The Ibegwu are the collective deified ancestors of the Igala, among the most actively venerated powers of the religion and the object of a major seasonal festival. They are conceived as the direct representatives and messengers of the supreme being Ọjọ, standing between him and the living. In that office they guard the welfare of their descendants — their fertility, their farming, the good order of family and community — and act as judges of morality, sanctioning breaches of custom with misfortune. Igala families further hold that the Ibegwu reincarnate through the birth of children, so that the lineage of the dead is continually renewed among the living. They are catalogued here as the named, individuated ancestral power that the Igala themselves treat as a single venerated collectivity, rather than as ancestors-in-general.