Vale do Amanhecer

Praise God! – from a distance, a sign emerges on the front of a temple announcing something otherworldly. Other worlds, many worlds united through so many people. They came bearing long capes and carrying crosses on their backs, flowing hats on their heads and poles on their hands. They are Afro-Brazilian, Egyptian, Aztecan, Incan, Christian, and Indigenous people from before, spirits from times before our time.

Mysticism might be the most frequently used word to describe the scenery and the experience. But the Doctrine of Dawn (Doutrina do Amanhecer) can be placed as a Christian and syncretic faith using the Gospel of Jesus Christ for a foundation. Its founder, clairvoyant Neiva Zelaya, was a Catholic single mother of four who worked as a truck driver to provide for her family. In 1958, she started incorporating entities despite not fully understanding what she was going through. Ten years later, after much suffering and anguish, she founded the community with the central mission of providing spiritual assistance to people who sought it.

“We’re working for human balance,

so people can accept things for what they are:

this is faith”

Raul Zelaya

Opening people’s hearts to Jesus: this is the reason Doutrina do Amanhecer exists and welcomes everyone – indistinctively! – with mediumistic challenges. For those who feel comfortable, relocating is also an option and as a local resident, it’s possible to collaborate with some of the activities. There are over a thousand mediums and several healing and mediumistic development rituals at the main temple and at the Star (over one hundred thousand square feet of land, a lake, a pyramid, and several sculptures): this is all located in the town of Planaltina, about twenty-five miles away from the country’s capital, Brasília.

While a surreal and fantastical quality may hang in the air for those who visit the ceremony for the first time, the many layers of symbols reveal that there is nothing random about that place. Overlapping meanings harmonize space and time: color, cross, triangle, star, sun, moon, jaguar… an aligned constellation of histories.

“The faith that denies science is as useless

as the science that denies faith”

Raul Zelaya

Tia Neiva couldn’t foresee this much when she founded the doctrine; the rites and the symbols just started popping up along with the people, their stories and doubts. Today, her son Raul Zelaya diligently cares for every detail. Colors are energies: green for the forests, yellow for knowledge, lilac for cure, white for peace. Brown is a reference to Saint Francis of Assisi, one the reincarnations of Father Seta Branca’s, entity in charge of directing the doctrine: he first appeared as an Indigenous man to Tia Neiva, a pure man who used force as a last resource when solving problems. Those who have been initiated wear white, intermediate participants… wear black shirts, and veterans wear colorful capes.

“Our uniform assures equality

among our people:

the cart driver and the doctor

are on the same level

and are both masters just the same”

Raul Zelaya

The Incan symbol for the sun, the Jaguar, is represented by a magnificent drawing of a lion and his colorful mane. The cross is a symbol for Christianity. The triangle reminds us that this is a place where mediums incorporate: people who receive other people and turn their bodies into passages for that which needs to be said. On the six-pointed star, the longest point reminds us of the possibility of evolving into paradise. The sun and the moon: opposing forces of nature that, as everything else, need to be in harmony.

All the elements and drawings used in the rational world to explain a connection with mystery… gathered right there as a redundant and detailed embroidery of memories signaling that there’s more history in silence than we could possibly grasp. Together: shamans and wizards and missionaries… men as equal and as different as can be in their enchantments… allowing themselves to exchange secrets about a life through ever-changing times.