When the Veil Grows Thin
Every year, autumn finds its way back into our lives. The light turns golden and low, the leaves let go of their branches, and the evenings draw in a little earlier each day. Nature is turning inward, returning to the earth all that is no longer needed. And in this quiet season of release, something else seems to come closer too.
I feel it every autumn now. A softness. A presence. As though the ones I have loved and lost are standing just behind me, close enough to hear me if I speak.
It was not always like this.
When I was younger, I never gave the afterlife much thought. I would not say I did not believe, but it all felt so far away from me that I never really had to go deep. Then, around my fourteenth birthday, my grandmother passed away. Not long after, my auntie, who was like a second mother to me and a dear friend, lost her battle with cancer, and soon her father, my granddad, followed her.
This is when, for the first time that I can remember, I could still feel them. Their presence. Their souls watching over me. And there were certain moments when connecting with them felt easier, as if a door that was usually closed had been left slightly open.
But it was not until my father passed away in 2022 that the veil between this world and the other became so much thinner. Every time I called upon him, I could feel him there. At times it was almost a conversation, a kind of telepathy. He came to visit me in my dreams many times, for comfort, for support, for guidance.
And then I noticed something I still find extraordinary.
The Mystery of the Number 13
In the Maya sacred calendar, the Tzolk’in, time moves through 260 days: 20 day signs, each meeting the numbers 1 through 13 in a never-ending, woven rhythm. Thirteen is the highest number in this count. It completes each cycle of thirteen days before the count begins again at one.
In the Maya calendar my birth sign is 13 Tz’ikin. Tz’ikin is the bird, often described by daykeepers as a messenger between heaven and earth. So perhaps it is no surprise that the number 13 has always felt close to me.
After my father passed, I began to notice a pattern. The days when he felt most present, when he would appear in my dreams or when talking to him felt effortless, were almost always a 13th day of the Maya calendar. I would be chatting away to him in my heart: Hi Dad, how is it going? I miss you. It is so beautiful here. And I would see him smiling, laughing. And then a thought would arrive: wait a second, what day is it again? I would check, and yes, of course. A 13th day.
In Maya cosmology, thirteen is woven through the sacred. Mesoamerican traditions speak of thirteen layers of the upper world, and many people who walk with the Maya calendar experience 13 days as a time of fullness and completion, when the spiritual realm feels especially near. I cannot prove why these days opened the door for my father and me. Perhaps it was his 13 meeting my 13. Perhaps it was simply love finding its way. But I have stopped needing to explain it. I just say thank you.
A Few Words About Me
My name is Sharon Fernie, and I am the founder of Herbal Cacao, a brand devoted to high-quality ceremonial cacao blends and the holistic wisdom carried by sacred plants. My path is guided by a deep love for holistic wellness and ancient traditions, and through the years I have been blessed to sit in ceremony with Maya wisdom keepers, people who carry the stories, prayers and teachings of their ancestors as a living practice, not a memory.
Through Herbal Cacao, it is our mission to support our community on their journey of self and spiritual discovery, spreading awareness about ceremonial cacao and the plant allies that walk beside her. Honouring the ones who came before us sits at the very heart of that journey. Cacao herself is an ancestor of sorts, a plant spirit who has been offered, shared and prayed with for thousands of years. Every cup carries that lineage.
What follows is my own lived experience and what I have learned from tradition. I am sharing, not teaching, and I invite you to take what resonates and gently leave the rest.
A Worldwide Remembering: How We Honour Our Ancestors
What moves me most is that this feeling, that our ancestors are still with us, watching over us, is not mine alone. In every corner of the world, across every culture and century, people have set aside sacred time to remember the ones who came before them. Different names, different foods, different songs. The same love.
Samhain: The Turning of the Gaelic Year
Samhain (pronounced sow-in) is an ancient Gaelic festival from Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, celebrated from sunset on 31 October into 1 November. It marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the darker half of the year. It was believed to be a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. Souls of departed loved ones were thought to return home, and in some homes a place was set at the table and food left out to welcome them.
Much of what we now know as Halloween grew from these roots. Beneath the costumes and pumpkins, there is still that older heartbeat: a night to remember, to welcome and to honour.
Día de Muertos: A Celebration of Life
In Mexico, Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is celebrated on 1 and 2 November. Families build ofrendas, altars filled with photographs, candles, glowing orange cempasúchil (marigold) flowers, copal smoke, pan de muerto and the favourite foods and drinks of those who have passed. Cacao is still a sacred offering in many homes, either as seeds representing abundance or as a cacao drink made with the ancestors’ favourite spices. The scent of the marigolds and the light of the candles are said to guide the souls home.
It is not a time of mourning, but of reunion. Families gather at graves, share stories, play music and laugh together with their beloved dead. UNESCO recognised these indigenous festivities dedicated to the dead as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.
Hanal Pixán: Food for the Souls
In the Yucatán, the Maya keep their own tradition, Hanal Pixán, which in Yucatec Maya means food for the souls. From 31 October, families prepare altars with candles, flowers, water, salt and lovingly cooked dishes such as mucbipollo, a tamal baked in an earth oven. First, the souls of children are welcomed, then adults, each with the foods they loved in life.
Cacao and the Ancestors
For the ancient Maya, cacao was an offering, a sacred bridge between the living and the dead. Archaeologists have found cacao vessels placed in royal tombs, including a beautiful lidded pot discovered at Río Azul in Guatemala, dating back around 1,500 years, which still held chemical traces of cacao inside. Cacao was sent with loved ones on their journey to the other world.
When I prepare a cup for my father, I feel part of that long, unbroken line. And for me, two lines meet in that cup.
My father was Scottish. Scotland is one of the lands where Samhain was born, where for centuries fires were lit on the hillsides as the darker half of the year began, and the ones who had gone before were welcomed home. So when the nights draw in at the end of October, I feel I am honouring him in the language of his own ancestors. His people, his soil, the old traditions of his homeland.
And then there is the other line, the one I was not born into but which found me. Through cacao, my heart was led to the Maya. I have sat in ceremony with wisdom keepers who greet their ancestors as naturally as we greet a dear friend, and through Herbal Cacao I work closely with cacao growing families in Guatemala and Belize who tend her just as their grandparents did. It was the Maya calendar that showed me my own sign, 13 Tz’ikin, and it was on those 13th days that my father came closest.
I do not claim these traditions as my own. I hold them with deep respect, as a guest who has been shown great kindness. But I have come to feel that the love behind them is the same love that lit the Samhain fires in Scotland. Different lands, different languages, the same remembering.
So on my altar, the two sit side by side: a candle for the fires of my father’s Scottish ancestors, and a cup of cacao for the Maya wisdom that taught me how to call him. And somewhere between the flame and the cup, I feel him smile.
And Everywhere Else
The list goes on and on. Obon in Japan, when lanterns are lit to guide ancestral spirits home. Qingming in China, when families sweep and tend the graves of their elders. Chuseok in Korea, Pchum Ben in Cambodia, and All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days across much of Europe, when cemeteries glow with candlelight. Wherever we look, humanity has always known: love does not end where life does. Our souls, our spirits, live on.
Why Remembering Matters
I very much believe that when we call upon our ancestors, they are there. And I believe that as long as we remember them, they are not forgotten in this physical realm. Our remembering keeps a thread alive between their world and ours.
They are also the ones who carried the stories of their own ancestors. The recipes, the prayers, the songs, the strength. Everything they lived through, the good times and the hard times, shaped who we are now. Honouring them is a way of honouring ourselves, and of understanding where we come from.
A Cacao Ritual to Honour Your Ancestors
As Samhain and Día de Muertos draw near, I invite you to set a moment aside to honour the ones who came before you. It does not need to be elaborate. It only needs your heart.
Create a small ancestor altar
Choose a corner, a shelf or a small table. Place a photograph of the loved one, or loved ones, you wish to honour. Add a candle, a few flowers (marigolds, roses or whatever grows near you), and perhaps a small object that reminds you of them: a piece of jewellery, a letter, a favourite treat. If you like, you can burn a little copal, the sacred resin the Maya have offered alongside cacao for centuries.
Prepare your cacao
Warm your water or plant milk, without letting it boil, and whisk in your ceremonial cacao until it is smooth and velvety. Prepare one cup for yourself and a cup for your ancestors to place on the altar as an offering.
The ritual
Light the candle. As the flame catches, say the name of the person you are honouring, out loud or in your heart. Names hold power. Speaking them keeps them alive.
Hold your cup with both hands and take three slow breaths. Feel the warmth travelling into your palms and towards your heart.
Send them your love and gratitude. Thank them for the life they lived and for all they gave you, knowingly and unknowingly.
Talk to them. Share the good times you remember. Speak about the challenges too, the ones that made you who you are now. Tell them what is happening in your life. You might even laugh together, as I so often do with my father.
Listen. Sip your cacao slowly and sit in the quiet. Notice any feelings, memories or images that arrive. There is no right or wrong here.
Close with thanks. When you feel complete, thank them once more. Let the candle burn for a while if it is safe to do so, and the next day, return the cacao offering to the earth, beneath a tree or in your garden.
A note on timing
You can do this ritual on any day that calls to you: on Samhain, on Día de Muertos, on a birthday or an anniversary. If, like me, you feel drawn to the Maya calendar, you might choose a 13th day. This year, according to the Maya count kept in the highlands of Guatemala, 13 Kame falls on 4 November 2026, just after Día de Muertos. Kame is the day sign of death, transformation and the ancestors. It feels like a beautiful day to sit with the ones who came before us.
Rooted in Reverence
Cacao has always been, for me, a doorway to the heart, and the heart is where our ancestors live on. This is part of why everything we do at Herbal Cacao begins with respect: for the plant, for the land, and for the Maya families who have cared for her for generations.
It is also why we give back through our 2% Reciprocity, so that the ancestral knowledge of the people who tend this sacred plant stays alive, carried by its own people. Honouring ancestors is not only about the past. It is about protecting what they gave us for those who come after.
If you would like to make this ritual part of your own season of remembrance, any of our ceremonial cacao blends can be your companion. Choose the one that calls to you.
Our ancestors are not gone. They live in our hands, our laughter, our stubbornness and our kindness. They live in the recipes we cook and the songs we hum without knowing why. They are there, listening to our prayers.
So this season, light a candle. Say their names. Tell them you miss them, and tell them thank you. And know, deep in your heart, that when our own time comes, we shall see them again.
With love,
Sharon
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I honour my ancestors at home?
One of the simplest ways is to create a small altar with a photograph, a candle and something your loved one cherished. Take a few quiet minutes to light the candle, say their name, share your gratitude and talk to them. Many people also cook a favourite dish of theirs or share stories about them with family.
What is the difference between Samhain and Día de Muertos?
Samhain is an ancient Gaelic festival from Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, celebrated from 31 October to 1 November to mark the end of the harvest and the start of the darker half of the year. Día de Muertos is a Mexican tradition celebrated on 1 and 2 November, rooted in indigenous and Catholic customs, where families welcome the souls of their loved ones home with altars, flowers and food. Both honour the dead and both hold the belief that our loved ones can draw near at this time of year.
Why is cacao used to honour the ancestors?
For the ancient Maya, cacao was a sacred offering. Cacao vessels have been found in royal tombs, such as the one discovered at Río Azul in Guatemala, and cacao is still offered in Maya ceremonies today. Sharing a cup with your ancestors is a way of joining that long lineage of remembrance.
Why is the number 13 sacred in the Maya calendar?
In the Tzolk’in, the 260-day sacred calendar, the numbers 1 to 13 combine with 20 day signs. Thirteen is the highest number and completes each cycle. Mesoamerican traditions also speak of thirteen layers of the upper world, and many who walk with the Maya calendar experience 13 days as a time when the spiritual realm feels especially close.
What should I put on an ancestor altar?
There is no fixed rule. Common elements include photographs, candles, flowers, water, a little salt, incense or copal, and foods or drinks your loved one enjoyed. A cup of ceremonial cacao makes a beautiful offering. Above all, include things that carry meaning for you and for them.
Sources and Further Reading
- Samhain, Wikipedia: overview of the Gaelic festival, its dating and associated beliefs
- Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (inscribed 2008)
- A Mayan tradition: Hanal Pixán, Yucatán Tourism
- Hall, G.D., Tarka, S.M., Hurst, W.J., Stuart, D. & Adams, R.E.W. (1990), Cacao residues in ancient Maya vessels from Río Azul, Guatemala, American Antiquity 55(1): 138 to 143
- Tzolk’in, Wikipedia
- The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
