Ancestors

In multiple religious traditions, living relatives call on ancestors to provide aid, guidance, and intercession. Ancestors are generally beneficent, domesticated, and deceased relatives or prominent community figures. They may also be seen to punish those who do not act properly toward them or their guidance. And the living show reciprocity for ancestors by honoring them through memorials, caring for the resting place of the ancestor, making prayers for and to ancestors, offering goods to ancestors that are needed in the afterlife, and holding feasts for ancestors.

An important consideration in understanding ancestors in various religious traditions is in clearly making the differentiation between ancestors and the dead. While ancestors have passed beyond this life, they are ancestors because they are considered to have passed on to a new and pleasant existence rather than to have simply died. As such, ancestors can still aid the living through visions, prayers, intercessions, and examples of how to live. Furthermore, ancestors are an aid to the living by virtue of becoming ancestors and not just ghosts or unhappy dead. In this respect, the living help themselves by helping ancestors. For instance, in Hindu death rites, the living descendants of the dead care for the deceased, considered a preta (ghost) immediately after death. [Page 32]If the rites are properly observed, then the preta becomes a pitr or “father” and reaches the “world of the fathers.” In so doing, the deceased becomes a proper ancestor. If these rites are not properly observed or if the dead person does not reach the householder age, which assumes a complete life and the means for proper ritual observance (i.e., for descendants), then the deceased remains a preta and will become a malicious, wild spirit in his or her displeasure with these circumstances.

Ancestors of communities act as “guiding lights” to the community, and some members may claim to see visions and hear the voices of those ancestors. Cosmogonic myths of certain traditions refer to an ancient king or first human being as a community ancestor. Meanwhile, civil religious traditions look to “city fathers” or “founders” as community ancestors. In these cases, the ancestors are the source of the establishment of the community, and from them, the present community derives its authority and purpose.

From even humanistic perspectives, ancestors influence the living. In such a view, ancestors are those by whom the still living are given into this world. This giving over, both of life and the world, from ancestors to the living, lays heavy responsibilities and expectations on the living. But it is through the examples of ancestors that the living find the means to both persevere and excel. In this view, as in religious views, ancestors are (at least) a portion of the ground of a community's tradition that legitimizes its existence, guiding it and its members toward proper ways of being.