The making of a nganga is a complex procedure. Its components must take place at specific times during the day and month. A Palo practitioner would travel to a graveyard at night. There, they would focus on a specific grave and seek to communicate with the spirit of the dead person buried there, typically through divination. They then determine to create a "trata" (pact) with the spirit, whereby the latter agrees to become the servant of the practitioner. Once they believe that they have the consent of the spirit, the palero/palera will dig up the bones of the deceased, or at least collect soil from their grave, and take it back home. There, they perform rituals to install this spirit inside their nganga. When a new nganga is created, it is described as having been "born" from a "mother" nganga. The practitioner enters a pact with the spirit of the nganga in a ritual involving them contacting the latter using divination and trance. For a time the nganga is then buried, either in a cemetery or a monte area of nature, before being recovered.