Creator gods

In monotheistic religious belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or to control some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". Belief in the existence of at least one deity, who may interact with the world, is called theism.

Shiva (; , , , ), also known as Mahadeva (; , , [mɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐh], ) and Hara (, ), is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions within Hinduism.

Krishna (; Sanskrit: कृष्ण, ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the eighth avatar of Vishnu and also as the Supreme God in his own right. He is the god of protection, compassion, tenderness, and love; and is widely revered among Hindu divinities. Krishna's birthday is celebrated every year by Hindus on Krishna Janmashtami according to the lunisolar Hindu calendar, which falls in late August or early September of the Gregorian calendar.

Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the trinity of supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva. He is associated with creation of everything, knowledge, and the Vedas. Brahma is prominently mentioned in creation legends. In some Puranas, he created himself in a golden embryo known as the Hiranyagarbha.

Rama (; , , ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric Hindu traditions, he is considered the Supreme Being. Also considered as the ideal man (maryāda puruṣottama), Rama is the male protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana. His birth is celebrated every year on Rama Navami, which falls on the ninth day of the bright half (Shukla Paksha) of the lunar cycle of Chaitra (March–April), the first month in the Hindu calendar.

thumb|Odin, in his guise as a wanderer, as imagined by Georg von Rosen (1886)

Ganesha or Ganesh (, , ), also known as Ganapati, Vinayaka and Pillaiyar, is one of the best-known and most revered and worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon and is the Supreme god in the Ganapatya sect. His depictions are found throughout India. Hindu denominations worship him regardless of affiliations. Ganesha also holds the Title of "Pratham Pujya" (the god to be worshipped initially before the worship of any other Deity). Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains and Buddhists and beyond India.

Ra (; ; also transliterated , ; cuneiform: ri-a or ri-ia; Phoenician: 𐤓𐤏, romanized: rʿ) or Re () was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Ra had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day Sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the Sun, order, kings and the sky.

Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, remained the only oracle of Amun throughout. With the 11th Dynasty ( BC), Amun rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Montu.

Aten, also Aton, Atonu, or Itn (, reconstructed ) was the focus of Atenism, the religious system formally established in ancient Egypt by the late Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. Exact dating for the Eighteenth Dynasty is contested, though a general date range places the dynasty in the years 1550 to 1292 BCE. The worship of Aten and the coinciding rule of Akhenaten are major identifying characteristics of a period within the Eighteenth Dynasty referred to as the Amarna Period (1336 BCE).

highest deity and creator deity of Zoroastrianism

in Christianity, the first of the three persons of the Trinity, who begets the Son and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds

Marduk (; cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia, patron deity of Babylon. First sparsely attested in the 3rd millenium BC, Marduk slowly rose to prominence before being enshrined as leader of the Mesopotamian pantheon under Nebuchadnezzar I in the 1st millennium BC. In Babylon, Marduk was worshipped in the Esagila temple.

Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity in the southeastern ancient Levant that became the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel-Samaria and Judah. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographic origins of the deity, most modern scholars favor a southern origin hypothesis. The worship of the deity goes back to at least the early Iron Age and apparently to the late Bronze Age.

Ptah ( ; , ; ; ; ) is an ancient Egyptian deity, a creator god, and a patron deity of craftsmen and architects. In the triad of Memphis, he is the husband of Sekhmet and the father of Nefertem. He was also regarded as the father of the sage Imhotep.

Atum (, Egyptian: jtm(w) or tm(w), reconstructed ; Coptic Atoum), sometimes rendered as Atem, Temu, or Tem, is the primordial God in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose. He created himself and is the father of Shu and Tefnut, the divine couple, who are the ancestors of the other Egyptian deities. Atum is also closely associated with the evening sun. As a primordial god and as the evening sun, Atum has chthonic and underworld connections. Atum was relevant to the ancient Egyptians throughout most of Egypt's history. He is believed to have been present in ideology as early as predynastic

Khnum, also romanised Khnemu (; , ), was one of the earliest-known Egyptian deities in Upper Egypt, originally associated with the Nile cataract. He held the responsibility of regulating the annual inundation of the river, emanating from the caverns of Hapi, the deity embodying the flood. Since the annual flooding of the Nile brought with it silt and clay, and its water brought life to its surroundings, he eventually became known as the creator of human bodies and the life force kꜣ ("ka"). Using a potter's wheel and clay, he fashioned these entities and placed them within their mothers' wombs.

Khepri (Egyptian: ḫprj, also transliterated Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life.

Enki (Sumerian: dEN-KI), also known as Ea (Akkadian: dE₂-A), was the Mesopotamian god of wisdom, crafts, fresh subterranean waters, magic, and incantations. He was believed to rule the Abzû. In Mesopotamian astronomy, he was associated with the stars of the southern band of the sky. Enki's wife was Damgalnuna, and their children included Nanshe, Asalluhi, Marduk and Enbilulu. His sukkal (attendant deity) was Isimud. Servants of the god included lahmu, kulullû, and the Seven Sages.

thumb|Elohim in Hebrew script. The letters are, right-to-left: aleph-lamed-he-yud-[[mem.]]

Vamana (, ), also known as Trivikrama (), Urukrama (), Upendra (), Dadhivamana (, ), Ulagalanthan (lit. 'the one who measured the world) and Balibandhana (), is an avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu. He is the fifth avatar of Vishnu and the first Dashavatara in the Treta Yuga, after Narasimha.

Fuxi or Fu Hsi is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie system of writing Chinese characters around 2900 BC or 2000BC. He is also said to be the originator of bagua (the eight trigrams) after observing that there were eight fundamental building blocks in nature: heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountain, and lake. These eight are all made of different combinations of yin and yang, which are what came to be called bagua.

Izanagi (イザナギ/伊邪那岐/伊弉諾), formally referred to with a divine honorific as , is the creator deity (kami) of both creation and life in Japanese mythology. He and his sister-wife Izanami are the last of the seven generations of primordial deities that manifested after the formation of heaven and earth. Izanagi and Izanami are held to be the creators of the Japanese archipelago and the progenitors of many deities, which include the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon deity Tsukuyomi, and the storm god Susanoo. He is a god that can be said to be the beginning of the current Japanese imperial family.

Tengri (; Old Uyghur: 13px ; Middle Turkic: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; Proto-Turkic: / ; Mongolian script: , ; , ; , ) is the all-encompassing God of Heaven in the traditional Turkic, Yeniseian, Mongolic, and various other nomadic religious beliefs. Some qualities associated with Tengri as the judge and source of life, and being eternal and supreme, led European and Muslim writers to identify Tengri as a deity of Turkic and Mongolic peoples. According to Mongolian belief, Tengri's will (jayayan) may break its own usual laws and intervene by sending a chosen person to earth.

Abzû or Apsû (, + ) is the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in ancient near eastern cosmology, including Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. It was believed that all lakes, springs, rivers, fountains, rain, and even the Flood, as described in Atrahasis, originated from the Abzû. In Mesopotamian cosmogony, it is referred to as the freshwater primordial ocean below and above the earth; indeed the Earth itself was regarded as a goddess Ninhursag that was conceived from the mating of male Abzu with female saltwater stream Tiamat. In this w

Northwest Semitic word for "god"

Pangu or Pan Gu

Viracocha (also Wiraqocha, Huiracocha; Quechua Wiraqucha) is the creator and supreme deity in the pre-Inca and Inca mythology in the Andes region of South America. According to the myth Viracocha had human appearance and was generally considered as bearded. According to the myth he ordered the construction of Tiwanaku. It is also said that he was accompanied by men also referred to as Viracochas.

Daksha ( ,) is a Hindu god whose role underwent a significant transformation from Vedic to Itihasa-Puranic mythology. In the Rigveda, Daksha is an aditya and is associated with priestly skills.

thumb|110px|Hœnir in an illustration from a 17th-century Icelandic manuscript In Norse mythology, Hœnir (also Hǿnir; modern Icelandic , modern Swedish ) is one of the Æsir. He is mentioned in Vǫluspá as one of the three gods (along with Odin and Lóðurr) that created the first humans.

Vishvakarma or Vishvakarman (, ) is a craftsman deity and the divine architect of the devas in contemporary Hinduism. In the early texts, the craftsman deity was known as Tvastar and the word "Vishvakarma" was originally used as an epithet for any powerful deity. However, in many later traditions, Vishvakarma became the name of the craftsman god.

Svarog is a Slavic god who may be associated with fire and blacksmithing and who was once interpreted as a sky god on the basis of an etymology rejected by modern scholarship. He is mentioned in only one source, the Primary Chronicle, which is problematic in interpretation. He is presented there as the Slavic equivalent of the Greek god Hephaestus. The meaning of his name is associated with fire. He is the father of Dazhbog and Svarozhits.

ancient Egyptian deity

thumb|alt=Winged figure holding a staff, with a snake coiled around his body|A figure who has been identified as Protogonos, on a relief from Modena, 2nd century AD

thumb|The jaguar was an animal sacred to Tezcatlipoca.|link=File:Standing_jaguar.jpg thumb|Mirrors in Mesoamerican culture#Aztecs|Aztec obsidian mirror

thumb|Brahma as Prajapati with the same iconographical features of Brahma, a statue from [[Tamil Nadu]]

thumb|Kukulkan at the base of the west face of the northern stairway of El Castillo, Chichen Itza thumb|Kukulkan at Chichen Itza during the Equinox. upright|thumb|The Classic Maya vision serpent, as depicted at Yaxchilan. Kukulkan, also spelled K’uk’ulkan (; "Plumed Serpent", "Amazing Serpent"), is the serpent deity of Maya mythology. It is closely related to the deity Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people and to Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology. Prominent temples to Kukulkan are found at archaeological sites in the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan.

Mahākāla (, ) is a deity common to Hinduism and Buddhism.

deity in Rapa Nui mythology

Anshar ( , , ) was a Mesopotamian god regarded as a primordial king of the gods. He was not actively worshiped. He was regarded as the father of Anu. In the first millennium BCE his name came to be used as a logographic representation of the head god in the Assyrian state pantheon, Ashur. He is attested in a number of god lists, such as An = Anum, and in literary compositions, including the Enūma Eliš.

Tatenen (also Ta-tenen, Tatjenen, Tathenen, Tanen, Tenen, Tanenu, and Tanuu) was the deity of the primordial mound in ancient Egyptian religion. His name means "risen land" or "exalted earth", as well as referring to the silt of the Nile. As a primeval chthonic deity, Tatenen was identified with creation. Both feminine and masculine, he was an androgynous protector of nature from the Memphis area (then known as Men-nefer), the ancient capital of the Inebu-hedj nome in Lower Egypt.

thumb|330px|Odin, Lóðurr, and [[Hœnir create the first humans, Askr and Embla.]] Lóðurr (Old Norse: ; also Lodur or Lodurr) is a god in Norse mythology. In the poem , he is assigned a role in animating the first humans, but apart from that he is hardly ever mentioned, and remains obscure. Scholars have variously identified him with Loki, Vé, Vili, and Freyr, but consensus has not been reached on any one theory.

thumb|Itzamna as shown in the classic period Itzamná () is, in Maya mythology, an upper god and creator deity thought to reside in the sky. Itzamná is one of the most important gods in the Classic and Postclassic Maya pantheon. Although little is known about him, scattered references are present in early-colonial Spanish reports (relaciones) and dictionaries. Twentieth-century Lacandon lore includes tales about a creator god (Nohochakyum or Hachakyum) who may be a late successor to him. In the pre-Spanish period, Itzamná was often depicted in books and in ceramic scenes derived from them. Befo

Aramazd was the chief and creator god in the Armenian version of Zoroastrianism. The deity and his name were derived from the deity Ahura Mazda after the Median conquest of Armenia in the 6th century BC. Aramazd was regarded as a generous god of fertility, rain, and abundance, as well as the father of the other gods, including Anahit, Mihr, and Nane. Like Ahura Mazda, Aramazd was seen as the father of the other gods, rarely with a wife, though sometimes husband to Anahit or Spandaramet. Aramazd was the Parthian form of Ahura Mazda.

Inca god creator and animator of all the universe, worshiped mainly on the coast

Huracán (; ; , "one legged"), often referred to as U Kʼux Kaj, the "Heart of Sky", is a Kʼicheʼ Maya god of wind, storm, fire and one of the creator deities who participated in all three attempts at creating humanity. He also caused the Great Flood after the second generation of humans angered the gods. He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and repeatedly invoked "earth" until land came up from the seas.

Slavic deity

Jesus, considered to be the Messiah and the Son of God in Christianity

primordial parents in Māori mythology

Jah or Yah (, Yāh) is a short form of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the personal name of God: Yahweh, which the ancient Israelites used. The conventional Christian English pronunciation of Jah is , even though the letter J here transliterates the palatal approximant (Hebrew י yodh). The spelling Yah is designed to make the pronunciation explicit in an English-language context (see also romanization of Hebrew), especially for Christians who may not use Hebrew regularly during prayer and study.

In Egyptian mythology, Heryshaf, or Hershef ( "He who is on His Lake"), transcribed in Greek as Harsaphes or Arsaphes () was an ancient ram deity whose cult was centered in ancient Heracleopolis Magna. He was identified with Ra and Osiris in ancient Egyptian religion, as well as Dionysus or Heracles in the interpretatio graeca. The identification with Heracles may be related to the fact that in later times his name was sometimes reanalysed as ḥrj-šf.t "He who is over strength". One of his titles was "Ruler of the Riverbanks". Heryshaf was a creator and fertility god who was born from the primo

creator god and common motif in the art and religion of Aboriginal Australia

Ngai (also known as Múrungu or Enkai) is the central deity in the traditional spiritualities of the Gĩkũyũ, as well as the related Embu, Meru, Kamba, and Maasai peoples of Kenya and Tanzania. Within these belief systems, Ngai is recognized as the creator of the universe and all existing things. Traditional worship often involves facing Mount Kenya, a location of central spiritual significance to these communities. Rituals, including prayers and sacrifices, are historically performed under the Mugumo (fig tree). These ceremonies are typically conducted during significant environmental or social

thumb|Tonacacíhuatl and Tonacatecuhtli as depicted in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer thumb|Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl described in the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer

in trinitarian Christianity, the third person of the Trinity, that proceeds from the Father (and the Son, depending on the branch of Christianity); often depicted as a dove in iconography

In Aztec mythology, Tonacatecuhtli was a creator and fertility god, worshipped for populating the earth and making it fruitful. Most Colonial-era manuscripts equate him with Ōmetēcuhtli. His consort was Tonacacihuatl.

Achamán is the supreme god of the Guanches on the island of Tenerife; he is the father god and creator. The name means literally "the skies", in allusion to the celestial vault (the sky).

Norse gods