Household deity

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Early-20th-century Slavic cult statuette of a Domovoy, the household deity,

progenitor of the kin, in Slavic paganism
A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the
entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as
well as in folklore across many parts of the world.

Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a
goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is
associated with the home and hearth, with examples including the Greek Hestia[1]
and Norse Frigg.

The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but
a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major
deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of
ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon
paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in
folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.

Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where
they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often
translated as "household gods" in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings or
reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in
the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the
household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The
gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be
given offerings of food and drink.

Contents
1 Types
2 Origins in animism and ancestor worship
2.1 Shinto as an exemplar of development
2.2 Cultural evolution and survival
2.2.1 Animism and totemism
2.3 Domestic deities and ancestor worship
2.3.1 Jacob Grimm (1835)
2.3.2 Thomas Keightley (1870)
2.3.3 MacMichael (1907)
2.3.4 New International Encyclopaedia
2.4 Origin of ancestor worship in animism
2.4.1 Hearn (1878)
2.4.2 George Henderson (1911)
3 List
3.1 Specific deities
3.1.1 European
3.1.2 African
3.1.3 Asian
3.1.4 North American
3.1.5 Other
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
Types
In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home.

Certain species, or types, of household deities existed. An example of this was the
Roman Lares.

Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples
of these include:

Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin /

Hobgoblin
Domovoy (Slavic)
Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
Húsvættir (Norse)
Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the
Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had
to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble.[2] Because of their
immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than
the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity
and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan
pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian
accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens
and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as
guardians partitioning a sacred space.

For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan
deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther's Tischreden have
numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds.[3][4] Eventually,
rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor
deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and
embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the
20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games,
video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented
traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric
roots.

Origins in animism and ancestor worship

Shinto as an exemplar of development
The general dynamics of the origin and development of household deities over a
considerable span may be traced and exemplified by the historically attested
origins and current practices of the Shinto belief system in Japan. As the British
Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn put it:

The real religion of Japan, the religion still professed in one form or other, by
the entire nation, is that cult which has been the foundation of all civilized
religion, and of all civilized society, – Ancestor-worship.[5]

Drawing the picture with broader strokes, he continues:

Three stages of ancestor-worship are to be distinguished in the general course of

religious and social evolution; and each of these finds illustration in the history
of Japanese society. The first stage is that which exists before the establishment
of a settled civilization, when there is yet no national ruler, and when the unit
of society is the great patriarchal family, with its elders or war-chiefs for
lords. Under these conditions, the spirits of the family-ancestors only are
worshipped;—each family propitiating its own dead, and recognizing no other form of
worship. As the patriarchal families, later on, become grouped into tribal clans,
there grows up the custom of tribal sacrifice to the spirits of the clan-rulers;—
this cult being superadded to the family-cult, and marking the second stage of
ancestor-worship. Finally, with the union of all the clans or tribes under one
supreme head, there is developed the custom of propitiating the spirits of
national, rulers. This third form of the cult becomes the obligatory religion of
the country; but it does not replace either of the preceding cults: the three
continue to exist together.[6][full citation needed]

Furthermore,

Whenever a child is born in Japan, a local Shinto shrine adds the child's name to a
list kept at the shrine and declares him or her a "family child" (氏子 ujiko).
After death an ujiko becomes a "family spirit", or "family kami" (氏神 ujigami).

Many Japanese houses still have a shrine (kamidana, kami shelf) where offerings are
made to ancestral kami, as well as to other kami.

Cultural evolution and survival

Edward Burnett Tylor, one of the main founders of the discipline of cultural
anthropology, spoke of survivals, vestiges of earlier evolutionary stages in a
culture's development. He also coined the term animism. Tylor disagreed with
Herbert Spencer, another founder of anthropology, as well as of sociology, about
the innateness of the human tendency towards animistic explanations, but both
agreed that ancestor worship was the root of religion and that domestic deities
were survivals from such an early stage.[7]

Animism and totemism

In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended
theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in
totemism. In reality this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be
regarded as particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis
of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud's Totem and Taboo,
both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same
psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather
reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic
implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular
emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens,
the ancestral component.[8]

Domestic deities and ancestor worship

Jacob Grimm (1835)

Shrine of the household deities lares in Pompeii, showing the offering altar and a
niche for votive images
The doyen of European folklorists Jacob Grimm did not hesitate to equate the Roman
lar familiaris to the brownie.[9] He explains in some detail in his Deutsche
Mythologie:

Larva betrays its affinity to lar ..., and the good kindly lares were often held to
be manes or souls of departed ancancestorSo in our German superstition we find
instances of souls becoming homesprites or kobolds, and still oftener is there a
connexion between unquiet spirits and spectres.[10]

Thomas Keightley (1870)

To underscore the equivalence of brownie, kobold and goblin, consider the words of
the English historian and folklorist Thomas Keightly:

The Kobold is exactly the same being as the Danish Nis, and Scottish Brownie, and
English Hobgoblin. [b] He performs the very same services for the family to whom he
attaches himself. ... The Nis, Kobold, or Goblin, appears in Scotland under the
name of Brownie.
[11]

MacMichael (1907)
MacMichael elaborated his views on the folkloric belief complex as follows:

What are our elves and fairies, goblins, nisses, brownies, and pixies but latter-
day survivals of arkite ancestor worship? Brownies and pixies were probably
invariably of good character, originally, a likelihood suggested by the good points
which in many respects survive in their character, their virtues being turned into
vices, and, contrariwise, their vices into virtues, as good or ill fortune befell
the household and its appurtenances. Is not the bowl of milk placed for the Brownie
in the corner of the room a survival of the drink-offering of wine which was poured
out before the household gods of the Romans?[12]

New International Encyclopaedia

Demonstrating that this evolution and functional equivalence has generally come to
be accepted, and that their nature is indeed that proposed by Grimm, one may refer
to the early twentieth century New International Encyclopaedia:

The term fairy, however, is also loosely used to include other beings of a similar
character like the brownie, elf, fay, gnome, goblin, kobold, pixy, puck,
salamander, sprite, sylph, troll and undine. ... Fairy lore contains likewise
certain elements of ancestor-worship, of mythology, and of older religious beliefs.
[13]

and also

The resemblance to the Robin Goodfellow (q.v.) of the English and the Kobold of the
Germans is conspicuous, and the Roman Lar is also suggested by this suspicion.[14]

Origin of ancestor worship in animism

Hearn (1878)
William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist and jurist, traced the origin of domestic
deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system
thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European
religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II "The House
Spirit", Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was ... the spirit rule of
dead ancestors.[15]

In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not
a mere hypothesis. ...

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House
Spirit appears with no less distinctness. ... [T]he existence of that worship does
not admit of doubt. ... The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it
is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of
their friendly relations with man. ... In [England] ... [h]e is the Brownie. ... In
Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to
particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing
the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite
gratification was milk and honey.[16]

George Henderson (1911)

George Henderson elaborated on the presumed origin of ancestor worship in animism:
The second phase of this stage of thought [Animism] would be a cult of human
ancestors, specially of tribal chiefs and clan-heroes: this is Manism or Ancestor
Worship proper, culminating in hero worship. ... it is to be noted that the
characteristics pertaining to a particular clan or tribal community, which mark
ancestor worship, will have fallen very much to the background if they can be at
all inferred among the Celts; the relations emphasised will be found pertaining to
mythologic concepts and to the Nature-Myth. For, as modifications and transitions
in behalf are constant, ancestor worship gets partly transcended. But in Manism the
guardian spirit has its specific influence on the tribal consciousness. I recollect
Aoibhell of Craig Liath, the guardian spirit of the Dal Caiss, mentioned in the
narrative concerning Brian Boru in the Wars of the Gaedhel and the Gall; there is
also Mag Molach or Hairy Hand, and Bodach An Duin of Rothiemurchus, as well as the
more familiar belief in the Brownie which renders offices of help in some houses,—a
feeble survival of early phases of cult.[17]

List
Specific deities
Domestic or hearth goddesses from various mythologies include:

European
Agathodaemon in Ancient Greek religion
Aitvaras in Lithuanian mythology
Berehynia (originally a river spirit, since 1991 has become a hearth goddess in
Ukrainian Romantic nationalism)
Brighid, a goddess in Ancient Celtic religion
Brownie or Urisk in Scottish folklore
Bwbachod in Welsh folklore
Cofgodas in Anglo-Saxon paganism
Domovoy in Slavic paganism
Frigg, a goddess in Old Norse religion
Gabija, a goddess in Baltic paganism
Haltija, or Haldjas in Finnish paganism, Finnish folklore, and Estonian folklore.
Heinzelmännchen in German folklore
Hestia, a goddess in Greek paganism
Hob, Lubber fiend, and Puck in English folklore
Húsvættir, Norse
Jack o' the bowl in Swiss folklore
Kobold in German folklore
Lares in Ancient Roman religion
Lutin in French folklore
Matka Gabia, a goddess in Slavic paganism
Monaciello, Monachiccio, Mamucca, Lu Laùru, Aguriellu, or Mazapegol in Italian
folklore
Penates, in Ancient Roman religion
Pūķis in Latvian folklore
Tomte, or Nisse in Scandinavian folklore
Trasgu in Spanish folklore and Portuguese folklore
Vesta, a goddess of Traditional Roman religion, both state and domestic
African
Bes, a god in Ancient Egyptian religion
Ekwu, a god in Igbo Odinani
Asian
Anito in prehispanic Filipino culture.
All Gashin, the most prominent being Teoju, Seongju, Jowang, or Samshin.
Kamui Fuchi, a goddess in the Ainu folklore in Japan
Ông Táo in Vietnamese folklore
Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) in Chinese Folk Religion
Zao Jun (Kitchen God) in Chinese Folk Religion
Zashiki-warashi in Japanese folklore
North American
Chantico, a goddess in Aztec mythology
Other
I Gudli Saibia, a female guardian angel in Romani mythology