Kese-Manetōw, the Great Good Spirit or Good Mystery, is the supreme benevolent power of Menominee cosmology, the remote overseer who set the culture-hero Manabus his tasks and through whom the ordered world and its blessings descend to humankind. Dwelling in the highest tier of the sky-world, above the Thunderers and the lesser powers, the Good Spirit is approached less through direct petition than through the mediating figure of Manabus and the ceremonies of the medicine lodge. Menominee tradition sets over against this power the malevolent forces beneath the earth, and the flood-cycle turns on the effort to hold the two in balance. Sources differ on how far the sharply dualistic scheme of a single good and a single evil power reflects the influence of mission-era teaching upon older Menominee belief.