According to the popular narrative of the Valley’s origins, Tia Neiva was a young widow with a third-grade education and four small children when she moved to Brasília in 1957 to work as a truck driver in the ultramoderno capital city then under construction. Soon afterwards, she began to suffer from visual and auditory hallucinations that persisted until her death in 1985. Initially terrified by these “visions of illuminated beings, visions of deformed beings, disequilibrium, conflicts,” as a doctrinal tract described them, Tia Neiva soon became convinced that they were visitations from various spiritual and extraterrestrial beings, among them Pai Seta Branca and his female counterpart, Mãe Yara. In the course of her contact with these and other “spirits of light,” Tia Neiva claimed to receive esoteric teachings about the extraterrestrial origins—and eventual destiny—of humanity on the distant planet of Capela. Following Pai Seta Branca’s directions, Tia Neiva established a small spiritual community in 1959. Ten years later, after the dissolution of that group and convinced she had been chosen to prepare humanity for a new era referred to as the Third Millennium or the Age of Aquarius, Tia Neiva, together with Mario Sassi, founded the Valley of the Dawn.

– Kelly E. Hayes, “Intergalactic Space-Time Travelers, Envisioning Globalization in Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn”