Kpĩĩ

The kpĩĩ are the ancestral dead, whose cult stands at the centre of everyday Dagara religion. Because the creator Naaŋmin has withdrawn beyond human approach, it is to the ancestors, alongside the Earth, that the living turn. Jack Goody's classic study of LoDagaa mortuary custom showed that the dead are held to keep eternal rights over the property and the persons they leave behind, so that heirs are bound to sacrifice to them; ancestors who are well served protect their descendants, while those who are neglected send affliction as a demand for attention. Standing nearer than the living to the distant God, the kpĩĩ also relay human petitions upward. Their shrines, tended within the household and lineage, receive libation and the blood of sacrificial animals, sustaining an unbroken exchange between the community and its forebears.

Domains

• death afterlife
• ancestry lineage
• mediation

Powers

• receives sacrifice from descendants
• protects and disciplines the lineage
• carries the prayers of the living toward God

Epithets

• kpĩĩ — the dead ones, the ancestorsJack Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors (1962). (secondary)

Sources

• The kpĩĩ, the ancestral dead, retain eternal rights over their descendants and property, receive sacrifice at ancestor shrines, protect the lineage, and mediate between the living and the remote God.: Jack Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa (Stanford University Press, 1962). (secondary)