List of thunder gods

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For other uses, see God of Thunder (disambiguation).
Indra, the Indian/ Hindu god of thunder.

Polytheistic peoples of many cultures have postulated a Thunder God, the personification or source of the forces of thunder and lightning; a lightning god does not have a typical depiction, and will vary based on the culture. In Indo-European cultures, the Thunder God is frequently known as the chief or king of the gods, e.g. Indra in Hinduism, Zeus in Greek mythology, and Perun in ancient Slavic religion; or a close relation thereof, e.g. Thor, son of Odin, in Norse mythology. This is also true of *Shango in Yorùbá religion and in the syncretic religions of the African Diaspora, such as Santería (Cuba, Puerto Rico, U.S. and Candomblé (Brazil).

In Greek mythology, The Elysian Fields, or the Elysian Plains, the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous, evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios.[1] This could be a reference to Zeus, the god of lightning/Jupiter, so "lightning-struck" could be saying that the person was blessed (struck) by Zeus (/lightning/fortune). Egyptologist Jan Assmann has also suggested that Greek Elysion may have instead been derived from the Egyptian term ialu (older iaru), meaning "reeds," with specific reference to the "Reed fields" (Egyptian: sekhet iaru / ialu), a paradisiacal land of plenty where the dead hoped to spend eternity.[2]

List of thunder gods[edit]

Ancient Near East[edit]


East Asia[edit]




Polynesian mythology
Micronesian mythology


New Zealand[edit]


  • H. Munro Chadwick, The Oak and the Thunder-God, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1900).


Video games[edit]


  1. ^ Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985. p. 198.
  2. ^ Assmann, Jan (2001). Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Cornell University Press. p. 392

See also[edit]