Bodies, songs and music "weird", common in voodoo celebrations, mingle with the scents of herbs and potions prepared to ask favors from the spirits. Believers spend hours in the water, pray, extend their arms to heaven, they embrace. Many throw their old clothes to the sky, a symbol of a past they want to leave behind, and come with medicinal herbs. Some queried the "hougan" (priests) or "Mambo" (priestesses) who would be possessed by some of the loas, deities of the voodoo. In fact, hougan and mambo are responsible for the direction of worship, top leaders of the altars dedicated to the saints and, in turn, "are interpreters of the will of the loas."