Initiates do not describe what happens in the djèvo, and the reticence is remarkably consistent — across houses, across the diaspora, and in conversation with researchers who have spent decades in the religion. What is publicly known is the structure: a period of seclusion of a week or more in the inner chamber, in darkness, with dietary and behavioural restrictions; the lave tèt, the washing of the head; the boule zen, a fire rite involving heated pots that is the origin of the term kanzo; and emergence in white as a new person with a new name. What initiates will say afterwards is that it was harder than they expected, that it changed their standing permanently, and that they are not going to describe it. Researchers who have pressed have generally been refused, and the ones who have been initiated have generally honoured the same silence.