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Death Underworld

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.

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Four Powers of the Turkic and Mongolic Steppe Sky

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Tengrist Deities gathers four powers of the historical Turkic and Mongolic peoples of Central Asia and the steppe, arranged around a single sky centred cosmology that also reaches into the wider Siberian shamanic world.

Tengri is the sky god at the centre of the system, understood as the supreme, eternal blue sky itself and the source of the ruling khan's authority to govern. Tengrism, the modern name for this belief system, survives today as both a living folk practice in parts of Central Asia and Siberia and a modern revival movement. Umay is a mother and fertility goddess associated with childbirth, children and the hearth, standing beneath Tengri alongside the earth water spirit Yer-Sug as one of the principal subordinate powers of the steppe pantheon.

Erlik and Ulgen form the system's other axis, ruling death and benevolence in structural opposition to one another. Erlik is the lord of the underworld and of death across Turkic and Mongolic mythology and the wider Siberian shamanic world, ruling the realm beneath the earth against Tengri's sky, and is one of the few figures shared by name and function across multiple Central Asian and Siberian traditions rather than belonging to a single people. Ulgen, Bai-Ulgen, is a benevolent sky and creator god of the Altai Turkic and wider South Siberian shamanic tradition, understood as the source of good in the world and the counterpart to Erlik's rule of the underworld, addressed directly by shamans in ritual ascent to the highest levels of the sky.

Death Underworld
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1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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