How do you reconcile traditions that teach giving offerings to ancestors with traditions that teach reincarnation? In other words, you might be feeding an ancestor that is no longer on the other side because he has taken rebirth.

In most cultures the spirit is seen as having multiple parts. In Tibet for instance there is the Namshe and the La. In Vodou there is the Ti Bon Ang and Gros Bon Ang. In Catholicism you have Augustines Soul and Spirit as distinct parts.

It is quite possible for the lesser part of a soul, or shade of a being, to linger - especially if remembered and fed with offerings. The essence or more integral parts if the stream of being reincarnate.

Or you could argue for non-linear time and say that you can access any incarnation at any time.

Either argument works.

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