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— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

Deity

~9 min read · Ch. 1 of 8
8 sections

  • A deity is a supernatural being thought to hold authority over some part of the universe or of life itself, and many are treated as sacred and worthy of worship. C. Scott Littleton offered one definition. He called a deity a being with powers greater than ordinary humans, one who interacts with people, positively or negatively, in ways that carry them to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life. That single sentence hides a vast disagreement. Huw Owen warns that the word, or its equivalent in other languages, carries a bewildering range of meanings. It stretches from an infinite being who created and lords over everything, to a finite entity that simply evokes a special feeling. How did so many cultures, from the Yoruba of West Africa to the Maori of the Pacific, arrive at the idea of gods at all? Why do some count only one, others count thousands, and others insist none ever truly exist? And what does the word itself remember about the shining, divine roots from which it grew?

  • The English word deity travels back through Old French deite to the Latin deitatem, a term for divine nature coined by Augustine of Hippo from deus, meaning god. Deus connects through a common Proto-Indo-European origin to the root deiwos. That same root, tied to the idea of shining, gave the ancient Indian word Deva, a shining one, alongside Greek dios and Zeus, and Latin deus. Deva is masculine, and its feminine equivalent is devi, cognate with Latin dea and Greek thea. A single root can split into opposites. In Old Persian, daiva means demon or evil god, yet the related Sanskrit word means the heavenly and divine, the exalted and shining ones. The word god has its own tangled path. Douglas Harper traces it to Proto-Germanic guthan, from a root meaning that which is invoked. Guth in Irish means voice, and the same root feeds Old Church Slavonic words for calling. An alternate line traces god to a root meaning to pour a libation, linked to the Greek khein, to pour. In Germanic languages the word for god was originally neuter. It shifted toward the masculine under the influence of Christianity, in which the god is typically seen as male.

  • Theism is simply the belief that one or more deities exist, and from that starting point cultures fan out into strikingly different systems. Polytheism is the belief in and worship of multiple deities, usually gathered into a pantheon with their own rituals. In many such systems the gods stand for forces of nature or ancestral principles, and they may be seen as autonomous or as aspects of a single creator God. Henotheism takes a softer view. It accepts more than one deity but treats them all as equivalent representations of the same highest divine principle. Monolatry holds that many gods exist while insisting only one may be validly worshipped. Monotheism narrows the field to a single existing deity, known as God. That God is usually described as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and eternal, though none of those qualities is essential to qualifying as a deity. Deism keeps the single creator but removes his ongoing involvement. It holds that one deity made the universe yet does not usually intervene in the world that resulted, a view especially popular among western intellectuals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pantheism identifies the universe itself as God. Pandeism sits between deism and pantheism, proposing that the creator became a pantheistic universe. Panentheism holds that divinity pervades the universe and also transcends it. At the far edges sit agnosticism, the position that certainty about any deity is impossible, and atheism, the non-belief in any deity at all.

  • Scholars infer that deities existed in the prehistoric period from inscriptions and from cave drawings, yet they cannot say for certain what those sketches mean or why they were made. Some engravings show animals, hunters, or rituals, but their purpose stays hidden. For a long time archaeologists treated almost every prehistoric female figurine as a single primordial goddess, the supposed ancestor of later goddesses such as Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Cybele, and Aphrodite. That approach has now generally been discredited. Modern archaeologists accept that no prehistoric figurine can be conclusively identified as any kind of deity, let alone a goddess. What remains possible is judgment case by case. The Venus of Willendorf, a female figurine found in Europe and dated to about 25,000 BCE, has been read by some as an example of a prehistoric female deity. Probable representations of deities have turned up at Ain Ghazal, and the art uncovered at Catalhoyuk points to what is probably a complex mythology already taking shape.

  • Diverse African cultures built their own theologies of deities over long histories. In Nigeria and neighboring West African countries, the Yoruba religion centers two prominent Orisa. Ogun is the primordial masculine deity and guardian of occupations such as toolmaking, metalworking, hunting, war, and the work of ascertaining equity and justice. Osun is an equally powerful feminine deity, a guardian of fertility, water, health, love, and peace. Both crossed the Atlantic on slave ships and were preserved in plantation communities, where their festivals are still observed. Egyptian culture revered so many gods that the count is staggering. Egyptologist James P. Allen estimates that more than 1,400 deities are named in Egyptian texts, while Christian Leitz speaks of thousands upon thousands. Around 200 are prominent in the Pyramid texts and ancient temples, many of them zoomorphic, among them Min, Neith, Anubis, Atum, Bes, Horus, Isis, Ra, and Thoth. Most stood for natural phenomena or social aspects of life as hidden immanent forces. The god Shu represented air, the goddess Meretseger represented parts of the earth, and the god Sia represented the abstract powers of perception. In Mesopotamia, the dingir were almost exclusively anthropomorphic, thought to be of tremendous physical size and generally immortal. The most important were the Anunnaki, including the seven gods who decree: An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna. Marduk rose from an obscure deity of the third millennium BCE to become the national god of the Babylonians and the creator of heaven, earth, and humankind.

  • Walter Burkert described the Greek deities as persons, not abstractions, ideas or concepts, and that phrase captures a whole family of Indo-European gods. The Greeks revered gods and goddesses who had fantastic powers yet were not omnipotent and could be injured in some circumstances. Each held a unique expertise and a specific, often flawed, personality. The most important were the Twelve Olympians: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hermes, Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Ares. Several of these gods trace back to older Indo-European traditions. Eos, the goddess of the dawn, is cognate to Indic Ushas, Roman Aurora, and Latvian Auseklis, while Zeus, king of the gods, is cognate to Latin Iupiter, Old German Ziu, and Indic Dyaus. The Roman pantheon absorbed and syncretized many of these figures, pairing six gods and six goddesses including Venus, Apollo, Mars, Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter, alongside non-Greek deities such as Janus, Fortuna, and Quirinus. Roman scholars debated what the gods even were. Varro, in his Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, set out three accounts of deity: the mythical account created by poets for theatre, the civil account used by the city for veneration, and the natural account created by philosophers. He argued the best state combines the poet's myth with the philosopher's reasoning, and Cicero praised him for it in his Academica. In Norse mythology, the Aesir and the Vanir went to war before reconciling. The Ynglinga saga describes that truce sealed by exchanged hostages and intermarriage, after which the goddess Freyja of the Vanir taught magic to the Aesir.

  • Viracocha, also called Pachacutec, stood before space and time in Inca belief as the abstract creator who existed before he created anything at all. The other Inca deities corresponded to elements of nature. Inti, the sun deity, was held responsible for agricultural prosperity and counted as father of the first Inca king, while Mama Qucha was goddess of the sea, lakes, and rivers. Across the Maya world, Kukulkan was the supreme creator, revered also as god of reincarnation, water, fertility, and wind. The Maya built step pyramid temples in his honor and aligned them to the sun's position on the spring equinox. Their calendar ran 18 months of 20 days each, plus five unlucky days of Uayeb, and every month had its own presiding deity who inspired festivals and trading markets. In Aztec culture a figure with similar aspects was called Quetzalcoatl, though Timothy Insoll cautions that Aztec ideas of deity remain poorly understood, since much of what survives was constructed by Christian missionaries. Aztec deities were usually not anthropomorphic. They appeared instead as zoomorphic or hybrid icons, often shaped into ceramic figurines and revered in home shrines. Far across the Pacific, the Maori of what is now New Zealand named the supreme being Io, the original uncreated creator with nothing beyond him, surrounded by gods such as Tangaloa, who created men, and Rangi, the sky god father.

  • Democritus argued that the concept of deities arose when human beings observed natural phenomena such as lightning, solar eclipses, and the changing of the seasons. The impulse to explain belief in gods runs at least that far back. In the third century BCE the scholar Euhemerus argued in his book Sacred History that the gods were originally flesh-and-blood mortal kings, posthumously deified, so that religion continued their earthly reigns. That view is now called Euhemerism. Much later, Sigmund Freud suggested that God-concepts are a projection of one's father. Modern thinkers locate the tendency deeper still, in the architecture of human consciousness. Children are naturally inclined to believe in gods, spirits, and demons even without being introduced to a religious tradition. Humans carry an overactive agency-detection system that concludes events are caused by intelligent beings even when they are not, a trait that may have helped ancestors survive real threats in the wild. People also think teleologically, ascribing meaning to their surroundings, which may push them toward belief in a creator. Stories of supernatural encounters spread easily because they pair familiar categories, a person or an animal or a house, with counterintuitive properties such as invisibility or memory. Sociologists of religion add that deities can mirror a culture's sense of self-esteem. Lonely and fearful societies tend to invent wrathful, submission-seeking gods, while happier and more secure societies tend to invent loving and compassionate ones. Matt Rossano proposes that God-concepts may serve as a means of enforcing morality and building more cooperative communities, a working purpose for an idea that began, perhaps, with someone watching the sky go dark.

Common questions

What is the definition of a deity?

A deity, or god, is a supernatural being considered to have authority over some aspect of the universe or of life, with many also regarded as sacred and worthy of worship. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton describes a deity as a being with powers greater than ordinary humans who interacts with people in ways that carry them to new levels of consciousness.

Where does the word deity come from?

The English word deity derives from Old French deite and the Latin deitatem, meaning divine nature, a term coined by Augustine of Hippo from deus, meaning god. Deus connects through a common Proto-Indo-European origin to the root deiwos, which is tied to the idea of shining and also yields the ancient Indian word Deva.

What is the difference between monotheism, polytheism, and henotheism?

Monotheism is the belief that only one deity exists, polytheism is the belief in and worship of multiple deities usually gathered into a pantheon, and henotheism accepts more than one deity while treating them all as equivalent aspects of the same highest divine principle. Monolatry holds that many deities exist but only one may be validly worshipped.

How many deities did the ancient Egyptians worship?

Egyptologist James P. Allen estimates that more than 1,400 deities are named in Egyptian texts, while Christian Leitz offers an estimate of thousands upon thousands. Around 200 deities are prominent in the Pyramid texts and ancient temples, many of them zoomorphic, including Min, Neith, Anubis, Horus, Isis, Ra, and Thoth.

Who were the most important deities in Greek and Roman religion?

The most important deities in the Greek pantheon were the Twelve Olympians: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hermes, Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Ares. The Roman pantheon syncretized many of these with figures such as Venus, Mars, Minerva, Juno, and Jupiter, alongside non-Greek deities like Janus, Fortuna, and Quirinus.

Why do humans believe in deities?

Democritus argued that the concept of deities arose when humans observed natural phenomena such as lightning, solar eclipses, and the changing of the seasons. Modern thinkers point to an overactive agency-detection system, a tendency to think teleologically, and, as Matt Rossano proposes, the use of God-concepts to enforce morality and build cooperative communities. Children are naturally inclined to believe in gods, spirits, and demons even without religious instruction.

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All sources

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