The characteristic spirits of Quimbanda are the Exus and their female counterparts the Pombagiras. These are not the same as the Yoruba orisha Eshu-Elegba, though they share a lineage with him; in Quimbanda they are understood as powerful spirits of the dead who once lived human lives and who now move at the crossroads between the human and spirit worlds. They are frequently imagined through vivid personae (figures of the street, the graveyard, the tavern and the margins of society), and the Pombagiras in particular are associated with female power, sexuality and the concerns of the marginalised.
Devotees approach them for concrete help with love, money, protection, justice and revenge, offering cachaca, cigars, candles and food at crossroads, cemeteries and household shrines. Because Exus stand deliberately outside conventional respectability and deal frankly with human desire and conflict, Quimbanda has often been sensationalised from outside as "black magic" or diabolism, an identification its practitioners reject as a colonial and Christian misreading. Within the tradition the Exus are morally complex intermediaries who can be petitioned for good or ill, bound by reciprocity and by the authority of the presiding priest.