ISSUE 10

GODS AND GODDESSES
The Divine Balance and the Many Faces of the One Creator

By Knight Fredel

This lecture was inspired by a popular opinion I have heard lately from certain student mystics who claim that honouring the Goddess belongs to a lower level of spirituality. According to them, the advanced mystic has somehow graduated from the Divine Feminine, as though the Cosmic Mother were an old classroom chair that must be abandoned once one has learned a few impressive words.

I find this idea strange.

If there is a Divine Masculine principle, then there is also a Divine Feminine principle, because Nature expresses herself through balance, relationship and polarity. Day leans into night. Inhalation answers exhalation. Activity requires rest. Giving meets receiving. The seed enters the soil, but the soil must open, hold, nourish and transform it. Neither half can mock the other without eventually mocking the process that gives both of them meaning.

This balance is often illustrated through the Chinese symbol of yin and yang. Yet we must understand it carefully. Yin and yang are not merely a cosmic man and woman quarrelling inside a circle. They represent complementary modes of existence: receptive and expressive, dark and luminous, inward and outward, cool and warm, still and active. Each carries the seed of the other, and each changes into the other when its movement reaches fullness. The symbol does not teach that one side is holy and the other suspicious. It teaches that wholeness is born through living relationship.

Therefore, neither God nor Goddess is lower or higher than the other. They are sacred names given to two great currents flowing from the One Life. Beyond every name, image and polarity, the Supreme Source is neither male nor female in the limited biological sense. Yet when the Infinite enters manifestation, human consciousness encounters powers that may be expressed through masculine, feminine, both, or neither.

This is a sensitive subject, especially for those who believe that my teachings conflict with the principles of the mystery Order to which many of us subscribe. I shall continue to withhold its name because this is not an advertisement, a recruitment exercise or a spiritual election campaign. I ask those critics to read carefully before preparing their stones. Mystics, of all people, should investigate an idea before condemning it. Otherwise, one may leave religious dogma through the front door and quietly carry the same furniture into the mystery school through the back.

The purpose of this article is not to impose a new religion. It is to restore a missing balance. I am not asking anyone to discard the God of his or her heart, ancestral path, temple, shrine, philosophy or sincere spiritual experience. I am asking the student of the mysteries to examine whether human politics has been projected upon the heavens—whether the Divine Feminine was truly absent, or merely hidden behind centuries of masculine language and institutional power.

1. BEFORE GOD BECAME ONLY “HE”

The Ultimate Creator is greater than grammar.

This must be our starting point. Language gives shape to thought, but no word can fully contain the Intelligence that gives birth to galaxies. When we say God, the mind forms an image. For some, that image is an old man seated on a throne beyond the clouds, watching Earth with the exhausted expression of somebody supervising a very disorderly family. For others, God is pure Light, universal Mind, infinite Love, vibration, Nature, the ancestral Source or the silent consciousness within all things.

The word is not the Reality. It is a doorway through which the mind approaches the Reality.

The same is true of Goddess. The Goddess is not simply a female version of the bearded man in the sky. She is the language through which consciousness encounters the generative, receptive, nourishing, intuitive, transformative and relational powers of the Divine. She is womb and grave, river and ocean, soil and harvest, darkness and birth, compassion and terrible justice. She is not always gentle, because Nature is not always gentle. The same ocean that carries a child’s laughter along the shore can swallow a ship without asking what denomination the captain belongs to.

When I say that if there is a God there is a Goddess, I do not mean that two human-shaped beings sit in a celestial office sharing paperwork. I mean that any complete vision of Divinity must contain the powers symbolized by both masculine and feminine principles. If the Creator generates, protects, penetrates and illuminates, the Creator also conceives, receives, nourishes, gestates and brings forth. Creation is not produced by command alone. It also requires a cosmic womb in which possibility becomes form.

The masculine principle may be symbolized by direction, will, differentiation, focus, seed, fire, solar force and outward expression. The feminine principle may be symbolized by receptivity, synthesis, intuition, gestation, water, Earth, lunar rhythm and inward transformation. These are spiritual symbols, not prisons for human behaviour. A woman can express tremendous masculine force; a man can express profound feminine wisdom. Every complete human being carries both currents.

This is where some students become confused. They hear Divine Feminine and imagine the discussion concerns only women. They hear Divine Masculine and assume it belongs only to men. But the inner cosmos is wider than the body’s sex. A man without an awakened feminine principle may possess power but lack empathy, intuition and the ability to receive wisdom. A woman whose masculine principle has been crushed may possess vision but struggle to set boundaries, direct her will or defend what she carries. Spiritual maturity does not amputate one current. It brings both into conscious harmony.

Nature demonstrates this union everywhere. Electricity moves through polarity. The heart contracts and relaxes. The lungs receive and release. The soil accepts the seed, but the seed must break open. Water descends as rain, rises as vapour and returns through the sky. Nothing remains alive by performing only one movement forever. Imagine inhaling proudly and refusing to exhale because exhalation appears less spiritual. Your enlightenment would be brief.

The Divine Feminine is therefore not a lower dimension. She manifests through every level in which Life receives, forms, relates, heals, transforms and gives birth. The Cosmic Mother is not trapped inside physical matter, even though matter is one of her great garments. She exists as principle, presence, intelligence and sacred function.

The Divine Masculine is not inherently oppressive either. Domination is not masculinity; it is wounded power. True masculine force gives direction without destroying freedom. It protects without imprisoning. It illuminates without demanding that everything else become invisible. In the same manner, true feminine power nurtures without enslaving through emotional dependence. It receives without losing discernment. It transforms without manipulating.

The problem is not masculinity or femininity. The problem is imbalance.

When masculine force is separated from the feminine, power becomes dry, mechanical and hungry for control. When feminine force is separated from the masculine, feeling may lose direction and become overwhelmed by whatever enters its field. Their union creates wise power and active compassion. This is the sacred marriage spoken of in many esoteric systems—not merely the union of a man and woman, but the reconciliation of complementary powers within consciousness.

The One Creator stands behind both. In the highest mystical understanding, God and Goddess are not competitors. They are faces of a Mystery that exceeds both faces. They meet in the Prima Creator, the First Source, the Absolute Unity from which all gods, goddesses, Souls, elements, worlds and laws emerge.

To honour the Goddess does not require the rejection of God. To honour God does not require the humiliation of the Goddess. The Sun does not become brighter because somebody insults the Moon.

2. THE GOD OF YOUR HEART, THE MASTER WITHIN AND THE PERSONAL CHI

Many mystics misunderstand the expression God of my heart. They were taught to direct petitions to the God of their heart, and they assumed this meant that every student possesses a private deity living inside the chest, rather like a spiritual tenant who receives prayer requests during office hours.

That is not the purpose of the expression as I understand it.

Every human being develops a concept of the Supreme. That concept is shaped by family, culture, scripture, ancestral memory, initiation, experience and personal reflection. One calls the Creator Allah. Another says Jehovah or Yahweh. Another invokes Chukwu, Olodumare, the Great Spirit, the Cosmic Mother, the Universal Mind, the Nameless One or the Source. Some approach the Divine through Sango, Oshun, Olokun, Ala, Ma’at, Isis or another sacred manifestation. Others reject all images and contemplate pure Being.

The phrase God of my heart creates a meeting place among these differences. It means the Divine as sincerely conceived within one’s deepest understanding. It does not force every member of a mystery school to adopt the same image, name or religious vocabulary. It permits a Christian, Muslim, traditionalist, deist, pantheist and mystical philosopher to work together without spending every meeting trying to convert one another.

This language was designed to produce tolerance, not theological uniformity. The mystery school is concerned with the evolution of the Soul, the study of natural and spiritual law, the disciplined development of consciousness and the practical application of esoteric knowledge. It is a brotherhood and sisterhood—not a church with a new uniform.

Therefore, the God of my heart may be approached as Goddess. It may be understood beyond gender. It may be honoured through a form inherited from one’s ancestors. The phrase does not secretly mean “the male God approved by the loudest student.” If it did, it would no longer unite seekers; it would merely place religious competition in a ceremonial robe.

The Master Within is a different idea. It refers to the higher centre of consciousness, the inward teacher, the awakened Self or the Divine intelligence that can guide the personality when the noise of fear, desire and social conditioning becomes quiet. The Master Within is not the everyday ego declaring itself infallible. If every impulse were the voice of the inner Master, then anger, appetite and stubbornness would all qualify for initiation certificates.

The Master Within speaks through clarity, conscience, intuition, inward equilibrium and an intelligence that sees beyond immediate pleasure. Contact with this Master is cultivated through meditation, ethical discipline, self-observation, study and service. The lower personality asks, “How can I win?” The Master Within asks, “What is true, what is just and what serves the growth of the Soul?”

The Igbo concept of Chi must also be treated with respect and precision. Chi is often translated too quickly as a “personal god,” but no short English phrase can carry every meaning of an indigenous spiritual concept. Chi may be understood as an individual spiritual portion, destiny principle, personal divine companion or unique relationship between a person and the Supreme order. It concerns the pattern of one’s becoming and the mysterious partnership between destiny and personal effort.

Chi is therefore not simply another name for the God of your heart. The God of your heart describes your inward conception of Ultimate Divinity. Chi concerns your personal spiritual individuality and destiny within the cosmic order. The Master Within concerns the higher guidance available through awakened consciousness. These ideas may touch one another, but touching is not the same as being identical.

A river, rain and a cup of water are related, yet no sensible person puts a canoe in the cup.

Confusing these teachings produces spiritual disorder. A seeker may mistake personal desire for the Master Within, treat Chi as a servant expected to deliver whatever the ego requests, and imagine the God of the heart to be a supernatural politician who must defeat everybody on the opposing side. Then, when consequences arrive, he announces that dark forces are jealous of his destiny. Sometimes the dark force is simply poor judgment wearing perfume.

This brings us to prayer and petition.

Certain petitions remain unanswered because the request itself violates balance, contradicts the seeker’s deeper development or demands an effect without establishing its cause. A person asks for prosperity while refusing discipline, asks for love while practising control, asks for justice while secretly requesting revenge, or petitions for spiritual elevation while feeding contempt for half of humanity. The lips face one direction while character walks in another.

Within devotional traditions, different deities and divine forms represent particular powers of the One: healing, justice, fertility, protection, prosperity, love, wisdom, the ocean, thunder, ancestry or transformation. Approaching the appropriate sacred form can help the mind and Soul align with the quality being sought. This does not mean the universe operates like a government ministry in which a fertility request is rejected because it reached the Department of Thunder. The deity is not a bureaucrat, although some religious institutions have certainly tried their best to make heaven resemble one.

Rather, sacred forms are channels of relationship. If I seek emotional healing but approach the Divine only through aggression, conquest and fire, I may be unable to receive the gentler wisdom the situation requires. If I seek protection but refuse boundaries, I have ignored the active current necessary for my prayer. If I ask the Mother for abundance while poisoning her rivers and abusing her daughters, my ritual contradicts itself.

The “wrong deity” may therefore mean the wrong inner posture, the wrong symbolic current or a refusal to honour the complete balance of the Divine. It should not become an excuse to blame every unanswered prayer upon a ceremonial technicality. The Infinite is not confused because you pronounced a name imperfectly. Often the deeper question is whether your life has become capable of carrying what your mouth requests.

This knowledge is not an imposition. I offer it as one lamp added to the lamps already burning within serious seekers. Acceptance remains your responsibility. My duty is to speak what I have received, examined and understood. Your duty is to test it through study, contemplation, ethical practice and experience.

3. THE HIDDEN GODDESS AND THE SERPENT OF WISDOM

SEE ALSO:
HOW DO MYSTICS PRAY? DOES PRAYERS REALLY MATTER? Part 1 -
By Knight Fredel - Awake Afraka Magazine

The Goddess has never been absent from human spirituality. She has been named, veiled, absorbed, renamed, demonized, preserved and rediscovered. She appears in the Earth beneath our feet, the waters surrounding and sustaining us, the womb through which human embodiment arrives, the darkness in which seeds germinate, and the intelligence by which life repairs and renews itself.

The water you drink, bathe in and use to prepare food expresses the feminine mystery of reception, cleansing, circulation and nourishment. The Earth upon which you build, plant, harvest, drive and bury the dead expresses the power that carries every human drama without demanding applause. We call land “property,” draw lines across it and fight over ownership, yet the same Earth eventually receives every owner. The Mother has a patient sense of humour.

To honour the Goddess is therefore more than lighting a candle before a beautiful image. It means respecting water, land, fertility, women, children, the body, emotion, intuition, birth, death and the interdependence of living things. A man who praises the Cosmic Mother while humiliating the women around him has not entered Goddess spirituality. He has merely decorated hypocrisy with incense.

The serpent is one of the most ancient and widespread sacred symbols associated with this mystery. It sheds its skin and therefore speaks of renewal. It moves close to the Earth and enters hidden places, linking it with subterranean knowledge, ancestors and the unseen. Its venom can destroy, while knowledge of venom can contribute to healing. Its coiled form suggests dormant power; its rising form suggests awakening. Across different cultures, serpents have represented fertility, protection, danger, royalty, healing, wisdom, chaos, rebirth and the passage between worlds.

In the esoteric lineage handed down to me, the earliest Goddess-centred stream is remembered as the Serpent Religion: a current of sacred knowledge guarded by women, transmitted through initiation and later extended to men through forms of shamanic practice. Within this Gnosis, the serpent offering knowledge to Eve is read differently from the ordinary religious interpretation. Eve represents woman as the first receiver of hidden knowledge; Adam represents the masculine world that later receives the fruit through her.

This is a mystical interpretation, and I present it as such. The historical and archaeological record does not establish one single worldwide institution called the Serpent Religion from which every mystical organization descended, nor does it prove that all earliest shamans were women. Human spiritual traditions arose through many cultures and cannot be forced into one simple family tree. Yet serpent symbolism, Goddess traditions, female ritual authority and women acting as healers, diviners, mediums and spiritual leaders are undeniably ancient and widely distributed.

The symbolic truth remains profound: knowledge passes through the receptive mind before it becomes conscious action. The feminine receives the seed of mystery, gestates it and gives it form. In this sense, Eve is not merely the cause of a fall; she is the courage to approach knowledge. The serpent is not merely a villain; it is the disturbing power of awakening. Knowledge ends innocence, and that ending can feel like exile. Once the eyes open, one cannot return to unconscious peace.

This esoteric reading should not be confused with a claim that every ancient culture understood the Eden story in this exact way. Myth speaks through layers. The same image can carry different teachings within different schools. A literal reading asks, “What happened?” A mystical reading asks, “What is happening within consciousness?”

The suppression of the Feminine did occur in many societies as patriarchal institutions strengthened control over property, inheritance, sexuality, priesthood and political authority. Goddesses were sometimes reduced, reinterpreted or condemned. Women’s access to education, leadership, bodily autonomy and sacred office was restricted. Religious language became overwhelmingly masculine, and human male authority was then presented as a reflection of heavenly order.

But the history is complex. We should not claim that every ancient society was originally a peaceful matriarchy later ruined by men, because evidence does not support such a universal story. Nor should we say that every member of every major religion consciously desires the enslavement of women. There are oppressive doctrines and practices within religious histories, and there are also women and men within those same traditions who have resisted them, reinterpreted texts, built schools, defended dignity and recovered neglected feminine images of the Divine.

Precision makes the criticism stronger. Patriarchy should be confronted where it appears—in law, custom, preaching, forced marriage, denial of education, sexual violence, exclusion from leadership and the treatment of women as property. Hatred directed at every believer only creates another form of blindness. The objective is liberation and balance, not the replacement of one arrogant gender with another.

The claim that ancient Hebrew Genesis refers to Yahweh grammatically as “She” also requires correction. Biblical Hebrew normally speaks of YHWH using masculine grammatical forms. Yet this does not prove that the Infinite possesses a male body, just as grammatical gender does not give tables and rivers human anatomy. More importantly, the Hebrew Bible contains feminine and maternal images for the Divine: a mother giving birth, a woman comforting her child and a mother who cannot forget the infant she nurses. Genesis 1 presents both male and female humanity as created in the image of God.

The deeper conclusion is not that Hebrew secretly changes “He” to “She.” It is that the Divine Reality exceeds the male language through which it was commonly expressed. Later Jewish mystical language would also develop rich feminine images of Divine Presence and Wisdom. The sacred Feminine was not entirely erased; she survived between the lines, in poetry, Wisdom, Presence, compassion and the recurring refusal of Life to fit inside one pronoun.

This is why genuine research matters. Research is not opening a search engine, choosing the first sentence that agrees with us and declaring the ancestors victorious. It requires a clear question, reliable sources, comparison, context, reflection, synthesis and the humility to revise a claim when the evidence demands it. Books can be misread. Websites can repeat one another. Even an ancient symbol can be interpreted too quickly.

Spiritual research adds another responsibility: one must distinguish historical evidence, inherited tradition, initiatory teaching, personal revelation and symbolic interpretation. All may carry value, but they do not carry the same type of authority. A vision is spiritually meaningful; it is not automatically an archaeological discovery. An old text is evidence of what somebody wrote; it is not proof that every event described occurred literally. The true mystic does not fear these distinctions. He knows that Truth loses nothing when the fog is removed.

4. THE MANY FACES OF THE ONE CREATOR

Gods and Goddesses are sacred faces through which cultures encounter the powers of one Divine Reality. Some traditions understand them as independent personal beings. Others see them as emanations, archetypes, forces of Nature, exalted ancestors, cosmic intelligences or names given to the many functions of the One. These interpretations need not be forced into a single formula.

What matters for this teaching is that multiplicity does not necessarily oppose unity. White light enters a prism and reveals many colours, yet every colour belongs to the light. Water becomes rain, river, mist, ice, ocean and blood, yet its essence remains water. In the same way, the One Creator may be approached through many manifestations without being divided into rival Creators.

Ma’at is one of the clearest expressions of the Divine Feminine as cosmic order. In ancient Egyptian thought, Ma’at was both Goddess and principle: truth, justice, rightness, equilibrium and the order through which the world remained habitable. She reminds us that spirituality is not merely feeling close to invisible beings. It is living in alignment. The feather of Ma’at is light because truth does not need the heavy luggage carried by deception.

To honour Ma’at is to make one’s word trustworthy, one’s judgment balanced and one’s conduct capable of surviving examination. A person cannot repeatedly create disorder, then place a feather on an altar and announce himself aligned with cosmic justice. Ma’at is not impressed by branding.

Oshun, within Yoruba tradition, expresses the sacred powers of fresh water, beauty, attraction, love, fertility, diplomacy, sweetness and prosperity. Yet sweetness must not be mistaken for weakness. Water appears gentle, but it shapes stone. Oshun teaches that intelligence does not always need to shout, and that attraction can accomplish what force cannot. Her current concerns relationship, value, emotional wisdom and the wealth that flows when life is allowed to circulate.

Olokun reveals the mystery of the deep ocean, hidden wealth, vastness and powers concealed beneath the visible surface. Significantly, traditions differ in describing Olokun as female, male or beyond a fixed gender, particularly across Yoruba, Edo and diasporic communities. Rather than treating this variation as an inconvenience, the mystic may receive it as instruction: the sea is too vast to be imprisoned by one human category. Divinity often overflows the container built to name it.

The Mesopotamian Ishtar—related to the older Sumerian Inanna—cannot be reduced simply to fertility. She carries love, sexuality, war, kingship, political power and the dangerous intensity of desire. She demonstrates that the Goddess is not only mother and gentle river. She may also be warrior, sovereign, lover and power moving between worlds. The feminine that creates life can also defend it.

Sun Goddesses appear in several cultures, reminding us again that symbols are not universally assigned by gender. The Sun may be masculine in one cosmology and feminine in another. Illumination does not check its pronouns before rising. The solar Goddess represents revelation, vitality, sovereignty and the light that draws hidden possibilities into visibility.

On the masculine current, Sango expresses thunder, lightning, fire, royal force and justice within Yoruba cosmology. He is not merely uncontrolled violence. Thunder announces consequence. Lightning exposes the landscape for one brilliant moment. The mystery of Sango concerns authority, courage, vitality and the power that answers falsehood and disorder.

Within Igbo cosmology, Ekwensu is more complex than the simple title “God of War.” Ekwensu has been associated with conflict, strategy, negotiation, trade, cunning and the difficult forces awakened during struggle. Colonial and missionary translations often flattened this complex figure into an equivalent of the Christian Devil, but indigenous interpretations do not fit that easy equation. Ekwensu reminds us that survival sometimes requires intelligence capable of moving through uncertainty. A strategic power can defend or destroy depending upon the ethics of the person who invokes it.

Horus is more accurately understood as an Egyptian sky, kingship and protective deity than merely a Sun God. He became closely joined with solar symbolism in forms such as Ra-Horakhty, while Ra remained a central solar deity. This distinction matters because each sacred figure carries a particular web of stories, functions and relationships. Comparative spirituality should build bridges, but it should not merge every deity wearing a solar disk into one anonymous employee of the Sun.

These divine manifestations should not be reduced to rigid job descriptions. Oshun is not forbidden from protection because she is associated with love. Sango is not incapable of blessing because he carries thunder. Ma’at is not merely a courtroom officer. Gods and Goddesses are living mysteries within their traditions, and their meanings vary by region, lineage, era and community.

The mature seeker approaches them respectfully. He does not collect deities as though decorating a spiritual shelf. He studies the cosmology, ethics, songs, symbols, prohibitions and living communities connected to a sacred power. Appreciation without context can become another form of taking. If a tradition requires initiation, training or priestly guidance, enthusiasm alone does not cancel that requirement.

Above these manifestations stands the Prima Creator—not above in the sense of contempt, but as the Unity from which difference proceeds. The Cosmic Mother and Cosmic Father are the first great polarities through which the One becomes knowable to the human mind. Together they pour Love, Light, Life, Intelligence and Law into creation. Every deity, elemental, ancestor, Soul and natural power exists within that greater field.

The Cosmic Mother must not be confused with a feminine elemental. Elementals are intelligences or forces associated in esoteric traditions with Earth, water, air and fire. However beautiful or powerful, they belong to particular levels and functions within manifestation. The Cosmic Mother is not one local spirit among many. She is the universal feminine principle—the womb of worlds, the matrix of becoming and the receptive infinity through which Divine intention enters form.

Likewise, the Cosmic Father is not merely a masculine nature spirit or a powerful local god. He is the universal projective principle: will, seed, direction and illuminating consciousness. Father and Mother meet before form, within form and beyond form. Their union produces no hierarchy because each is incomplete as a symbol without the other.

This balance must become practical. It is useless to proclaim devotion to Gods and Goddesses while living in contempt, abuse and disorder. Honour for the Divine Feminine must appear in the treatment of women, children, bodies, rivers, land, emotion and community. Honour for the Divine Masculine must appear as courage, responsibility, protection, truthfulness and disciplined action—not control, terror or domination.

The man who calls upon a Goddess for prosperity while denying his daughter education is not misunderstood by heaven; he is understood perfectly. The woman who condemns every masculine quality while requesting protection and decisive leadership has also divided the sacred current. Balance asks both to heal.

The restoration of the Goddess is not a war against men. It is the healing of creation’s image within the human mind. The restoration of the true God is not the continuation of patriarchy. It is the purification of power from domination. When the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine are reconciled, neither kneels as a slave. Both bow to the One from whom they arise.

Therefore, let no student mystic call Goddess spirituality inferior. Let no devotee of the Goddess imagine hatred of men to be awakening. Let no worshipper of God insult the Mother through whom every body enters the world. Let no seeker confuse unity with sameness or difference with inequality.

The Gods and Goddesses are many lamps. The Flame is One.

The names are many rivers. The Ocean is One.

The faces are many mirrors. The Light is One.

May the God of your heart lead you toward truth.

May the Goddess of your heart restore what fear has divided.

May the Master Within teach you to recognize both currents.

May your Chi guide you toward the destiny your Soul came to fulfil.

And may the Cosmic Mother and Cosmic Father meet within you—not as rivals, but as the sacred balance through which the One Creator becomes alive in human consciousness.

MAN, KNOW THYSELF.

WOMAN, REMEMBER THYSELF.

AFURAKA, RESTORE THE BALANCE.

Love and Light... Always.

Written by Knight Fredel
All Rights Reserved: (c) 2019 - 2026

Editorial reference points

• The yin-yang tradition concerns complementary, interdependent principles that participate together in movement and change rather than a simple hierarchy in which one pole is spiritually inferior: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Ma’at embodied truth, justice and cosmic order in ancient Egyptian thought: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• The Hebrew Bible normally uses masculine grammatical forms for YHWH while also employing distinctly maternal and feminine imagery for the Divine: University of Aberdeen Research Portal and Journal for the Study of the Old Testament.
• Archaeological research demonstrates varied serpent meanings across cultures; this supports careful interpretation rather than the claim of one historically proven worldwide serpent institution: Cambridge University Press, Antiquity.
• Horus was principally associated with the sky, kingship and protection, while Ra was centrally associated with the Sun: British Museum.
• Scholarship on Ekwensu emphasizes a complex Igbo deity connected with warfare and other powers, rather than a simple indigenous equivalent of the Christian Devil: Nnamdi Azikiwe University journal.