Where does the cacao ceremony come from?
People have used cacao for around 5,300 years. But the cacao ceremony most of us know is far more recent. For me, both facts matter if you want to honour the plant and the people it comes from. And if we’re using cacao and profiteering off of it, it means this historical, cultural and societal understanding of cacao is as important as the safety information we share too. So, let’s have a quick whizz through the history. I go into this more in the 1 day facilitator course.
Cacao began in South America
The oldest evidence of people using cacao comes from Santa Ana-La Florida, in the upper Amazon of Ecuador. Pottery from the Mayo-Chinchipe culture holds cacao starch, theobromine residues and ancient cacao DNA, dated to about 5,300 years ago (Zarrillo et al., 2018). Established. Cacao then travelled north. In Mesoamerica, the Mokaya and Olmec peoples were drinking it around 3,900 years ago, about 1,500 years later. This means it’s older than we originally thought, and I’ve updated my teaching materials to reflect this.
Carl Linnaeus named the tree Theobroma, Greek for "food of the gods", in 1753. Theobromine, cacao's best-known compound, is named after the tree.
The Maya and the Mexica
During the Classic Maya period, about 250–900 CE, cacao was written as kakaw on painted drinking vessels. It was served at feasts, marriages and funerals, offered to the gods and placed in burials. The drink was frothed by pouring from a height and flavoured with chilli, flowers and honey. Established. Soil chemistry suggests the Maya also tended sacred groves of cacao inside humid sinkholes in the northern Yucatán, where the tree would not otherwise grow (Terry et al., 2022). Emerging.
Cacao could not grow in the highlands around the Mexica (Aztec) capital, Tenochtitlan, so it arrived as tribute. Beans were used as currency, and the drink was associated with nobility, warriors and merchants. Established. Mexica tradition tells that Quetzalcoatl brought cacao to the people as a gift from the gods, and in the Maya Popol Vuh cacao is among the foods of the mountain of sustenance. Traditional.
Colonisation and the chocolate bar
Spanish colonisers met cacao in the early 1500s. The drink reached the Spanish court, was sweetened with sugar and spread across Europe in the 1600s. In 1847 Fry's of Bristol made the first solid chocolate bar, and in 1875 Daniel Peter created milk chocolate in Switzerland. Colonisation also broke many of the Indigenous traditions that had held cacao for millennia. Established.
The modern cacao ceremony
The cacao ceremony practised in the West today grew largely from the gatherings Keith Wilson held at Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, where he taught travellers to prepare cacao and sit with it (Mental Floss). Keith died in 2024. Established. There is no single ancient template behind today's ceremonies.
This is why I avoid the phrase "traditional cacao ceremony". It claims a lineage that does not exist, and it can slide into appropriation. Cacao ceremonies are what you make them. There is no right or wrong, as long as you honour the plant and the people who grow it. That includes understanding how and where your cacao is sourced.
Honouring the roots in your own practice
So, how might you do that? There are a few good places to start…
Learn the history of the land your own cacao comes from, and the stories told there. If you use a good supplier, they should be able to provide all the information you need for this. Yes it takes time, but this is about creating a rich, ethical and grateful practice.
Credit the sources of prayers, songs and practices you use. Perhaps email the sources to people afterwards so they can discover more themselves, or pop a QR code somewhere so people can read in ceremony.
Describe your ceremonies honestly. "A cacao ceremony I hold" is truer than "an ancient Mayan ritual".
Know who grew your cacao and what they were paid. Today's growers are part of the story too and there’s a lot of issues around child labour especially in many cacao farms.
The history of cacao is, in my opinion, the most important part of my CMA accredited Cacao Training & Ceremony, and it opens the day. The course relaunches in 2027. Sign up on the course page to hear about dates first.
