page_title: Deity
section_title: Zoroastrianism
hierarchical_section_title: Deity / Religions / Eastern religions / Zoroastrianism
caption_attribution_description: English: Taq-e Bostan: high-relief of Ardeshir II investiture; from left to right: Mithra, Shapur II, Ahura Mazda. Lying down: dead Roman emperor Julian. فارسی: طاق بستان: انتصاب اردشیر دوم به پادشاهی؛ از چپ به راست: میترا، شاپور دوم، اهورا مزدا. پایین: ژولیان امپراطور روم.
context_page_description: A deity or god is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess", or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". A goddess is a female deity.
  Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity, polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being.
  Although most monotheistic religions traditionally envision their God as omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and eternal, none of these qualities are essential to the definition of a "deity" and various cultures conceptualized their deities differently.
context_section_description: Ahura Mazda (/əˌhʊrəˌmæzdə/); is the Avestan name for the creator and sole God of Zoroastrianism. The literal meaning of the word Ahura is "mighty" or "lord" and  Mazda is wisdom. Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism, taught that Ahura Mazda is the most powerful being in all of the existence and the only deity who is worthy of the highest veneration. Nonetheless, Ahura Mazda is not omnipotent because his evil twin brother Angra Mainyu is nearly as powerful as him. Zoroaster taught that the daevas were evil spirits created by Angra Mainyu to sow evil in the world and that all people must choose between the goodness of Ahura Mazda and the evil of Angra Mainyu. According to Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda will eventually defeat Angra Mainyu and good will triumph over evil once and for all. Ahura Mazda was the most important deity in the ancient Achaemenid Empire. He was originally represented anthropomorphically, but, by the end of the Sasanian Empire, Zoroastrianism had become fully aniconic.
caption: Investiture of Sassanid emperor Shapur II (center) with Mithra (left) and Ahura Mazda (right) at Taq-e Bostan, Iran
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