Goddess Ixcacao
In the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica the Goddess of Chocolate has had different names and roles but has always been worshipped as a fertility goddess. Her Mayan name is Ixcacao and her story is not really an easy one to tell as she herself went through a lot of struggle. It’s a story about the creation of mankind, Mother Earth, the patriarchy, authority systems and the power of the feminine energy that is amplified when women join forces for a greater good. So did the Goddess of Love & the Goddess of Cacao.
The cultures of Mesoamerica tell the stories of Ixcacao, the mayan goddess of the cacao tree. She was an earth goddess in a matriarchal society and was adored by the common people as a goddess of compassion, abundance and fertility. During her time, the Mayans consumed a golden unsweetened liquor made of cacao beans also known as ‘xocolatl’. They believed that chocolate was a real gift from the gods and it should be available to everyone. So it happened that chocolate was drank by women before childbirth to give them strength and by soldiers before battles to make them brave. However with the arrival of the Aztecs and their patriarchal culture, Ixcacao was forced to marry the God of Commerce who turned her cocoa beans into currency and declared chocolate as the 'food of the gods’ available only to the elite, leaving the common people behind. Women in particular were not allowed to drink chocolate in order to control their sexuality since it was believed that cacao worked as an aphrodisiac. However it is said that the Aztec emperor Montezuma II, maybe the first confirmed chocoholic, drank about 50 cups of chocolate a day in order to be able to satisfy his numerous mistresses (sex slaves). But Ixcacao could not accept her peoples’ suffering caused by the greed of the privileged, so she joined with the Goddess of Love to fight the patriarchy and bring back abundance and love to all.
The ancient story about emperors, aristocracy, the imbalance of feminine and masculine energies reminds me a lot of what we see unfolding nowadays. That’s also one of the reasons I truly believe in the powerful feminine energy of cacao and that her medicine will be of great benefit for years to come. Years of change, of transformation and of remembering that true love can’t be manufactured, can’t be sold, can’t be manipulated, can’t be censored, true love can only travel from heart to heart. Cacao teaches us about the only language that transcends continents and galaxies, it’s the language of love. The wisdom of Ixcacao is a wonderful counterpoint to the hustle mentality of our modern world, the obsession with power and selling for profit. The Goddess of chocolate reminds us that true luxury is created inside of us when we are willing to step out of the hustle matrix, taking a moment to be still and engage in things which really give us pleasure and a sense of expansion.