Gods and Goddesses of War

War and strife have never been far from human society. For the ancients, the practice and suffering of wars was a way of life, and its varied expressions and nuances were thought to be determined by the moods and actions of a host of patron deities. The Greeks, for example, distinguished between the art of war as influenced by the goddess Athena and the primal bloodlust craved by the war god Ares. In other cultures, war and violence formed integral parts of their creation myths, such as the Aztecs and the Sumerians. 

Below you will find a list of the war gods and goddesses from many of the world's ancient religions and from the Semitic goddess Agasaya to the Slavonic Zroya.