The Hyrulian Pantheon: The Minor Gods
Posted on May 16 2012 by Mases Hagopian
In every pantheon there are many tiers or levels of gods based on power and importance. Besides the major gods, there are many others. The Greeks had a god for practically everything. Not all of them were important enough to live on Mount Olympus, and some that did live on Olympus weren’t all that important. Take Hephaestus for example, the deformed god of the forge. Hera threw him off of Olympus when he was born because he was hideous, but Zeus brought him back to make lightning bolts for him. He was around Olympus, but I don’t think any of us would consider him a major god. There is no way that we can compare him to his siblings, like Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, who burst from Zeus’s head fully formed and armed for battle when he tried to eat her mother to prevent her birth.
Perhaps a better parallel from Greek mythology to the minor deities we see in Hyrulian mythology would be the “underling-gods” of the major Olympian Gods. For example, Poseidon was the Olympian god of the sea, definitely a major God. Under him were a host of other less important gods. For example, there was Aegaeon, the god of violent sea storms, or Ceto, goddess of the dangers of the ocean and of sea monsters. Below them there are “Demi-God” like beings, often referred to as “the son of Poseidon by ….” or “the daughter of Poseidon by…” and then sea monsters that act like guardians of the sea, and lastly simple sea spirits, like the sirens or the mermaids. These other categories will be discussed in more depth in later chapters of this series.
The Norse people had twelve major gods, including all of the gods listed in the previous chapters. Below them, however, there were also minor gods, though not as many in number as the Greek Minor Gods. Some examples are Ran, Keeper of the Drowned, or Honir, the silent god known for indecisiveness. Deities below them in the Norse pantheon are Light Elves and Dark Elves (also called Dwarves), the Giants and other mystical creatures, and then spirits, which are more personifications of concepts than creatures. Again, more on this in later chapters.
We don’t know the names of many of the Hyrulian minor gods, not because those names don’t exist but because they’re not central enough to the “myths” (the games) to warrant naming. Like the Three Golden Goddesses, the minor gods are almost never seen in the world itself. They, too, are most likely absent from the world and worshipped in their absence.
First, we will talk about the most important of the minor gods, the two we do have names for and see in Majora’s Mask. Despite being a parallel world, Termina is still a part of the Hyrulian worldview (as discussed in the Cosmology article) and it is still one of the stories of which the people speak, if we are looking at the games as a collection of myths. These two characters straddle the line between major and minor gods. After we talk about them, we will move on to the nameless gods and goddesses we see throughout the Hyrulian myths.
Majora
In the introduction, we talked about the moon god and sun goddess archetypes seen throughout world mythologies, and I claimed that the Fierce Deity is the spirit of the moon, and Majora is the spirit of the sun. From there, it is easy to interpret them as minor gods instead of merely spirits. However, in order to discuss them as gods, I first need to lay out evidence for their associations. In regards to Majora, I am arguing that Majora is female, and that she represents the sun enough to be considered a sun goddess.
I have three major points to support the hypothesis that Majora is the incarnation, or spirit, of the sun. The first point dovetails nicely with something I should establish first, and that is Majora’s gender. The most obvious detail listed by fans of this theory is that when the mask sprouts limbs and a head, the eyes of the mask are situated on the chest of the new creature. Though they do not protrude, their design suggests female breasts.
The eyes of the mask are simple. They are orangish-yellow, much like the sun, and consist of an outer circle with a simple dot in the middle. A little known fact about this is that that symbol, depicted below, was originally the Egyptian symbol for their major god Ra, a sun god. Today, it is used by astronomers as shorthand for the sun in research writing. Likewise, they use a familiar symbol to represent the moon: a crescent moon, also depicted below.
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Now where have we seen these before? How about on the chests of Majora and Fierce Deity, respectively, during the final battle? They are literally labeled with the scientific symbols for sun and moon. Now, this fact and the color of Majora’s eyes/breasts are circumstantial evidence. It is, nonetheless, a simple observation and my first point.
Before going into the next point, it’s important to finish establishing Majora’s gender. Beyond the remarkable resemblance to breasts, Majora’s voice is feminine. It’s not just the high-pitched voice of a young boy or young man in a video game, it’s literally the voice of a woman. Listen to her voice in the following youtube video of Majora’s Wrath. While you do, please pay special attention to the way that Majora’s Wrath dances. She lifts up on her toe with one leg crooked and she spins, much like a ballerina with long ribbons in her hands might spin.
Again, look for Majora’s ballerina-like dancing and listen for her high pitched vocal sounds:
Skull Kid may have been male, but Majora herself is most definitely female. Now that the pronoun usage is explained, let’s move on to what really matters.
The second point has to do with color. Majora’s color scheme is bright and glaring, dominated by harsh purples and reds. When Skull Kid uses the power of the mask to cast spells, Majora’s power radiates from the mask in a circular beam, like it was emitting sunlight. The boss room Majora takes the hero to for their final battle is filled with a rainbow of color. I’m sure some of you scientifically-inclined Zelda fans already know about the relationship between light and color, but for those of you who don’t let me give you a quick lesson.
Sunlight radiates from the sun in waves. Within these rays of sunlight, also called white light, are specific rays including every color in existence. Color is actually contained in the light itself. What this means is that no item on earth actually has its own color. An apple looks red because it reflects the red wave in the sunlight. A tree’s leaves are green in summer because it reflects the green wave. In order for something to look white, it has to reflect all of the colors waves in the sunlight (hence why sunlight is white). In order for something to look black, it has to not reflect any of the waves in the sunlight.
Without sunlight, color wouldn’t exist. Try this: go into a room with no windows, preferably at night. Wait until your eyes adjust, which they usually will after a while. This will even work in rooms with curtains at night. Once your eyes have adjusted, look around and honestly try to pick out specific colors. You can’t. Without sunlight (or moonlight, as the light of the moon is merely reflected sunlight) encountering the items they don’t appear to have color. Your mind may try to pin a color on it because it knows what color it SHOULD be, but if you really look honestly all you will see is shades of gray and black.
This is interesting in two respects. The relationship between the sun and color is fascinating. Color is in the sun’s light, not in the world. Therefore, the fact that Majora is so strongly associated with the sun is important. Also, note that the moon has no light of its own. What light the moon gives is reflected light from the sun, like one gigantic round mirror. If Majora is the sun, how interesting is it that the sun gives Link the key to exposing the moon? By putting on the mask received from Majora, the moon can finally be seen through Link. In a way, Majora gives Fierce Deity his spotlight.
This moon connection can also be seen in the color issue. Just as the moon is white surrounded by black, so Fierce Deity is white and black. The eyes of Fierce Deity have no pigment or pupil. His hair is white. His tunic, though often interpreted as light blue, is also often thought to be white. His armor is silver and his leggings and undershirt are black. The only color on the Fierce Deity, in fact, is the war paint on his face, armor, and gauntlets. Other than that he, like the moon itself, is nothing but white and black. Without pigment of its own.
Still not convinced that Majora is the sun? Let us look at Majora’s temple, the Stone Tower Temple. For more information on the Stone Tower Temple and Majora, please see Hylian Dan’s “The Message of Majora’s Mask”. Seriously, if you haven’t read it, go read it now. Right now. Your life is incomplete and you didn’t even know it. You see, Hylian Dan brilliantly explores the Stone Tower Temple, and he comes to the substantiated conclusion that the architecture in the temple indicated that it was used to worship the mask, among other things. Take a look at this famous image below:
If that isn’t one gargantuan sculpture of Majora’s Mask, then I don’t know what is. The mask can also be seen carved into the pillars in the boss room of the temple. This room is actually a giant desert, where the light of the sun beats down on the land and kills everything alive. When we think desert, we think hot, unforgiving sunlight. It’s noteworthy to observe that this sun-filled, Majora-decorated place is in the heart of Stone Tower Temple.
The key to Majora’s temple is light. Sunlight, to be specific. Most of the puzzles involve reflecting sunlight onto objects, and the light arrows (which contain concentrated sunlight) are obtained and primarily used here. The key puzzle of the temple involves inverting the natural roles of the sky and the earth, placing an inverted sun and moon under your feet. The whole temple is actually decorated with suns. Take a look at the doors in the temple, for goodness sake.
And if you’re not convinced by the sun and moon symbols, the color schemes or science of color, or the multitude of sun-related elements littering the Stone Tower Temple, then I have one last nail in the coffin for you. Let’s go back to that rainbow-colored boss room. Look at the following picture of the beginning of the fight and tell me what you see.
A sun. The centerpiece of the boss room design is a large, rainbow-colored sun. Not only that, but Majora’s Mask itself is mounted in the center of that sun. When the battle begins, it detaches itself from the wall and emerges out of the sun to fight us. Developers don’t get much more direct than that folks. Majora represents the sun itself, and she is the sun goddess of Hyrulian mythology.
What I find to be most interesting about Majora is her trickster nature. As I said in the introduction, Majora fits this archetype to a T. It makes sense that Majora would be the trickster and female due to the dominance of females in the Hyrulian pantheon. They are definitely a matriarchal society, as we rarely see a King of Hyrule with more power than Princess Zelda, and almost all pantheons accurately represent the patriarchal or matriarchal nature of the society that created it. If men rule your society, they will rule your gods as well. Vice versa, if women rule your society then they will rule your goddesses.
However, I think what Wikipedia notes about trickster figures in mythology is very telling on this subject:
(Source: Wikipedia)
As you can gather from this quote, Loki is the trickster in Norse mythology. He is very like Majora in his ability to change forms. Also, though he is sometimes merely tricky, he later becomes borderline evil and malicious. When Skull Kid, possessed by Majora’s Mask, started out he merely played pranks. As he went on, the pranks became more and more malicious. When he nearly caused the destruction of the world, the moon god, Fierce Deity, had to step in to keep the sun goddess, Majora, in line. There will be a further discussion of Skull Kid in the seventh article on spirits, as this immortal creature may be a better candidate for the trickster role than even Majora.
One last thing of note, in respect to sun deities and Majora’s Mask there is a common myth found in almost all mythologies: the myth of the dying or missing sun. These myths are used to explain a variety of solar activities, including why the sun disappears every night (Apollo’s Chariot vs. Artemis’ Chariot), shorter days in the winter, and Solar Eclipses.
A solar eclipse is when the moon covers the sun during the day for a period of time. If we are treating Majora’s Mask as a myth, Majora as a sun goddess, and Fierce Deity as a moon god, then this is clearly a Hyrulian missing sun story created to explain solar eclipses. What else was the moon doing than covering the sun? There is a lot more to it than that, but compare it to a similar Japanese myth about the Goddess Amaterasu.
Amaterasu, a sun goddess, hid in a cave because she was frightened by the behavior of her brother, Susanoo, a moon god. The world is plunged into darkness until she is willing to emerge. This myth is explaining a solar eclipse, but has to do with the bad behavior of one causing a reaction from the other. In Hyrulian mythology, the sun goddess takes control of the moon god and forces him to fall, covering the sun in the process. Only with the help of the Hyrulian culture hero, Link, is the moon god freed from the power of the sun goddess and return to his rightful place in the sky.
The Fierce Deity
Having established that Majora is the sun goddess, it is not difficult to make a claim for Fierce Deity as the moon god. We’ve already explored the symbol on his armor and his color scheme (or lack thereof). We went over how just as the sun gives its light to the moon so that we can see it, in the same way Majora gives Fierce Deity the “spotlight” by giving the Fierce Deity mask to Link. Lastly, we looked at Majora’s Mask as a Hyrulian missing sun story used to explain solar eclipses.
There are many theories about the true nature of the popular Fierce Deity Mask given to Link by Majora herself. This mask bears a striking resemblance to Link, and is very powerful. Tatl wonders if it could be more evil than Majora, and Majora calls it the “true bad guy”. However, Hylian Dan’s legendary article gives another, more positive meaning for the Fierce Deity Mask: a mask representing all that Link has learned in gaining the other masks, full of hope and promise. This reading would seem to be collaborated by a gossip stone in Majora’s Mask that says: “The Fierce Deity Mask, a mask that contains the merits of all masks, seems to be… somewhere in this world…”
Despite the factors we have already covered, the biggest case for Fierce Deity’s godhood rests in Majora through an important aspect of the Hyrulian worldview. Hyrule is about balance, just as its goddesses are. That is what they believe in on the most basic of levels. If we look at the story about Termina in this light, we notice that even Termina has balance in everything. For the Sonata of Awakening, we have the Goron’s Lullaby. For the New Wave Bossa Nova, a song of birth, we have the Elegy of Emptiness, a song of death.
Snowhead is getting colder, and Great Bay has warmed up. Poison in the swamp is killing all life, and the dead are rising from their graves in Ikana. Even the masks themselves have opposites. The postman’s hat is one of freedom, and the Gibdo’s Mask is a mask of confinement. The Couple’s Mask is a mask of happiness, and the Circus Leader’s Mask is one of terrible sadness.
What we’re getting at is the fact that for everything, there is its opposite. Therefore, for Majora, a being representing the sun itself, there is her opposite: the Fierce Deity. Where she is colorful, he is without pigment. Where she is female, he is male. Where her mask possesses the wearer, his mask lends its strength. Where she is associated with the sun, he is the moon.
Let’s look at Fierce Deity’s relationship with the moon. First, we know that the Fierce Deity mask is a transformation mask. Other than the Giant’s Mask, which is more of an enlargement of your current form than a true transformation anyway, every transformation mask in the game is created by healing the soul of a troubled or dying person. So whose soul is in the Fierce Deity mask, and how did it get there? I and others will argue that it is the moon itself.
The Fierce Deity mask is obtained inside the moon. The moon has been unnaturally forced down by Majora, but for some reason it doesn’t just hurtle into the earth and destroy it in one quick swoop, despite its size. It is as if the moon is resisting, like it doesn’t want to destroy earth. This is supported by the fact that a tear falls from the moon’s eye, a rare occurrence we are told. It is mourning what’s happening. The creepy eyes we see in its face are identical to Majora’s eyes, and we do not hear it speak until Majora’s Mask enters into the moon and those unnatural eyes light up. The voice speaking is the voice of the creature possessing the moon, Majora, not the voice of the moon itself.
All of this shows that the moon is a sentient being on some level. It has consciousness enough to mourn and cry over the fate of the land, consciousness enough to resist Majora’s power. In the long run, however, the sun is much bigger than the moon, and has much more power.
When we eventually leave the inside of the moon, the Happy Mask Salesman says that we have a great many masks full of happiness. This indicates that Link still has his masks when he leaves the moon. What happens in the moon happens in a spiritual realm, on some level, or perhaps inside the moon’s consciousness. It is possible to view the events there as Link entering the moon’s mind in order to eradicate the demon that has entered it and possessed it. What we find inside of the moon, then, is caused by the moon himself and not by Majora.
Once we enter the moon, we find ourselves on a serene plain. In order to get the Fierce Deity Mask, you have to have obtained and then given away all of the other masks in the game to the four children running around the tree. They each wear one of the four masks obtained in the four corners of Termina, representing the fate that each of those lands faced before Link helped them. Perhaps these children show the moon’s guilt. It feels like it cannot resist the power of the sun and by that failure it has caused these things to happen. Its powerlessness has caused the imminent destruction of the earth over which it foresees.
By giving masks to these projections of the moon, Link proves to it that he has helped the world, and he can help the moon himself. Link moves on to the center child, the one wearing Majora’s Mask. This child represents the part of the moon that is possessed by Majora. Link has healed the moon’s spirit by giving the masks to the four children, and so the mask containing the moon’s spirit is created. Majora, the sun, working through what foothold she has left on the moon’s phyche, gives the mask with the moon’s spirit to Link so that she can regain control of the moon by defeating Link and the mask. However, Fierce Deity, the moon, easily overcomes the sun on its own territory and returns to the sky.
I think that all of this fits perfectly from a mythological standpoint. Most often, as I said before, moon gods are male (with the notable exceptions of Roman and Greek mythology, which even then used to be opposite in the early Greek Myths) and sun goddesses are female. This is true in Norse mythology, Japanese Mythology, early Egyptian mythology, and early Greek mythology. Lithuania, Finn, Inia, Sri Lanka, the Hittites, the Babylonians, and some Native American tribes (including the Cherokee, the Natchez, Inuit, and Miwok tribes) all have female solar goddesses and male lunar gods.
Fierce Deity also fits with the archetypal hero-god. Thor is the hero-god in Norse mythology, and the favorite of the people. He is a strong, strapping young man with a huge, famous hammer who keeps Loki and the powers of evil at bay. He is the god of thunder and battle, associated with the sky. Thor is second only to Odin, but was more popular among the people than Odin was.
Fierce Deity fits this perfectly—with his trademark huge helix sword, he is armor-clad and fearsome, but depicted in the Majora’s Mask myth as being a hero. A dangerously powerful hero, but aren’t all gods very dangerous on one level? I would say that Fierce Deity is not only the god of the moon, he is also the god of battle and the hero-god of Hyrulian mythology.
The Goddess of Sand
The Goddess of Sand is the first in our discussion of nameless minor gods of Hyrulian mythology. We see her likeness depicted in statues but not her physical self, much like the statue of the goddess in Skyward Sword. We also never see the Three Golden Goddesses outside of cut scenes, but we do see statue representations of them. Because we are Hylian in the myths and not Gerudo, we do not hear legends about the goddess of sand as they would have when they were young.
Some may argue that she is a Gerudo god and not a Hyrulian god because the Gerudo are separate from Hyrule and have a king of their own. I would argue that so do all the other races. The Zora have King Zora, the Gorons have their Big Brother Darunia, the Kokiri have the Great Deku Tree (or Deku Tree sprout), and so on and so forth. Greek culture was the same way. They were all independent governments with their own kings, laws, and patron gods united under one banner. For example, in Greece the Spartans worshiped Ares, the god of war, and were very battle-hardened, war-bent people. Athens worshiped Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and was known for its great works of art and knowledge. Athens and Sparta were equals, with their own kings, gods, and different philosophies, but they were also both Greek.
Sometimes the citystates fought among themselves, especially Athens and Sparta, but eventually they became united. In Ocarina of Time we are told about a time when the country was at war within itself. It is described as a time “before the King of Hyrule united the world” (OoT), and at the beginning of Ocarina of Time we see the King of the Gerudo citystate pledging allegiance to Hyrule. The other races have already done this, and the country of Hyrule has been sealed as one. That’s why in both Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, the places where the other races live with their kings are not marked on the map as separate countries. They are shown as a part of Hyrule, where these other races live and pay homage to the king/queen of Hyrule.
This is important when including the Goddess of Sand as a part of Hyrulian mythology. The Gerudo, though their own citystate, are Hyrulians too. That is why one of the six temples scattered throughout the land of Hyrule lies in the heart of the Gerudo Desert, is guarded and built by Gerudo masons, and depicts the patron goddess of the Gerudo. This is not indicative of another country, but of a citystate-like system of government, and therefore the Goddess of Sand is included as a Hyrulian Goddess.
Basically, all we have of her are a few statues. In Ocarina of Time, she is shown with a snake wrapped around her body. One might guess that she is part snake somehow, or able to turn into one. Perhaps she has a pet snake that is closely associated with her. In Twilight Princess, she is shown holding fire as well as with a snake wrapped around her body. By the time the Arbiter’s Grounds had been built it is possible that she was becoming more associated with Din as the Gerudo race and culture faded from the land and Hylians tried to adopt her into their main pantheon.
The Goddess of Time
The popular thought is that Nayru or Farore is the Goddess of Time, however neither goddess is a perfect fit and she is not named. When Majora’s Mask first mentions the Goddess of Time, Zelda says that she is watching over him. Throughout the journey she gives Link new time related abilities using his Ocarina of Time to slow time, speed up time, skip whole chunks of time, and even to reset time. Perhaps she is his patron goddess.
In Skyward Sword, we learn more about her, but that is a spoiler and will be discussed in more detail in the ninth chapter of this series.
The Goddess of Spirits
Seen on an island in Phantom Hourglass, the Goddess of Spirits presides over mystical spirits and their powers. In the game, she is able to help the three spirits traveling with Link regain their memories and their powers. There is no other information about her, and we never see her physical representation.
The Goddess of Fortune
The Goddess of Fortune is mentioned by some of the people in the Wind Waker as living on an island in the ocean. When Link clears the rubble blocking her spring, she thanks him with a larger wallet. Little else is known about her.
The Goddess of Wind
The Goddess of Wind is briefly mentioned by people in the Wind Waker, but we do not see more about her. Some fans believe that she may be Farore because of the association with the spell Farore’s Wind, but it is just as likely for Nayru to be the Goddess of Wind due to her status as the sky goddess of Hyrulian mythology. Along those lines, it is also possible that Nayru is the Hyrulian goddess of love because of the spell Nayru’s Love, but again there is no real evidence for this.
The Mountain God
This goddess is worshiped by the Goron people in Spirit Tracks, where Kagoron prays for his people at her alter atop the Mountain of Fire as they face the erupting volcano. They believe that she, in her anger, is causing the volcano to erupt. Some fans suspect that this could be the Goddess Din because of her association with the earth and fire.
PREVIEW OF ARTICLE 5:
Now that we have examined the minor deities of the Hyrulian pantheon, it is time to look at the beings that are just above being a guardian and just below being a full goddess. The common term for this is Demi-God, as they are often seen as getting god-like powers or immortality either from being descended from a god, or through some other divine means.
Author: The Wolfess
Jennie Marie, also called The Wolfess, is getting her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry at Eastern Washington University. She is the author of a three-book Zelda fan fiction, The Doppelganger Trilogy and does freelance articles for Zelda websites. The Wolfess has written such articles as Zelda Wii Needs An Anti-Hero, Skyward Sword’s Art Style: Straddling the Line or Walking a New Path, and a ten-part series on The Hyrulian Pantheon currently running at ZeldaDungeon.net.
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