The kun kaze yu, or 'smoke man', is the male medium possessed by the Smoke Woman. Smoking strong tobacco until he falls into trance, he becomes the mouthpiece through which she speaks, and so the human instrument of Maring divination. In this office he diagnoses the spirit causes of sickness, transmits the demands of the red spirits, and is consulted at the junctures of the ritual and warfare cycle. The role is not fixed in any hereditary line; a man is known as a smoke man by his capacity to receive the Smoke Woman and to carry her words back to the living.