Libation

The ritual pouring of a liquid — wine, water, milk, beer, or palm wine — as an offering to deities, spirits, or ancestors during religious ceremonies, seasonal festivals, and commemorative occasions, attested in ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, and across sub-Saharan Africa. In many African and African-diaspora traditions, pouring libations for ancestors is central to festivals such as Kwanzaa and Odwira; in Shinto, sake is offered to kami at seasonal matsuri, physically connecting the living community to the divine and ancestral worlds it honours.