Ceremonial-grade Cacao in Starbucks?

Time to stand up for what we believe in.

Ceremonial Cacao is unlike anything you have known before, if it is sourced appropriately, processed traditionally and prepared intentionally - and I am here to enlighten you about it all!

With a cacao company being sponsored by Dragons Den in the UK (TV show) we finally arrived at the stage I have been predicting since 2017: Ceremonial Cacao goes mainstream.

Which is something I am equally happy and scared about.

More about the specific cacao brand and what I think about honouring our teachers and what the cacao spirit wants us to do: further down.

Happy because, well finally I can talk about my number 1 favourite superfood and psychoactive plant companion with my partner´s great aunt - after buying them a glass blender and sharing all tricks about preparing a great cup of cacao for years because I truly believe it can ease her anxiety and help her in finding lifes spark again after a period of grief - she seems to finally appreciate the gesture and even her husband started drinking it!

Happy because I think my dad finally considers my profession as a cacao teacher and ceremonialist as valid work.

Happy because my work flourishes with more people experiencing and getting excited about cacao.

Happy because it is a stepping stone towards my dreams:

Football stadiums filled with cheerful fans sipping cacao instead of bullying each other and causing havoc when their team looses. Offices filled with people creating for the higher good of the world, whilst generously sharing their business profits with people in harsher circumstances. War not being used as a money making affair but conflicts being resolved because people are taking responsibility for their actions, have honest conversationsa dn soothe their own emotions.

To be fair, this might still take a decade or two hundred but hey, the path is paved for it now!

SCARED because, actual ceremonial grade cacao with its incredible biodiverse origin, rich nutrient content and magically spirited effects that can heal addictions, helps with conflict resolution and leads to sovereign living from love instead of fear, SIMPLY CANNOT BE COMMERCIALISED:

Making ceremonial grade cacao a commodity will take the ceremonial (aka ethical, reciprocal, spiritual and traditional) aspect away whilst capitalising on the unprotected term and watering down the potent medicine cacao can be.

Leading to a mass movement of half informed wellness practitioners and influencers who market themselves as cacao ceremonialist without having experienced or embodied its full spectrum because they most likely use a cheap monocultured highly processed bitter variation of chocolate (hello, exploitation here we go again) branded as cacao because companies now know how to make money from marketing the term.

By now, you might either be at the front of your seat, grateful to have found me and start an incredible journey with integrity - or put off by my intense passion, wondering what I am making such a fuss about. Hear me out:

When you are interested and genuinely care for your wellbeing and that of others, there will be uncomfortable truths you get to face. Be it, the realisation of conditioned behaviours or belief patterns that hold you back from living a healthy life or the amount of time and energy it takes to not simply follow or give in to the easy route but swim against the stream. At least for a moment until you find your own little crew of funky rainbow fishes or get used to the change of direction because you built up strength and resilience.

When I first saw a local Glastonbury coffee shop advertise their cacao after I had approached them to suggest they stock ceremonial grade cacao as our town is soooo ready and asking for somewhere to buy a cup (its a hippie heaven, everyone is high on something and I cant believe I was the first to suggest that to the local coffee shops), they took all the information on board (inclduing my preferred preparation method and insider tips), but didn´t buy the proper stuff and actually continued offering cocoa powdered drinks. But labelling it “cacao”.

Which it is by the way. Cacao is the plant, cocoa is a modern variation of the word which refers to highly processed powder. However even that is technically still cacao. What gets to me though is that they did it, knowing it would be perceived as “oh they have ceremonial grade cacao, as the cacao scene simply says cacao instead of chocolate or cocoa.

Then I saw another coffee place do the same and after asking what cacao they used, I was told oh just some organic cacao powder.

This is where consumer discernment comes in.

Please don´t give your precious money away to what they sell you, unless you know what it is. Marketing can be devils craft, selling the soul of society. But it is never more powerful than your discernment. Yes, the beautifully packaged recyclable card board with green writing and ecological key phrases looks so trustworthy. But it is up to you to read the ingredients, research the sourcing and go the extra mile. Which takes effort.

Why should you make the effort? Because it is a) your money, b) your body.

When we buy these packages we think we do soemthig good. We believe what they tell us. And thats great, as believing in the good of the world is what we should strive for, but it is also being taken advantage of. Unfortunately there are companies and institutions and people out there that use our goodwill for their benefit. Some even bluntly lie. Because thats how they make most money in a capitalist society.

It is sad but it does not leave us powerless. On the contrary. The more we are willing to put in the work that it takes to discern, the more we reclaim our sovereignty and actually do good in the world!

To make it a bit easier for you, I am here.

I´ve done the research (and continue to do more), have the experience and am training cacao practitioners with a background education from the origin place of ceremonial grade cacao and the person that established what we nowadays know as a cacao ceremony.

So, welcome! I am happy you found me and it is my absolute pleasure to be writing about all you want to know when it comes to ceremonial cacao, sacred space and leadership.

For inner work, mythology and practical magic please hop over to my personal Substack

Laura Durban

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Here at

Kakaozauber | Cacao Enchantment

I aim to create a space to refer to for any question about cacao, especially now that it becomes mainstream.

So please hit reply and send me any questions YOU have about this magic elixir! And please recommend and share my publication so we can make it mainstream, too in order to inspire integrity and actual change in us, others and our environment.

For the love of nature, its inhabitants and our potential future.

Upcoming articles:

• Effects and Expectations when working with ceremonial grade cacao

• The origin of cacao ceremony and a tribute to Keith Wilson

• Oatmilk or no-milk, this is the question

• From numb to magic, how to listen to your body and activate your healing potential

• Cacao dosage for beginners and long time lovers

• Cacao in pregnancy, postpartum and beyond

• How we can honour the Cacao Spirit and drink cacao with reverence

• Preparation hacks and favourite plants to combine with cacao

Read further for more on the hot topic of Cacao going mainstream!

About Cacao and honouring its origins.

Liam, founder of fullpowercacao discovered cacao through Keith Wilson, alongside lovely Angela who I am quoting below. He mentions Keith as his teacher on his socials but what I find intriguing is that no where is mentioned that The Chocolate Shaman Keith Wilson has indeed his very own cacao - why start your own business if you could support one that is already so beneficial?

Many different reasons could be the driving force, I want to believe it is all about making cacao more accessible and supporting other countries rather just Guatemala but one cannot ignore the profit that people have in focus when promoting a product on Dragons Den (the US pendant is Shark Tank and in German its called Die Höhle der Löwen). Investors will only invest if the get big money out of it, which by default already defeats the idea of ceremonial-grade cacao which is supposed to establish harmony between humans and nature and requires a certain level of integrity and eventually the end of capitalism.

Keith lived in a one room shed (with his sweetheart Barbara!) in Guatemala which literally had a bed and a cooker in it, plus an outdoor toilet and his famous porch and little garden. That´s it. He has not founded Keith´s Cacao to make more profit and upgrade to a mansion on Lake Atitlán to join the rich expats of San Marcos La Laguna - he simply wanted to retire and keep supporting the local community by enabling job opportunity and financial benefits. Bless you Keith and rest in peace, (he died on Jan14th) may your legacy continue to provide for dear Barbara and your incredible team.

I am not saying we all should live in one room sheds - although I am all for basic living and love a good one room apartment ;) - I totally believe that more money should be made by spiritual entrepreneurs, health practitioners and small businesses (instead of big companies that exploit our planet and people) WHEN they are in integrity with their work. Which in the cacao scene has to be by bringing forth change!

I believe if we truly want to be in alignment with the Spirit of Cacao and restore the harmony between humans and nature, there is simply no room for capitalism.

This doesn´t mean we can´t be living beautifully and abundantly, it just requires transparency and willingness to question and change the exploitative system we currently live in which does not have the best interest of our planet and its inhabitants in mind.

I believe those that make big profits are supposed to carry a bigger responsibility of restoring balance and have to agree to making smaller margins and equal distribution.

Now, lets hear from Angela Economakis, who as a devoted and long term student of Keiths has important things to share about people who learned and benefitted from Keith but don´t spread the word about his cacao (which you can get here by the way) and instead start their own brands:

“I think there’s going to be a fundamental bottleneck every time Keith’s work which attracted those of us that had a connection to the cacao spirit not just because of Keith but potentially were always going find Cacao as a heart medicine to work with, meets the implications of what their actions mean in cold hard business. 5 days before I ever met Keith, I had been told in another medicine journey that I would land ‘5 days from now in a place and become a medicine carrier’.  I had no idea what that meant until Keith, 5 days later, literally reiterated the words of the entity, along with his identity, telling me we shared the same etheric guide and I was to ‘come back to train with him’ as a result. It was cacao spirit that showed me the visions directly of the expansion of the ‘porch’ and of cacao in the world that led to the Cacao Tribe being created as a network that then went global. Keith had doubted whether it would even be necessary at the time! 😂 But others of my generation like Liam (who was at the Dragons Den) and so many others were guided in their own way by cacao spirit to source other sources of sacred cacao from different locations in the cacao growing world. It didn’t mean it was by default or necessarily bad cacao, or less sacred in its ceremonial value because Keith himself wasn’t channeling the location of the beans. In fact I believe it was quite the opposite: it demonstrated the power of what Keith had channeled from the cacao spirit. She never said he was the sole guardian or source of knowledge of the only cacao on the planet. She did say, according to Keith, that she would eventually spread across the world and be in every location as common as Starbucks! ‘She’….. not specifically Keith’s cacao beans only. Because if we take it that only Keith’s cacao is sacred, then one has to wonder what’s gonna happen now since Keith isn’t around to select the magic beans from the less energetically amped farmed ones or at the very least, to place his hands and blessing on the blocks. 

I most definitely and ardently agree that all should give the credit, where the credit is due and it was a big source of frustration for Keith when people who had trained with him then lifted content from his page and never credited him even with a thank you. 

It’s not a straightforward issue and it is one where spirituality transects with commerce in an inconvenient way it seems and where perhaps an element of falling back on some of Keith’s original principles of trusting the unfolding where it’s supposed to go for the highest good, is a preferential approach to ‘attempting to micromanage and control and manipulate the outcome’ ~ another common thing we would hear day in and day out on the porch. 

If integrity is truly behind all these people sourcing and promoting alternate cacao beans, then it will all work out in a beneficial way, at all levels, for everyone involved. If it isn’t, again, as Keith used to say: ‘you don’t need to be the executor of karmic justice!’ 😉

Thank you for reading - this is all for today, I hope I sparked an interest and an ongoing conversation which fosters change in this world!

Laura Durban is a devoted Cacao Ceremonialist, professional Teacher experienced Facilitation Mentor. If you wish to train alongside her and become confident in sharing ceremonial grade cacao with the world and making a difference or integrating this magnificent heart medicine into your own healing journey, please take a look at THE MAGIC OF CACAO: https://lauradurban.com/cacao-training/

Lauras two week Cacao Dieta will begin in March for those keen to dive deep with the Spirit of Cacao and embody its teachings. Founder Members of Kakaozauber will be given free participation!