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Monotheism: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Monotheism
The word monotheism did not exist in the ancient world. It was coined by Henry More in 1660, a time when the concept of a single, exclusive deity was already centuries old. Before this linguistic invention, scholars and believers used terms like monolatry, henotheism, or one-god discourse to describe their faiths. The ancient Egyptians, for instance, did not call their belief monotheism, yet Pharaoh Akhenaten attempted to establish Atenism in the 14th century BCE, declaring the sun disk Aten to be the only God of Egypt. This radical shift occurred in Year 5 of his reign, around the 2nd of January 1348 BCE, when he changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, meaning Agreeable to Aten. He moved the capital from Thebes to a new city called Akhetaten, the Horizon of the Aten, to separate the priesthood from political power. Akhenaten banned idols and images of the sun except for a rayed solar disc, claiming that the Aten was the sole God while he served as the only intermediary between the divine and the people. Despite this bold declaration, historians often classify Akhenaten's religion as monolatry rather than true monotheism because he did not deny the existence of other gods, but simply refused to worship them. His reign ended in heresy, and Egypt reverted to its traditional polytheistic ways shortly after his death, leaving his experiment as a singular flash in the ancient sky.
The concept of a single God also emerged independently in the Iron Age South Asian Vedic period, where the Rigveda exhibited notions of monism regarding the Brahman, particularly in the tenth book known as the Nasadiya Sukta. This text, dated to the early Iron Age, suggests that while many gods existed, they were all aspects of one supreme reality. Similarly, in ancient China, the Shang dynasty, beginning around 1766 BCE, centered its faith on Shangdi, literally the Above Sovereign, or Heaven. This faith system was not truly monotheistic in the narrow sense, as it allowed for the worship of lesser gods and spirits alongside Shangdi. However, later variants like Mohism, which flourished between 470 BCE and 391 BCE, approached true monotheism by teaching that lesser gods and ancestral spirits merely carried out the will of Shangdi. The Zhou dynasty rulers performed annual sacrificial rituals to Shangdi, slaughtering a completely healthy bull to honor the supreme being. This tradition persisted until the end of the Qing dynasty, when the last ruler declared himself the son of heaven, integrating the concept of a supreme ruler into the political structure of the empire.
In the 6th century BCE, Zoroastrianism emerged in Persia, crediting the prophet Zoroaster with founding the first monotheistic religion in history, possibly as early as the middle of the second millennium BCE. Zoroastrians believed in the supremacy of one God, Ahura Mazda, the Maker of All, who was the first being before all others. The Yasna, the primary collection of Zoroastrian texts, describes Ahura Mazda as the Father of the Good Mind and the true Creator of Truth. However, scholars remain conflicted about whether Zoroastrianism is best characterized as monotheistic, polytheistic, or henotheistic due to the centrality of Ahriman, the opposite force of Ahura Mazda. This dualistic element created a complex theological landscape that influenced Second Temple Judaism and, through it, later monotheistic religions. The evolution of monotheism was bound with universal monarchies, as large, densely populated societies required more formalized religious structures to maintain social cohesion. The shift from small, kin-based communities to larger settlements increased the need for moralizing gods and centralized rituals, a process that facilitated the emergence of religious specialists and institutionalized belief systems.
The word monotheism was coined by Henry More in 1660. Before this linguistic invention, scholars and believers used terms like monolatry, henotheism, or one-god discourse to describe their faiths.
When did Pharaoh Akhenaten establish Atenism and what changes did he make?
Pharaoh Akhenaten established Atenism in Year 5 of his reign, around the 2nd of January 1348 BCE. He changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, moved the capital from Thebes to Akhetaten, and banned idols and images of the sun except for a rayed solar disc.
When did the First Council of Nicaea take place and what was its main decision?
The First Council of Nicaea was held in 325 CE in present-day Turkey. All but two bishops took the position that Jesus was of the same substance, homoousios, as the Father, resulting in the first uniform Christian doctrine known as the Nicene Creed.
When did the doctrine of the Trinity take its final form and who developed it?
The doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since by the end of the 4th century. It was developed under the leadership of the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus.
When did Islam emerge and what is the core principle of Islamic belief?
Islam emerged in the 7th century CE in the context of both Christianity and Judaism. Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of faith, stating that there is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.
When did Rastafari develop and who is given central importance in its beliefs?
Rastafari developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. The former emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, is given central importance, with many Rastas regarding him as an incarnation of Jah on Earth and as the Second Coming of Christ.
The First Council of Nicaea, held in 325 CE in present-day Turkey, marked a pivotal moment in the history of Christian monotheism. Convoked by the Roman Emperor Constantine I, this was the first ecumenical council of bishops of the Roman Empire. The council aimed to resolve disagreements in Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in relationship to the Father, specifically whether Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father or merely of similar substance. All but two bishops took the position that Jesus was of the same substance, homoousios, as the Father, rejecting the argument of Arius. This decision resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, the Nicene Creed, which established a precedent for subsequent general ecumenical councils to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy. The creed begins with the declaration, I believe in one God, affirming the central tenet of Christian monotheism.
The doctrine of the Trinity, which describes God as a triune entity comprising three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, was developed over the next half century. Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, the doctrine took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. These three persons are described as being of the same substance, existing consubstantially within a single Godhead. Trinitarian Christians argue that the Trinity does not consist of three separate deities, but rather three persons who exist consubstantially within a single Godhead. They maintain that in God, everything is one where there is no distinction by relative opposition, and that the three persons share equally in the internal divine activity because they are all identified with the divine essence.
Despite this orthodox definition, other Christian faiths have diverged from the Trinitarian view. Unitarianism, named for its understanding of God as one person, stands in direct contrast to Trinitarianism. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, and other groups do not share the Trinitarian view, arguing that the Godhead consists of three separate individuals, each having a distinct purpose in the grand existence of human kind. Some in Judaism and Islam reject the Christian idea of monotheism, classifying the Trinitarian doctrine as shituf in Judaism and as shirk in Islam. These traditions argue that attributing divinity to a created entity is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Quran. The Islamic belief states that Muhammad did not bring a new religion from God, but rather the same religion as practiced by Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus, correcting the lost message of the Tawrat, Injil, and Zabur. The Quran asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique and indivisible being who is independent of the creation. Ash'arite theology, which dominated Sunni Islam from the 10th to the 19th century, insists on ultimate divine transcendence and holds that divine unity is not accessible to human reason, teaching that human knowledge regarding it is limited to what has been revealed through the prophets.
The Evolution of Belief Systems
The history of monotheism is not a linear progression from polytheism to monotheism, but rather a complex interplay of beliefs that evolved over millennia. Scholars of religion largely abandoned the 19th and 20th-century view that monotheism was the original religion of humanity, known as the Adamic religion or Urreligion, in favor of an evolutionary progression from animism via polytheism to monotheism. However, more recently, thinkers like Karen Armstrong have returned to the idea of an evolutionary progression beginning with animism, which developed into polytheism, which developed into henotheism, which developed into monolatry, which developed into true monotheism. This order was reversed by Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt, who had postulated an Urmonotheismus, or original monotheism, in the 1910s. The evolution of monotheism is bound with universal monarchies, as large, densely populated societies required more formalized religious structures to maintain social cohesion.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the Cushitic-speaking populations of the central Nile Valley, present-day Sudan, worshipped Waaq, a singular sky deity, circa the 5th millennium BCE. This belief persists among some Cushitic groups, and the term barwaaqo in the Somali language means prosperity, still including the name of Waaq. The Irreechaa festival, an annual thanksgiving celebrated by the Oromo people in Ethiopia, marks the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the harvest. It is a spiritual occasion dedicated to Waaq, the supreme God in traditional Oromo belief, symbolizing gratitude for nature's abundance. The festival is observed in various regions, with the largest celebration taking place in Addis Ababa, where tens of thousands of people gather near bodies of water to offer prayers, songs, and traditional rituals. This tradition reflects deep-rooted cultural practices that promote unity and peace among the Oromo community and beyond.
In Central Africa, the Bukongo religion of the Kongo people is based on the belief in a supreme God called Nzambi a Mpungu Tulendo, an abstract, formless entity representing the cycle of the Nza, the Universe, and the source of all life. While it includes practices related to the ancestral community and natural forces that can be embodied by Nzambi a Mpungu, these entities are regarded as respected intermediaries, not as independent deities. This hierarchical monotheism centers on a single, supreme God, with spiritual structures that acknowledge the existence of lesser powers without granting them independent divinity. Similarly, in the Americas, the Great Spirit, called Wakan Tanka among the Sioux and Gitche Manitou in Algonquian, is a conception of universal spiritual force or supreme being prevalent among some Native American and First Nation cultures. While some researchers have interpreted Aztec philosophy as fundamentally monotheistic or panentheistic, with priests and nobles coming to an interpretation of Teotl as a single universal force with many facets, others argue that many assertions of this supposed monotheism might actually come from post-Conquistador bias, imposing an Antiquity pagan model onto the Aztec.
In the Andaman Islands, the religion of the Andamanese peoples has at times been described as animistic monotheism, believing foremost in a single deity, Pūluga, who created the universe. However, Pūluga is not worshipped, and anthropomorphic personifications of natural phenomena are also known. In Southeastern Australia, the sky father Baiame is perceived as the creator of the universe, though this role is sometimes taken by other gods like Yhi or Bunjil. The Yolngu had extensive contact with the Makassans and adopted religious practices inspired by those of Islam, with the god Walitha'walitha based on Allah, specifically with the wa-Ta'ala suffix, though it is unclear if this deity was Allah-like in terms of functions.
The Philosophers and the One
The philosophical roots of monotheism extend back to ancient Greece, where thinkers like Xenophanes of Colophon held views very similar to those of modern monotheists. His poems harshly criticized the traditional notion of anthropomorphic gods, commenting that if cattle and horses and lions had hands or could paint with their hands, they would also depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies of such a sort as the form they themselves have. Instead, Xenophanes declared that there is one god, greatest among gods and humans, like mortals neither in form nor in thought. His theology appears to have been monist, but not truly monotheistic in the strictest sense. Although some later philosophers, such as Antisthenes, believed in doctrines similar to those expounded by Xenophanes, his ideas did not appear to have become widely popular.
Plato, though a polytheist in his own writings, often presented Socrates as speaking of the god in the singular form. The Euthyphro dilemma, for example, is formulated as Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods? This question highlights the tension between the plurality of gods and the concept of a single divine source. The development of pure philosophical monotheism is a product of Late Antiquity, during the 2nd to 3rd centuries, when early Christianity was just one of several competing religious movements advocating monotheism. The One, a concept prominent in the writings of the Neoplatonists, especially the philosopher Plotinus, is described as an inconceivable, transcendent, all-embodying, permanent, eternal, causative entity that permeates throughout all of existence.
In the 2nd and 3rd century CE, a number of oracles of Apollo from Didyma and Clarus, the so-called theological oracles, proclaimed that there is only one highest god, of whom the gods of polytheistic religions are mere manifestations or servants. Cyprus had, besides Christianity, an apparently monotheistic cult of Dionysus, where two monotheistic religions, Dionysian and Christian, existed contemporaneously in Nea Paphos during the 4th century CE. The Hypsistarians were a religious group who believed in a most high god, according to Greek documents. Later revisions of this Hellenic religion were adjusted towards monotheism as it gained consideration among a wider populace. The worship of Zeus as the head-god signaled a trend in the direction of monotheism, with less honor paid to the fragmented powers of the lesser gods. These philosophical and religious developments laid the groundwork for the later emergence of strict monotheistic doctrines in the Abrahamic traditions.
In the 6th century AD, the Byzantine chronicler Procopius recorded that the Slavs acknowledge that one god, creator of lightning, is the only lord of all, to whom they sacrifice an ox and all sacrificial animals. The deity to whom Procopius is referring is the storm god Perún, whose name is derived from Perkwunos, the Proto-Indo-European god of lightning. The ancient Slavs syncretized him with the Germanic god Thor and the Biblical prophet Elijah. This syncretism illustrates how monotheistic ideas could emerge from polytheistic traditions, blending old gods with new theological concepts. The head deity of the Proto-Indo-European religion was the god Dyēus Phtēr, and a number of words derived from the name of this prominent deity are used in various Indo-European languages to denote a monotheistic God. Nonetheless, in spite of this, Proto-Indo-European religion itself was not monotheistic, but rather a complex system of beliefs that evolved over time.
The Abrahamic Faiths and Their Divergences
Judaism is traditionally considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world, although up to the 8th century BCE the Israelites were polytheistic, with their worship including the gods El, Baal, Asherah, and Astarte. Yahweh was originally the national god of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. The oldest books of the Hebrew Bible reflect this competition, as in the books of Hosea and Nahum, whose authors lament the apostasy of the people of Israel, threatening them with the wrath of God if they do not give up their polytheistic cults. As time progressed, the henotheistic cult of Yahweh grew increasingly militant in its opposition to the worship of other gods. Some scholars date the start of widespread monotheism to the late 8th century BCE, and view it as a response to Neo-Assyrian aggression. Later, the reforms of King Josiah imposed a form of strict monolatrism. After the fall of Judah and the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, a small circle of priests and scribes gathered around the exiled royal court, where they first developed the concept of Yahweh as the sole God of the world.
Second Temple Judaism and later Rabbinic Judaism became strictly monotheistic. Maimonides, 13 principles of faith, Second Principle, states that God is one, and there is no other. The Babylonian Talmud references other, foreign gods as non-existent entities to whom humans mistakenly ascribe reality and power. One of the best-known statements of Rabbinic Judaism on monotheism is the Second of Maimonides' 13 Principles of faith, which asserts that God is one and there is no other. Some in Judaism and Islam reject the Christian idea of monotheism, using the term shituf to refer to the worship of God in a manner which Judaism deems to be neither purely monotheistic nor polytheistic. Modern Judaism uses the term shituf to refer to the worship of God in a manner which Judaism deems to be neither purely monotheistic nor polytheistic.
Islam emerged in the 7th century CE in the context of both Christianity and Judaism, with some thematic elements similar to Gnosticism. Islamic belief states that Muhammad did not bring a new religion from God, but rather the same religion as practiced by Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus, correcting the lost message of the Tawrat, Injil, and Zabur. The Quran asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique and indivisible being who is independent of the creation. Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of faith, There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God. To attribute divinity to a created entity is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Quran. The entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of tawhid. Medieval Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali offered a proof of monotheism from omnipotence, asserting there can only be one omnipotent being. For if there were two omnipotent beings, the first would either have power over the second, meaning the second is not omnipotent, or not, meaning the first is not omnipotent, thus implying that there could only be one omnipotent being.
The Bahá'í Faith, a monotheistic and revealed religion, teaches that God is the Imperishable, uncreated Being Who is the source of existence, too great for humans to fully comprehend. Human primitive understanding of God is achieved through his revelations via his divine intermediary Manifestations. In the Bahá'í faith, such Christian doctrines as the Trinity are seen as compromising the Bahá'í view that God is single and has no equal, and the very existence of the Bahá'í Faith is a challenge to the Islamic doctrine of the finality of Muhammad's revelation. God in the Bahá'í Faith communicates to humanity through divine intermediaries, known as Manifestations of God, who are the prophets and messengers that have founded religions from prehistoric times up to the present day. The Oneness of God is one of the core teachings of the Bahá'í Faith, and the obligatory prayers in the Bahá'í Faith involve explicit monotheistic testimony.
The Spectrum of Belief and Criticism
Monotheism exists on a spectrum from narrow to wide. Narrow monotheism holds that only one exclusive deity exists, disallowing others, while wide monotheism acknowledges one supreme deity and permits lesser deities. A narrow monotheistic religion will often regard other monotheistic religions as worshipping its own specific deity under a different name or form, hence the Abrahamic religions believe they worship the same one God. A wide monotheistic religion will often regard other monotheistic religions as worshipping deities lesser than its own specific deity, hence Atenism believes Yahweh to be a lesser deity to Aten. Examples of narrow monotheist religions include Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Bahá'í Faith. Examples of wide monotheism include Atenism, Native American worship of the Great Spirit, Hinduism, Chinese religions, Tengrism, Mandaeism, Rastafari, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism, Proto-Indo-European religion, Hellenistic religion, and Andaman Islands religion.
Sikhism is a monotheistic and revealed religion that arose in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sikhs believe in one, timeless, omnipresent, supreme creator. The opening verse of the Guru Granth Sahib, known as the Mul Mantra, signifies this: One Universal creator God, The supreme Unchangeable Truth, The Creator of the Universe, Beyond Fear, Beyond Hatred, Beyond Death, Beyond Birth, Self-Existent, by Guru's Grace. The word Ik Onkār has two components, the digit 1 in Gurmukhi signifying the singularity of the creator. Together the word means One Universal creator God. It is often said that the 1430 pages of the Guru Granth Sahib are all expansions on the Mul Mantra. Although the Sikhs have many names for God, some derived from Islam and Hinduism, they all refer to the same Supreme Being. God in Sikhism is most commonly referred to as Akal Purakh, which means The Immortal Being, or Waheguru, the Wondrous Enlightener.
Rastafari, sometimes termed Rastafarianism, is classified as both a new religious movement and social movement. It developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It lacks any centralized authority and there is much heterogeneity among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas. Rastafari refer to their beliefs, which are based on a specific interpretation of the Bible, as Rastalogy. Central is a monotheistic belief in a single God, referred to as Jah, who partially resides within each individual. The former emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, is given central importance. Many Rastas regard him as an incarnation of Jah on Earth and as the Second Coming of Christ. Others regard him as a human prophet who fully recognized the inner divinity within every individual.
Criticism of monotheism has been leveled by philosophers and scholars for centuries. David Hume said that monotheism is less pluralistic and thus less tolerant than polytheism, because monotheism stipulates that people pigeonhole their beliefs into one tenet. In the same vein, Auguste Comte said that Monotheism is irreconcilable with the existence in our nature of the instincts of benevolence because it compels followers to devote themselves to a single Creator. Mark S. Smith, an American biblical scholar and ancient historian, wrote that monotheism has been a totalizing discourse, often co-opting all aspects of a social belief system, resulting in the exclusion of others. Jacob Neusner suggests that the logic of monotheism yields little basis for tolerating other religions. Ancient monotheism is described as the instigator of violence in its early days because it inspired the Israelites to wage war upon the Canaanites who believed in multiple gods. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan regarded monotheism as a cause of violence, saying The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien beliefs and cultures. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam, and it might not be unreasonable to suggest that it would have been better for Western civilization if Greece had moulded it on this question rather than Palestine.
The Hidden Gods and the One
Mandaeism, or Mandaeanism, is a monotheistic, Gnostic, and ethnic religion. Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, and John the Baptist to be prophets, with Adam being the founder of the religion and John being the greatest and final prophet. The Mandaeans believe in one God commonly named Hayyi Rabbi, meaning The Great Life or The Great Living God. The Mandaeans speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. The name Mandaean comes from the Aramaic manda meaning knowledge, as does Greek gnosis. The term Sabianism is derived from the Sabians, a mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the Quran alongside the Jews, the Christians, and the Zoroastrians as a people of the book, and whose name was historically claimed by the Mandaeans as well as by several other religious groups in order to gain the legal protection offered by Islamic law. Mandaeans recognize God to be the eternal, creator of all, the one and only in domination who has no partner.
Yazidism is a religion that believes in a divine Triad. The original, hidden God of the Yazidis is considered to be remote and inactive in relation to his creation, except to contain and bind it together within his essence. His first emanation is the Angel Melek Taûs, who functions as the ruler of the world and leader of the other Angels. The second hypostasis of the divine Triad is the Sheikh 'Adī ibn Musafir. The third is Sultan Ezid. These are the three hypostases of the one God. The identity of these three is sometimes blurred, with Sheikh 'Adī considered to be a manifestation of Tawûsê Melek and vice versa; the same also applies to Sultan Ezid. Yazidis are called the nation of Tawûsê Melek. God is referred to by Yazidis as Tawûsê Melek, and, less commonly, as other names. According to some Yazidi hymns, known as Qewls, God has 1,001 names, or 3,003 names according to other Qewls.
Zoroastrianism, by some scholars, is credited with being some of the first monotheists and having had influence on other world religions. But this theory has been widely criticized, even by Zoroastrians, who consider that their religion believes in two gods, not one god. Gherardo Gnoli comments that the Islamic conquest of Persia caused a huge impact on the Zoroastrian doctrine. After the Islamic conquest of Persia and the migration of many Zoroastrians to India and after being exposed to Islamic and Christian propaganda, the Zoroastrians, especially the Parsis in India, went so far as to deny dualism and consider themselves completely monotheists. After several transformations and developments, one of the distinctive features of the Zoroastrian religion gradually faded away and almost disappeared from modern Zoroastrianism. Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla described the doctrine of the Gayomarthians sect as another attempt to mitigate the dualism that has always been the essence of Zoroastrianism. This was due to the Prophet Muhammad's emphasis on monotheism and the Muslims' mockery of the doctrine of worshipping two gods, which made the Zoroastrians view dualism as a defect, so they added monotheism, which led to the Zoroastrians' division into sects and he mentions examples of the Zoroastrian attempt to establish a monotheistic belief by diminishing the importance of Ahriman, including that Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were created from time, or that Ahura Mazda himself allowed the existence of evil, or that Ahriman was a corrupt angel who rebelled against Ahura Mazda. Then he mentions the name of a Persian book from the 15th century in which it is written that the Magi believe that Allah and Iblis are brothers.
Tengrism, or Tangrism, is a modern term for a Central Asian religion characterized by features of shamanism, animism, totemism, both polytheism and monotheism, and ancestor worship. Historically, it was the prevailing religion of the Bulgars, Turks, Mongols, and Hungarians, as well as the Xiongnu and the Huns. There is no doubt that between the 6th and 9th centuries Tengrism was the religion among the nomads of the steppes. It was the state religion of the six ancient Turkic states: Avar Khaganate, Old Great Bulgaria, First Bulgarian Empire, Göktürks Khaganate, Eastern Tourkia, and Western Turkic Khaganate. In Irk Bitig, Tengri is mentioned as Türük Tängrisi, God of Turks. The term is perceived among Turkic peoples as a national religion. In Chinese and Turco-Mongol traditions, the Supreme God is commonly referred to as the ruler of Heaven, or the Sky Lord granted with omnipotent powers, but it has largely diminished in those regions due to ancestor worship, Taoism's pantheistic views, and Buddhism's rejection of a creator God. On some occasions in the mythology, the Sky Lord as identified as a male has been associated to mate with an Earth Mother, while some traditions kept the omnipotence of the Sky Lord unshared.