A theyyam is assembled slowly and in public. The performer fasts and observes restrictions for days beforehand, and on the night itself the face is painted over several hours in patterns fixed for each deity, worked in rice paste, turmeric, lime and red pigment by assistants who know the design by memory. The costume is built up in layers of split palm leaf, cloth, brass and silver ornament, sometimes rising into a headdress several metres tall that has to be braced against the body. The whole assembly is heavy and hot and is put on in front of the people who have come to see it.
The turn from performer to deity is marked. The dancer is handed a mirror and looks into it, and the moment of recognition, when the man sees the deity rather than himself, is the point at which the transformation is understood to be complete. From then the figure speaks in the first person as the deity, moves to a hard drum rhythm, gives oracular answers to those who approach, and blesses. Some theyyams involve fire directly: in the ottakkolam and related forms the dancer enters or falls repeatedly into a bed of embers, protected, the tradition holds, by the deity now present in him. At the end the headdress is removed and the man is a man again, and the village returns to its ordinary arrangement until the next season.