Qualla: Cidade Eclética

Cidade Eclética: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

His name meant ocean, and he flew for a living. In the movement's own telling, Oceano de Sá was in the air over the empty plateau where Brasília would later be built when a being not from this world appeared to him and said his real work was on the ground rather than in the sky. He did not believe it. The aircraft went down. He woke in a hospital bed with the same figure at his side, asking: “And now, did you learn?” The next day he left the Brazilian Air Force. He took a new name - Yokaanam, said within the movement to be an anagram of John the Baptist and to mean The Diver. The man called Ocean became the Diver, and went inland to build a city.

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Cidade Eclética: The Master

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Yokaanam was born Oceano de Sá in Maceió, in the coastal state of Alagoas, in 1911. He said his abilities as a medium first appeared when he was thirteen, and he came to regard himself as a reincarnation of both Elijah and John the Baptist. Before founding anything of his own he ...

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Cidade Eclética: Eighteen Tents on the Planalto

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Fraternidade Eclética Espiritualista Universal was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1946. Ten years later Yokaanam moved it inland. A caravan left Rio on 31 October 1956 and reached the Planalto Central on 4 November - the high central plain where the new federal capital was abou...

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Cidade Eclética: One Church of All Churches

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Yokaanam taught that Cidade Eclética was the religious centre of the world, and that his Igreja Eclética Espiritualista Universal was the pioneer in the unification of all the sects of the planet. In practice the doctrine draws heavily on Kardecist spiritism and on Umbanda, the A...

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Cidade Eclética: Two Halves of a Town

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The settlement sits 62 kilometres west of Brasília, in the municipality of Santo Antônio do Descoberto, and it is built in two parts. Avenida São João runs the length of the public side, which has a bakery, a shoe repair shop, a cemetery, a social welfare office, a hospital, the ...

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Cidade Eclética: Barefoot at the Mausoleum

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Yokaanam died on 21 April 1985, and three long-standing followers took over the leadership between them. That is the point at which movements of this kind usually come apart, and this one did not. Four decades later the internal workers are still there, still farming, still holdi...

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