While this view of African religion is partly true, it obscures more than it clarifies.

The fetish is believed to have some powers of its own, but, in general, it derived them from its close association with a dead ancestor.

Behind the fetish was the religion of ancestor worship, and the fetish is better understood as a religious symbol.

Ancestor worship was also part of the African's strong family ties and his powerful kinship patterns.

Behind the realm of this fetish and ancestor worship lay another world of distant and powerful deities who had control over the elemental natural forces of the universe.