Festa dos Tabuleiros

The Festa dos Tabuleiros (Festival of the Trays) or Festa do Divino Espírito Santo (Feast of the Holy Spirit), takes place every four years in July in Tomar, Portugal. This festival is an ancient tradition, and the most important celebrated in the city, attracting people from all over the world. It is held every four years, the last one being held in June and July 2015. The local population parades in pairs with the girls carrying tabuleiros on their heads. The tabuleiro is made of 30 stacked pieces of bread, either in 6 rows of 5 or 5 rows of 6, decorated with flowers. At the top of the tabuleiro is a crown which normally contains either a white dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit, or the esfera armilar (armillary sphere), a symbol of the historical Portuguese maritime expansion, and over the sphere, the cross of the Order of Christ.

In addition to the Parade, the Festival is made up of various traditional ceremonies like the Procession of the Crowns, the Procession of the Boys, the Procession of the Mordomo or the arrival of the bulls of the Holy Spirit, also by the Partial Parades and Popular Games.

In the day after the Parade or Procession, is still maintained the tradition of the Pêza, which is the sharing of bread and meat by the population.

Although the features of the Feast arise from major deletions and some changes (in what remained) of the ancient Portuguese millenarian rituals (dating back to the 13th century), that took place over the centuries, standardizing the current Feast in 1950, its origin is in the Cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit (Culto do Império do Divino Espírito Santo), at the feast of the Pentecost.

In some localities of the municipality of Tomar, as Carregueiros, it is still practiced the ancient complete cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit, including the Coronation of the Emperor, symbolizing the future Emperor of the Age of the Holy Spirit, and the Bodo (Feast).

According to the traditional Feast, the third age would be governed by the Empire of Holy Spirit and would represent a monastic or fraternal governance, in which the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the clergy, the intermediaries, and the organized Churches would be unnecessary, and infidels would unite with Christians by free will.

The Tabuleiros were identified in its remote source as an offering of each family to the symbolic building of the Temple of Jerusalem, that is, as the columns of the Temple of the Heavenly Jerusalem and of the Temple of Solomon.

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