Gnostic Chocolate

Examining the wrapper of a Dagoba organic chocolate bar, one encounters slogans such as these:

Chocolate is sacred.

There is an art to the alchemy of flavor infusion,
an art we explore with mystery and integrity.

We invite you to uncover your senses and explore a moment of indulgence.

Higher sensory atonement meets primal fulfillment in this exotic chocolate bar.

The conclusion is inevitable. A bite of Dagoba organic chocolate is a bite of heresy! Yes, the folks in the advertising department are clearly in the throes of Gnosticism. Disturbing as this is, you might think this a relatively trivial detail- after all, as long as the chocolate tastes good, who cares if the wrapper reads like Secret Gospel of Quetzalcoatl? But if you think this is just a harmless fantasy on the part of Dagoba chocolate employees, chew on this for a minute:

You can deprive the body, but the soul needs chocolate.

Every true chocolate lover should be appalled by the mind-body dualism implicit in that statement. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I for one don't spend a lot of time worrying about filling my soul with its daily quota of chocolate, and frankly I doubt that's even possible. I mean, we've all heard of "soul food" but who ever heard of the soul taking material sustenance? But now Dagoba comes along and says that as long as the soul is nourished it's perfectly fine to deprive the body of chocolate. I beg to differ! I resent some chocolate company coming along telling me what I can and cannot do with my body where chocolate is concerned. But for their sake I shall deprive my body of their chocolate by taking my business to a confectioner who has no such illusions about what to do with chocolate. Someone who knows that chocolate surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the universe together...


Image copyright 2004 by Dagobah Organic Chocolate