VeeJay 
Hat tip to friends Daren and Rhoda who, thanks to a recent generous wedding anniversary gift, stumbled across this amazing find buried deep in the treasure trove of Eyes Wide Shut-esque elitist Diablerie
Introducing Vosges Chocolates. For a mere $95, you can purchase the Prima Materia Truffle Collection. Don’t let the word “collection” fool you—it comes with a mere 20 pieces of candy. But this isn’t just a tray of treats…the collection comes with directions:
- Slow down
- Close your eyes and take three deep breaths
- Listen closely to the silence
- Let your imagination be unleashed
- Place the message on the chocolate
- Feel the chocolate
- Smell the chocolate
- Taste the chocolate
- Taste the breath
- This experience transforms your chocolate into your tincture.
What now?
What, prey tell, is my tincture?
If the condescending instructions and high price tag don’t offend thee, there is perhaps a few more things you might like to know about this chocolate company. Such as it’s Founder, Katrina Markoff. The home page of her Instagram account shows a photo of her with Warren Buffet. She is also buddies with Obama and is featured on the WhiteHouse.gov website as one of their featured Champions of Change.
What led my friends to search out this information was the fact that once they opened the box that housed their pricey truffles, the interior of the box was decorated with symbols associated with witchcraft, New Age, and secret societies—the usual cliché fodder such as pyramids, third eyes, etc. Add to this her limited-edition Bastet Sacred Hi-Vibe Chocolate Collection. Bastet, of course, being the name of an Egyptian goddess.
After discovering the Mayan roots of cacao, namely, a medicinal plant with healing and spiritually restorative properties, Markoff wanted to, “…make something that had a true soul, a true meaning and reason, and ultimately to create a true experience that is transformative.”
Beliefnet.com features an article on Vosges Chocolates entitled, “The Sweet Spirit: Chocolatier Katrina Markoff Makes a Connection Between the Spirituality of Yoga and Her Favorite Gourmet Truffles.” (Phew! That title is more of a mouthful than her rip-off $95 box of chocolates!) The article begins, “For many of us, chocolate is our sin of choice. But what if we could reconcile this sweet indulgence with our spiritual lives? If, through eating a chocolate, we could enhance our spiritual practices? Might that shift our sense of chocolate from vice to transformative virtue?
Good grief?! Who wrote this article anyways, Cathy?
Markoff first linked chocolate and yoga together because, in her own words, “All eating is associated with ritual.” Markoff believes that chocolate not only has the power to enhance yoga, but the experience of eating chocolate, of allowing each flavor to hit the tongue slowly, “can be the yoga itself-the thing that gets you into a meditative state.” Yikes.
Markoff’s Instagram page tells us everything we need to know. This isn’t just a chocolate lover or Paris trained chocolatier we are dealing with here. Her intro statement on Instagram says, “Cosmic Chocolate Rituals. Witchy wellness. Intuitive healer through gorgeous Alchemical foods and metaphysical objects. Hi Vibe Interiors.” Sounds like Bowie lyrics to me…but seriously, there’s just one too many New Age adjectives packed into the short sentence.
Candy Industry.com even goes so far as to give Markoff the moniker of “artisanal alchemist.” Which, I’m sure they mean as some sort of alliterative tongue-in-cheek form of flattery; but I dare say, it’s more of a truth-in-plain-sight elitist *wink-wink* they assume will go over the Deplorables’ heads.
“I remember thinking, ‘this might be the most powerful food on the planet!’” she recalls. “Mayans believed it was food to open the heart and the mind to connect with the above and to connect with people near you — to open yourself, and love yourself, and be able to love other people. From there, I was hooked.”
–Katrina Markoff
But if the descriptors alchemist and witchy aren’t enough to prove the New Age white witchcraft vibe this company and founder are giving off left and right, check out the Vosges Experience tab on the company website. Here we find sections on “High Vibe” foods and “Mindful Consumption.” Ready for a veritable crapload of more witchy adjectives? Check out this paragraph from the VOSGES + HIGH VIBE section: “When we craft our chocolate, we approach it with this same positivity, passing this energy on to the chocolate and our guests. We infuse all of our chocolates with a 528hZ frequency, sustained as the chocolate cools from liquid to solid, creating a transformational, healing, and miracle-manifesting experience.”
The description ascribed to their “Grateful Dead” chocolate collection reads, “These new collections express the magic of the band and their tribe of fans. To elevate this collection to a higher level of consciousness, it has been infused, quite literally, with the sound frequencies of the Grateful Dead’s music. High vibe chocolate and high vibe sound.”
I don’t know too many folks in the market for a $100 box of chocolates, but all this talk should give us pause to wonder what sort of alchemy is going on behind closed doors at the manufacturing plants that process our food. As if high fructose corn syrup and all these mysteriously ambiguous “natural” flavors aren’t cause enough for concern—do we also have to worry about white witches infusing frequencies, chants, incantations, and spells onto our food labels and into the very food itself? As preposterous as this all sounds, I don’t think it is out of the question.
This brings to mind 1 Corinthians 8 where Paul writes, “ So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that ‘An idol is nothing at all in the world’ and that ‘There is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
We have nothing to fear. No weapon formed against us will prosper…even if that weapon is a box of enchanted chocolates. But suffice it to say, maybe it’s time to graduate from the milk of, “God is great and God is good, and we thank Him for our food”—and maybe add a few, meaty warfare prayers before digging in.
Bon appetite!
Contributor
