CACAO ECSTATIC TRANCE

On Thanksgiving Sunday, we are opening a ritual container to enter communion with cacao, a living spirit that has emerged in these northern lands, bringing with her a profoundly important message–inspiring circularity, reunification, and revivification of the fundamental relatedness between all living beings. 

Then, anchored in our inextricable, living connection with the Earth - with ceaseless vibrations of a Siberian shamanic drum, countless djembes, tambours and other percussive instruments, and a central fire - we will raise the collective frequency and open doors to trance. All of this will be in a contained space. 

Date: Sunday October 12, 6:30PM-10:00PM

Venue: Hosted on the land of Henk & Sol Alaya Hausstein 

IMPORTANT NOTES: 

-This event varies from an ecstatic ‘dance’.

-To offer a space where a high-level of focus can be achieved, this event is for ages 13+ 

- For an optimal experience, we ask that you eat light the day of the event. Snacks will be served and you are invited to bring something to share around the fire during our group integration.

The Case for Ecstatic Trance

Human beings are not only rational animals; we are also ecstatic animals. Across time and culture, people have sought the trance state — not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Trance is a birthright. It is one of the most essential ways that human beings have made meaning, healed wounds, regulated intensity, and aligned themselves with the greater rhythms of existence.

When we look at history, ecstatic states are at the heart of culture. They forged bonds that held communities together, dissolving isolation through the shared language of rhythm, song, and movement. They became the crucible of myth and imagination, giving rise to the stories, symbols, and metaphors that still carry our deepest truths. They shaped rituals that honored the cycles of life and death, the turning of the seasons, and the reciprocity between humans and the more-than-human world. From these experiences emerged art, music, dance, and poetry — the great flowering of human creativity.

Trance has always been more than spectacle. It has been a medicine, a way to metabolize grief, anger, joy, and ecstasy within a sacred container, ensuring that what is dangerous when repressed becomes powerful when expressed. It has been a means of healing both the individual psyche and the collective body. It has guided societies toward values, norms, and systems of governance that claimed legitimacy not from coercion but from vision, insight, and the felt sense of the sacred.

The suppression of trance in modern times has not diminished the human longing for intensity; it has merely displaced it. Where ritual once carried our fire, we now see its shadow: addiction, extremism, violence, disconnection. The hunger is the same, but without containers of wisdom it devours us instead of feeding us.

To restore ecstatic trance is to restore balance. It is to return to a mode of being where humans remember their place in the cosmos — not as conquerors but as participants in a vast symphony of rhythm and resonance. It is to reclaim joy, catharsis, and vision as necessary for health. It is to honor the imagination as a force that shapes reality. And it is to heal the deep fractures of our age by remembering what cultures across millennia have always known: that to be fully alive, we must sometimes step beyond the ordinary, into the ecstatic.

EVENING SCHEDULE

6:30PM: ARRIVAL

7:00pm: OPENING CEREMONY

7:30PM: RITUAL WITH CACAO

8:00PM: INTRO & ENTRY INTO ECSTATIC TRANCE 

9:30PM: RETURN

9:15PM: GROUP INTEGRATION

ENERGY EXCHANGE:

Cacao teaches us the importance of reciprocity. 10% of all ticket sales will be offered back to the farms from which the cacao grows. Value generated from ticket sales help us offer back to the land hosting this event, pay for artists, materials, cacao and snacks. Your contribution goes a long way. 

Presale until October 3rd: $33

Presale for couples: $60

Regular price: $40/person

Regular price for couples: $70