A tutelary is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship.
The mural crown of Cybele represents the walls of the city she protects
Lararium depicting tutelary deities of the house: the ancestral Genius (center) flanked by two Lares, with a guardian serpent below
Stone doors of a tomb of the period of the Northern Dynasties to Tʻang Dynasty, excavated in Ching-pien County of the city of Yü-lin, Shensi Province. It shows two figures with tridents as the guardian deities of the tomb.
A Thai spirit house for the Chao Thi in front of a car dealership in Bangkok
A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over the universe, nature or human life. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life".
Pantheists believe that the universe itself and everything in it forms a single, all-encompassing deity.
Statuette of a nude, corpulent, seated woman flanked by two felines from Çatalhöyük, dating to c. 6000 BCE, thought by most archaeologists to represent a goddess of some kind
Yoruba deity from Nigeria
Egyptian tomb painting showing the gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus, who are among the major deities in ancient Egyptian religion
