The taro-spirit is the animating power of the taro cult, called Kava keva, which F. E. Williams described in Orokaiva Magic. Entering the kasamba or taro-men, it made them tremble and prophesy in the seizure known as jipari, and its favour was held to make the taro gardens flourish. The cult drew on the older Orokaiva conviction that ancestral spirits govern the fertility of the staple crop; some tellings of the Totoima myth trace the origin of the taro-spirit to the deed of the ogre's twin sons. Sources differ on whether it is conceived as one spirit or as the ancestral dead acting collectively through the taro.