Journal du cacao

Your September Ritual Report Has Arrived! 🍂

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

As summer begins its transition toward autumn, this month invites us to consider what we’ve gathered from the season behind us, where our energy is being spent, what deserves our gratitude, and what we want to carry with us into the months ahead.

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

Explore This Month’s Ritual Companions

✨ September Ritual Report ✨

September 1 | National Forgiveness Day

National Forgiveness Day offers an opportunity to look at where resentment, regret, or unresolved hurt may still be taking up emotional space. Forgiveness doesn’t require forgetting or condoning what happened or reconciling a relationship. It can be an internal process of deciding what weight we no longer want to keep carrying in service to our own freedom.

Ritual Idea: Prepare your cacao and choose one situation that still feels unresolved. Write down what happened as simply as you can, then underneath it, name what you are still carrying from the experience, such as anger, guilt, disappointment, self-blame, or an expectation that things should have gone differently. Ask yourself: What would forgiveness mean for me in this situation? What am I ready to stop carrying, even if nothing about the past changes? Finish by writing one statement that names what you are choosing to release or relate to differently moving forward.

Recommended Cacao: Mystical Mushroom - calming, nourishing, and grounding, pairing with emotional processing, forgiveness, and healing.

September 7 | Labor Day

Labor Day honors the generations of workers whose labor has built and sustained the communities we live in, along with the people who fought for safer working conditions, fairer treatment, and time for life outside of work. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on our own relationship with labor. So much of our time and energy goes toward creating, providing, building, caring for others, and keeping life moving. Today offers a reminder that rest has a place alongside effort, and that our worth isn’t measured by how much we accomplish in a day.

Ritual Idea: Let your cacao accompany a genuine period of rest today. Choose one block of time when you will step away from work, errands, household tasks, and anything you feel obligated to accomplish. Take your cacao somewhere you enjoy, whether outside, into the garden, onto the porch, or alongside a favorite book or creative activity. Before you begin, write down one thing you appreciate about the work you do and one way you want to better protect your time or energy around that work going forward.

Recommended Cacao: Illuminating India - etheric, undulating, and spacious, pairing with devotional practice, spaciousness, and time away from productivity.

September 10 | New Moon in Virgo

September’s new moon arrives in Virgo, an earth sign associated with discernment, organization, devotion, and the details that make up our daily lives. New moons begin a new lunar cycle, making this a useful moment to look at the routines, systems, and habits supporting us and to refine what is ready for an upgrade.

Ritual Idea: Choose one area of your daily life or of your physical space that currently feels cluttered, inefficient, or harder than it needs to be. As you drink your cacao, write down what is currently happening, identify the specific point where things tend to break down, and decide on one practical change to make for the next lunar cycle. Keep it small enough to repeat consistently, such as preparing something the night before, protecting a particular hour of your day, simplifying a routine, cleaning out an area that has become cluttered, or removing one commitment.

Recommended Cacao: Thriving Tanzania - focused, clarifying, and uplifting, pairing with discernment, refinement, and taking action.

September 21 | World Gratitude Day

World Gratitude Day offers a moment to recognize how much of our lives is made possible through others. The people who support us, the land and food that nourish us, the experiences that have changed us, and the small moments of beauty we encounter each day can easily become part of the background. Gratitude is woven into cacao ceremony, inviting us to acknowledge the many hands, relationships, and living systems that bring cacao to us and extend that appreciation to all that supports our lives.

Ritual Idea: Prepare your cacao and write down three people who have contributed something meaningful to your life recently. Beside each name, write exactly what you appreciate about them or what they offered you. Then choose at least one person and express that gratitude directly before the end of the day through a message, phone call, handwritten note, or another gesture that feels meaningful.

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

September 22 | Autumn Equinox

The Autumn Equinox marks the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere and the point in Earth’s orbit when day and night arrive close to equal length. From here, the nights gradually grow longer as the season moves us away from summer’s outward energy and toward autumn’s themes of harvest, preparation, and transition.

Ritual Idea: Bring two seasonal objects into your ritual, such as leaves, apples, flowers, seeds, or stones. Let one represent where most of your energy has gone over the summer and the other represent something you want to give more attention to this autumn. Place your cacao between them and reflect on what would create greater balance between the two. Write down one concrete adjustment you want to make as the season changes, then place the two objects somewhere visible as a reminder.

Recommended Cacao: Tantric Rose Blossom - potent, sensual, and heart-opening, pairing with balance, emotional connection, and the transition into autumn.

September 26 | Full Moon in Aries

September’s Full Moon arrives in Aries opposite the Sun in Libra. Aries is associated with individuality, instinct, courage, and direct action, while Libra emphasizes relationship, cooperation, and balance. At the culmination of the lunar cycle, this polarity brings attention to the relationship between honoring our own desires while staying connected to the people around us.

Ritual Idea: Divide a journal page into two columns: What I want and What this relationship or situation requires from me. Choose one area of your life where those two currently feel in tension and write honestly in both columns. Then identify where you have either been overriding your own needs or moving forward without enough consideration for the other side. Choose one direct next step, such as naming a need, setting a boundary, initiating a conversation, or making a decision you’ve been postponing.

Recommended Cacao: Vibrant Vitality - exuberant, spirited, and strengthening, pairing with courage, direct action, and forward movement.

September Invocation: The Wisdom of Transition

September arrives as summer begins to give way to autumn.

The days are still warm, but the light is changing.
What has grown through the summer is being gathered.
And the season ahead is beginning to make itself known.

This month invites us to notice where we are in the transition.

To appreciate what has sustained us.
To find greater balance between effort and rest.
To tend to the rhythms and practices that support us.
To make space for what we want to give our energy to next.

There is gratitude in recognizing what is already here.

The people who have supported us.
The experiences that have taught us.
The abundance we sometimes move past too quickly.
The simple things that continue to nourish our lives.

And there is wisdom in allowing our own rhythms to change with the season.

May you give thanks for what has sustained you,
Find balance in where your energy goes,
Honor what this season has given you,
And welcome what begins to unfold next.