Cult of Gods

Agni

Hindu tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
fire, the sacrifice, messenger of the gods
Symbols and attributes
Ram; flames
Vishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.
Vishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.

Key myth

Agni carries sacrifice to the gods. The Rigveda opens with a hymn to him, and he still bears the offerings in Vedic ritual and Hindu wedding ceremonies.

Primary sources

  • Rigveda 1.1

All sources for the Hindu pantheon

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

Dyaus PitarPrithviIndraAgniVarunaSuryaYamaUshasVishnuLakshmiShivaParvatiSaraswatiGaneshaKartikeyaDurgaKrishna

More traditions

Odin rides to Hel, W. G. Collingwood, after the Poetic Edda.NorsePapyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.EgyptianA chaos monster and a sun god, drawn by L. Gruner for A. H. Layard's Monuments of Nineveh.MesopotamianFolio 309r of the Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin), c. 800.Celtic (Irish)

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Agni: the sun and light, earth, harvest and fertility. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Sif

golden hair, grain (by later reading)

Norse

Freyr

peace, fertility, sunshine

Egyptian

Atum

creator, the completed one

Egyptian

Ra

sun, kingship, order

Egyptian

Geb

earth

Egyptian

Osiris

afterlife, resurrection, fertility of the flood

Egyptian

Sobek

Nile, fertility, kingship

Compare across cultures