Cape Cacao

24/05/2026

From the lush, emerald heart of the Guatemalan jungle, a sacred cacao origin is lovingly offered from the hearts of the Q’eqchi Maya people to our community in South Africa.

Cape Cacao is honoured to stock this ceremonial-grade cacao from Tuqtuquilal - a regenerative centre rooted in the rainforest of San Agustin Lanquin, Alta Verapaz. This cacao is the energetic embodiment of “tuqtuquilal”, a Q’eqchi word meaning harmony and natural flow.

Every block of this cacao carries the prayers, wisdom, and traditions of the Maya people - an ancient lineage steeped in reverence for land, Spirit, and the interconnection of all life.

Fran developed a beautiful connection with Tuqtuquilal cacao while staying with the community during her pilgrimage in Guatemala. Connecting with the plant spirit, Fran felt a deep resonance, a soul-knowing that this was a sacred partnership in the making... a bridge between worlds, cultures, and sacred ways.

We enjoy each cup of Tuqtuquilal cacao with deep respect for the Maya communities who tend and process this cacao, and reverence for the wisdom of the traditions of their lineage. Heart-to-heart in gratitude.

🫖 But there's more: light + earthy Mayan Cacao Tea!

We’re also excited to offer you something truly unique - an aromatic chocolate-flavoured tea made from the husks of these ceremonial beans.

After fermentation and sun-drying, cacao beans are gently toasted over an open fire. This ancient practice connects the elements of fire and air to the alchemy of cacao. Once cooled, the women of the Q’eqchi community carefully hand-peel each bean.

The husks are then gathered and offered as a delicious tea with a slightly "toasted" flavour.

💫 Simply steep the husks in hot water and sip slowly - a cosy companion to meditation, journaling, or soft moments of solitude.

🌿 100% ethically and personally sourced
🌿 In service to Maya culture, wisdom and land
🌿 Fermented, sun-dried, hand-peeled and blessed
🌿 Final ritual blessing before reaching you

Ceremonial-grade Cacao and Mayan Cacao Tea available on our webshop www.capecacao.com/shop (link in bio).

20/04/2026

As part of honouring the gentle rhythms of the Feminine, we will only be offering one immersive experience this year: Our sacred pilgrimage to Bali — the land of the gods, and the heart of our Jembrana cacao origin.

This pilgrimage a homecoming of reconnection: with land, plant spirit, and self.

From 23-28 August, we will sit in daily cacao ritual under swaying palms, meet the farmers who tend our ceremonial cacao with love, and be guided through heart-opening practices in sacred space.

You are invited to walk with Mama Cacao at source — held in the embrace of our Balinese family, guided by the wisdom of farmers, artisans, and teachers, and nourished by the fertile land that cradles this heart medicine.
​
✨ We rise with the sun and drink cacao in circle.
✨ We visit the trees, taste the fruit, and meet the farmers who tend them.
✨ We witness fermentation and the transformation of beans into ceremonial paste.
✨ We learn the art of offerings and altar-making, guided by Balinese cosmology.
✨ We rest, reflect, and integrate through meditation, reflection practices, and stillness.
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​This pilgrimage is not a retreat. It is a living prayer.​
And now, we open the invitation for you to join us.

Bookings close 15 May, or when we are full (we have 2 spaces left).

Link in bio to our website for details🤎☕️

20/01/2026

Snippet from our Cacao Training with Fran #

19/01/2026

Our trainings honour Cacao as a sacred medicine, and we have been called to offer this knowledge in a way that is respectful to both people and land. While you will learn all the science of Cacao as a superfood for physical health as part of the training, our focus is predominantly on personal development and spiritual connection.

We work in reverence, integrity and respect to all of life, learning about '"right relationship" and trusting the wisdom of our hearts in response to the breathing world which we are a part of.

Join Cacao Alchemist and Medicine Woman, Fran Siebrits, as she shares her wisdom on this plant ally, learning all about the origin, history, uses, and how to connect deeper through sacred ritual and ceremony with ixCacao.

🪶Level 1🪶 Practitioner Training
•PRIVATE CONTAINER 2 months
•Become a Cacao Practitioner
•Learn hold a solo at-home Cacao Ritual

🪶Level 1 & 2🪶 Facilitator Training
•PRIVATE CONTAINER 4 months
•Become a Cacao Facilitator
•Learn how to hold space for others in Ceremony

📍 Online ceremonialist training
📚 Self-study modules and regular live sessions
🗓️ Private Training year-round by application
💌 Inquire via email [email protected]

ANY QUESTIONS?

📞 Book a Free 15 minute "Explore Call" with your trainer, Fran Siebrits.

✨️ LINK IN BIO ✨️

♡

19/01/2026

The core of what we stand for is reflected in the relationships with communitues and lands which are the sacred origins of our Ceremonial-grade Cacao.

CEREMONIAL-GRADE is a term we use in modern culture to distinguish:

✨️INTEGRITY
✨️QUALITY
✨️RESPONSIBILITY
✨️RECIPROCITY
✨️HARMONY

Cape Cacao is based in South Africa 🇿🇦, and so we source our Ceremonial-grade Cacao through partnerships we've developed in the tropical Cacao lands of >>>

1. Bali 🇮🇩 and 2. Guatemala 🇬🇹 >>> to bring these ethically and personally sourced ceremonial Cacao origins to your home.

Each origin carries its own essence, shaped by climate, culture, and ceremony...

🍫🌴 Our Balinese Cacao is smooth, creamy, and subtly floral — grown in the island’s Jembrana region by small-scale family farmers whose prayers bless the cacao at every step, from the seeds to the harvested and sun-dried beans that gets processed into paste.

This is the Cacao many of you have come to know and love — light, soft, heart-opening and energetically balancing. She is also the cacao origin we have worked with the longest at Cape Cacao, and we deeply value our relationship with her.

🍫🫕 Our Guatemalan Cacao carries the deeper earth-tones of the Lanquín Valley in Alta Verapaz. Tended by Mayan families and lightly roasted over traditional open fires, it offers a more grounded, bitter complexity, with light hints of citrus and vanilla. It also encourages the energetic fire element to strengthen.

This Cacao joined our Cape Cacao family after Fran’s pilgrimages to Guatemala where she sat in many fire ceremony with indigenous elders - and the spirit of the medicine called to come home with her.

❤️🙏🏽 Both Cacao origins are true. Both sacred.

We don’t offer one as “better” than the other - but rather as distinct expressions of a shared Spirit. We invite you to meet each one, to listen with your heart, and to feel which ally calls to walk beside you.

▵ Our Ceremonial-Cacao Cacao origins form a sacred triangle, between Guatemala, Bali, and South Africa... and the Spirit of Cacao will meet you wherever you are at.

Read more / purchase via the link in our bio.

05/01/2026

21/12/2025

To our community, thank you!
Blessings on your transition into 2026 ♡

18/11/2025

Our Cacao Trainees are into their second month of training with Fran, our founder and educator.

This educational container is a 6-momth journey exploring the world of cacao and ceremony.

www.capecacao.com/cacao-training

10/11/2025

Cacao from Africa is NOT ceremonial-grade!

A question we often get asked is "can Cacao from Africa be ceremonial-grade?"
From our ongoing research we have sadly realised that Africa does not produce a "ceremonial-grade" Cacao from bean to paste at origin (yet... we live in hope this will change in the future as we would love to support a closer-to-home source).

The term "ceremonial-grade" is most closely associated with the historical and traditional use of cacao in Central America (where our Guatemala origin comes from), and modern "ceremonial" cacao is defined by its integrity in the entire process, from cultivation to processing, as well as a cultural reciprocity with the natural world (which is true of the cacao from our Bali origin).

Africa has a history of exploitation and industrial-scale over-harvesting for the mass-market chocolate industry, which contrasts with the ideal of small-scale, respectful farming, and social reciprocity required for ceremonial grade.

It is important to have a healthy amount of skepticism about labels of African origin that claim to be "ceremonial-grade", especially the origins from certain African countries where human trafficking related to Cacao farming is still ongoing.

But even if labour and farming practices are sound, most social-enterprise system and regenerative farming areas in Africa sell Cacao beans for export - this means that the grinding of beans into paste is not happening at origin location, let alone country of origin, thereby removing potential jobs from communities as well as changing the energy (beans are removed from source before being transformed into paste, thereby not holding the entire frequency of land and culture).

Modern ceremonial cacao emphasises a contemporary understanding of integrity, which is not only sustainable and respectful farming practices, direct relationships with farmers, and processing methods that preserves the bean's natural qualities, but most importantly that cacao growing communities still live an animistic connection with the natural world and an earth-based cultural cosmology.

While there are some wonderful organisations assisting in soil regeneration and community empowerment through Cacao farming and social enterprise, it will take a long time for a harmonious state of land and communities to be the reality. For example, certain organisations are working to provide higher-quality, ethically sourced cacao from regions like Tanzania, but it still faces challenges in truly achieving the integrity of ceremonial-grade cacao, and we feel a lot more information is needed on these "ceremonial" products.

Previous (and current) exploitation of people, their culture and traditions, as well as land and natural resources, has cast a long shadow which will need time and dedication across the socio-political-economic future.

We are constantly remaining updated in the world of Cacao, and are committed to our service by only offering Cacao from ethical sources, which meet the criteria of "Ceremonial-grade". Until such a time as things improve in Africa, we continue to support the work of our Cacao partners in Bali and Guatemala who honour Cacao, the land, and their cultural traditions with the utmost integrity.

We hope this can be taken in the spirit in which it is intended - to honour the Spirit of Cacao, to educate, to learn and grow together, and to make sure that all of us continue to work with and share this beautiful heart medicine with integrity.

Please share this with anyone who you feel would benefit from this education.

♡ Cape Cacao

03/11/2025

You are invited ~ all details on our website (link in bio)

For inquiries email: [email protected] (no DMs)

Spaces are limited ♡