Ancestors 49just the rocks or water, but the spiritual powers
capable of manifesting anywhere. There is no sep-
aration between the religious world and other
spheres of human and supernatural activities
because the relationship among the living, the
dead, and the Supreme God is one of mutuality
and connectedness. Humans are intertwined with
the divine; there is no seam in the relationship.
The spiritual world is interrelated with the natural
world according to the Shona of Zimbabwe.
Mwari, the Supreme God, is connected to the liv-
ing through the ancestors and spirit mediums. The
natural world, the world of trees, rocks, rivers,
and so forth, has a direct connection to the spiri-
tual world by way of moral geography.
To become an ancestor, death is necessary, but
it is not enough. Most practitioners of popular
traditional African religion make a distinction
between the dead and the ancestors. In fact,
among the Tallensi people, it is believed that those
who die without offspring live a ghostly existence
because they have no one to provide reverence for
them. A more elaborate understanding of this dis-
tinction is given by the Fon of Dahomey. In fact,
the Fon say that the dead (chio) are not the same
as the ancestors (tovodu). As one would expect,
the people of Benin (the African nation with the
largest proportion of its population practicing
popular traditional African religion) also have the
most complex ritual system for deifying the dead
and turning them into ancestors.
The Ritual ProtocolsClearly the practice of ancestor veneration among
the people of Africa means that there must be a
pantheon of deities. Of course, there exists in all
of these congregations a pantheon, but most often
a judicious and limited one. There are not thou-
sands of deities, as among the Hindu people, or
scores of them as among the ancient Greeks; there
are only the robust ancestral spirits that have been
properly called into service by ritual. They have
been brought home again and have manifested
themselves in the service of the community.
Through prayers, rituals, sacrifice and incest pro-
hibition, and other taboo injunctions, the commu-
nity acknowledges the dead person as joining the
cosmography of the ancestral world.
The Akan people of Ghana have a rather devel-
oped sense of ancestor reverence based on kinship.
The matrilineal forebears can become ancestors
and receive veneration. The Akan may have
established this system because the philosophical
tradition is based on the idea that the person is
composed of thentoro, thesunsum, theabusua,
and themogya. The father transmitsntoro, per-
sonality, to the child, but it does not survive death.
The mother transmits themogya, the blood, and
theabusua, family lineage. Thus, in a matrilineal
society, it is from the mother that one receives
those things that survive and are transmuted to
become the spirit of the ancestor. Spirit is a name
attached to certain ritualized relics, such as a
stool, which represents the validation of the
proper ancestral lineage.
Among the Akan, ancestor veneration is more
than a filial relationship to the father or mother; it
is a kinship event with the backing of the political-
philosophical system. Those members of the lin-
eage who are heads of households or holders of
office may become enshrined as venerated ances-
tors. What is true for the Akan matrilineal system
is also true for the patrilineal system in terms of
the rules of selection and veneration.
As an ancestor, a person is able to prolong his
legal existence in his heir or co-heirs. He may have
been a person of bad temper or poor judgment,
but it becomes the inescapable duty of his heirs to
venerate him because he continues to live effec-
tively in the world. Accordingly, it does not mat-
ter what a person’s relationship has been with the
ancestor; once the person has become an ancestor,
it is necessary to venerate him regardless of his
successes or failures as a person. One ancestor is
on equal standing with another so long as he has
been ritualized into ancestorhood, which carries
with it the power to influence lives and intervene
in activities of his descendants.
The Tallensi people, along with many other
Africans, believe that if a man has no sons, he can-
not become an ancestor regardless of his virtue
and success in life. Without an heir to venerate
him, he is in danger of a grievous travesty. What
holds for the ancestor holds for the descendants.
The eldest son must officiate regardless of his
moral condition or his intellectual capacity. No
one can take away from him his right to lead the