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Plate 1 A pomegranate split open to show its seeds, the fruit Persephone ate in the underworld

Goddesses of death

Goddesses of death include Hel in Norse myth, Ereshkigal, queen of the Mesopotamian underworld, Persephone in Greece, Mictecacihuatl among the Aztecs and Izanami in Japan. Most rule the land of the dead; Izanami threatens to kill a thousand people a day.

Symbols across cultures. Also called death goddess, goddess of death, goddess of the underworld, queen of the underworld.

Meaning

Most of the goddesses searched for as goddesses of death are queens of the dead. Hel was “originally the name of the world of the dead”, and later its goddess (Britannica). Ereshkigal was “Lady of the Great Place”, the abode of the dead in Mesopotamia; Persephone was queen beside Hades; Mictecacihuatl ruled the Aztec Mictlan with her husband. Izanami, the Japanese creator goddess, went to the land of the dead, Yomi, after giving birth to fire. Kali is a living goddess of Hindu worship whose devotees call her mother; whether she is a goddess of death is taken up below.

Origin and history

In the Prose Edda, Alfather (Odin) casts Hel, the daughter of Loki, into Niflheim and gives her power over nine worlds, to give dwellings to “those who die from sickness or old age”; those who fell in battle went to Odin in Valhalla instead (Britannica). Snorri describes her with care: “One-half of her is blue, and the other half is of the hue of flesh; hence she is easily known. Her looks are very stern and grim.”

Britannica pictures Ereshkigal reigning in her palace “on guard over the fount of life lest any of her subjects take of it and so escape her rule”, with Namtar, Death, as her son and servant. Yağmur Heffron, for the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project, notes that Ereshkigal was goddess of death but also linked with birth, and that she had almost no cult and appears rarely outside literature, though temples to her are recorded at Kutha, Assur and Umma. In the myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal, told on the gods of death page, she comes to share her throne with Nergal.

Persephone, daughter of Demeter, was carried off by Hades. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades promises her that in his house “you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods”, and secretly gives her a pomegranate seed so that she cannot stay always with her mother. Britannica gives the result: a third of each year with Hades. Hesiod already speaks of “the echoing halls of the god of the lower-world, strong Hades, and of awful Persephone”. Her own page is Persephone.

Mictecacihuatl was the wife of Mictlantecuhtli, and the two ruled Mictlan together (Britannica; Lewis Spence, 1913). Britannica’s article on the Day of the Dead calls her “Lady of the Dead” and says she led the celebration, which lasted a month before the Spanish moved it to All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.

Izanami and the first deaths

The Japanese account of how death began is a quarrel between husband and wife. Izanami was fatally burned giving birth to the fire god and went to Yomi; Izanagi followed her there, but she had eaten the food of that place and could not leave (Britannica). In the Nihongi, Izanagi flees, blocks the pass of Yomi with “a thousand-men-pull-rock” and pronounces the formula of divorce. Izanami answers that she will “strangle to death the people of the country which thou dost govern, a thousand in one day”, and Izanagi replies that he will “in one day cause to be born fifteen hundred”. The fire god’s birth is on the gods of fire page.

Inanna in Ereshkigal’s underworld

The Sumerian poem Inana’s Descent to the Nether World brings the two sisters face to face. In the translation of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Inanna has her clothes taken from her as she arrives; when she makes Ereshkigal rise from her throne and sits on it herself, the seven judges give their verdict against her: “They looked at her – it was the look of death”. Inanna’s own page is Inanna and Ishtar.

Is Kali a goddess of death?

Britannica, in Wendy Doniger’s article, says the goddess Kali “is largely associated with death and with ferocious battle, but she also grants wishes to devotees”, and that Kali and Durga are forms of the one supreme goddess of Hinduism. Her name is the feminine of kala, time, “which is all-destroying and all-devouring”, writes Jennifer Rose in the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (2007). Rose also records how Kali is worshipped: since the medieval period Bengali devotees have worshipped her as Kali Ma, “the benevolent mother”; the poet Ramprasad Sen (1718–1775) approached her “as a child would its protective and nurturing mother”; and “for most modern worshippers Kali is not seen as being wrathful”. Western readers met her differently, Rose notes, as “a villainous goddess” in twentieth-century films. Her war aspect is on the goddesses of war page.

See also

Gods of death, Hel, Tree of life, Labyrinth, Crescent moon, Spiral.

Sources

  1. Hel (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Hel”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 8 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  2. The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Gylfaginning, ch. 34
  3. Ereškigal (goddess) (Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses), Yağmur Heffron, “Ereškigal (goddess)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy (2019), Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses (Oracc, University of Pennsylvania Museum), character; cult
  4. Ereshkigal (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Ereshkigal”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 18 May 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  5. Inana’s descent to the nether world (ETCSL 1.4.1), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, t.1.4.1, English translation, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, lines 164–172
  6. Persephone (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Persephone”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 18 May 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  7. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Homeric Hymn 2, To Demeter, ll. 360–383; Theogony, ll. 767–768
  8. Mictlantecuhtli (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Mictlantecuhtli”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 23 March 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  9. Mictecacihuatl (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Mictecacihuatl”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 15 June 2025), Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry (Day of the Dead)
  10. The Myths of Mexico & Peru (Lewis Spence), Lewis Spence, The Myths of Mexico & Peru (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company), Project Gutenberg, ch. II, “Mictlantecutli”
  11. Kagutsuchi (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Kagutsuchi”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 28 August 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article (Izanagi and Izanami)
  12. Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan, vol. 1 (tr. W. G. Aston), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, translated by W. G. Aston, vol. 1 (1896), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, Book I, p. 24
  13. Kali (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Kali”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 6 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  14. Kali (Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender), Jennifer Rose, “Kali”, Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture, Society, History, ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas (Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction; iconography; worship

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

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