Feitio of the Santo Daime

The feitio of the drink is a ceremony loaded of a great spiritual symbolism. It is the production of a sacrament. The feitio corresponds entirely to the role of the main initiation ritual, where the knowledge is administered and received according to each one’s surrender.

The main stages of the labor are: Location of the vine and the leaf in the woods; cleaning of the leaves, cleaning and the bateção (knead the vine with wooden pestles) of the vine, cozimentos (cooking) and the final apuração (refinement) of the Santo Daime. Each one of these stages demands a dedication, attention and accentuated enough willpower, as it is, simultaneously, an intense physical, mental and spiritual work, where the sacramental drink is taken during the whole time.

During the feitio the women care for the leaves while the men prepare the vine. Of the spiritual point of view, the result of the feitio, the sacramental drink called Daime, is considered a sacrament, a vehicle for the manifestation of the divine being responsible for its light and spiritual effect. At the other hand, of the material point of view, it is a forest product, an entheogenic sacramental tea of psycho-active properties, produced and distributed under the Church’s responsibility.

Read a description of the atmosphere that surrounds a feitio:

The pans are being filled. We are concentrated on them with our best vibrations. We arduously worked and the fruit of our effort impregnates the liquid, in the same way that we are impregnated by it, by the vibrations of the spiritual being that inhabits in the vines of the Amazon jungle.

In the furnace room stays just the responsible people for the cozimento and the Daime's refinement. It is a phase of total attention and concentration. Holding big wooden tridents, they watch the ebullition, instruct the stoker and execute several maneuvers with the boiling mixture, impeding the liquid to spill, burn or overtake the point where it must be withdrawn from the pan.

The pans come and go in a synchronous choreography. The gestures are precise and the words are few. The attention is total in order to have no mistake. Through the search of perfection in the material process of the feitio everyone is suitable to penetrate in the spiritual perfection of the feitio. The combination between these two aspects is just what gives it the initiation character in the mysteries of the holy inner alchemy.

This is the same drink that has been made for thousand of years by our ancestral that inhabited these forests.

The flames flicker in the furnace. The responsible person for the apuração of the sacred liquid examines with his wooden trident the pans level. He feels it lasting and softly, feels the pressure in its interior and deeply smells the steam. Everybody is concentrated around of that smoke, in a climate of mystery and of magic.

Finally, after some time that seems like an eternity, the apurador (refiner) beats with his wooden trident three times on the edge of the pan, meaning with this gesture that he's invoking the sun, the moon and the stars: higher forces that are influencing in the Daime's point that is coming to the light.

Two men silently cross the room, by both sides of the furnace, passing the rope through each pan’s handle and suspending it. The flames jump. The pan is carried to the gutter and drained by the sound of the hymns.