Cacao 2003 — anatomy of an invention

La vraie histoire du cacao, et celle qu'on raconte depuis 2003. Démêler — pour mieux célébrer.

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La vraie histoire du cacao, et celle qu'on raconte depuis 2003. Démêler — pour mieux célébrer.

— La vraie histoire du cacao, et celle qu'on raconte depuis 2003. Démêler — pour mieux célébrer.

— Respect for a tradition begins with the refusal to invent a tradition in its place. It is by that precision that the ritual stays honest. —

§0 · A crack to begin with

You've taken part in a cacao ceremony, or you've heard of one. You were told it was a millennia-old Maya ceremony, that the cacao was drunk in a circle, that the spirit of the plant was invoked, that you were stepping into a tradition reaching back centuries, perhaps to Quetzalcoatl. Someone probably spoke of “opening the heart.” Someone else may have said the Maya called it the “food of the gods.” And you felt something real — the warmth in the chest, the slowing down, the tender circulation through the group. What you felt was real. The cosmology sold to you alongside it is, in large part, invented. The crack is there. You don't have to choose between the experience and the lucidity. This article gives you both.

What the Maya and the Mexica actually did with cacao

Let's begin with what is true, sourced, peer-reviewed. Cacao has been sacred in the Mesoamerican civilizations since at least 1900 BCE — archaeological theobromine residues found in Olmec pottery (Powis et al., PNAS 2007). Among the Classic Maya (250–900 CE), it was used in precise ritual contexts: marriages, funerals, political treaties between cities, human sacrifices, diplomatic exchanges. It served as currency (cacao beans circulated as small change throughout the region up to the 16th century). And it was consumed as a thickened drink, fermented or not, to which other plants were added: chili, vanilla, achiote, ear-flower (Cymbopetalum penduliflorum), yauhtli (Tagetes lucida), sometimes balché.

The context of consumption among the Maya and Mexica is very precisely documented in Chocolate in Mesoamerica (McNeil, ed., 2006), the reference academic volume. What does not appear there, because it never existed: a format of a “cacao circle with heart-opening facilitated by a guide.” The Maya ritual format is ceremonial-political-religious, overseen by trained priests, tied to temples, to precise calendar dates, to specific sacrifices. It bears no resemblance to the contemporary cacao ceremony. It matters to state this without ambiguity.

2003 — the date of the invention

Now, the genealogy of the invention. The format we call “cacao ceremony” today has a date, a place, and a name. Date: 2003. Place: Big Island, Hawai'i. Name: Keith Wilson, a British national settled in Hawai'i since the 1990s. It was he who formalized — his site Keith's Cacao claims it explicitly — a format of a hot cacao drink taken in a circle with a “set intention” and facilitation. He began training facilitators around 2007–2010. The format spread quickly through yoga, neo-shamanic, and festival circles in Europe and North America from 2010–2012. The commercial boom came around 2015–2018.

Wilson is not dishonest in the narrow sense — he does not claim, on his site, to transmit a pre-Columbian Maya tradition. He says he receives cacao as a “plant medicine” and shares it in a format he developed. But the narrative that settles into the market around his format gradually erases that nuance. The facilitators trained in the third, fourth, tenth generation sell the ceremony as a “millennia-old Maya tradition,” an “ancestral ritual,” a “sacred heart ceremony of the Ancients.” The false memory becomes consensual. No one lies deliberately at any precise point. Everyone reproduces the received narrative.

Twenty years later, the industry is massive. More than a hundred “ceremonial cacao” brands on Amazon, trainings at $2,000–$5,000, retreats at $3,000–$8,000 a week. And at the heart of this market, a false collective memory: that the format goes back to the Maya. No academic source supports it. The majority of facilitators have never checked. This is how invented traditions are born — not through concerted lying but through a laziness of verification, multiplied by an economic interest.

Why this is a problem

One could say: so what? If the format does some good, the origin doesn't matter. Three serious objections to this indifference.

First objection — ethical. To sell a format invented in 2003 as a millennia-old tradition is, strictly speaking, an aggravated cultural appropriation. You don't draw inspiration from a living tradition by naming it; you borrow the prestige of a living tradition (the Maya) to sell a Western format, without the living Maya receiving either recognition or revenue. Carl Cowl, in his thesis at Naropa (2019), documents several statements by K'iche' and Yucatec representatives asking the market to stop attributing this format to them. They are rarely heard.

Second objection — epistemic. The false collective memory destroys the very possibility of knowing the true tradition. When a majority of practitioners is convinced that the contemporary cacao ceremony is the Maya tradition, the work of serious ethnobotanical archaeology (xocoatl, balché, pre-Columbian political contexts) becomes inaudible. The rumor smothers the source. It is exactly the mechanism by which civilizations die in the memory of others.

Third objection — practical. The false memory is a poor counsel. If you believe you are doing “what the Maya did,” you are not listening to cacao as it presents itself to you, in your life, in 2026, in your kitchen. You are playing a scene. The scene has its charm — but it prevents the true encounter. The honest ritual begins with the refusal of the scene. Cacao has a great deal to say; she does not need you to dress her up in a folkloric costume.

Fourth objection — economic. The Keith Wilson format has generated, since 2010, an industry that today weighs several hundred million euros worldwide. From that flow, almost nothing reaches the living Mesoamerican communities — Lacandon, K'iche', Yucatec, Tzeltal — who are the direct heirs of cacao's pre-Columbian practices. When a European facilitator sells a three-day retreat at €1,200, the Indigenous grower of the bean he serves receives, on average, less than 80 cents per kilo of raw bean. The ratio between the value generated by the narrative (“millennia-old Maya ceremony”) and the value returned to the named lineage is, mechanically, indecent. Not in the individual intention of the facilitator. In the structure of the market.

Fifth objection — second-order epistemological. When the false collective memory is sufficiently entrenched, the Indigenous voices themselves find themselves, paradoxically, constrained by it. Several K'iche' representatives interviewed by Cowl (Naropa, 2019) recount that European or North American tourists, come to seek “the real Maya ceremony,” are disappointed when they discover that contemporary Maya cacao practices bear no resemblance to the Keith Wilson format — less staging, less verbalized “heart-opening,” more of a political-communal dimension and less of a therapeutic-individual one. The false memory shapes even the demand that addresses itself to the real heirs. It is, perhaps, the most perverse effect of the whole operation.

What INFUSE chooses, and why

INFUSE has worked with cacao from the start. Not as “ceremonial cacao” in the Keith Wilson 2003 sense. As cacao, plain and simple — grown respectfully, prepared with care, drunk in company or alone, within a ritual frame when the need is felt, without a frame when the moment doesn't call for it. Four explicit editorial and commercial commitments:

One — INFUSE does not use the label “cacao ceremony” or “ceremonial cacao” in the Keith Wilson sense in its products, its communications, its trainings. The word “ceremony” in the contemporary sense is misleading; we avoid it. When the word “ceremony” appears in our texts, it is precisely qualified — historical pre-Columbian Maya ceremony, or an owned contemporary INFUSE ceremony, never the conflation.

Two — when we speak of the Maya and the Mexica, we cite the academic sources (McNeil, Coe & Coe, Carrasco, Freidel-Schele) and we strictly distinguish the documented pre-Columbian practices (xocoatl, balché, ritual kakaw) from recent contemporary practices. No confused fusion. Respect begins with precision.

Three — our cacao is sourced from identified growers (a named region of origin, transparent harvesting conditions), not through opaque intermediaries. We give the traceability. This is not enough to redeem three centuries of colonization, but it is the minimum ethical baseline for a trade that claims to be honest.

Four — when we offer cacao in the company of other plants (damiana, blue lotus, rose, yauhtli), we name the format for what it is: a contemporary INFUSE composition, respectfully inspired by the documented Maya xocoatl without claiming to reproduce it. Transparency about the owned blending is, for us, the only ethic possible when you do not belong to the source lineages.

What you can do — without giving up your practice

This article isn't asking you to stop drinking cacao in a circle. It's asking you to do it with lucidity. Three simple adjustments that change the posture without changing the practice.

Adjustment one — change the word. Stop saying “Maya cacao ceremony.” Say “cacao circle,” “cacao moment,” “contemporary cacao ritual,” “cacao sharing.” These words are true. They lie to no one — not to the living Maya, not to you. Lexical precision is the minimum ethic.

Adjustment two — check your cacao. Where does it come from? Which country, which cooperative, which way of harvesting? If the answer is “pure ceremonial cacao” with no further detail, change supplier. Truly good cacao comes from identifiable cooperatives (Lacandon in Mexico, K'iche' in Guatemala, Kuna in Panama, Asháninka in Peru). The fair price sits between €35 and €60 a kilo. Below that, the chain is probably abusive. Above it, the brand is pocketing more than the grower.

Adjustment three — if you facilitate circles, say so clearly. “This is a format I learned in the Keith Wilson 2003 lineage,” or “This is a format I composed, drawing respectfully on several traditions.” That short sentence, spoken at the start of the circle, restores the dignity of the practice. The participants deserve to know where they are. And you stop carrying a false authority that weighs more than it brings.