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Deities & Sacred Figures
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The gods and goddesses of the world's pantheons, the named figures of scripture and legend who are not gods, the archangels of the Abrahamic traditions, and the archetypal patterns used to compare them. Each figure carries their myths, domains and symbols, and links out to the planets, plants, animals and cards attached to them. Ancient sources often equated deities across cultures themselves, and the Atlas records those identifications where they were genuinely made.
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Overview
Scope of This SectionThe personal figures of religion and myth: the gods of the pantheons, the named human and semi-divine figures of sacred narrative who are not worshipped as gods, the archangels of the Abrahamic hierarchies, and the archetypes used to set one figure beside another. The categories sort by kind of figure rather than by religion. 1 Categories in This Section
Abrahamic Deities2Afro-Brazilian Deities2Ainu Deities5Andean Deities2Anishinaabe Deities3Armenian Deities2Australian Aboriginal Deities4Aztec Deities24Aztec God of Art, Games, Beauty, Dance and Flowers1Aztec God of Games, Gambling, Music and Dance, Foremost of the Ahuiateteo1Babylonian Deities10Baltic Deities9Basque Deities2Buddhist Deities34Burmese Deities1Canaanite Deities6Caucasian Deities4Celtic Deities30Chinese Deities39Cloud Serpent, patron of the hunt and of the Chichimec hunting peoples the Mexica claimed as their own ancestry1Deities3deity7Diné (Navajo) Deities6Egyptian Deities31Etruscan Deities8Finnish Deities11Fon Deities9Founder Gods1Georgian Deities2Germanic Deities2Greek Deities68Hindu Deities109Hittite Deities5Hurrian Deities1Igbo Deities1Inca Deities6Inuit Deities5Jain Deities3Japanese Deities24Khmer Deities1Kongo Deities1Korean Deities5Lakota Deities6Lusitanian Deities6Maasai Deities1Mandaean Deities4Maya Deities19Melanesian Deities1Mexican Folk Deities3Micronesian Deities2Mixtec Deities1Moche Deities1Nabataean Deities1Norse Deities30Orisha Deities16Palmyrene Deities1Phoenician and Punic Deities1Phoenician Deities2Phrygian Deities3Plague-expelling protector deities of southern Fujian and Taiwanese folk religion, sent seaward each cycle in a burned or floated wangye boat1Polynesian Deities17Roman Deities23Shona Deities1Siberian Deities2Sikh Deities1Slavic Deities13Sumerian and Akkadian Deities1Sumerian Deities11Tagalog Deities1Taoist god of literature and the imperial examinations, patron of scholars and students1Tengrist Deities4Thai Deities1The Abandoned Princess of Korean shamanic epic, guide of souls to the afterlife and patroness of shamans, recited in the funeral gut1The Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, venerated in Cao Dai cosmology as one of three spirits who signed the Third Alliance Between God and Man1The Dark Heaven Supreme Emperor, Daoism's barefoot warrior god of the north, water and exorcism, enthroned on Wudang Mountain1The French writer Victor Hugo, venerated in Cao Dai cosmology as one of three spirits who signed the Third Alliance Between God and Man1The grain and food kami of the Outer Shrine at Ise, second in standing only to Amaterasu at the shrine complex itself1The Great Emperor Who Protects Life, Fujianese and Taiwanese folk god of medicine, deified from the historical Song dynasty physician Wu Tao1The Mad Monk, a Chan Buddhist deity deified from the historical Hangzhou monk Daoji, revered for flouting monastic discipline while helping the poor1The Old Man under the Moon, Chinese god of marriage and destined union, who ties couples together with an invisible red thread1The Primordial Sovereign of the Rosy Clouds of Dawn, Taoist goddess of Mount Tai, childbirth and destiny, known in English as the Princess of the Azure Clouds1The Seven Stars of the Big Dipper, honored in the Korean shaman pantheon and in Korean Buddhist temple shrine halls for longevity, fortune and children1The Three Great Officials of Heaven, Earth and Water in Chinese Taoism, who bestow blessings, remit sin and avert misfortune1Thracian Deities2Ugaritic Deities2Urartian Deities1Venezuelan Deities1Vietnamese Deities4Vietnamese scholar official, poet and prophet, venerated in Cao Dai cosmology as the third spirit of the Third Alliance Between God and Man1Vodou Deities15West African Deities10Wiccan Deities5Yazidi Deities2Zapotec Deities1Zoroastrian Deities7Zulu Deities3 Other Sections
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What this domain gathers
This section holds the personal figures of the world's religions and mythologies: the gods and goddesses of the great pantheons, the named human and semi-divine figures of scripture and legend who are not themselves gods, the archangels of the Abrahamic traditions, and the archetypal patterns scholars use to compare one figure with another.
A deity is a being held to be divine and, usually, to govern some part of the cosmos or human life. A character is a figure of sacred narrative (a prophet, patriarch, saint, hero or monster), who acts within the story without being worshipped as a god, though the line between the two is drawn differently in different traditions and is sometimes disputed within one. Archangels occupy a rank of their own in Jewish, Christian and Islamic angelology, and archetypes are a modern comparative device rather than objects of belief.
Why the Boundary Matters
Where a tradition places a figure (god, intermediary, exalted human), is rarely neutral; it is often the point on which whole theologies turn. The same person may be a god in one community and a revered but wholly human teacher in another, and figures who are dual-modelled in this atlas (worshipped as a deity in one setting, remembered as a historical or scriptural person in another) carry a page in more than one category so each perspective can be given its due.
The entries describe the myths, domains, symbols and associated animals, plants and planets of each figure, and note where a tradition's own account differs from the historical-critical reconstruction of scholars. The aim throughout is to report what each tradition holds without adjudicating between them.
How to browse it
The categories under this section sort the figures by kind rather than by religion, so a browser can move from Deities across all pantheons, to the Characters of sacred story, to the Archangels of the Abrahamic hierarchies, to the comparative Archetypes. Within the deity and character pages the entries group further by tradition (Greek, Norse, Hindu, Egyptian and the rest), so a reader can narrow from all gods to one pantheon in a step.
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