by Rodrigo Borges Conti Tavares*

The history of the Santo Daime is the one of an endured people, coming from in the majority of the Brazilian northern-northeast regions, destitute of human resources and many times of natural resources as well. Truthful representatives of the culture that was developed in these regions and still today are cultivated -- in the regional festivities, in the religious celebrations, in the art and music –- they proved to be indefatigable workers in spite of the difficulties lived along centuries. Thus, when writing my personal impressions concerning the doctrine of Raimundo Irineu Serra I write in memory of these families, which were the pioneers, excelled expressions of the human will, giving to them the character of immigrants of the spirituality.

Irineu Serra was a devote, from a rigid family in the Catholic practices, but in that region of difficulties and great distances the clergy was not always present, making the rites be permeated by a strong influence from the people, where the sacred and the religiosity adopted the outlines of a popular Catholicism, of the rosaries accomplished at neighboring homes, of the benditos* and received prayers, of life in community and of the spiritual leaders that were born of the need to leadership.
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*Bendito (blessed) is how a prayer that is initiated by this word is called in some areas of Brazil, but many times they are also prayers or narrative solos in reference to Saints and Catholic divinities.

It is through the memory of these followers that the Santo Daime doctrine would be influenced, thousands of miles distant from their original land, when around 1914 Raimundo Irineu Serra arrives at the state of Acre. For almost twenty years he would acknowledge the Ayahuasca in its natural environment, the forest, among the caboclos and the Amazonian Indians, back to the time of the Inca empire, in a period that the historians classify as of learning, where he learnt the woods secrets, of how to confection the drink, to talk Tupi-Guarani*, demonstrating that in this route he not only acquired maturity as man but also as a forest inhabitant, totally integrated with nature. It was after this probation and learning phase that Irineu Serra started his mission on earth, that would become the Santo Daime doctrine, as tells Luiz Mendes do Nascimento.
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*Tupi-Guarani - is the name of the most important subfamily of the Tupi languages of the South American Indians.

And She delivered it to him, but Mestre knew that it wasn’t enough for him to be [realized]. No! He received it and then went to form himself -- working to start acquiring knowledge, perfecting himself, receiving every day the powers that one needs. In this phase he said that he spent about five years, having doubts on many occasions. The Queen started to appear to him and being next to Her everything was right, but when She would disappear the doubts would come. There is a spiritual stage that, from here [he gesticulates] on to that point, truth goes mixed with lies, they go on interlacing themselves. When it develops beyond that wall, then there is only truth, and actually Mestre only started the mission after passing through all these doubts.

The doctrine that we know would start in fact in 1931, where the works were held in their own houses, that small group, gathered around a table and a cross*. Accepted as a natural leader Irineu Serra would give many lectures, teaching the people to work with the drink that at the same time received the name of Daime. It is in this period that he starts to cement his teachings while receiving from the Queen of the Forest the instructions of how the work had to be developed. In spite of his roots with the drink, among the Indians and caboclos of the forest, his religious memory and the recognition of his spiritual teacher proceeded having fundamental role in the liturgy development, however, never denying the natural aspects of it. It was the so dreamt union between man, nature and the celestial realms on earth.
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*the double barred cross, likewise the Caravaca Cross, probably brought to Brazil by the first missionaries, as it is also called the Missioner’s Cross, was the first symbol of the Santo Daime doctrine. It is said to contain a fragment of the True Cross upon which Jesus was crucified. According to the elders its meaning in the doctrine, represented by the two bars, is of the first and second coming of Christ on earth. This cross still today is much popular in the Northern and Northeast regions of Brazil, where on April the 26th of 1500, four days after the discoverers arrived at the new continent, in a coral bank of the Red Crown’s beach in Bahia's Southern coast, was prayed an Easter mass by the feet of a great cross, the first of so many that since then were celebrated in the one that came to become the biggest Catholic country of the world.

In owning this understanding is not difficult to think that the doctrine of Irineu Serra was never deliberate for the formalism, but indeed a doctrine been born of the group’s need to organize around the Ayahuasca and to take a direction. In the past, among the people of the forest, the brew was used to accomplish so much the good as well as the personal earnings. It was through Irineu Serra that the Daime became a vehicle only for healings and spiritual ascension, changing forever the brew’s own image in the area. There are the ones who affirm be the dignifying work of Irineu Serra a fundamental factor for the current shamanic panorama of South America, visited today by hundreds of tourists in search of its secrets and mysteries.

In 1945, due to the urban growth Irineu Serra moves, together with his group, to the placement that would be named by him as Alto da Santa Cruz* (Summit of the Holy Cross), by the fact that the land was higher than the surroundings and where a cross was seen blessing the city. It is in these lands that he would formalize the last measures regarding the liturgy, finish his work on earth and to receive the rank of Chief of this mission. It is in these lands that the doctrine would become recognized in Acre by the healings carried out in the fraternity, and its leader's character, becoming popularly known as “Alto Santo” (Holy Summit).
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*Coincidentally Santa Cruz also is one of the first names given to Brazil in the XVI century. Of profound religious character this Brazilian title would be later surpassed by the popular denomination of a rich native tree exported to Europe. Called by the navigators as Pau Brasil (glowing wood), due to its reddish coloration, it became the new continent reference among marine routes that linked the main commercial harbors of the time. For some scholars this was a striking fact of our history, where the materialism power surpass the spiritual belief of the first explorers who here thought to be setting foot in paradise. Perhaps this was also a reason for Mestre to baptize his land of this way, in the country that he so much reverenced and fought to improve.

It is known that Mestre struggled through his whole life in order to socially recognize his doctrine, due to the early years’ strong persecution, but we cannot forget that Mestre himself, when questioned by external authorities, always chose the Daime. One of the more striking facts of his trajectory is the one of the moment in which the headquarters of the Esoteric Circle* in São Paulo, of which Mestre was part during the 60s, questions the brew’s practices. His answer was immediate, “If they don’t want my Daime they also don’t want me. I am the Daime and the Daime is me”, he said. With that he would disconnect from the Esoteric Circle and once again give us proofs that his command was not from earth, but coming from the astral, from the Queen of the Forest, his eternal guide, the Virgin of the Conception.
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*Esoteric Circle of the Communion of Thought - spiritual organization founded in the city of São Paulo in the year of 1909 by the Portuguese Antonio Olívio Rodrigues under the slogan of “harmony, love, truth and justice”. He would also create in 1917 the Thoughts Publishing Company, right from the start translating and distributing in Brazil humanist texts of different philosophical or religious shades (Gnostics, Hindu’s, Humanists, Kardec’s, Theosophy and of occultism slopes at that time popular in Europe as the non Jewish cabalists and the Rosicrucian’s, among others). Little by little it multiplied centers all over Brazil, as Mestre Irineu personally became a member only in May of 1961, in Rio Branco, thirty years after having began the preaching of the Santo Daime doctrine, when more then ninety percent of the doctrinaire base hymns had been received and the liturgy was entirely defined (with the exception of the blue farda, used in the concentrations and in the danced services of contrition, introduced after 1971 in obedience to the instructions given by Mestre Irineu in the previous year of his passage (juramidam.jor.br).

Since his first steps in Acre Irineu Serra faces once more the scarce relation in between the people and the government, where colonies were raised following the same order of the small cities and towns in the northeast of the country -- an informal organization where the cooperation was a natural way of survival. The caboclo people from Acre, largely composed by immigrants, were established thru their own effort and labor, most of the time cohabiting with Indians and the forest in a regime of harmony and exchange, where small cities agglutinated the deeds of the adjacent communities' work. Within this context we also cannot characterize the doctrine as being “contemporary”, but indeed a doctrine where the memory of Jesus Christ was cultivated in total isolation and unaware of the religious practices of the big centers, where, since the antique, has been manipulated and addressed towards the castes formation, orthodoxy and political conglomerates. In the forest, however, the doctrine was practiced within the natural molds of the man, of ascension and cure, of rescue and illumination -- a union between man and nature without the need for mediators, fruit of the simplicity and humility on purpose. The intermediation was present in the drink’s own divinity, where to it the group resorted in search of counseling and cures, strengthening thus the community's liaisons. It is in the vastness of the forest that these valiant pioneers of the spirituality sought the encounter with God, through the sacred brew, unaware that the world didn’t know them.

Right from the start Mestre Irineu taught his followers to pray and his philosophy was always the one of simplicity, where the prayer, the meditation and the silence carried them to get rid of all external interference, be it material or not. With this thinking Mestre Irineu taught his disciples to listen to what the Daime had to tell, if it was each one’s merit to it and he presented his spiritual work as a communication’s vehicle with the divine beings and the superior spheres of the universe, dissuading and refuting any kind of intermediation, by knowing and teaching that the Daime never sends a courier... it by itself tells what it has to tell. In the silence of the salon each one accounted and answered for their own deeds, working on behalf of the collective through the astral projection, teaching that self consciousness and free will are fundamental requisites of the spirituality, because otherwise we would also be charged by the acts of others, without the ignorance’s benefit, aside in the case of children, these under their families' direct responsibility. Not different from the astral realm his salon presented to all the perfect reality found in the after life.

The hymns, teachings from the astral, were brought to us through the profound memory of these followers, together with a strong influence from the Amazon and its mysteries. The steady rhythm and the voice tune also carry us to the time of the back countries, where the prayers were elevated to the skies by those suffered people. The authenticity and value of its lyrics and melodies is fruit of the faith and of the recognition of the celestial realms, where they found the shelter and comfort that to them was denied here on earth. Through the hymns the group shared to each other the received teachings, the cures and the personal growth. As some tell, Mestre liked to sing the hymns without interruptions, one after another, not giving margin for the mind to wander off.

For this universal aspect, present also in the first name of his center, called “Free Center”, the liturgy of the Santo Daime was born, developed and it reached maturity as a unifying ritual, without preambles and alterations, a fact that motivated him to repeat several times for us to don’t invent anything, because people wouldn’t hold it later. Its liturgy made possible in the concentration and healing works the receiving of the teachings and cures in order for in the hinário services “be revised” and presented to all according each one’s merit. Inside this simplicity the doctrine was formed and solidified as a true spiritual educational work to the souls.

A cross, a candle and flowers –- these last ones to ornate and make it pleasant, as he liked to say -- and a bottle of Daime are the elements of his work. The silence, the prayer, the hymns, the concentration and the self consciousness, like fundamental elements of his spiritual philosophy, carry us certainly to the roots of the Santo Daime, of the direct communication with the forest and the divine beings, regardless of where we are, if in the wish of practice the good, the humility and the harmony, we recognize its value.

“If two of you agree down here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them” (Matthew).

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*Rodrigo Borges Conti Tavares is a graphic designer, living in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the idealizer and keeper of The Juramidam Family website.