Diviners and spiritualists help to achieve this harmony by interpreting spiritual forces, and provide the means to influence them. Ancient and modern-day rural Egyptians, like many Songhai along the Niger River and the Sahel region, believe that the world consists of two earths and seven heavens. God lives in the most distant heaven. Deified angels inhabit heavens two to six. Ancestor spirits inhabit the first heaven, the one nearest earth.
Heavens are the same as realms.
In concurrence with an orderly matrix of creation, ancestors are thought to span the gap between the supernatural and natural worlds. They connect these two worlds specifically by linking living lineage members with their earliest forebears. Because of their proximity, and because they once walked among the living, ancestors are prone to intervene in daily affairs. This intervention is particularly likely in the case of the recently deceased, who are thought to spend weeks or months in limbo between the living and the dead. Many religious observances include special rituals to propitiate these spirits, encourage them to take their leave with serenity, and restore the social order their deaths have disrupted.