Migration, ayahuasca, and a founding vision
Born on December 15, 1890 (a date discovered later on a baptismal certificate; the tradition had long held 1892), Irineu Serra left drought-stricken Maranhão around 1909 for Acre, where he worked as a rubber tapper and, from about 1910 to 1912, on the government commission surveying the border with Peru and Bolivia. In 1914 he met Antônio and André Costa in the frontier town of Brasiléia; Antônio, who had learned of ayahuasca from a Peruvian ayahuasquero, introduced Irineu Serra to the brew. The tradition holds that soon afterward, during an eight-day solitary fast in the forest, Irineu Serra experienced a vision in which a female spirit — later identified as the Queen of the Forest and Our Lady of Conception — charged him with founding a new religious movement, an experience commemorated in his hymn "Lua Branca" ("White Moon").
Building the doctrine
Full realization of that mission took decades. Around 1916, Irineu Serra helped organize the Círculo de Regeneração e Fé, an ayahuasca-drinking group he eventually left amid persecution from local authorities and disputes with Antônio Costa. He returned to military service in Rio Branco in 1920, remaining in the Força Policial until 1932, and supported himself afterward mainly through farming. The religion's formal founding is dated to May 26, 1930, when Irineu Serra led the first trabalho of what became Santo Daime — a name combining the Portuguese words for "holy" and the plea "give me," as in "give me light, give me love" — with only two other people present.
In 1961, many of his senior followers joined the Círculo Esotérico da Comunhão do Pensamento, a São Paulo esoteric order founded in 1909, a step that left a lasting imprint on Santo Daime's liturgy, including its principles of Harmony, Love, Truth, and Justice; the relationship ended around 1970 over the Esoteric Circle's objection to Daime use, after which Irineu Serra's center took the name Centro de Iluminação Cristã Universal.
A second founder emerges
In 1965, Sebastião Mota de Melo — a rubber tapper, canoe maker, and practicing Kardecist Spiritist medium from Amazonas state — met Irineu Serra for the first time. Padrinho Sebastião, as he came to be known, is said to have arrived seeking a cure for chronic liver disease and to have experienced a profound healing during a single Daime session, after which he began attending works at Alto Santo, land given to Irineu Serra by the Governor of Acre in 1945. Irineu Serra died in 1971, and it was from among his disciples, Padrinho Sebastião chief among them, that the tradition's later branches emerged.