The Dark Side of Chocolate

The myths of Ixcacao, the Goddess of Chocolate were about as dark as they could get. Enslavement, natural disasters, civil wars, economic collapse and the human sacrifice (of children, no less) were all part of her story.

Ah, but that's all in the past, or so you might think . . . chocolate is the ultimate 'feel good stuff'.

Only one problem . . . well two, actually. . . that we ought to be really concerned about. The first is the issue of:

Health and Ecological Concerns (including our treatment of farm animals)

I belabored this point in the earlier posting in response to an email I received. If you missed it, check it out below. Bottom line is "dark" chocolate is the good kind, saves you a world of guilt about what you're doing.

Indentured Servitude and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry

Most of the chocolate candy we consume is made from the cheaper chocolate made in the Ivory Coast where children from neighboring countries are kidnapped or bought and forced into labor on plantations. The children don't even know what it's used for and have never had a taste of its wonders ... much like in the myths of Ixcacao, the Goddess of Chocolate, when eating chocolate was forbidden to women and children.

Major chocolate companies such as Nestle's and Hershey's, say that since the Ivory Coast is a sovereign nation they will continue to buy their chocolate there because they don't wish to damage to Ivory Coast's fragile economic system. Yeah right!

Carol Off, author of the book, Bitter Chocolate, traces the troublesome story of the growing of chocolate in a fascinating interview with CBC (Canada). It's well worth checking out the interview. How you can help:

Petition your government for improved trade practices (require a label on chocolate saying no children were abused in the making of this cocoa, perhaps?)

Restrict yourself to the healthy kind of chocolate.

It's more expensive ('tho it's much, much richer and a little bit will go a very long way and satsify even the most crazed chocoholic). Some brands to look for include Dagoba's, ChocoLove, Vosges and there are many others if you search.

Fair trade is, I suppose, the only way to go. Check the labels.

You Can't Make 'Em All Laugh

I'm always mystified (and somewhat dismayed) when I encounter people who don't seem to have a sense of humor. Sometimes I'm wrong though and my knee-jerk reaction initially led me to judge them unfairly.

Sometimes they, like the greek goddess Arachne, are simply speaking the truth as they see it. And they care deeply about important issues. I admire them for their courage in speaking out.

Following the mailout of a humorous (obviously tongue-in-cheeek) piece on the diet we were given by the Goddess of Chocolate (ie, the health benefits of chocolate) I got this email from a newsletter subscriber:

I enjoy reading info about Goddess in Her many names and forms.

However, I think it's interesting you have included a comment about milk (dairy) in some (most) forms of chocolate. Maybe you are not informed as to the health dangers (especially for women) of dairy for human consumption, and for the poor tortured, abused, enslaved cows used for dairy. The danger includes all dairy from any source, organic, factory farms, free range (which is a lie anyway), etc... it's all bad. This is an epidemic of astronomical proportions for cows, humans, and the Earth Herself.

The first and most important point is that mother's milk is made for only the specific child of that mother (her own offspring and species). That being said and considering the oft mentioned comments of (what about wet nurses?), the next important point is that NO other species consumes (on it's own) the milk of another species and NO other species consumes milk after they are weaned!

All milk contains casein; a toxic ingredient of milk (basically a glue which leads to a lot of mucous build up and other health problems like asthma and congestion). All milk contains pus, blood, bacteria, the possibility of bovine spongiform encephalitis, fat and cholesterol, growth hormones, deadly chemicals, biological bacterial agents, insecticides, antibiotics (that are not safe or needed for human's, and would not even be necessary if cows were not used in this way), it's well documented as a cause for diarrhea, cramps, bloating, gas, gastrointestinal bleeding, iron-deficiency anemia, skin rashes, arteriosclerosis, and acne. It is the primary cause of recurrent ear infections in children. It has also been linked to insulin dependent diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, infertility, and leukemia.

There are many sights which you can become more aware of the harm of dairy, such as PETA, milksucks.com, vivausa.org, and more like Robert Cohen's book Milk The Deadly Poison, if you choose to research.

Cows are wrongfully subjugated and enslaved for the purposes of humans, so we can feel comforted. Their milk does us much harm rather than any good. I believe Goddess/Mother Earth would want Her women to support the other exploited females of Earth, let alone all the used, abused, enslaved, tortured, and murdered animals of both genders for all the different reasons; food, sports, clothes, other products for human consumption... and all from something that was never meant for human consumption in the first place.

Another sad point is that these cows are taken from their artificially inseminated (I.E. RAPED) mothers all too young and never get their own mother's milk (neither the female nor the male calves). The Mothers and the calves moan and cry for one another to no avail. The females are taken and over fed to grow too soon and be turned into female raped breeder/milk slaves and when they are too used up (they are tortured and must be kept pregnant... one after the other each babe stolen away), they are then sufferingly, painfully, cruelly, gruesomely, murdered and the mothers ground into hamburger for humans. The males are either bolted through the brain and left to die in a ditch or kept starved and anemic, fed blood, kept in a tiny dark box so weak their legs crumble and bust beneath them, to keep them the right color for veal.

The above mentioned is only a tiny portion of the suffering that cows are forced to go through for humans. This doesn't even begin to cover their torturous pseudo-lives and they are just one species of animal. All other animals used for human consumption are tortured and suffer and die on the behalf of those humans who consume their bodies and body products.

Please consider that when you send your good messages of Goddess that there are other important messages to send along to, messages that are Goddess messages, like the safety and health of Goddess's women, children and men, and the unnecessary misuse, abuse, and torture of Goddess's animals. Dairy is not health food!!!

I and my family have been eating and living meat, dairy, and animal product free for over a year and are happy, well fed/nourished, and helping to spread the word for humans and animals; we are all of the Goddess!!!

My comments:

Let's get straight about one thing. Chocolate has a light and dark side—literally. Milk chocolate, for example, has none of the health benefits and all of the risks. They're loaded with sugar (not even real sugar, usually it's that poisonous high fructose stuff) and unhealthy fats . . . empty calories, at the least.

Dark chocolate (bitter, semisweet) is a different story. It's the REAL chocolate, the kind the Goddess of Chocolate was all about.

And she wants you to know that the higher the percentage of cocoa powder the better. Look for 70% or more. An added benefit: you get away from all the ethical issues surrounding dairy products that Jackie has so eloquently outlined in her letter.

Meditations on
the Goddess of Chocolate:
Confessions of a Crazed Chocoholic

I've a confession to make. It might help you to understand what I've done with the story of the Goddess of Chocolate that I recently posted at the website and why.

In the beginning I thought that writing the myths of the Goddess of Chocolate shouldn't be this hard. Dare I say it: It even ought to be FUN!

Gee, was I ever wrong -- and in for quite a ride. Over a year in the making, it is a sad and moving story about working too hard, the inequitable distribution of wealth, war, greed and excess leading to the eventual collapse of several societies where the Goddess was revered.

The Mayans, the Toltecs, the Olmecs, the Aztecs and the conquering Spaniards . . . whose cradle rocked the goddess first? Which version should I tell?

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

~ Carl Jung

OK, so it was Carl Jung who said that. But he must have been channeling the archetype of
the Cocoa Goddess...I'm sure of it!

I take the appearance of this quote on my calendar at this time as absolute synchronicity and a clear message from God/Goddess/Spirit to pull up my big girl pants, take a stand one way or the other, and pull myself out of the fudge!

In other words, to do a good job of telling the story and make it flow and capture the "spirit" of the goddess and her times, I made free use of my first amendment rights (aka, "poetic license") and didn't bother over-much with the details of the bio-socio-geo-political background.

Let's just say that, like all archetypal characters, the Goddess of Chocolate was a gal who really got around! Wherever she went on her journey and whichever name she usedwhile she was there, she made the changes to meet the needs and beliefs of thepeople who embraced her.

So, to all of you to whom it really matters whether or not I got the correspondence of the gods and goddesses' names and cultures and the order of their appearance "right", you may be dismayed with the liberties I've taken. But please do enlighten us with your knowledge about the Goddess of Chocolate (and the issues surrounding her) by leaving your comments below. Some would really like to know/understand this stuff. It just kept getting in the way of the story so it's just not in my JD (job description) at the moment.

Now let's all grab a cup of cocoa and get together to discover the myths of the Goddess of
Chocolate in her many guises.

Synchronicity . . . gotta' love it!

There I was typing away on the latest issue of the Goddess Gift E-zine featuring the "Forgotten Goddess",Hestia, Greek Goddess of the Hearth) when my inbox pinged that I had new mail coming in.

That email made it Synchronicity-squared. (More on the email later)

Paying attention to synchronicity is my usual modus operandi in deciding on the subject matter for the newsletter. I try to pay attention to anything unusual or challenging that's happening in my life at the moment, while asking myself "Which Goddess is trying to tell me something important?"


All too often I have to ask "And what the heck is She trying to say?" as well.


But not this time. The issue was chillingly clear. Her message was clearly, "Sharon, you need to get more FIRE in your life. Literally!"


Now the Goddess didn't mean passion (either sexual or motivational), but real, live fire. The kind in the hearth. So it was pretty obvious that it was Hestia I was supposed to be channeling as I wrote.


Not a big surprise since our heat pump had just imploded during an unseasonable cold spell here in the mountains. And the company we've always dealt with had the audacity to say it'll be 4-5 weeks before they can install a new unit. Brrrrrr!


So, thanks Hestia, for sending the message. I pulled up my big girl pants, fired our old company and finding a young upstart company to do the job next week!


Moral of the story: This, my friends, is why it's always a good idea to be on a first-name basis with a goddess!
(A good place to make their acquaintance is our free monthly newsletter. So take us up on the invite to Subscribe by using the button on the right.)


And about that email that was pinging away all this time . . . it brought the welcome news of a mystery solved.

A reader of last month's entry on the Iron Jawed Angels wrote to inform us that the original author of the circulating email was none other than Connie Schultz who first published it as a column titled "And you think it's a pain to vote," which ran in Cleveland's Plain Dealer Feb. 19, 2004. Many thanks to Anon. for sharing that information in the comment below.


Enough for now. I go to through another log on the fire. Sharon

A friend of mine sent me an email that's been circulating for a few years. The original author is unknown.

It's about the women who became known as the “Iron Jawed Angels” and about the HBO film of that name. (See the video clip below.) It’s a harrowing story, but one that will inspire you. These American 'goddesses' risked all to gain the right to vote for women. We should honor their courage.

Politics has always been an ugly business. Personal attacks create gain in the public arena. It works through fear to promise safety. It reduces us to the most superficial self-defining and calls that democracy.

But the political process also reminds us that each of us matters, hearing our voices to determine who will stand in place to represent our national character. . . an opportunity for each of us to make a difference in the world.

WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited.

She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory.
Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly?
We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?
Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use , or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.

A Clip from Iron Jawed Angels