Those who are mounted consistently report no experience of it: they lose time, come back tired, and are told by others what the lwa said and did through them. There is no ecstatic narrative attached, and Vodou does not treat the state as a spiritual attainment or a sign of merit — it is a functional arrangement by which the lwa become physically available for consultation. The community's conduct during possession is practical: assistants ensure the horse is not injured, the lwa is dressed and given its food and drink, and people queue to ask questions. Authenticity is assessed behaviourally, since each lwa has a known manner, gait, voice, appetite and vocabulary, and a performance that departs from it is identified as false. Maya Deren, who went to Haiti to film dance and was herself possessed by Ezili, wrote the best-known first-person account of the approach to the state, describing the moment of losing the ability to observe.