Cult of Gods

Kartikeya

Also: Murugan, Skanda

Hindu tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
war, youth
Symbols and attributes
Spear (vel); peacock
Parents (per the sources used)
Shiva and Parvati
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

A war god, general of the gods. Widely worshipped in Tamil Nadu as Murugan, and in Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Where sources differ or caution applies. Birth accounts differ: Shiva's seed borne by Agni and the Ganges, raised by the Krittikas; or Parvati as mother.

Primary sources

  • Kumarasambhava
  • Mahabharata Vana Parva

All sources for the Hindu pantheon

Lineage in the sources used: Shiva, Parvati.

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 Kartikeya: war and fighting. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Odin

wisdom, poetry, war

Norse

Thor

thunder, protection of gods and people, strength

Norse

Freyja

love, desire, magic (seiðr)

Norse

Týr

law, oaths, war

Egyptian

Seth

storm, desert, chaos

Egyptian

Horus

kingship, sky

Egyptian

Sekhmet

war, plague, healing

Mesopotamian

Enlil

wind, command, the fates of cities

Compare across cultures