Deity
A deity is a supernatural being considered to have authority over some aspect of the universe and/or life, with many deities also regarded as sacred and as worthy of worship. A deity 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". The Oxford Dictionary of English explains deity as anything revered as divine; while 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". English-speakers call a male deity a god, and a female deity a goddess.
Belief in the existence of at least one deity, who may interact with the world, is called theism. Theistic beliefs can be categorized by how many deities their adherents worship. Monotheism accepts only one deity, whereas polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle. Nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity, but may accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being.
Although most monotheistic religions traditionally envision their god as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and eternal, none of these qualities are essential to the definition of a "deity" and various cultures have conceptualized their deities differently.
Some deities may incorporate superintelligence.
Some philosophical forms of monotheism or henotheism go a step further and precisely identify God with Being itself as a metaphysical grounding for super-human attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to their god in masculine terms,
while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways—male, female, hermaphroditic, or genderless.
Many cultures—including the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Germanic peoples—have personified natural phenomena, variously as either deliberate causes or effects. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts.
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