Sebastião Mota de Melo
Disciple of Mestre Irineu, he received from him the gift of expanding the Santo Daime worship to the whole country and beyond its borders...

Sebastião Mota de Melo, been born in the rubber plantation Monte Lígia, in 1920, demonstrated propensity to make astral journeys (out of body experiences) and to have visions of enchanted beings of the forest since the early years. He started his healer’s career in the remote area of the Vale do Juruá (Juruá's Valley) and he developed himself as a medium in the Spiritualist Doctrine through his godfather Oswaldo, who was a Kardec adept.

He moved to Rio Branco with the family in 1957, where he lived a colonist's life and attended the sick of his relatives' circle, godfathers and godsons. He was a simple man, of a solid spiritualist faith and a indefatigable worker.

Disciple of Mestre Irineu, he received from him the gift of expanding the Santo Daime worship to the whole country and beyond its borders.

In 1980 he transferred the community that was placed in the surroundings of Rio Branco to a virgin area inside the forest, denominated Rio do Ouro rubber plantation.

In 1982 he founded the settling that today happens to be the Céu do Mapiá’s village, where he was an indefatigable worker, both in the spiritual and material way. He liked to work in the construction of canoes and to go for long walks through the forest that he so much loved and knew.

In the last years he affectionately received the godsons and goddaughters that arrived from all the corners of the world, and he made some trips to the south of the country to know the churches that had been formed around his teachings. Only at that moment was that he met the sea, which much moved him.

He died on January 20th of 1990 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he was treating a serious cardiac disease that he had acquired a few years before.