Within Balinese Hinduism, pemangku serve as the everyday custodians of sacred space and practice, standing at the point where community life meets the world of the gods and spirits. They are responsible for the ongoing care of the temple, maintaining its ritual purity, overseeing its physical upkeep, and tending to sacred objects and shrines. Through the preparation and presentation of daily offerings and the performance of regular prayers, they keep the temple’s worship “alive,” ensuring that the relationship between humans and the divine is not merely ceremonial but continuous. Their authority is closely tied to particular temples and local deities, reflecting a deeply rooted connection to place and community.

Ritually, pemangku lead the recurring cycles of worship that shape Balinese religious life. They conduct daily offerings and prayers, preside over temple festivals such as odalan, and perform various purification rites for the temple and community. In many contexts they also guide ceremonies that touch individual and communal life, including blessings, rites of passage, and other forms of ritual protection. Through mantras, holy water, and structured offerings, they invoke the presence and favor of deities, ancestral spirits, and protective forces, seeking to maintain harmony among humans, nature, and the unseen realms.

As spiritual intermediaries, pemangku occupy a mediating role between villagers and the invisible world. They act as channels to local deities, guardian spirits, and other subtle forces, sometimes through trance and other times through more formalized prayer and ritual. People look to them for guidance in understanding religious obligations, in performing household ceremonies linked to the temple’s deities, and in interpreting signs or experiences that are understood as spiritual in nature. In this way, they function not only as ritual specialists but also as accessible religious guides whose counsel helps shape the community’s moral and spiritual orientation.

Their position is distinct from that of the Brahmana high priests, or pedanda, who are associated with more complex, broadly Vedic-based rites and higher-level rituals of purification. Pemangku, by contrast, are generally drawn from the local community and are devoted primarily to the needs of specific temples and their congregations. This local grounding makes them central figures in the daily religious life of Balinese Hindus, embodying a form of priesthood that is intimate, continuous, and closely woven into the fabric of village existence.