List of People Who Have Been Considered Deities - Relevant Distinctions

Relevant Distinctions

  • Apotheosis means divinization or deification, usually posthumously:
    • Imperial cults are religions in which an Emperor, or a dynasty of emperors (or rulers of another title), are worshiped as demigods or deities.
    • Hero cults involved the deification of selected historical individuals.
    • Personality cults, modern-day versions of Imperial cults most often used by dictatorships.
    • Other contemporary religions with a following larger than one million which deify historical individuals include Tibetan Buddhism (Lamas) and Shinto (Tennos). This is controversial as Buddhism technically advocates against any deification.
  • Euhemerism is the historical position that all gods were human, reducing theism to ancestor worship.
  • Ancestor worship involves the elevation of all deceased ancestors to the status of deities. In Ancient Egyptian religion, by the New Kingdom, all deceased (not just pharaohs) were held to become the god Osiris.
  • Culture heroes are gods or demi-gods that may or may not have a historical individual as their nucleus (e.g. Gilgamesh, Fu Xi or Rama).
  • Advaita Vedanta is the state of being in perfect union with the Godhead (Brahman) in mysticism (see Mahāvākyas, Thou Art God).

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