Ancestor veneration in East and Southeast Asia is distinguished above all by its focus on one’s own lineage. The spirits addressed are deceased family members—parents, grandparents, and earlier forebears—linked by blood or adoption, rather than anonymous or distant powers. This creates a direct genealogical relationship that extends family bonds beyond death, so that the dead remain part of the living family network. By contrast, other forms of spirit worship are directed toward deities, nature spirits, local tutelary beings, culture heroes, or ghosts that are not tied to a single family line. These other spirits may be powerful and revered, yet they stand outside the intimate circle of kinship. Ancestor rites therefore carry a different emotional and social weight than rituals directed to non-familial spirits.

Because of this lineage focus, the obligations involved in ancestor veneration are framed in terms of filial piety and family duty. Honoring the dead is understood as repaying a debt to those who gave life, nurtured descendants, and safeguarded the continuity of the clan. Ancestors are seen as moral guardians who monitor behavior, enforce family values, and shape the fortune of the lineage, so that ethical conduct is inseparable from ritual remembrance. Other spirits, by contrast, are usually approached for protection, favor, or the avoidance of harm in a more transactional or contractual way, without the same built‑in framework of filial responsibility. Their concerns may relate to territory, natural forces, or general well‑being rather than the inner life of a particular family.

The ritual settings further highlight this distinction. Ancestor veneration is typically centered on domestic altars, family shrines, clan halls, and tombs, where offerings of food, incense, and meaningful items are made on fixed dates such as death anniversaries and seasonal festivals. These regular, lineage‑based observances create an unbroken ritual thread linking generations. Other spirit worship more often takes place at public temples, shrines, or natural sites and may be occasional, festival‑based, or need‑driven—for healing, examinations, business ventures, or travel—without the same genealogical continuity. In this way, ancestor rites organize and express the internal structure of family and inheritance, while other spirit cults mediate the relationship between human communities and the wider cosmos.

Yet these two modes of reverence are not mutually exclusive; they are complementary dimensions of a single spiritual landscape. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in kinship systems, social hierarchies, and the moral order of the household, whereas other spirit worship orients communities toward broader domains such as territorial protection, fertility, and collective safety. Together they weave a pattern in which the living stand between the intimate presence of their forebears and the larger world of spirits and deities.