In Norse mythology, for example, Sol (also called Sunna) is the goddess of the sun, while her brother, Mani, is the god of the moon. Hades, called Pluto by the Romans, was the god of the Greek underworld, the land of the dead in Greek and Roman mythology. He was the son of Kronos and his sister Rhea, the eldest of six: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Cronus, Zeus became king of heaven and gave his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, the sea and the underworld, respectively, for their domains. Zeus punished Prometheus with having his liver pecked out every day. In response, the king of the gods deprived mankind of the use of fire so they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the boon they’d been granted, but Prometheus found a way around this, and stole some of the gods’ fire by hiding it in a stalk of fennel and then giving it to mankind.

Zeus was enraged with the behavior of Prometheus. The root of both “Zeus” and “Jupiter” is in a proto-Indo-European word for the often personified concepts of “day/light/sky”. In the Roman pantheon, Zeus is known as Jupiter. Zeus and his siblings confronted his father and the Titans in the greatest battle ever fought: the Tianomachy. Zeus is the son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He remains neutral most of the time, allowing his son Sarpedon to die and glorifying his favorite, Hector. He can teach his heart – he’s always talking to his heart, the emotional core, which the Greeks call thumos – that he can control himself,” Martin says. “So that’s heroic. Smith and Asad are therefore examples of scholars who critique the concept religion without denying that it can still refer to something in the world, something that exists even before it is named. Abandoned by her husband in the “care” of some stern-looking men in suits, including an ex-FBI agent, she still managed to get her hands on a newspaper. Zeus was the husband of Hera, but he had many affairs with other goddesses, mortal women, and female animals. He is the brother of his wife Hera, his other sisters Demeter and Hestia, and his brothers Hades and Poseidon.

Although hidden from the light of day and the living in Hades myths, the god himself was not evil. Celebrated each year on March 17, it’s a day when people from all sorts of national and ethnic backgrounds dip a toe in Irish culture. However, around 1.2 billion people are without religious affiliation, those that associate themselves as atheists, agnostic, or secular. For centuries, people scrambled as the Earth plunged into darkness and feared the worst – a terror that ranged from the belief that demons swallowed the sun to being rejected by their gods. In Hindu traditions, the sun god Surya travels across the sky in a chariot pulled by either seven horses or a single seven-headed horse. Admittedly, none of the maps are outright terrible and most of them are solid and inoffensive, but not a single one stands out in any meaningful way. Many sun gods and goddesses are humanoid and ride or drive a vessel of some sort across the sky.

It is from the sun goddess that the Japanese imperial family is believed to be descended. Another sun goddess is Amaterasu, a major deity in the Shinto religion of Japan. The comparison of Christ with the astronomical Sun is common in ancient Christian writings. The most common form combinations are with Atum (his human form), Khepri (the scarab beetle) and Horus (the falcon). You may notice that most sun gods are male and act as counterparts to female moon deities, but don’t take this as a given; sometimes the roles are reversed. Her brother, Tsukuyomi, is the god of the moon. There are goddesses of the sun just as there are male deities of the moon. While the Gods of Destruction are generally fearless of deities and mortals alike, they are shown to respect Zeno and the Grand Minister due to their greater position and power. On some charts, gender differences that may appear to be large are labeled as not statistically significant because of small sample sizes of women and men in particular religious groups. Zeus was the last, and when he was born, his mother sent him to Gaia in Crete, replacing Zeus with a large stone wrapped in swaddling clothes.