Deities

A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of spinning, weaving, beauty, love, sexuality, motherhood, domesticity, creativity, and fertility (exemplified by the ancient mother goddess cult). Many major goddesses are also associated with magic, war, strategy, hunting, farming, wisdom, fate, earth, sky, power, laws, justice, and more. Some themes, such as discord or disease, which are considered negative within their cultural contexts also are found associated with some goddesses. There are as many differently described and understood goddesses as there are male, shapeshifting, or neuter gods.

A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over some aspect of the universe and/or life. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life".

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

Sugiura Shigemine (杉浦茂峰, Sugiura Shigemine) was a Japanese fighter pilot in World War II who is now recognised in Taiwan as the deity Feihu Jiangjun (Chinese: 飛虎將軍), or "General Flying Tiger." Sugiura was born in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, on 9 November 1923. As a youth he joined a pilot training program at the Imperial Navy's Kasumigaura Air Base, where he learned the basics of flying. After graduating he was sent to Taiwan for advanced training.

Kuru is an ethnic Meitei name for the supreme God, Atiya Kuru Shidaba in Kanglei mythology as well as Sanamahism. It is also worshipped by several tribes including Kuki, Paite, Hmar, Zou, Tangkhul and Chiru of Manipur, North East India. Kuru's full name is Atiya Kuru Shidaba (Atiya, the vast and empty sky; Kuru, the round or circular hemisphere; and Shidaba, eternal).

ʾIlāh (Arabic: إله‎; plural: آلهة ʾālihat) is an Arabic term meaning "deity" or "god". The feminine is ʾilāhat (إلاهة, meaning "goddess"); with the article, it appears as al-ʾilāhat الإلاهة. The Arabic word for God (al-Lāh) is thought to be derived from it though it is disputed. ʾIlāh is cognate to Northwest Semitic ʾēl and Akkadian ilum. The word is from a Proto-Semitic archaic biliteral ʔ-L meaning "god" (possibly with a wider meaning of "strong"), which was extended to a regular triliteral by the addition of a h (as in Hebrew ʾelōah, ʾelōhim). The word is spelled either إله with an optional diacritic alif to mark the ā only in Qur'anic texts or (more rarely) with a full alif, إلاه.

Rahu (Sanskrit: राहु)is one of the nine major astronomical bodies (navagraha) in Indian texts. Unlike the other eight, Rahu is a shadow entity, one that causes eclipses and is the king of meteors. Rahu represents the ascension of the moon in its precessional orbit around the earth.

Apotheosis (from Ancient Greek ἀποθέωσις (apothéōsis), from ἀποθεόω/ἀποθεῶ (apotheóō/apotheô) 'to deify'), also called divinization or deification (from Latin deificatio 'making divine'), is the glorification of a subject to divine levels and, commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.

A pantheon is the particular set of all gods of any individual polytheistic religion, mythology, or tradition.

The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and theology. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God (with the same or similar arguments also generally being used when talking about the existence of multiple deities) can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective, or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being or existence) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include "perfection").