Death deity

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"Death god" redirects here. For the deities of this nature, see Shinigami, of the Shinto religion. For Bleach see Shinigami in Bleach.

Many cultures have incorporated a god of death into their mythology or religion. As death, along with birth, is among the major parts of human life, these deities may often be one of the most important deities of a religion. In some religions with a single powerful deity as the source of worship, the death deity is an antagonistic deity against which the primary deity struggles.

The related term death worship has most often been used as a derogatory term to accuse certain groups of morally-abhorrent practices which set no value on human life, or which seem to glorify death as something positive in itself.

In polytheistic religions or mythologies which have a complex system of deities governing various natural phenomena and aspects of human life, it is common to have a deity who is assigned the function of presiding over death. The inclusion of such a "departmental" deity of death in a religion's pantheon is not necessarily the same thing as the glorification of death which is commonly condemned by the use of the term "death-worship" in modern political rhetoric.

In the theology of monotheistic religion, the one god governes both life and death. However in practice this manifests in different rituals and traditions and varies according to a number of factors includeing geography, politics, traditions and the influence of other religions.

[edit] Gods of death (listed alphabetically by culture)

• Aztec: Mictlantecuhtli
• Babylonian: Ereshkigal ^{[1] [2]} Nergal
• Buddhist: Yama
• Canaanite - The name of the god Mot was the Canaanite word for "death".
• Celtic - Morrigan
• Chinese: Yan Luo (transileration of Yama)
• Ancient Egypt - The Gods Anubis and Osiris were Gods of the Underworld or Death.
• Finnish: Tuoni, his wife and children
• Greek: Thanatos
• Hindu: Yama
• Japan: Enma (transileration of Yama)
• New Zealand: Hine-Nui-Te-Po . Literal translation similar to great lady of the night
• Maya: Ah Puch
• Mexico - Contemporary Mexicans worship Santa Muerte or Saint Death in conjunction with the Catholic faith.
• Norse: (Death) Odin and Freya^[3]; (Underworld) Hel, Odin and Freyja ^[3][4]
• Roman: Mors

[edit] India

The Hindu gods Mara, Yama Raj and Kali are Gods of death and deadly forces. In the monotheistic frame-work of Islam, reverence for death also manifests in the 'worship of the dead' or 'saint worship' - a derogatory term used by some (eg the Sunni Wahabi) groups when referring to the Sufi, Shiah and Hindu Islamic practices of revering dead saints and prophets as manifestations of God's word on Earth.

In the 19th-century, the Thuggees, who blended Islam and Hinduism like many of the living religious variations of the region, were accused of literal death-worship. Recently the term has also been applied by Christian writers to apply to those who support suicide terrorists (who are ironically religiously leaning towards Wahabism themselves).

[edit] Fiction

In the universe of George Orwell's novel 1984, "Death Worship" was the common propagandistic English-language translation of the name of the governing philosophy of Eastasia (more accurately translated as "Obliteration of Self"). This ideology presumably made some allusion to Buddhist cultural concepts, but was functionally indistinguishable from the totalitarian "oligarchical collectivist" ideologies of the other two superpowers (Ingsoc in Oceania and "Neo-Bolshevism" in Eurasia).This is reflected in some contemporary anti-Islamic propaganda.The Bali Bombers: What Motivates Death Worship?

[edit] See also

• Death (personification)
• List of deities
• Lunar deity
• Solar deity
• Afterlife

[edit] References

1. ^ "The counterpart to these deities of sky, air, water, and earth was the underworld, the realm of the dead, originally seen as ruled by the powerful Goddess Ereshkigal." Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 2005:45. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23146-5
2. ^ "After consulting his mistress Ereshkigal, the queen of the Nether World, he admits Ishtar" Kramer, "Ishtar in the Nether World According to a New Sumerian Text" Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 1940. google scholar results as the JSTOR link is unlikely to be universally available.
3. ^ ^{a b} Kveldulf Gundarsson. (1993, 2005) Our Troth. ISBN 0-9770165-0-1
4. ^ The dwelling one went to after death varied depending on where one died, at the battlefield or not. If not at the battlefield, one would go to Hel (not to be confused with the Christian Hell). Of the slain at the battlefield, some went to Folkvang, the dwelling of Freyja and some went to Valhalla, the dwelling of Odin (see Grímnismál):

   The ninth hall is Folkvang, where bright Freyja

   Decides where the warriors shall sit:

   Some of the fallen belong to her,

   And some belong to Odin.

[edit] General

• Encyclopedia Mythica, pantheon.org