Shamanism among the ancient Taino was expressed mainly in the cohoba ceremony, when shamans and important men in the community inhaled psychoactive powders.

Seated on their duhos or wooden stools, they first pushed a spatula down their throats, purging the stomach and purifying it to receive the sacred hallucinogenic powders.

The cohoba ritual aimed to help its practitioners to contact the deities or cemies to diagnose illnesses and predict the future. The “trigonolitos”, on the other hand, has been interpreted as propitiatory cemies for agricultural fertility, especially yucca, or mandioc.