Tempon Telon is the divine ferryman of the dead in Ngaju religion, the heavenly being charged with conducting the liau, the soul of a deceased person, from the middle world to Lewu Tatau, the 'Rich Village' of the ancestors in the Upperworld. He pilots the banama, a golden soul-ship often figured as a hornbill, and his voyage is chanted at length by the priests during the tiwah, the great secondary mortuary feast at which the cleaned bones of the dead are finally deposited and the soul is dispatched to its heavenly home. Without his passage the soul cannot complete its journey, and much of the recorded Ngaju death-liturgy is addressed to guiding and provisioning his ship.