Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Domain / Function

This page groups deities by the domain or function myth assigns them, the area of life, craft or natural force a god is called on to govern. Wikipedia's overview of deities gives a clear example in the Yoruba god Ogun, described as "the primordial masculine deity as well as the archdivinity and guardian of occupations such as tools making and use, metal working, hunting, war, protection and ascertaining equity and justice." Browsing by domain lets a visitor find every god of, for example, war or the harvest, across many different pantheons at once.

Facts
Attestation
Era of Attestation
Divine names appear in the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions of about 1250 to 1050 BCE, the earliest Chinese writing. The pantheon is documented continuously thereafter and is in worship today. 3
Veneration Today
Worshipped today in temples, at domestic altars and at festivals across the Chinese-speaking world. 2
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
The gods of Chinese religion taken across its parts rather than within one of them: the Taoist canonical pantheon, the deities of the imperial state cult, buddhas and bodhisattvas naturalised into popular worship, and the local and household gods of folk religion. The pantheon is ordered like a bureaucracy, with rank, office and promotion, and many of its members are deified humans. 2
Directory
Category
Deities 1
Learn More
The gods of Chinese religion

This group gathers the deities of Chinese folk religion, Taoism and the state cult, a pantheon organised much like an imperial bureaucracy, with a supreme heaven, ranked officials and local gods answerable upward. Figures move between Taoist, Buddhist and popular contexts, and many are deified humans elevated for merit.

The browser will find the Jade Emperor at the head of the celestial administration, the Three Pure Ones of Taoist cosmology, the Queen Mother of the West, city gods and kitchen gods, and popular protectors such as Mazu and Guan Yu. The tradition is syncretic and living, and the entries note where a figure belongs to Taoist, Buddhist or folk contexts.

Domain / Function

Agriculture and harvest

Domain / Function
2 entries

Ancestors

Domain / Function
2 entries

Awakening and liberation

Domain / Function
9 entries

Chaos and adversary

Domain / Function
1 entry

Childbirth

Domain / Function
1 entry

Commerce and wealth

Domain / Function
2 entries

Compassion and mercy

Domain / Function
1 entry

Cosmic order and truth

Domain / Function
2 entries

Creation and cosmogony

Domain / Function
4 entries

Death

Domain / Function
1 entry

Disease and plague

Domain / Function
2 entries

Earth

Domain / Function
1 entry

Fate and time

Domain / Function
3 entries

Fire

Domain / Function
1 entry

Fortune and luck

Domain / Function
2 entries

Healing and medicine

Domain / Function
3 entries

Hearth and domestic fire

Domain / Function
1 entry

Justice, law and oaths

Domain / Function
5 entries

Kingship and sovereignty

Domain / Function
3 entries

Love and desire

Domain / Function
1 entry

Marriage and the household

Domain / Function
3 entries

Moon

Domain / Function
1 entry

Motherhood

Domain / Function
1 entry

Mountains

Domain / Function
1 entry

Primordial being

Domain / Function
1 entry

Prophecy and divination

Domain / Function
1 entry

Protection and guardianship

Domain / Function
8 entries

Rain and weather

Domain / Function
1 entry

Rivers, lakes and springs

Domain / Function
3 entries

Sea and ocean

Domain / Function
1 entry

Seafaring and fishing

Domain / Function
1 entry

Stars and planets

Domain / Function
3 entries

Storm and thunder

Domain / Function
1 entry

Sun

Domain / Function
2 entries

Trickster

Domain / Function
1 entry

Tutelary of a place or community

Domain / Function
2 entries

The underworld

Domain / Function
3 entries

War and battle

Domain / Function
4 entries

Wisdom and counsel

Domain / Function
1 entry

Writing, scribes and learning

Domain / Function
2 entries
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Chinese ReligionView the Source
3. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China
David N. Keightley, University of California Press, 1978chs. 1-2View the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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