of the supreme being and other spirits. The area in which
this secret society flourished coincides roughly with the area
in which there are clearly delineated concepts of a high god
(e.g., among the Maidu). However, this connection is a com-
plicated one. Among the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego, the
ciexais puberty initiations involve themselves deeply with
Watauineiwa, the supreme being who established them. In
the kina, the secret society rituals of the Yahgan, however,
no mention is made of him. Nor does the supreme being fig-
ure in the SelkDnam esoteric initiations (klóketen), on which
the Yahgan probably modeled the kina. Although knowledge
of a supreme being may be transmitted, refined, and re-
shaped in secret societies, it is unwarranted to draw the more
general conclusion that supreme beings are the creation of
such elites.
Among those supreme beings who merge with or yield
to more active forms, there exists a tendency toward a more
scheduled public cult. This can be seen in cults dedicated to
solarized supreme beings. Although solarized supreme beings
share something of the sacrality of the sky, their potency and
periodic activity often highlight the manifest rational order
of regulated life processes, which outshines the mysterious
and unfathomable order of being commonly associated with
celestial supreme beings.
Summary. The attributes and powers of supreme be-
ings, often reflected in their very names, are most clearly
made known in sky divinities. The activity that best suits the
infinite and omnipotent nature of supreme beings is the cre-
ation of the world. Often, but not always, they create the
world through thought, a creatio ex nihilo, which is in keep-
ing with their passive nature. After creation, a supreme being
often retires on high and becomes even more transcendent
a power. When supreme beings do take a more active role,
their form tends to merge with or yield to other divine forms.
Such is true, on the one hand, with sovereign divinities who
ruled the world and, on the other hand, with fecundators and
“champion” divinities. Knowledge of a transcendent and
mysterious supreme being is often better preserved in initia-
tory secret societies than in the public cults that surround the
more active expressions of sun god, storm god, or meteoro-
logical beings.
There is no doubt that many forms of supreme being,
as known today, have been influenced by the religious ideas
of historical monotheisms. Such contacts reveal themselves
in the very names of many supreme beings, not to mention
the influences brought to light in careful study of the histo-
ries and religious ideas of cultures around the globe. Howev-
er, the impact of such historical change ought not to be exag-
gerated. In the first place, no culture’s religious ideas have
remained without change through history. Even those forms
held by scholars to be most archaic give evidence of compli-
cated historical processes that involve borrowing, deteriora-
tion, new inspiration, and reconstitution. The contemporary
era ought to be seen as a further instance of a much larger
historical process. In the second place, in those areas where
absorption of ideas from monotheisms is clearly evident, one
does not generally find inert imitations of monotheisms but
lively new syntheses, often in terms that are best understood
as part of the religious history of a local culture’s conception
of supreme being.
SCHOLARLY THEORIES. In the development of the discipline
of history of religions, the investigation of supreme beings
has occupied a special place. For more than a century, three
factors have especially affected the scholarly debate about the
nature of supreme beings: the provenance of the materials
studied; the dogmatic concerns of the investigators, whether
theological or scientific; and the judgments in vogue regard-
ing the nature of religious expressions. On the most general
plane, one may distinguish four important positions taken
during the study of supreme beings over the past 120 years.
Four main views. The first point of view, exemplified
in the work of Leopold von Schroeder, interested itself in the
sky gods known through sacred texts in the Indo-European
family of languages. Interest in such exalted forms of su-
preme being was eclipsed when attention turned to the eth-
nographic data pouring in from cultures outside the Indo-
European sphere. This second position, developed most suc-
cessfully by E. B. Tylor, held that it was impossible to see
supreme being as anything but a most recent religious form
in human history. Tylor considered the idea of supreme be-
ings to be a rational elaboration of simpler and earlier reli-
gious notions. The third perspective began with Andrew
Lang, who called attention to the authentic existence of su-
preme beings outside Indo-European and ancient Near East-
ern culture history, principally in Aboriginal Australia. Tak-
ing his cue from Lang, Wilhelm Schmidt carried on an
intense and comprehensive investigation of supreme beings
in traditional cultures of the Americas, Oceania, Australia,
Asia, and Eurasia.
Regardless of their judgment on the antiquity and
meaning of the various forms of supreme being, these three
views of the issue never succeeded in detaching the inquiry
into the nature of supreme being from the question of the
appearance of historical monotheism with its concomitant
theological constructs of revelation, creator (or first cause of
creation), and moral rectitude. A historicist search for simple
origins, an exaggerated rationalism in defining religion, and
a dismal appraisal of the nature of myth are common to all
three approaches.
It fell to Raffaele Pettazzoni to take a fourth position by
reinstating a consideration of the supreme being of the sky,
this time in a framework that treated the history of monothe-
ism as a particular, even if related, historical instance. Draw-
ing upon data from all over the world, Pettazzoni centered
his research on what were called the “primitive” religions.
Taking Pettazzoni’s insight about the celestial being as a
starting point, Mircea Eliade has presented a morphology of
supreme beings that serves as the foundation for his compar-
ative historical studies of religion. In addition to these gener-
al positions and their principal protagonists, a large number8874 SUPREME BEINGS