We’re welcoming October with this month’s ritual report, sharing key dates to work with ceremonial cacao.
As autumn deepens, this month invites us to tend to our inner world, honor the people and lineages who came before us, and consider what we’re ready to release as we move further into the darker half of the year.
Keep reading to explore October’s most meaningful moments and discover simple cacao rituals for each one.
Explore This Month’s Ritual Companions
🍂 October Ritual Report 🍂
October 10 | World Mental Health Day
October 12 | Indigenous Peoples Day
October 23 | Scorpio Season Begins
October 26 | Full Moon in Taurus
October 31 | Samhain & Halloween
November 1 | Día de los Muertos
October 10 | World Mental Health Day
Most of us will move through periods when we’re struggling, whether or not the people around us can see it. Mental health is deeply personal, and sometimes simply having a safe place to be honest about how we’re actually doing can make a meaningful difference.
In a time when it feels we are constantly inundated with challenging news, on top of the normal stressors of being human, it can definitely impact our mental health.
One of the most supportive ways to move through dips in mental health is through community - by initiating social connection, even when it might be the last thing you want to do. This helps us see that we are not alone in what we are experiencing, which can be such a relief! So in honor of World Mental Health day, you’re invited to share a cup of cacao with a friend.
Ritual Idea: Invite someone you trust to share a cup of cacao and an honest conversation with you. Take turns sharing something you’re currently moving through, creating space for each person to speak openly about what has been challenging. As the other person shares, practice listening without judgment, advice, or trying to fix their experience. Let this be a space to simply hear and be heard, reminding one another that we don’t have to carry everything alone.
Recommended Cacao: Mystical Mushroom - calming, nourishing, and grounding, pairing with reflection, emotional care, and tending to your inner well-being.
October 12 | Indigenous Peoples Day
On this day, we honor Indigenous peoples across the world for their resilience, wisdom, and stewardship of the land. This includes the many Mesoamerican lineages who have carried cacao for thousands of years, keeping its traditions alive through cultivation, ceremony, and relationship with the Earth.
It is also an invitation to acknowledge the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands we now inhabit. Every place carries memory and lineage. Learning whose land we live on offers one way to deepen our relationship with place while honoring those who came before us.
And we can recognize that we all came from indigenous people - for some of us, those indigenous ancestors may be closer and for others they may be further back in our lineage. It’s also a good time to get curious about our own roots and the land-based practices of the lineage we came from.
Ritual Idea: Look up the Indigenous territories where you live using native-land.ca. Learn the names of the people connected to that land and spend a few minutes reading about their history and living culture. Prepare your cacao and step outside to offer a gesture of respect to the peoples lived on the land where you are long before you came, both the peoples whose names you can know and the peoples before them, whose names have been forgotten. Your offering can be a flower, song, prayer, water, or a small offering of cacao, whatever feels authentic to you.
Recommended Cacao: Boundless Belize - expansive and earthy, with a deep connection to cacao’s Mesoamerican roots, pairing with reflection, gratitude, and honoring the ancestral lineages of cacao.
Go Deeper: Read our blog Honoring Indigenous Peoples Day to learn more about cacao’s lineages and how to carry this awareness forward in your life.
October 23 | Scorpio Season Begins
Scorpio season pulls us inward to explore the realms of transformation, depth, and renewal. It is a season of shedding what no longer serves so we can meet ourselves more honestly. Shadow, mystery, intimacy, and power all live here, reminding us that death and rebirth are inseparable parts of the same cycle.
As autumn teaches us how to let go, Scorpio season invites us to do the same. What has reached its ending? What are we still holding onto? And what might become possible when we allow an old layer of ourselves or our lives to fall away?
Ritual Idea: Prepare your cacao and choose one area of your life that feels ready for transformation. Journal on these questions: What am I holding onto here? What makes it difficult to let go? What could become possible if I allowed this to change? Finish by naming one layer, habit, belief, or attachment you are ready to begin releasing during this season.
Recommended Cacao: Tantric Rose Blossom - sensual, heart-opening, and intimate, pairing with shadow work, emotional depth, and meeting transformation with compassion.
October 26 | Full Moon in Taurus (Hunter’s Moon)
The Hunter’s Moon marks a time of illumination, gathering, and preparation for winter. Full moons bring things into greater visibility, offering a moment to recognize what has reached fruition and what we are ready to release.
This year’s Hunter’s Moon falls in Taurus opposite the Sun in Scorpio, illuminating the tension between what feels solid and familiar and what is asking to transform. Taurus draws us toward the simple, tangible things that create nourishment, comfort, and security, while Scorpio asks us to meet the deeper layers of change, intimacy, and release. Together, they invite us to consider what is truly worth carrying forward and what has become too heavy to keep holding.
Ritual Idea: Divide a journal page into two columns: What Sustains Me and What I’m Ready to Release. In the first, write down the relationships, practices, resources, environments, and parts of your life that genuinely nourish and support you. In the second, name what you have been carrying that no longer feels necessary for the season ahead. Choose one thing from each column: one to intentionally nourish and one to begin letting go.
Recommended Cacao: Vibrant Vitality - exuberant, spirited, and strengthening, pairing with seasonal transition, intentional release, and carrying your energy forward into the months ahead.
October 31 | Samhain & Halloween
Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival marking the thinning of the veil between worlds, honoring ancestors, grief, and the cycles of death and rebirth. Our modern-day celebration of Halloween has roots in traditions surrounding Samhain.
During Halloween, while we playfully dress up in spooky costumes, the “darker” aspects of the collective consciousness come forward: ghosts, goblins, shadows, death, and even the parts of ourselves we often keep hidden. Rather than excluding or turning away from them, for one night they are welcomed as part of the whole.
There is something meaningful in that. Samhain and Halloween offer an opportunity to acknowledge that darkness exists alongside light, death alongside life, and grief alongside celebration. By making space for what is usually hidden, we can meet the full cycle with greater reverence rather than denying the parts that are more difficult to hold.
November 1 | Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
Día de los Muertos has roots in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures in what is now Mexico. This tradition invites us to remember and celebrate ancestors and loved ones who have passed by creating altars, sharing their favorite foods, displaying photographs, telling their stories, and making offerings in their honor.
Rather than separating death from life, Día de los Muertos brings remembrance into the center of celebration. We speak their names. We tell their stories. We remember what they loved and the lives they lived. In doing so, grief and celebration are allowed to exist together, and those who came before us remain part of the stories we continue to carry.
Ritual Idea: Create a simple altar to honor your ancestors or loved ones who have passed. Include cacao at the center, surrounded by photographs, candles, flowers, autumn leaves, favorite foods, or meaningful objects. As you drink your cacao, speak their names aloud, share a memory or story, and offer gratitude for something their life made possible in yours.
Recommended Cacao: Oaxacan Spice - celebratory and warming with cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cayenne, pairing with remembrance, ancestry, gathering, and connection with those who came before us.
October Invocation: The Wisdom of What Remains
Autumn teaches us that letting go is part of the cycle of life.
The trees do not hold every leaf.
The Earth does not remain in bloom.
The light does not stay the same.
And neither do we.
October brings us deeper into the season of release,
asking us to notice what is ready to fall away
and what remains when it does.
There are things worth carrying forward:
the wisdom passed down to us,
the relationships and practices that nourish us,
the parts of our lives that still feel alive.
And there are things whose season has ended:
old identities, stories we have outgrown,
and ways of protecting ourselves we no longer need.
There can be grief in letting go,
and gratitude for what carried us here.
We do not have to rush toward what comes next.
There is wisdom in the space between what has ended
and what has not yet begun.
So as the days grow shorter
and the Earth draws inward,
may we honor what came before us,
give thanks for what continues to sustain us,
and let what has completed its season return to the Earth.
May we trust what remains
and carry it with intention
into the darker months ahead.
