Througout equatorial Africa, ritual specialists mediate with the ancestors and prepare medicines to address the concerns of their clients. While the black, red, and white ngobudi mask was worn only by practitioners specializing in determining the causes of problems, most specialists employed figurative and non-figurative minkisi. The former, dubbed power figures, manifest the partnership between a carver, who created the figure, and the ritual specialist, who rendered the inert sculpture capable of effecting change and healing. The mirror, suggestive of the surface of water, evokes the ancestral realm; Kongo identify bodies of water as the domain of the ancestors. Each iron nail and blade driven into the nkisi nkonde documents a particular case addressed by a ritual specialist.