Deity

Deities are one of the most powerful and important beings in the worlds of the Legend of Zelda series. Deities vary widely in their form and the extent of their power. Terms such as deity, god, and spirit have been applied to many beings, and there is no clear definition of what is a deity and what is not. These terms are likely not defined levels of power nor races of being but are representative of the speaker's view of the one being described. Ganondorf for example, who is a powerful Gerudo but not generally considered a deity, has once been called a god. It is thinkable that a deity is not an actual race, but more rather to classify a powerful being. Despite supposedly being very powerful creatures, some deities have been defeated or fallen prey to others, with such events happening quite a few times throughout the series.

The most powerful deities are the Golden Goddesses, who descended from a Distant Nebula and created Hyrule and the life that exists there. There are three Golden Goddesses; Din, Goddess of Power, Nayru, Goddess of Wisdom, and Farore, Goddess of Courage. Before returning to the heavens, the Golden Goddesses left the all-powerful Triforce in the Sacred Realm, a world parallel to Hyrule. This also extends to Lorule as they also gave them a parallel Triforce as well.

Link is often said to be the hero chosen by the gods. This may be meant to indicate the Golden Goddesses, or perhaps other deities. In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Link is the chosen hero of the Goddess Hylia, specifically.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The prologue, found in the official manual for the game, is the first time that the creation of Hyrule is explained and the Golden Goddesses are mentioned.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
The Wind Fish is a deity with the appearance of a large winged whale. It is trapped in a deep sleep, and the island of Koholint is its dream. Link becomes stranded on the island, and in order to free both himself and the Wind Fish from its dream, he must wake the Wind Fish from its egg atop Mt. Tamaranch.

The Sun Fish is mentioned by Manbo, the Sun Fish's son. Aside from this relationship, nothing else is known about the Sun Fish, though its name possibly indicates that it is a deity not unlike the Wind Fish.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Several guardian deities exist in Hyrule. The Great Deku Tree gave life to the Kokiri and watches over them in Kokiri Forest. The Great Deku Tree was cursed by Ganondorf when he refused to hand over the Kokiri's Emerald, and eventually dies. Seven years later, when the curse on the Forest Temple is broken, the Great Deku Tree's successor, the Deku Tree Sprout, grows in front of the Great Deku Tree. It appears to have the Great Deku Tree's memories.

Lord Jabu-Jabu is the patron deity and guardian god of the Zora race. He is attended by Princess Ruto. Like the Great Deku Tree, Jabu-Jabu has been cursed by Ganondorf, and Link must go inside his body to defeat the parasite within.

The Gerudo worship the Goddess of the Sand. They have constructed a large statue in her honor both on the exterior of the Desert Colossus and on the interior of the Spirit Temple within the colossus. The Goddess of the Sand is never seen, and may or may not be a purely mythical being. It is also said that the Gerudo worship Ganondorf almost like a god.

The Golden Goddesses are also mentioned by the Great Deku Tree when he explains the origins of Hyrule and the Triforce.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
The Four Giants are the creators and guardian gods of the land of Termina. Long ago, they departed in the four cardinal directions to guard the land while they slept, telling the people of Termina to call them if they were in danger. Every year the Carnival of Time is held to celebrate the passage of time and ask the gods for a fruitful harvest in the coming year. During the events of the game, the Moon is set on a collision course with Termina and the Four Giants have been imprisoned by Majora's Mask. Link must free the Four Giants and call them to halt the falling Moon.

The Goddess of Time is mentioned by Princess Zelda of Hyrule and several characters native to Termina. The Goddess of Time is apparently responsible for Link's ability to loop time back to the beginning of the three days Termina has before its destruction.

The Giant Turtle is a guardian who watches over Great Bay while he slumbers. When Lulu sings the New Wave Bossa Nova, the turtle awakens from his disguise as an island and takes Link to Great Bay Temple.

Near the end of the game, Link can acquire a special transformation mask known as the Fierce Deity's Mask. The true nature and history of the Fierce Deity is never elaborated upon.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons
A female and male Maku Tree are the guardians of the lands of Labrynna and Holodrum, respectively. Each advises Link throughout his quest to liberate their land from evil. The female and male Maku Trees are aided by Link's collecting of the Essences of Time and Essences of Nature, respectively. When all eight essences are retrieved, each Maku Tree will give Link a Maku Seed needed to break through a curse and confront either Veran or Onox, depending on the game.

In Oracle of Ages, Jabu-Jabu is the guardian of the peaceful Sea Zoras. In the past, Jabu-Jabu is too small to enter, but in present time, Link must go inside him to retrieve the Rolling Sea, the seventh Essence of Time.

In Oracle of Seasons, the four Season Spirits reside in the Temple of Seasons. Link must travel to the temple with the Rod of Seasons so that each of spirits may imbue the rod with the power to bring about their respective season.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Prior to the events of the game, the evil Ganondorf partially breaks through his seal and invades the kingdom of Hyrule. Unlike during his last invasion, no hero appears to attempt to thwart him, and the people are forced to appeal to the gods. In order to stop Ganondorf's onslaught, the gods cause a Great Flood. Some of the people of Hyrule escape to the mountaintops that remain above the waters. These mountaintops become islands upon the newly formed Great Sea. The land of Hyrule below remains sealed within a large bubble of air. The beings who caused the great flood are simply referred to as "the gods", leaving their exact identity and gender a mystery.

During the events of the game, a number of deities are seen. Valoo the sky spirit lives atop Dragon Roost Island and watches over the Rito people. He bestows one of his scales to young Rito when they come of age, which allows them to grow wings. His tail is stuck inside a cavern and is being attacked by Gohma, and Link must fight through Dragon Roost Cavern and defeat the monster. Prince Komali's Grandmother was Valoo's attendant while she was alive, and trained Medli to be her successor.

The Great Deku Tree is the guardian of the Koroks, the new form taken by the Kokiri when they came to live on the Great Sea. Every year, the Koroks hold a ceremony in which they gather around the Great Deku Tree and play him music. This allows him to produce seeds which the Koroks then carry to distant islands of the Great Sea. With these seeds, the Great Deku Tree intends to grow vast forests which will create new land, and one day unite the scattered islands into one country again. When Link encounters the Great Deku Tree, he is plagued by ChuChus which Link must defeat. Afterward, the Great Deku Tree gives Link a Deku Leaf and asks that he rescue Makar from the Forbidden Woods. When he is successful, Makar and the other Koroks hold their ceremony, and the Deku Tree grants Link Farore's Pearl.

The great sea spirit, Jabun, lived at Greatfish Isle prior to Ganondorf's attack on the island. Link must trace Jabun to a cave on Outset Island to which the water spirit fled. There, the King of Red Lions talks to Jabun and convinces him to grant Link Nayru's Pearl.

The two brothers Cyclos and Zephos are the gods of wind. Angered by the destruction of his monument on Dragon Roost Island, Cyclos causes cyclones across the Great Sea. If Link approaches one of the wind god's cyclones and strikes him with three arrows, he surrenders and teaches Link the "Ballad of Gales". Zehpos appears to Link when he plays the "Wind's Requiem", a song he learned from Zephos's monument on Dragon Roost Island. Zephos congratulates Link on being able to control the wind, dubbing him the "Waker of the Winds", and warns him about Cyclos' anger.

The Queen of Fairies is the leader of all fairies, a high status that potentially defines her as a deity. She resides on Mother & Child Isles and grants Link's bow the power to shoot fire and ice arrows.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
The Queen of Fairies is seen in Hyrule Castle, and is potentially powerful enough to be defined as a deity. She has been split into two by dark magic, and Link must reunite the halves. Once he does, the Queen of Fairies aids him by breaking a magic barrier and vanquishing a horde of attacking Hyrule Guards.

Ganon is treated as a god by the Deku Scrubs of the Lost Woods. They use the Temple of Darkness as a place to worship him.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
No deities appear, but Vaati claims that he will have the power of a god after he possesses the Light Force. This is an example of the term being an acquired title as opposed to a race or races.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The four Light Spirits &mdash;Ordona, Faron, Eldin, and Lanayru&mdash; are guardians of the provinces of Hyrule. Lanayru explains to Link that the Light Spirits were sent by the goddesses to seal away the Fused Shadow, a powerful magical item which the Interlopers created to use in their quest to establish dominion over the Sacred Realm. Lanayru only mentions three Light Spirits as doing this however. During the events of the game, the light is stolen from the Light Spirits by Shadow Insects, and Twilight is allowed to cover their lands. Link defeats the Shadow Insects and returns the light to the Light Spirit using the Vessel of Light, restoring their power and dispelling the Twilight.

The Golden Goddesses are mentioned during Lanayru's explanation of Hyrule's early history. Though it is implied that Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf each possess their respective Triforce pieces, it is near explicitly stated as they are simply side to have been choose by the Goddesses to wield their power, though in the case of Ganondorf the Ancient Sages are confused as why the goddesses would choose someone as evil as Ganondorf to wield their power, considering the notion a divine prank.

Zant considers Ganondorf his god (similar to most of the Gerudo, who held Ganondorf in a similar regard). This is largely a matter of Zant's point of view, and Ganondorf is not generally considered a deity. Zant's worship of Ganondorf

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
The Ocean King is the patron deity of the World of the Ocean King. His servants are the Three Spirits; Ciela, Leaf, and Neri.

The Goddess of Spirits mentioned by her servants on Spirit Island. This servant allows Link to power up his corresponding spirit if he has collected enough of one the three types of Spirit Gems.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
The Spirits of Good are the deities of New Hyrule. When the land was founded, they sealed the evil Malladus away and left for the heavens to recover after the conflict.

The Mountain Goddess is the guardian of the Goron people.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Hylia is a goddess who was entrusted with the Triforce by the Golden Goddesses. When the Demon King Demise and his forces invaded the land, Hylia gathered the Hylians and used her powers to create Skyloft along with the other islands floating in the sky. Together with the races that remained on the Surface, she fought and sealed Demise within the Sealed Grounds. At some point she created the Goddess Sword and its spirit Fi to guide her chosen hero on his quest and left behind the Three Sacred Gifts within the Silent Realm, to aid him in his quest to find the Sacred Flames which would transform the Goddess Sword into the Master Sword. She is later reincarnated as Zelda.

The Three Dragons; Eldin, Faron and Lanayru, protect the regions of The Surface.

Levias, a whale-like creature, protects The Sky from inside the Thunderhead; however, a parasite has infected him, and Link must cleanse the spirit before he is able to learn about the Triforce.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
It is revealed that the parallel world of Lorule originally had a Triforce, which was presumably created by the gods of Lorule (possibly the Lorulean counterparts of the Golden Goddesses), however their names are never mentioned, though it is stated that each part of Lorule's Triforce represents Power, Wisdom, and Courage like Hyrule's Triforce, indicating that the Gods of Lorule represent those 3 virtues like the Golden Goddesses.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time manga
The Baga Tree appears as an evil counterpart to the Great Deku Tree in the bonus section of the manga. He appears to be the ruler of the Skull Kids in the Lost Woods. He is also able to summon monsters such as Wolfos and Moblins, and form projectiles out of his roots and limbs. Skull Kid kidnaps Saria when she was following Link into the Lost Woods. This pleases the Baga Tree, who thinks of it as revenge against the Deku Tree's rule over the forest. Link and Mido team up and defeat the Baga Tree, and discover that it was a parasite, similar in appearance to Queen Gohma who kills the Great Deku Tree later, that made the Baga Tree evil.

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
Baron is the god of war.

Hyrule Warriors
The Fierce Deity appears as a transformation of Young Link. Levias also appears in the story and as part of the Great Fairy's moveset. In Liberation of the Triforce, while possessing the power of the complete Triforce as well as the power he obtained from a dark ritual performed in Ganon's Tower, Ganondorf claimed that no Hero or Goddess could defeat him and his overwhelming power, forced the Hyrulean Forces and their allies to capture the Hyrule Castle Keep (as Ganondorf had converted the castle into Ganon's Tower), in order to cut off the power he obtained from the ritual, weakening Ganondorf to the point he was forced to resort to use the Triforce to resurrect him in his Ganon form.

Though the Guardian of Time, Cia, and Lana are referred to as Sorceresses, they have abilities and powers more in common with deities such as the ability to manipulate time-space, create & control Summoning Gates, and use fission to divide themselves into clones that are the same as the original. The Guardian of Time's role of watching over the countless battles over the Triforce is also more in line with that of a deity and it is implied she has watched over the battles over the Triforce for centuries before Ganondorf's spirit drove the light from her heart, resulting in the creation of Cia and Lana.

Deidad