The uniform, and receiving one

There are two. The white farda is worn for the danced hinário works and the great dates of the calendar — the Christian feasts, the fardamentos themselves, weddings, baptisms, the birthdays of senior members. The blue is worn for concentrations, for healing works and for the mass for the departed.

The details differ between Alto Santo and the ICEFLU line. The sources this site draws on name the two colours and say nothing about the individual garments, so neither does this page.

The fardamento is a consecration of the uniform and a giving of the star. It happens before a work begins. Mestre Irineu would give the instructions on how a fardado should conduct himself, and then call people forward one at a time to have the star pinned; when there were too many, he called other fardados to help pin them. Those who had just received the farda entered the hall already wearing it and danced the work.

Percília Matos da Silva, who had been in the doctrine since childhood, described it as simply as it can be described: the brother or sister, if their time had come, would put on the farda and the star, and enter the hall to dance.

What the initiate receives is a six-pointed star, pinned to the uniform. In the tradition's reading it is the union of heaven and earth, and it belongs to the Queen of the Forest — which is why it is hers to give and the leader's to pin.

Receiving it opens a choice of service. Madrinha Sonia put it in practical terms: when a new fardada receives her star, that is when she decides whether her work will be in singing, in playing an instrument, or in guardianship — and each of those, she adds, asks for real study. The puxadoras make a deep study of the hymns and every nuance of them, because they have to carry the whole current; a guardian must study her own field the same way.

Being fardado is what membership means here: the relationship with the doctrine officially recognised, and visible. Those who have not gone through the ceremony are paisanos — the ordinary Portuguese word for a civilian, the counterpart to the uniform.

The distinction shows in the room. Fardados form the lines, ordered by height, men to the left of the altar and women to the right; the paisanos and visitors take the places behind them, or the benches. A fardado may be absent from the hall for the space of three hymns and should tell the companion to their right; beyond that the line closes up from the left.

There is no evangelism attached to any of this. The tradition states plainly that it does not invite people — the request has to come from the person who wants to come.

One of the three paths a new fardado can choose. Guardians are appointed by the leader of a church or by the head guardian and never by themselves, and the role is under the patronage of Saint Anthony. The tradition's own instruction to them is unusual and worth quoting more or less as it stands: the most important part of guardianship is in the being and not the doing; remain in the present moment, doing neither too much nor too little, invisibly; and err on the side of doing less.