Journal du cacao

Your August Ritual Report Has Arrived!🌻

We’re welcoming August with this month’s ritual report, sharing key dates to work with ceremonial cacao.

As summer continues, this month’s holidays, seasonal shifts, and lunar cycles offer opportunities to appreciate what we’ve cultivated, honor the people and experiences that have influenced us, express what matters to us, and create space for reflection and release.

Keep reading to explore August’s most meaningful moments and discover simple cacao rituals for each one.

Explore This Month’s Ritual Companions

✨ August Ritual Report ✨

August 1 | Lammas/Lughnasadh

Lammas, also known as Lughnasadh, marks the halfway point between the summer solstice and fall equinox, a powerful threshold of late summer. Traditionally associated with the first harvest, gathering, and gratitude, this seasonal transition offers an opportunity to recognize what has ripened in our lives and appreciate what is nourishing us.

Ritual Idea: Bring the harvest into your ritual by preparing cacao alongside something seasonal from your garden, farmers market, or local landscape. As you drink, name what you have personally cultivated since the beginning of summer, whether a relationship, creative project, new habit, or commitment to yourself. Choose one thing that deserves to be celebrated and share that harvest with someone else through a meal, conversation, gift, or gathering.

Recommended Cacao: Oaxacan Spice - celebratory, elevating, and warming, pairing beautifully with gathering, gratitude, and community.

August 9 | International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples recognizes the rights, cultures, knowledge systems, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples around the world. For those of us who drink ceremonial cacao, this day also offers an opportunity to deepen our understanding of cacao’s history and honor the Indigenous peoples whose relationships with cacao extend back thousands of years. We are deeply grateful to the Indigenous peoples who recognized the sacredness of cacao and tended this relationship - including the Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, Toltec, and Marañon peoples.

Ritual Idea: Learn something about the origin of the cacao in your cup before you drink it. Find the region on a map and read about the people who grow cacao there today. (We share quite a bit about the culture and land of each cacao’s page on our website, so that is a great place to start!). Before you take your first sip of cacao, you’re invited to offer gratitude for the wisdom of Indigenous peoples and then go outside and offer the first sip of your cacao back to the Earth in reciprocity.

Recommended Cacao: If you have Boundless Belize on hand, we recommend working with this cacao as it’s grown by Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Maya farmers who have intricate knowledge of the forest as a living ecosystem. (We’re currently out of stock of Boundless Belize but will be restocking soon and will let you know when it’s available!)

August 12 | New Moon in Leo + Total Solar Eclipse

August’s New Moon in Leo coincides with a total solar eclipse, when the Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun and completely blocks the Sun along the path of totality. New moons mark the beginning of a lunar cycle, while Leo is associated with creativity, courage, leadership, and self-expression. Together, this moment invites us to let go of any aspects of self that are performing (Leo’s shadow) so that your authentic self-expression can clarify itself without an audience.

Ritual Idea: Choose one idea, project, or form of self-expression you’ve been thinking about but haven’t acted on. Prepare your cacao, write down what you want to create and why it matters to you, then identify the first tangible step required to begin. Before you take action, clarify for yourself what about this self-expression is most authentic and parse out if there are any aspects that feel performative. Then with that clarity, before the end of the day, take that step, whether that means starting the document, sending the message, making the plan, or putting an idea into motion.

Recommended Cacao: Vibrant Vitality - exuberant, spirited, and strengthening, pairing with creative expression, leadership, and the stamina to bring ideas into action.

August 26 | Women’s Equality Day

Women’s Equality Day commemorates the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which prohibited denying the right to vote on the basis of sex in the United States. The day honors generations of women who fought for greater political equality while recognizing that the work toward equal rights and opportunity continues.

Ritual Idea: Choose one woman whose courage, work, or leadership expanded what became possible for others. Learn something about her story that you didn’t know before, then prepare your cacao and write down one quality you admire in her. Consider how that quality already exists in your own life and choose one way you will practice it this week.

Recommended Cacao: Thriving Tanzania - for the strength to take forward action and continue the long term movement toward equal rights.

August 28 | Full Moon in Pisces + Partial Lunar Eclipse

The Full Moon in Pisces coincides with a partial lunar eclipse, which occurs when Earth moves between the Sun and Moon and part of the Moon passes through Earth’s darkest shadow. Unlike a total lunar eclipse, the entire Moon does not enter this shadow.

Astrologically, Pisces is associated with intuition, imagination, compassion, and surrender, while the full moon marks the culmination of the lunar cycle. This moment of completion is about finally releasing whatever's been asking to be let go around boundaries, over-control, or the gap between what you feel and what you actually do.

Ritual Idea: Divide a journal page into three sections: complete, continue, and release. As you drink your cacao, review the month and place the commitments, ideas, habits, or experiences you’ve been carrying into one of the three categories. Choose one unfinished task to complete, one priority to carry into September, and one thing you’re consciously choosing to stop giving your time or energy to.

Recommended Cacao: Illuminating India, etheric, undulating, and spacious, pairing with devotional practice, reflection, and creating space for what comes next.

August 30 | National Grief Awareness Day

National Grief Awareness Day brings attention to the many ways grief appears in our lives. Grief extends beyond the death of someone we love. We also grieve relationships, places, identities, opportunities, seasons of life, and versions of the future we once imagined. Giving grief intentional space allows us to acknowledge what has been lost rather than expecting ourselves to move past it on a particular timeline.

Ritual Idea: Choose one loss that still carries emotional weight and create a small ritual of remembrance around it. Prepare cacao, light a candle, hold a photograph or meaningful object if you have one, and write a letter naming what you miss, what the experience gave you, and what you wish you could say now. When you finish, close your ritual in a way that brings you back into the present, such as stepping outside, eating a nourishing meal, taking a bath, or spending time with someone you trust.

Recommended Cacao: Mystical Mushroom - calming, nourishing, and grounding, pairing with emotional processing, healing, and practices that reconnect you with your body.

Discover Cacao for Reflection & Connection

August Invocation: What We Carry Forward

August arrives at the height of summer, when what was planted in the spring is ripe and ready for harvest.

Some things are ready to be gathered and celebrated.

Some are asking for our continued devotion.

Others have reached their natural completion.

This month invites us to notice the difference.

To recognize what has grown through our care.
To honor the people, traditions, and experiences that have made our lives possible.
To give our creativity somewhere to go.
To acknowledge what we have lost without rushing past it.

We are always carrying something forward.

The wisdom we have received.
The courage we have witnessed.
The relationships and experiences that have changed us.
The ideas that are ready to become something more.

And we are always choosing what no longer needs to come with us.

May you honor what has brought you here,
Celebrate what you have cultivated,
Give your creativity the courage to move,
And release what has completed its season.