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A god who stays home stays one thing. A god that crosses into another religion usually comes back changed, sometimes with a new name, sometimes with a whole new job. The atlas holds a few deities who made that crossing, and their stories hold up on their own.

A Demon Becomes a Protector Twice Over

Hariti was a yakshini in Rajagriha who ate other people's children, until the Buddha hid the youngest of her own five hundred and asked her what she felt. She converted, and the monastic community agreed to feed her in exchange for her protection of children and childbirth. The story travelled with Buddhism itself: in Japan she is worshipped as Kishimojin, important in Nichiren practice, and among the Newar of Nepal, who are Hindu, she is worshipped as Ajima. One origin story, three names, two religions, two countries.

One God, Six Religions

Mahakala took his name and much of his fearsome form from the Hindu god Shiva, recast by Buddhist tantric texts as a worldly deity bound by oath and set to guard the teaching, a claim Shaivas do not accept. He became the chief wrathful protector across Tibetan Buddhism and much of East Asia. In Japan he softened again, into Daikokuten, a smiling god of the kitchen and of wealth carrying a mallet, a considerable distance from a cremation ground.

The same pattern runs the other way too. The God of Abraham is worshipped, under one name in the atlas, by six living religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Druze Faith, the Baha'i Faith, and the Latter Day Saint movement, the last three of those the ones most readers would not expect on the list.

Where To Read More

• HaritiBuddhist DeitiesThe demoness converted into a protector, worshipped today as Kishimojin in Japan and Ajima among the Newar
• MahakalaBuddhist DeitiesThe Hindu Shiva absorbed as a Buddhist protector, who becomes the kitchen god Daikokuten in Japan
• God (Abrahamic)Abrahamic DeitiesWorshipped under one name by four living religions, the Druze Faith among them