Cult of Gods

Lakshmi

Hindu tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
fortune, prosperity
Symbols and attributes
Lotus; elephants
Partner
Vishnu
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

Appears at the churning of the ocean of milk and chooses Vishnu. Diwali is celebrated, among other things, with prayers to her.

Primary sources

  • Vishnu Purana 1.9
  • Mahabharata Adi Parva

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 Lakshmi: earth, harvest and fertility, love, desire and fertility. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Sif

golden hair, grain (by later reading)

Norse

Freyr

peace, fertility, sunshine

Norse

Freyja

love, desire, magic (seiðr)

Egyptian

Geb

earth

Egyptian

Osiris

afterlife, resurrection, fertility of the flood

Egyptian

Hathor

love, music, joy

Egyptian

Sobek

Nile, fertility, kingship

Mesopotamian

Ninlil

grain, wind (as Enlil's wife)

Compare across cultures