He has been a trickster, a shaman, a divine child; he has been a sacrifice for the rebirth of nature, a consort with the earth goddess, a warrior, a sky king; he is the creator, a distant and impersonal immensity. He is the male divine, seen in the many gods of human myth—and his life story is told here in this graceful and illuminating account by David Leeming and Jake Page.

Ranging from the prehistoric cave paintings to the mystic Jewish Kabbalah, from the ancient Indian Vedas to North America's Sioux and Shoshonean tales, Leeming and Page reveal the changing mask of the male divine, illustrating each stage with mythic stories. We see how God first emerged as a shaman, an "animal master" and sorcerer (as in the Bear Man of the Cherokee Indians) who embarks on spirit journeys. He soon appeared as a trickster—as Loki of the Norse people, Legba of Africa's Yoruba, and Krishna of India—both creating and bedeviling. With the Neolithic age came the rise of agriculture and animal husbandry, of settlements and specialization in the roles of males and females—and a more sophisticated body of myths and rituals. Here emerged the Mother Goddess, and the male God took his place as her consort, ultimately dying in order that nature might be renewed. The authors illustrate this new stage in the male divine with tales of the Egyptian Osiris (husband of Isis), the Caananite Baal, and Wiyot of California's Luiseno (Shoshonean) Indians, among others. They describe the rise of a male sky God as "the equal to, the true mate, of Goddess, who was still associated with Earth." In the Iron Age, the sky God became more aggressive, separating from the Goddess and taking his place as the King God, as Zeus, Odin, and Horus. Ultimately he emerged as the creator, a more distant and impersonal force. Here Leeming and Page also illuminate an important trend—a sense that the divine is beyond gender, that it permeates all things (as seen in the Chinese Tao and En Sof of the Kabbalah). They see a movement in the biography of God toward a reunion with the Goddess. "As the Supreme Being becomes less Goddess and less God," they write, "it speaks more clearly to the essential human need for unity and understanding."

In their previous work together, Goddess, Leeming and Page provided a marvelous biography of the female divine—an account that won a wide and enduring audience. Now, in Gods, they provide the perfect companion volume—completing, as the authors write, "a record of what we humans believe ourselves at the deepest level to be."

David Leeming was formerly Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Jake Page is an essayist, science writer, novelist, and co-author with his wife Susanne of both Hopi and Navajo. Both authors live in New Mexico.