Amadlozi

These are the "Living Dead," the ancestral spirits who act as the essential intermediaries between the high, distant God and the daily struggles of the living family. They reside in the shadows of the home and the silence of the cattle kraal, requiring constant recognition through the smoke of herbs and the pouring of beer. To ignore the Amadlozi is to lose one's spiritual anchor, for they are the guardians of the moral law and the keepers of the family bloodline. They represent the continuity of the self, the proof that the grave is merely a gate to a more influential stage of being.