful language of an ancestral medicine trying to communicate with you.

Every time you prepare your cacao with intention and respect, you open a channel to this plant medicine’s ancient wisdom. The bubbles become messengers, carrying guidance, and healing.

Take the time to observe, to listen, and to receive. Mama Cacao has so much to teach us, or perhaps, so much to remind us of.

Thank you, Mama Cacao, once again, for this renewed connection, and for these precious teachings.

If this post resonated with you, nearby or planning a trip to Portugal, follow me on Instagram, where I share ceremonies and updates from the land. Further away, you’ll find me on Insight Timer instead, with meditations, chants, and cacao journeys wherever you are in the world.

Take care,
Johanna

Today, the return of sacred cacao reflects the meeting of an ancestral wisdom that refuses to fade, and a modern world that longs to find its way back to the Earth and its teachings.

What are cacao ceremonies?

I’d describe Cacao Ceremonies as gentle, accessible shamanic experiences (even though the work underneath them can be transformative, both in the moment and over the long run). Unlike other shamanic experiences, drinking the sacred brew won’t put you into a trance state, and it won’t bring on hallucinations, psychedelic visions, or out-of-body experiences.

Cacao ceremonies vary depending on the facilitator or shaman leading them. Today, they’ve evolved to weave in many spiritual wellness practices suited to our times:

• Singing bowls, sacred chants

• Yoga

• Pottery workshops

• Card readings

• Ecstatic dance

• Women’s circles and sharing circles

• Hiking

• Channeling and mediumship

• Qi Gong...

Sacred cacao increasingly accompanies music events and gatherings of awakened souls, where drugs, alcohol, and animal-based food no longer have a place — creating a collective healing space, held with kindness and respect.

In the Mayan cosmovision, all things that exist have a spirit.
— Carlos Barrios, The Book of Destiny

The Maya Legacy: A Thousand-Year-Old Cosmovision

Cacao in the Popol Vuh

There are many versions of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation story. In some of them, cacao plays a central role:

• Created by the Goddess of fertility, alongside corn, to bring divine nourishment to Earth.

• Stolen by the gods of death and taken to the underworld, then rescued by the hero twins and brought back to Earth as a symbol of abundance and the soul’s journey.

• As the first food to grow from the corn god, once again a symbol of transformation and abundance.

• In Mexico, it’s Quetzalcoatl who brings the cacao tree to humans, then turns into rain to nourish and grow the cacao trees.

These myths reveal cacao’s sacred place within the Maya cosmovision, where it accompanies courageous souls on their journey through the different realms.

Today, the thousand-year-old heart of this ancient cosmovision still beats within the Maya world. The foundations of this wisdom lived in secret for a long time; now they’re blossoming out in the open.

Contemporary wisdom keepers

Today, the millenary heart of this ancient cosmovision still beats in the Maya world. The foundations of this wisdom have lived in secrecy, and now they are flourishing in broad daylight.

The Arch’ij (wisdom keepers) hold the space for this awakening of wisdom. Some of them integrate Cacao into their practices. For thousands of years in Mesoamerica, Cacao was perceived as a fundamental essence of life, deeply woven into the destiny of humanity, accompanying and protecting souls to fulfill their journey through the different realms.

The ancient civilizations of Latin America were deeply linked to the earth; they lived in harmony with nature and honored the environment in which they lived. Fluent in the language of the earth, they asked for permission before harvesting and hunting, and regularly made prayers in its honor.

Sacred cacao: entheogen and nootropic

Scientific definitions

Cacao is a psychoactive medicine, which can be described as both an entheogen and nootropic.

Entheogen: Entheogens are psychoactive substances that induce alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior with the aim of fostering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. Anthropological study has established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world.

Nootropic: “Smart drugs“, “cognitive enhancers“. Substances that are claimed to improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, attention, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals.

This dual nature explains why cacao facilitates both the spiritual experience and the enhancement of mental capacities.

The scientific benefits of cacao

Exceptional biochemical composition

Theobromine dilates our cardiovascular system, which allows for 40% additional optimal oxygenation of the body → Increased concentration, mental clarity. Very effective when combined with breathwork such as cardiac coherence.

Phenylethylamine (PEA), which is the “love molecule,” also known as natural ecstasy, releases neurotransmitters that increase our levels of dopamine → feelings of joy and positive mood.

Anandamide: Bliss molecule, “Ananda” meaning bliss in Sanskrit. Anandamide is an endocannabinoid that mimics the psychoactive molecule in cannabis, THC! Although it is only present in very small amounts, it is a powerful substance that provides the sensations of joy and euphoria that many people experience when consuming cacao.

Serotonin & Dopamine : These neurotransmitters help regulate mood, appetite, digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire.

Magnesium : Helps our muscles and our body relax, and regulates our nerve functions as well as blood sugar and blood pressure.

Not forgetting Iron, Chromium, Manganese, Potassium, Calcium, Theophylline, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamins A – B1 – B2 – B3 – B12 and D.

A medicine for women

Cacao for your moons: Rich in magnesium, cacao helps to relax smooth muscle cells. Its richness in iron promotes and supports healthy blood circulation. These essential minerals, combined with serotonin which improves mood, make cacao one of the perfect supplements for women during menstruation.

Natural coffee alternative: Cacao is rich in healthy fats (cacao butter) and it is these that help slow down the metabolism of carbohydrates in the blood. Thus, cacao provides more complete and solid energy than coffee. Its theobromine is the stimulating and energizing chemical substance. Cacao is not addictive, and there is no recommended limit for its consumption other than what your body dictates.

Mama Cacao: meeting the spirit of the plant

The spirit of cacao, often called Mama Cacao, can be perceived as a wise and benevolent Mother, who delicately comes to untie the knots of our heart. Her medicine helps us align with our inner gentleness, fostering a sincere connection with oneself and with others during group ceremonies.

For me, Mama cacao is like a goddess who watches over us patiently, awaiting an inevitable inner awakening from us. She loves it when we talk about her and sing to her, like a flower. And the more we sing, the more she will unfold within us.

I have noticed over time how the same recipe, with the same cacao, can result in a totally different texture and taste depending on the dedication we have put into preparing the beverage! It is like an agreement, for her to deliver her wisdom, her knowledge, her ancestral know-how to us.

Do you think you could experience all this with a Hershey’s bar?! I think you have now grasped the difference.

Testimonials of transformation

My personal journey

Since my husband and I have been consuming ceremonial cacao, our lives have taken a different turn. We like to use cacao for all our important decision-making. We have noticed that over time, and after each ceremony (collective or as a couple), we were making aligned life choices followed by concrete actions!

Solo: When I create my cacao ritual alone, I get out of my head and my fears. Cacao allows me to open my heart and connect to my inner wisdom. Over time, I began to channel songs & meditations, for myself or the community.

As a couple: The cacao ritual allows you to connect with the other person and enter into conscious communication. Listening and exchanging from the heart is so obvious. Cacao makes masks fall away and the heart never lies.

In a group: The ceremony allows you to raise the energetic frequency in an even more intense way and reach a level of collective calm and well-being. Time stops. A magical space is created where everything becomes possible, where everyone connects on another timeline made of choices aligned with their soul.

→ Discover my songs & guided meditations on Insight Timer app.

📱 Important note: The app and the audio are free. Upon first launch, the app may offer you a premium subscription - Simply skip these steps by choosing “later” or by using the X in the top right corner of the subscription offer page, to access the free content.

Emotional healing and release

Emotional release: Cacao can be quite stimulating for some people and can, in some cases, have a laxative and purgative effect. This is not a bad thing. It is the way cacao encourages the body to get rid of what no longer serves it.

The emotions, beliefs, and thought patterns are stored in the body over time and, if they are not processed correctly, they can manifest as illness. It has never been more important for us to FEEL. To allow our emotions to guide us, to flow through us so that they can be released into the universe to be transformed.

The central role of ancestors

In the ceremonies I offer, ancestors occupy a central place. They provide guidance and care, and through cacao medicine, we can more easily connect with them. Mama Cacao is not limited to a simple opening of the heart; it also acts on a quantum level, reconnecting us to the universal memories contained in our flesh, our bones, our blood, our heart.

By consuming this brew, we do not only nourish our body; we travel through time and space, bringing to the surface earthly and ancestral memories. Each sip connects us to Mother Earth and to the ancients, revealing aspects of our personal and collective history that were buried deep within us.

Working with Maestra Cacao

Working with Maestra Cacao invites us to dive into a sustainable healing process. It is a subtle medicine, which awakens the memories of our ancestors and brings us back to our purest essence. We enter more easily into contact with the benevolent energies that surround us: Ancestors, Guardians of the earth, spirits of nature... who bring us guidance, care, synchronicities.

Why connect with the spirit of cacao

The spirit of cacao is so transformative, on so many levels, that it would be a real shame to miss out on it, in these times of great individual and collective change. In this chaotic transition, the spirit of cacao is an outstanding companion, in the love and strength of nature.

A prophetic myth

An indigenous myth tells that whenever the balance between humans and nature is threatened, cacao comes out of the rainforest to reopen the human heart and bring harmony back to Earth.

This prophecy feels especially relevant today, as we watch cacao’s remarkable comeback in Western societies. Hailed as the modern-day superfood, this medicine plant has become a pantry staple for holistic-health enthusiasts everywhere.

The modern evolution of ceremonies

We still have a long way to go before the practices (and the respect that comes with them) are fully restored in our Western association with cacao medicine - but we are on the right track.

Modern ceremonies seamlessly integrate:

• Ancestral traditions: Respect for Mayan protocols, offerings, prayers

• Contemporary practices: Yoga, meditation, art therapy, breathwork

• Modern science: Understanding neurological mechanisms

• Personal development: Tools for introspection and transformation

How to start your journey

If everything you just read makes you want to try sacred cacao for yourself, here’s where to start, one step at a time.

New to cacao? Start with your ears, not your cup. Listen to one of my chants or guided cacao journeys on Insight Timer app — no ceremony, no preparation, just a first taste of what this medicine feels like.

Ready to get your own cacao? Follow my guide on this blog for choosing and buying sacred cacao, so you know exactly what to look for and where to find it.

Want to be guided through it? Join one of my ceremonies, in person in Portugal or online, and let me walk you through your first cup step by step.

It is with deep respect and great gratitude toward the guardians of this ancestral wisdom that I share this guide with you. It has never been more important to raise awareness and support the indigenous communities that have shared and protected this medicine for millennia. May we honor them with every cup of cacao we consume.

May this mark the beginning of your love affair with cacao 🌿

Plants respond when we talk to them and when we open ourselves to their wisdom and their medicine.

Guadeloupe, Again

Every time I come back here, something in me shifts.

My first real shift happened years earlier, in 2018, during a chamanic retreat with Yann Lipnick. I came home from that one with my mind cracked wide open, and it’s what set my whole spiritual path, and everything I’ve shared since, into motion.

This time, my third retreat on the island, I came back changed again: calmer, lighter, whatever grief and anger I’d been carrying, gone. More patient than before. Something had shifted again, another layer, another step further along the path. I’d been initiated to go even further.

Wisdom. Expansion. Reconnection. Release. Focus.

Guadeloupe has always been, for me, a land of growth and transformation. Every time I come here, I change.

I Am the Arawak

Once you build a real, ongoing relationship with your ancestors and with plant teachers, the information, the synchronicities, the messages start arriving fast, faster still during a real initiatory passage.

One morning, our retreat group set off on a water trek upstream from Saut d’Acomat, in Guadeloupe. That day, I moved through more fear than I expected to, but more than that, I found myself back in sensations that felt both familiar and impossibly old.

Slipping through the pools like an iguana, feeling the strength of the water and the rocks, stopping to listen to the sounds around me, catching the sun through the jungle canopy. Moving along the river current on all fours, hands on stone, brought something back to the surface, and all at once, I saw myself: bare, wrapped only in a loincloth, long black hair, straight and loose. And this line arrived in my mind:

❝ I am the Arawak ❞

That one small sentence handed me a sudden understanding: I’d had something wrong, all along.

Cacao had come to me through a reconnection with my own lineage, but also through the ancestors of this land, the Caribbean. I’d believed, until that moment, that it was specifically the Arawak of Saint-Martin asking me to bring this medicine back to the islands, since it had once been part of their tradition. That one small sentence, that glimpse of a past incarnation, this hike, on this particular trip, told me otherwise. The karmic reconnection had been set in motion long before.

I am the Arawak, once living across the Caribbean and Central America, in relationship with plant medicine and sacred cacao, carried down from ancestors further south still, in the Yucatan, in Guatemala, in Venezuela.

We’re always learning, and every experience we live through in this body is also a memory of who we’ve been, and why we came back. This piece of understanding reached me almost three years after I first began my path with cacao.

The Most Powerful Ceremony I’ve Ever Lived

The most powerful cacao ceremony I’ve ever experienced happened on this same trip to Guadeloupe. And yet, it wasn’t a big ceremony at all.

There was no altar. No flowers. Only four of us. No music. I didn’t even have my usual cup or my ceremonial tools with me, I was traveling light, and all I had was a small piece of palo santo, a candle, and my voice.

And still, that evening, the spirit of cacao showed up, along with several other strong presences, moving through my shaman friend for nearly an hour. I went through something I still don’t fully understand, in my body and in my soul, something that kept unfolding over the nights that followed.

That evening taught me something I keep coming back to: it takes nothing but an open heart, love, and real devotion, to call this medicine’s magic in.

If this story stirred something in you, you’ll find more of this kind of work in my ancestral healing and reconnection meditations on Insight Timer, journeys built for exactly this sort of remembering.

Blessings,
Johanna

Johanna shares the animist way of life and ancestral wisdom through guided meditations, intuitive chants, and raw, immersive sound journeys.

Her love for the medicine plant of sacred cacao led her to create audio guides, so you can discover and walk with cacao yourself, in ceremony.

Her world will take you to faraway, ancestral lands, timeless places, where reconnecting with the living world and with your ancestors becomes possible. Her minimalist approach and slow, rural way of life bring a particular flavor and mood to her meditative content.

My Approach

Everything you’ll hear is real: my voice, my channeled words, chants received in ceremony, the drum I play myself, and sometimes the birds from my Portuguese forest finding their way into the recordings.

None of it is AI-generated. It’s alive, human, and rooted in the earth.

I create these meditations with the same care I put into my writing — every word is chosen, every silence means something, every beat of the drum brings you back to your essence.

Find Me on Insight Timer

1. Download the Insight Timer app (it's free)

2. Search for “Johanna Journey”

3. Follow me to get notified about new meditations

→ Visit my profile

The app and the audio are free. On first launch, the app may offer you a premium subscription — simply skip past it by choosing “later,” or using the X in the top right corner of the subscription page, to reach the free content.

What You Can Experience

These audios extend and complement what you can already read on this blog. Some content is exclusive; some is a revisited version of my teachings.

My world revolves around ancestral wisdom and shamanism, cacao ceremonies, slow living, spiritual minimalism, and reconnecting with the living world. You’ll find several formats:

• Guided meditations & visualizations

• Shamanic journeys, with medicine drum, plus intuitive chants

• Raw, immersive sound journeys (nature, forest walks, ceremony preparations, rituals)

• Teachings and talks

So tonight, as you drift off to sleep, why not press play on a meditation together?

→ Visit my profile

Which Meditation Will You Choose Tonight?

And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, feel free to send me your suggestions by replying to this email, or by leaving a comment on this article. 💬

Leave a comment

With love,
Johanna

But before any of that, I had to go through my own spiritual transformation. This is the true story of how it started.

Roots Between the Caribbean and Europe

I’ve spent most of my life in the French Caribbean (Guadeloupe), with a decade-long detour through Europe that shaped how I see the world.

I was born in Guadeloupe and grew up in Sainte-Anne until I was thirteen, when my family left the warm water behind for Cascais, Portugal — my father’s company had relocated us there. The move was hard on my parents, who’d known thirty years of tropical life. For me, as a teenager, it felt like a discovery: the freedom of taking the train into Lisbon, wandering the little streets of Cascais. Portugal back then hadn’t yet been swept up by the tourism it sees today.

At the French Lycée in Lisbon, I lived out the best years of my adolescence, and met the man who’s now my husband. After our baccalauréat, our paths led us to Aix-en-Provence, where I studied fine art, then to Switzerland, where I joined him. At Eracom in Lausanne, I trained as a multimedia designer, combining my two passions, computing and drawing — skills that would later turn out essential for sharing my spiritual path online.

In 2008, we settled in Saint-Martin, where we’d stay for the next fifteen years — the longest we’ve ever lived anywhere in our nomadic life.

The Call That Changed Everything

This is where my real spiritual path begins, and the reason you’re reading this today.

On March 16, 2015, at 5:15 in the morning, my mother called: “Dad is gone.” Those words opened a black hole in my stomach. I went straight to his side to help with his final care.

The six months before that had been brutal. Bounced between doctors, protocols, and false hope, we’d been moving through it like automatons, in denial about a disease we couldn’t get a handle on.

After he passed, something in me shifted, completely. I became a seeker of spiritual truth. Some force I couldn’t explain pushed me to understand — where had he gone? What comes “after”? The first book my mother and I read together was Après, by Stéphane Allix, and it cracked something open in both of us, letting in every question we’d never let ourselves ask about this world, and about what it means to be here in a body at all.

For almost a year after he died, my mother and I lived through strange things we couldn’t explain: electricity dropped for no reason, static and crackling sounds, the smell of cigarette smoke in rooms that had been closed for hours, heavy objects falling on their own. I understand now that these were attempts at communication, between two planes of existence. My father, still too tied to this one by our grief, hadn’t moved on to the higher planes yet. He stayed in the house, angry, until a soul guide finally helped him continue his journey.

For two years, I dove into the subject of the afterlife and other planes of existence, and along the way, my mother and I came to understand a lot about pharmaceutical lobbies and experimental treatments. But I kept pulling on that thread, further and further, until there was no real way back. I’d gone too far down the rabbit hole. 🐇

In 2017, at thirty-three, I hit a turning point that was as spectacular as it was exhausting: in the space of two weeks, I uncovered what felt like the whole hidden truth of this world. Some invisible force seemed to guide me toward exactly the right article, the right site, the right video — each one another piece of the puzzle. I felt things in my body I’d never felt before: waves of chills reading about the different planes of existence, sudden gasps in front of images that struck something certain in me, tears watching videos about the Pleiadians, flashes of memory I couldn’t place, as if they’d been stored somewhere in my cells all along.

And then — I wasn’t the same person anymore. I was someone who’d opened her eyes. But I was alone in it. That’s where the pull of “the world needs to know” was born, and it’s never really left me.

On June 3, 2017 — a date that would turn out symbolic, since I lost all of that content five years later, on June 3, 2022 — I opened my first blog, to share this transformation anonymously. My ten years as a graphic and web designer turned out to matter more than I expected.

From the moment I decided to share what I was going through, one thing led to another: I met people who were on the same frequency, went through intense shamanic retreats full of revelations, and slowly developed my intuition and my own channel for guidance, hearing the subtler messages more and more clearly. In 2020, I left graphic design behind for good, to devote myself fully to holistic wellbeing work, online and in person. That path eventually led me into shamanism, and into the medicine of sacred cacao.

My Trainings

My path has been one of continuous spiritual learning:

🤎 Sacred Cacao Ceremony Facilitator (2022) Trained with Julie Scalune and Geneviève Locas (Holistika, Cacao Source, Lavalove Cacao), and went deeper with Florencia Fridman (Cacao Laboratory) in 2020. Living in the Caribbean gave me a real advantage — close proximity to this tropical entheogenic plant.

🥁 Sacred Rhythms and Medicine Drum Certified with Pierre LeGarrérès. The shamanic drum resonates with something in my soul, and it’s sharpened my ability to guide others through spiritual journeys.

🎵 Sacred Chants and Medicine Voice Trained with Kirsty Ka to deepen spiritual experience through sound, and cultivated the art of sacred chanting.

🧬 Ancestral Lineage Healing Studied in depth with Torie Feldman, specializing in ancestral work and the healing of family memory.

The Nomadic Years (2023–2024)

From summer 2023 through the end of 2024, our family life took a sharp turn. Instead of going back to Saint-Martin, we chose to keep traveling, by camper van, across Europe and beyond.

Along the way, on this spiritual path with my husband, we learned something important: don’t wait on anyone. Waiting means staying still while the world keeps moving. It means watching opportunities pass you by. So we chose not to wait for everything to feel “ready.” The universe, once again, put every sign we needed in front of us, until we understood: the best time is now.

We decided to let ourselves be shaped by travel and by the people we met along the way. You don’t need the stars to align perfectly to actually live your life — sometimes all it takes is a first step.

Let me show you that another way of living is possible: one that’s free, and aligned with who you really are.

Putting Down Roots in Portugal (2025)

After fifteen months on the road, we chose to settle in rural Portugal, to keep chasing that same simple, connected life — tied to the land and to our ancestors, rooted in minimalism and softness, in rhythm with the seasons. A few weeks after this decision, we found a land with a stone house ruin.

What’s Next

After one year of renovating it, two new things are already taking shape on the land for the next adventures.

A large bell tent is set to go up, meant for cacao ceremonies, sound healing, workshops, and small wellness gatherings held in person. Alongside it, we’re building a wooden cabin, for anyone who wants to come stay and experience this slow, rural way of life for themselves, even just for a few nights.

So depending on where you are, here’s how to stay close to what’s coming:

Nearby, or planning a trip to Portugal? Follow me on Instagram — that’s where I share what’s happening on the land, upcoming ceremonies, and the cabin’s availability.

Further away? Insight Timer app is where you’ll find me instead — guided meditations, sacred chants, and cacao journeys, wherever you are in the world.

My mission hasn’t changed since the beginning: to pass on what I know, to inform, to awaken. Looking back, I’ve realized that without losing my father, my mother and I might never have found this path at all. That grief, as much as it hurt, was part of what woke us up.

Sending you love,
Johanna

Cacao is an ideal ally for lucid dreamers and experiencers!

The 5 Portals to the Spirit of Cacao

1. The Sacred Drink: Circulation and Energetic Flow

This is the form we all know, but let me share what I’ve come to understand about what it really does. The drink moves like volcanic lava, straight into the heart, connecting to our inner waters, our own movement, our own flow. It helps when we feel blocked or stagnant, when something in our physical or spiritual body needs to start moving again.

My personal practice: I use this form for ceremonies, obviously, for opening the heart, releasing stuck emotions and energetic knots, and creating fluidity wherever there’s been rigidity. It’s especially transformative during transitions, or whenever our energy feels stuck.

Conscious preparation:

• 20–30g of ceremonial cacao

• Hot water (70–80°C)

• Mix or whisk with sacred intention

• Drink slowly, in full presence

The effect: an immediate opening of the heart, emotional fluidity, and better energetic circulation.

2. The Raw Bean: Grounding and the Blossoming of Intention

The bean is a sprouting, a blossoming intention. A new seed, something meant to grow. Its energy is deeply grounding, and it needs to be organic, and from an heirloom variety, to carry its full strength.

My personal ritual: I love biting into a raw bean whenever I have access to a fresh pod, to carry a new project forward, honor a new lunar cycle, or set an intention of expansion. The grounding effect is immediate, and it lasts.

Different ways to use the bean:

• Raw beans with their white pulp: if you have fresh pods, savor the sweet pulp and its almond-like heart. Pure, divine nectar.

• Roasted beans: more bitter, perfect for a daily grounding practice, or an energy boost before exercise.

Essential criterion: choose only heirloom varieties (Criollo or Nacional), organically grown, to get the full energetic strength.

3. Solid Cacao: Structure and Energetic Foundation

Let a small piece of cacao block melt directly under your tongue, exactly like eating a square of chocolate. This form carries a more structural kind of energy, ideal when you need to set a strong intention and a solid base.

When I use it: whenever I don’t have beans on hand, or the time to prepare a liquid brew.

Simple technique: I cut a 15–20g square and let it dissolve under my tongue, eyes closed, until it’s completely gone, then I give myself a few more deep breaths, or a chant.

The effect is subtle but remarkably steady: deep grounding, energetic stability, a solid foundation for your projects.

4. The Whole Pod: Protection and Sacred Gestation

I discovered this form of connection as a birthday gift from Mama Cacao, when I got the chance to harvest fresh pods straight from the tree.

My personal realization: the pod represents maternal protection and sacred gestation. Its oblong shape echoes the heart, and its tough shell holds pure love inside, the beans wrapped in sweet white flesh. It’s Mama Cacao made physical: a protective mother holding her children, the beans, in a cocoon of love.

What the colors mean: pods show off beautiful colors as they ripen, tender green, golden yellow, passionate red, earthy brown once dried. Each color carries its own medicine, and lines up with a different chakra.

In Maya tradition: ripe pods echo the female body; their red-violet color and white sap symbolize fertility, the essence of femininity, and the womb. In Maya iconography, the pod represents the female reproductive organ and the capacity to create.

How I use it personally:

• Keeping dried pods on my altar as permanent offerings

• Holding one during meditations on creation and fertility, whether for projects, intentions, or new life

• Meditating on the gestation of a project while holding a closed pod

When to use this form: for anything related to creation, protection, the gestation of a project, a need for maternal safety, or connection to the sacred feminine.

The effect: a deep sense of protection, connection to the divine feminine, and grounding in the natural cycles of creation and manifestation.

5. Pure Spirit Connection: Beyond Matter

Here’s the secret few facilitators share: you can connect with the spirit of cacao without any physical matter at all. Beyond matter, you open a direct relationship with the energy itself, with the subtle, simply by connecting to the spirit of cacao through meditation.

Connecting with the plant: once you’ve connected with sacred cacao through its physical form, you build a lasting bond with its spirit. The spirit of cacao becomes a guide, a companion for inner journeys, one you can call on the way you would an ancestor.

Meditative practice:

• Sit to meditate and chant

• Connect with your altar dedicated to this medicine

• Call the spirit of cacao through thought and intention

• Open your heart to its subtle presence

• Connect through representations or effigies of this plant spirit

This form is ideal when you don’t have physical access to cacao but still feel the pull of its medicine. It also helps develop your own natural intuitive abilities.

→ Accompany these subtle moments with my chants, meditations, and prayers, available on Insight Timer.

Other Traditional Forms Worth Exploring

Through my travels and explorations, I’ve come across other ways of welcoming this medicine that I wanted to share with you.

Cacao nib tea: these crushed bean pieces, steeped in hot water, offer a gentler connection, perfect for daily drinking. It’s what you’ll often find in artisanal teas labeled “chocolate flavor” or “cacao.”

Cacao husk tea: the skin left over after shelling the beans also makes a delicate infusion, similar to nib tea.

Cacao tepache (traditional fermentation): in Mexico, I discovered this fermented drink, where beans are fermented together with fruit. Its naturally low alcohol content (2–3%) makes it a medicine used in certain ancestral shamanic rituals.

Cacao shavings: once you’ve cut your block with a knife, these shavings can be sprinkled over fruit or blended into smoothies, a delicious way to bring this medicine into your daily food.

Listening to What Your Soul Needs

What I’ve learned over time is that our soul instinctively knows which form it needs. Here are a few markers I’ve noticed:

Each cacao shows up for you at a particular moment in your personal development, almost as if each variety matched a different stage of your spiritual evolution.

For specific intentions:

• Emotional release → hot sacred drink

• Grounding and new projects → raw bean, with intention

• Stability and structure → solid cacao under the tongue

• Spiritual growth → pure spirit connection

• Daily integration → nib tea or roasted beans

By time of day:

• Energizing morning: nib or husk tea, one or two roasted beans

• A mindful day: a piece of cacao under the tongue

• Sacred ceremony: traditional drink, up to 45g (for experienced practitioners)

• Meditative evening: traditional drink, 20–30g

Whatever form you choose, keep this sacred attitude: create a clear intention, thank the spirit of cacao and the ancestors who protected this tradition, and stay present enough to receive whatever comes through.

Plants respond when we speak to them, and open ourselves to their wisdom. Cacao, in all its forms, teaches us the many faces spiritual connection can take.

As you keep exploring, you’ll naturally find your own dance with these different forms. Trust what you feel, experiment with curiosity, and let Mama Cacao guide you toward whatever your soul needs.

May this diversity of connection enrich your spiritual path, and deepen your relationship with Mama Cacao. 🌿

If this post resonated with you, nearby or planning a trip to Portugal, follow me on Instagram, where I share ceremonies and updates from the land. Further away, you’ll find me on Insight Timer instead, with meditations, chants, and cacao journeys wherever you are in the world.

Johanna

The cacao industry has a dark side that isn’t always well known. The vast majority of commercial chocolate brands on shelves today use highly processed cacao beans, often from GMO varieties, grown and harvested by workers, often children, paid terribly little and living in extreme poverty.

That’s exactly why it matters to know where your cacao comes from, and to choose it consciously.

The Fundamental Difference: Ceremonial vs. Industrial

Ceremonial cacao goes through minimal processing, using traditional production methods rooted in Maya civilization. Without that traditional process, cacao paste wouldn’t retain the beneficial properties of its beans, and it wouldn’t produce that felt sensation in the body. These are exactly the criteria that make your cacao ceremonial grade.

True ceremonial cacao makes up less than 1% of the global cacao market. That rarity is also why quality cacao costs more than supermarket chocolate, around €45 for 450g.

The ancient civilizations of Latin America were closely tied to the land; they lived in harmony with nature and honored the environment around them. Fluent in the language of the earth, they asked permission before harvesting and hunting, and regularly offered prayers in its honor.

Cacao originates from Mexico, Central America, and northern South America (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana). Ceremonial-grade cacao paste carries far more beneficial compounds, because it’s made from a specific heirloom bean variety: Criollo.

The 6 Essential Criteria of Real Sacred Cacao

1. Origin and Genetics: Favor Heirloom Cacao

Varieties to look for:

Criollo: a rare, ancestral variety, and the most sought-after. Criollo, meaning “native” in Spanish, is the closest living relative of South America’s original cacao trees, and it’s also considered the finest cacao there is. More fragile than other varieties, it’s especially vulnerable to pests and disease.

Nacional: an Ecuadorian variety with a unique flavor. This legendary variety traces its genetic lineage back to the very first cacao trees domesticated by humans, around 5,300 years ago. After reaching worldwide fame in the 19th century, it nearly disappeared in the 20th. As recently as 2009, pure Nacional cacao was believed to be extinct. In the Piedra de Plata valley, one of the last surviving groves of 100% pure Nacional cacao was found, what geneticists now call Ancient Nacional. Known for its delicious floral notes and bright aromatics, it makes up just 1% of Ecuador’s cacao production. This variety carries a high vibration and a complex aromatic profile, grown from old cacao trees still standing in the province of Manabí, along the banks of the Portoviejo river, some of them over a hundred years old.

Trinitario: a balanced hybrid variety. Trinitario is a cross between Criollo and Forastero, originally widely grown in Trinidad, hence the name, and now cultivated across many regions, including Southeast Asia. Like Forastero, Trinitario cacao is hardier than Criollo, making it better suited to large-scale production.

Preferred regions of origin: Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, Bolivia. These regions still preserve traditional methods and heirloom varieties.

To avoid entirely:

• Industrial hybrid varieties (commercial Forastero)

• West African cacao grown in intensive monoculture

• Any cacao mentioning GMOs or genetic modification

2. Agroforestry vs. Plantation: The Environment Changes Everything

Cacao is a tree that thrives under agroforestry. When you choose cacao from an industrial plantation, its quality will drop considerably compared to a small farm with rich soil and a true agroforestry system.

Agroforestry (favor this):

• Cacao trees grown under natural canopy

• Preserved biodiversity

• Rich, living soil

• A balanced ecosystem

• Respect for natural cycles

Industrial plantation (avoid this):

• Intensive monoculture

• Deforestation

• Depleted soil

• Heavy pesticide use

• Exploitation of local communities

3. The Traditional Production Process

It takes about five to six months for the fruit to ripen before it can be removed from the tree with a machete, yes, it doesn’t fall on its own. The fruit, a large, beautifully colored pod, is split open to reveal big beans wrapped in white flesh.

Small-batch fermentation: the beans ferment for several days in wooden crates, covered with banana leaves. This fermentation turns their sharp bitterness into complex notes, and develops cacao’s psychoactive properties.

Sun drying: they’re then dried in the sun, never in industrial ovens, which destroy nutrients.

Gentle roasting: roasted over small wood fires or in home ovens, at low temperature, to preserve the active compounds.

Hand-shelling: shelled by hand as well, always by women, in keeping with tradition.

Stone grinding: finally, the bare beans are turned into a thick paste, ground the traditional way on a hot volcanic stone, accompanied by chanting, incense, and prayer.

Le cacao est un arbre qui prospère en agroforesterie, quand vous choisissez un cacao provenant d'une plantation, la qualité du cacao diminuera probablement comparée à une petite ferme avec un sol prospère et un système d'agroforesterie.

4. Fermentation: The Secret Behind Taste and Properties

Your cacao’s flavor depends on several factors, but the three main ones are the soil it grows in, the fermentation process, and the roast. Large cacao companies often over-roast their beans, which changes the nutritional value of your cacao.

Traditional fermentation (what to look for):

• Small-batch fermentation in wooden crates

• Covered with banana or maxán leaves

• A controlled duration of 3–7 days, depending on the variety

• Develops flavor and activates the psychoactive compounds

Industrial fermentation (to avoid):

• Large-scale fermentation, often skipped entirely

• A rushed process that destroys these properties

• No quality control over the flavor profile

5. Form: Paste vs. Powder

Cacao paste, which hardens into a block as it cools (recommended for ceremony): the difference between powder and paste is that the butter stays present in the paste. Cacao butter is an incredible carrier, since it improves how well the body absorbs all the remarkable nutrients sacred cacao offers. For medicinal use, keeping the butter intact matters.

Cacao powder (fine for everyday use): still a great addition to your kitchen, but it carries none of cacao’s ceremonial or energetic strength.

A block of sacred cacao from Keith Wilson, recognizable by its characteristic formations of cacao butter. Origin: Guatemala.

6. Certification and Ethical Traceability

Sacred cacao is an organic product. The producers and guardians of sacred cacao never use pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, and never modify it genetically. Doing so would make it unfit for ceremonial use, and would go against their ancestral teachings.

Certifications to look for:

• Certified organic farming

• Fair Trade

• Rainforest Alliance, for agroforestry

• Direct producer certification

Traceability you shouldn’t skip:

• Name of the farm or cooperative

• Precise region of production

• Harvest year

• The producer’s own story

• Detailed farming practices

Authentic ceremonial cacao can’t cost €10 a kilo. The traditional process, small-batch production, and fair trade all come at a real cost. Be wary of prices that seem too low, they often hide industrial production in disguise.

Warning Signs to Watch For

Suspicious pricing: “ceremonial cacao” with no precise origin, exaggerated health claims with no evidence behind them.

Misleading marketing: modern packaging with no producer story attached, blends with added sugar or other additives.

Questionable origins: West African cacao grown in monoculture, countries with no ceremonial cacao tradition, vague or unmentioned origin, blends of multiple, unspecified sources.

As a rule, people who genuinely work with this medicine are proud to share where it comes from, to highlight the land it’s grown on and the people behind the process. That information tends to come freely. If it doesn’t, ask.

On origin: What’s the exact farm? Which variety, Trinitario, Criollo, Nacional? Does the producer practice agroforestry? Is there organic certification?

On process: How does fermentation work? What’s the drying method? What temperature is the cacao roasted at? Is grinding done on a traditional stone, or mechanically?

On ethics: What percentage goes directly to the producer? Are working conditions fair? Is there a positive social impact on the community? Is the environment respected?

Getting Your Cacao Directly From Me

I don't sell my cacao online, or ship it. If you'd like to try it, the best way is to join one of my ceremonies, in person, where I hand it to you myself, the same way it's always been passed on, hand to hand.

A Final Word

Choosing your sacred cacao is more than a purchase. It’s a conscious act, one that honors the guardians of this ancient tradition, supports respectful farming practices, and guarantees you a genuine experience with this extraordinary medicine.

I pray that cacao, and our ancestors, keep breathing these values back into us, through every cup we drink, and every dream we have.

Take the time to choose well, ask the right questions, and trust what you feel. Mama Cacao will guide you toward what’s right for you. 🤎

If this post resonated with you, nearby or planning a trip to Portugal, follow me on Instagram, where I share ceremonies and updates from the land. Further away, you’ll find me on Insight Timer instead, with meditations, chants, and cacao journeys wherever you are in the world.

Johanna