Names and origins
The tea at the center of Santo Daime practice has been known by many names across the cultures that have used it, including Ayahuasca, Yagé, Hoasca, and Caapi; within the church it is called Santo Daime, or simply Daime. Its use is traced by the tradition to Raimundo Irineu Serra, who described learning of the brew from Peruvian associates in the early twentieth century before founding the religion that bears its name. The doctrine holds that this history connects the church to a much older lineage of use among South American peoples, while giving it a distinctly Christian ritual and doctrinal frame.
How the tradition speaks of it
Within the doctrine, Irineu is referred to by the title Chefe Império Juramidam, and the plant used alongside the Ayahuasca vine is called the Rainha, or Queen — a name tied to the tradition's account of a female spiritual figure said to have guided the religion's founding. A stand of that plant is spoken of as a reinado, or kingdom. These terms situate the sacrament within a devotional language of court and reign rather than a botanical one.
Its place in the works
The doctrine describes the Daime as reorganizing a person's inner state and opening access to what practitioners call the miração — a period in which imagery, symbol, and narrative are said to surface from within the participant. Santo Daime understands this experience as a form of communication with the divine, central to the purpose of the ritual works in which the sacrament is taken, rather than as an end in itself.