The Rice Mother is the personified guardian of the rice to whom the Akha address the round of rituals that punctuate the agricultural year. In Akha thought rice, like people, has a soul, and the flight of that soul brings sickness and dearth; the rites of the Rice Mother recall the wandering soul and secure the fertility and health, the blessing, on which the household depends. Though the supreme creator stands higher in the cosmic order, it is the Rice Mother, alongside the ancestors, who receives the more constant and elaborate cult.