Understanding Igbo versus African Religion series

Understanding Igbo versus African Religion  series

Part 1

               The Ancestors (Ndichie)

These are African traditional saints who are not really deified; they are rather honored owing to the position they occupy among the African families. They are not worshipped or adored but venerated. They are still regarded as part of the family to which they belonged when alive.
Now that they are stripped of the body through death, they become freer and more active in helping the members of the family and the towns of their origin. They approach the different kinds of spirits and divinities interested in the affairs of men and enter into communion with them in view of the good of their living kith and kin. If a correct and befitting burial is not accorded a dead person he may become a wandering ghost, unable to live peacefully after death and therefore a danger to those who remain alive.

For one to become an ancestor, the following characteristics must be fulfilled:

* He must have lived an upright life when on earth according to the reckonings of the people;
* Died good and natural death at the ripe old age
* Accorded a befitting burial/funeral rites
* Must be survived by at least a male child.

         ROLE OF ANCESTORS

* Unifying families and people, caring for each other, empowering, blessing, rewarding and inspiring;
* Protecting families and clans from diseases, evil, enemies, and even in wars;
* Mediating between people and the divinity;
* Enforcing discipline in case of the breaking social values;
* Facilitating holistic healing.

Ancestors are believed to manifest in the family, clan and community in various forms. Thus they continue to interact with the living through dreams, appearances, visions, sounds and incarnations through animals such as birds, butterflies, bees, snakes, lions, python, and even, vegetations.

It is not the ancestors that are believed or thought to have reached the land of the bliss; other men, women, single or married, survived by only female children or by no child at all provided they lived according to the law and customs of the people and are given befitting funerals, also reach the land of the bliss but not ancestors. Such people are also venerated.

All such people in all their stages are supposed to be the various masquerades that roam the towns and villages during different traditional feasts and festivals. Thus they are inform of male and/or girl masquerades (agbogho mmuo), formidably, strong ones representing those who died in their prime of youth and so on.

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