Sky deity


The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.
The day lit sky deities are typically distinct from the night time sky deities. Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature reflects this by separating the category of "Sky-god" from that of "Star-god". In mythology, night time gods are usually known as night deities and gods of stars simply as star gods. Both of these categories are included here since they relate to the sky. Luminary deities are included as well since the sun and moon are located in the sky. Some religions may also have a deity or personification of the day, distinct from the god of the day lit sky, to complement the deity or personification of the night.
Day time gods and night time gods are frequently deities of an "upper world" or "celestial world" opposed to the "netherworld" and earth ruled by other gods. For example, sky gods Zeus and Hera rule the celestial realm in ancient Greece while the chthonic realm is ruled by Hades and Persephone. The tripartite division of the world into sky/heaven/upper, earth/middle, and under/nether/lower seems to be a universal feature of all human religions. Sea gods may be included with chthonic deities or form a separate, third category. Water, both fresh and salt, is often associated with the earth/underworld, giving rise to an alternate tripartite division of sky, land, and sea, where sea seemingly takes the place of the underworld.
Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as "sky father" deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a "sky father" god with an "earth mother" goddess. A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with "sky" not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically.
Gods may rule the sky as a pair. The following is a list of sky deities in various polytheistic traditions arranged mostly by language family, which is typically a better indicator of relatedness than geography.

[Indo-European languages]

Proto-Indo-European

Ancient Egyptian

Finnic

Chinese

Twenty Four Sky Emperors
Twenty Eight Sky Emperors
Thirty Two Sky Emperors
Sixty Four Sky Emperors

Incan

[Niger-Congo]

Australian

Hurrian

Etruscan