A woman in a trance is aided by the rest of voodoo devotees. Most of Voodoo rituals begin with Christian prayers recited in French, then switches to the Creole language, a combination mainly of French, Spanish, African and 'patois' - the latter word that the French applied with contempt to what they do not understand. Begin the ecstatic dances and drums to increasingly frantic pace. The activities of sorcery and spells, contain fetishism (word derived from the Portuguese feitiço 'dating from 1760) then follow pagan cults of sacrifice, trance handling and communication with their gods, whose names indicate their origin in Dahomey. Voodoo was persecuted in Haiti since 1685, when Catholic priests, managers of plantations and slaves, banned 'songs and the assemblies of blacks with or without drums. That contributed to its spread as these were clearly anti-slavery meetings.