Śrāddha

Vimalananda said that this was not the way that things really are.

And that anyone, male or female or other, can perform Shraddha and Tarpana.

Anyone can address the ancestors and attempt to do good things for them so that good things can come in our direction.

Of course, the debt to our ancestors occurs because, literally, we would not exist if they did not exist.

So when you have a tremendous amount of attention being paid to a certain astral realm, that astral realm becomes more accessible to anyone at that point.

So during the Pithrupaksha, that is the time that people will particularly perform two different rituals.

One is called Shraddha, which is much more complicated, and the other is called Tarpanah.

Shraddha is a very specific method of offering a ball made out of rice flour or cooked rice or barley flour, depending on where you're performing the ritual.