The Enlightened Lotus Flower

A choir growing with voices asks the questions the world tries to silence within each and every one of us: they make them heard again, without fear or weight. Nature shines a light that, on the contrary, is enough to brighten the issues we fear so much into a new path.

“What is our being?

What are we searching for?”

Gabriela Lima Vieira, Flor do Lotus Iluminado Maria Marques

During the Flor do Lotus Iluminado ceremonies, discipline marks the rhythm of the hymns received during Master Irineu’s first visions: faith is tuned and aligned in the shape of the military-like uniforms with the coat of arms for each lineage and its apprentices. If this is the work of Santo Daime, someone will repeat some of his enchanted verses:

“Sun Moon Stars

The earth the wind and the sea

It’s the light of the firmament

It’s all I must love.

It’s the only one I must love

I always carry that thought

It’s God who is in heaven

It’s where my hopes are.”

Verse from the Hymnal written by Master Irineu

Raimundo Irineu Serra descended from African slaves and stood out by simply being there: he was almost 6’7’’ tall and came from Maranhão state, in the Northeast of Brazil. He was one of so many Brazilian men arriving in Acre to work in the rubber plantations during a period when latex extraction and rubber production were the country’s main businesses.

It was his friends at the rubber plantations who introduced him to the sacred drink, Ayahuasca: mariri, iagê, hoasca, daime. The spirit’s vine or the divination wine has been in use for thousands of years among the Amerindian people, mostly by the Incas or the neo-incaic macro-ethnicity  in their healing and self-discovery rituals. The tea brewed from the root and the leaf of the plant is considered a shamanic remedy and has spread all over the world, mainly through the three most important religious lineages to emerge from the practice of ingesting it: Master Irineu’s Santo Daime, União do Vegetal  and the Barquinha.

“I see Daime as a great source of cure for humanity”

Gabriela Lima Vieira, Flor do Lotus Iluminado Maria Marques

Santo Daime is a doctrine interweaving the sacred drink’s consecration, prayers, chants known as hymns: a merger of Native, African, and European beliefs. Daime, influenced by Allan Kardec’s Spiritism as much as by that of the American peoples, was created from Master Irineu’s first visions, the Juramidam: the Queen of the Forest presented herself to him and told him to share this belief with the world. But first, he had to prove himself worthy of the duty: days of fasting in the depths of the jungle, fueled only by unsalted manioc, put him to the test.

In 1930, the master funded a community center to get Daime started and in 1945, he was gifted a piece of land where he founded the Alto Santo community: a place and a group to develop true love for one’s self, for the forest, and for the world. The doctrine’s main legacy is the hymnals: during their visions, masters receive messages that they share with the world.

“In a world filled with characters and masks,

The Daime reveals your true self”

Gabriela Lima Vieira, Flor do Lotus Iluminado Maria Marques

Among Master Irineu’s main apprentices is the woman who lends her name to the Centro Eclético Flor do Lótus Iluminado Maria Marques. Maria got her other last name, Damião, from the husband who left her a widow and mother of seven: she was a short blonde woman who came across the Juramidam in 1931 and quickly embarked in its doctrine. A simple person who became independent by selling delicacies at local markets, she was known as a fighter: illiterate and unable to add or subtract, she was humble enough to ask clients to tell her how much she owed them in change at each sale.

“Spirituality is the way you relate to yourself

And how you reflect that back to the world”

Sérgio Carvalho

A kind and hard-working woman, Maria Damião’s hymnal is admired by many Daimists. After her visions, she would memorize the lyrics and ask her friends to write them down in a notebook. With Irineu’s permission, she’d sing the advice at the Daime rituals.

Maria Damião died young and it was Master Irineu who took in her seven children and many verses at Alto Santo. From that point on, her family spread itself across the country and their visions continued to influence the view of thousands of Daimists who, in singing, use the music’s vibration to draw on their bodies the world this Daime Master was able to envision for all of us.

“You are here, in this world,

But there are other worlds,

There are other forces”

Gabriela Lima Vieira, Flor do Lotus Iluminado Maria Marques