He suggests at some points that the pagan deities are based on humans, but at others that they are misanthropic demons, and he cites several classical sources in support of this second hypothesis.

Many deities could be given epithets that seem to indicate that they were greater than any other god, suggesting some kind of unity beyond the multitude of natural forces.

Egyptians associated trees and gardens with gods as they believed that their deities were pleased by gardens.

The Israelites were forbidden to worship other deities, but according to some interpretations of the Bible, they were not fully monotheistic before the Babylonian Captivity.

However there is considerable evidence, both in the texts and from the wider Celtic world, that they were once considered deities.

Usually they are found in pairs around the icons of Thirthankara, as male ( yaksha ) and female ( yakshini ) guardian deities.

Even though they have supernatural powers, these deities are also souls wandering through the cycles of births and deaths just like most other souls.

Usually, they are found in pair around the icons of Thirthankaras as male ( yaksha ) and female ( yakshini ) guardian deities.

Even though they have supernatural powers, these deities are also souls wandering through the cycles of births and deaths just like most other souls.

Although these kami can be considered deities, they are not necessarily considered omnipotent or omniscient, and like the Greek Gods, they had flawed personalities and were quite capable of ignoble acts.

Contrary to popular belief, the loa are not deities in and of themselves ; they are intermediaries for a distant Bondye.

New gods did not at once replace the old ; they initially joined the ever growing family of deities or were merged with existing ones that seemed to share similar characteristics or responsibilities.

When they moved eastward and were translated into Iranian languages, the names of the Manichaean deities ( or angels ) were often transformed into the names of Zoroastrian yazatas.

Nymphs are personifications of the creative and fostering activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs: as Walter Burkert ( Burkert 1985: III. 3. 3 ) remarks, " The idea that rivers are gods and springs divine nymphs is deeply rooted not only in poetry but in belief and ritual ; the worship of these deities is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality.

As emblems of benediction and purification, they were also ritually offered to deities and powerful figures ; some were even found in Tutankhamen's tomb.

They are generally regarded as having positive contact with the deity or deities of the religion to which they subscribe, often interpreting the meaning of events and performing the rituals of the religion.

The cult was aniconic, the principal deities were female, and they appeared in epiphany called chiefly by ecstatic sacral dances, by tree – shaking and by baetylic rites.

It seems that the Greek deities began their career as powers of nature, but then they were given other functions and attributes by the worshippers.

The cobra ( of Pharaoh Son of Ra ), the lioness ( daughter of Ra ), the cow ( daughter of Ra ), the dominant symbols of the most ancient Egyptian deities, carried their relationship to the sun atop their heads ; they were female and their cults remained active throughout the history of the culture.

When male deities became associated with the sun in that culture, they began as the offspring of a mother ( except Ra, King of the Gods who gave birth to himself ).

After Uranus's castration, Gaia married Pontus and they have a descendent line consisting of sea deities, sea nymphs, and hybrid monsters.

According to Horace Walpole, the members ' " practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed ; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighborhood of the complexion of those hermits.

When they described the gods of Celtic and Germanic tribes, rather than considering them separate deities, the Romans interpreted them as local manifestations or aspects of their own gods, a cultural trait called the interpretatio Romana.

Hoschander argues that these were not deities as Strabo supposed but garbled forms of " Haman " and " Hamedatha " who were being worshipped as martyrs.

Lovecraft's works are ruled by several distinct pantheons of deities ( actually aliens who are worshipped by humans as deities ) who are either indifferent or actively hostile to humanity.

Henotheism ( Greek heis theos " one god ") is the belief and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities that may also be worshipped.

Most Egyptian deities were first worshipped by very local cults, and they retained those local centres of worship even as their popularity spread, so that most major cities and towns in Egypt were known as the home of a particular deity.

The Unknown God or Agnostos Theos () is a theory by Eduard Norden first published in 1913 that proposes, based on Paul's Areopagus speech in Acts 17: 23, that in addition to the twelve main gods and the innumerable lesser deities, ancient Greeks worshipped a deity they called " Agnostos Theos ", that is: the " Unknown god ", which Norden called " Un-Greek ".

of 1530 contains the following list of deities who were still worshipped by the Sudavians in Samland: " Occopirmus, Sualxtix, Ausschauts, Autrympus, Potrympus, Bardoayts, Piluuytis, Parcunas, Pecols ,..." ( Hastings, p 488 )

Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times.

In the Sumerian language, the gods were referred to as dingir, whilst in the Akkadian language they were known as ilu and it seems that there was syncreticism between the gods worshipped by the two groups, adopting one another's deities.

Gofannon is a Middle Welsh reflex of Gobannus, one of the deities worshipped by the ancient Celts.

The Alaisiagae were Germanic deities who were worshipped in Roman Britain, altar-stones raised to them having been recovered in the United Kingdom at Housesteads Fort, Hadrian's Wall in England.

Sometimes called Pax-Nemesis was also worshipped at Rome by victorious generals, and in imperial times was the patroness of gladiators and of the venatores, who fought in the arena with wild beasts, and was one of the tutelary deities of the drilling-ground ( Nemesis campestris ).

It is likely that the feathered serpent deity was borrowed from one of these two peoples and blended with other deities to provide the god Q ' uq ' umatz that the K ' iche ' worshipped.

The Tezcatlipoca figure goes back to earlier Mesoamerican deities worshipped by the Olmec and Maya.

The Tzitzimimeh were female deities, and as such related to fertility, they were associated with the Cihuateteo and other female deities such as Tlaltecuhtli, Coatlicue, Citlalicue and Cihuacoatl and they were worshipped by midwives and parturient women.

Nephthys was most widely and usually worshipped in ancient Egypt as part of a consortium of temple deities.

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad ( Greek " ογδοάς ", the eightfold ) were eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis during what is called the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2686 to 2134 BC.

The most notable case is Seti I of the 19th dynasty, who in his temple at Redesiyah worshipped a pesedjet that combined six important deities with three deified forms of himself.

* Sri Varaha Swamy Temple-Maravanthe-Maraswami, Kundapaur, Taluk, Udupi District, Varaha Murti and two other deities are worshipped.

The term Osiris-Dionysus is used by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy to refer to a group of deities worshipped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the emergence of Christianity.

Some have worshipped the Taoist deities religiously without bothering to delve into the theologial underpinnings, while others embrace the Taoist religion while ignoring the mythological aspects.

There is evidence that the colonists adopted the worship of other Semitic gods, including Phoenician deities and the chief Nabatean god, Dushara ( worshipped under his Hellenized name, Dusares ).

An imperial cult is a form of state religion in which an emperor, or a dynasty of emperors ( or rulers of another title ), are worshipped as messiahs, demigods or deities.