Possession is the tradition's central experiential claim and the terminology is unambiguous: the elegun, the one who is mounted, is the horse; the orisha is the rider. It occurs at drumming ceremonies, is generally confined to people who have been initiated and prepared, and is not sought individually — the orisha takes whom it takes. The mounted person is attended so they are not injured, may be dressed in the orisha's cloth and handed its emblems, and behaves as that orisha behaves: Shango's abruptness, Osun's coquetry, Obatala's slow dignity, Oya's violence. They speak, prescribe, bless and rebuke, and afterwards report no memory whatever and are informed by others. The community's scepticism is real and operates on behavioural grounds — a performance that does not match the known character of the orisha claimed is identified as false. Anthropologists have studied the phenomenon extensively; the tradition's own account is simply that the orisha is present.