Traditional Maya Cacao ceremony - a healing ceremony with the true ancient roots of the sacred fruit of the Gods

Join us for a ceremony led by Ajq’ij (spiritual leader), midwife and curandera Nana Rosalía Zavala and her son Kanec Zavala.

Cacao medicine makes us aware of the duality of life. Each plant, each medicine has its depth, its essence, its life. Many people talk about the medicine of cacao, but few listen to it.

We invoke each Nahual (20 energies of the Mayan calendar). Each of those energies will work with the cacao, creating a space that allows for us to detach from our pains, our past, our traumas, situations that we must leave behind. It allows us to flow little by little, it dances with life and with our own energy. 

Cacao has a depth which transforms blockages into seeds, it makes us see the balance of life. 

The ceremony is placed around the fire, because that is where the elements of Father Sky and Mother Earth are called. The sacred fire is the life of our spirit. Combined with the medicine of cacao, it is a thread of spiritual connection with all of life, giving meaning to everything.

These energies teach, protect, guide the space, allow harmony through the flowers we place around the fire, representing Grandfather Sun. 

Our ancestors didn't worry about diseases, they knew how to heal with cacao medicine, how to learn from pain and from difficulties. For the Mayan people, feeling pain is a deeper connection. Cacao is the energy that makes you feel strength, we have to learn from strength and we have to learn from weakness. Everything is a teaching, everything is a circle.

As well as cleansing, and helping us to leave things behind, the sacred cacao gives us energy, inner peace and helps us shift and create things. It opens our senses, it opens our nervous system to receive messages. It can shift our lives.

The traditional cacao ceremonies come from the Mayans of Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. This wisdom has been kept secret due to all the persecutions and massacres spiritual leaders suffered in Guatemala until 1996.

Text by Ixquick Zavala - Nana Rosalia’s daughter

October 12th is the day of Nahual IQ’ in the Mayan Calendar

IQ' is the air, wind. The day of the Heart of The Sky and the Heart of the Earth. Iq' is the mystical, spiritual breath of life, vital principle, inspiration, ideas and actions. It is the essence of the existence of all living beings. Day of the altars, sacred breath that gives strength and fills us with life-force.

The wind, element that governs ideas and changes. The cleanliness and purity of the crystal. It is the invisible space between matter, in our body. The window of the Mayan temples. It is the breath and the imagination.

IQ' is the wind, the ethereal, the inspiration that comes from the highest realms. 

The ceremonies on this day are to thank everything that is, the sacred nature and all of Creator’s work. 

The wind blows away suffering, illness and all evil and harm. 

The energy of this day is also appropriate for healing of psychological problems, heartbreak, hatred and depression. It is also a day to ask for protection in general and for our universal spirit to grow.

*Recordings will be available for those who can't make the live event.

***Please source your own ceremonial grade cacao and prepare it pure, without sugar, to drink during the ceremony. You can order 100% pure ceremonial Mayan cacao planted and harvested in a sacred way by Nana Rosalía’s family in Guatemala below.