A vision and an encounter
According to the story told within the community, the plant was first brought to Padrinho Sebastião by a young community member troubled by his own private use of it, who confessed the matter and asked for guidance. The story recounts that Padrinho Sebastião recognized the plant from an earlier dream in which he had been told he would take up a new spiritual line, and from a second dream image of a plant he was shown and told was meant for healing — a detail reported within this origin story rather than a claim made about cannabis in general.
Renaming the plant
Based on this experience, Padrinho Sebastião and others in his community came to associate the plant with the Virgin Mary, already venerated in Santo Daime as the Sovereign Mother, and with Dona Joana, Mestre Irineu's mother, renaming it Santa Maria. Within this belief, ayahuasca is associated with the spiritual energy of the "Father," tied to Jesus Christ and to Mestre Irineu, while Santa Maria is associated with the complementary energy of the "Mother," the two understood together as being in harmony.
Devotional practice
A body of devotional practice developed around Santa Maria within this community, including its own hymns, prayers, and periods of quiet reflection, alongside disciplines of restraint that members observed in connection with its ritual use. This account does not describe those disciplines in detail, and nothing here should be read as guidance for using cannabis.
Continuing tension
The introduction of Santa Maria drew strong criticism from other Daime followers and repeated friction with outside authorities, including a widely reported 1981 police action against the community. Padrinho Sebastião defended the practice by arguing that no part of nature could be selectively rejected without consequence. Many communities that trace their lineage to him have since kept devotion to Santa Maria largely private, a pattern researchers studying the tradition have linked to this history of external pressure.