The Hyrulian Pantheon: The Evil Gods

All but one of the characters discussed here as Evil Gods are highly debatable. All of them are called Gods by others for one reason or another. Some even have temples built for them by their worshipers. I have not included characters who proclaim themselves to be gods because of the amount of power they have gained.

 
There are a handful of gods in both Greek and Norse Mythology who are considered evil. Hades is an example of one such God, as well as Hel in Norse Mythology. Interestingly both of these deities are rulers of the underworld. In a way, a few of our Evil Gods can be considered rulers of the Evil Realm as well, if you wanted to think of the Evil Realm on the same level as the underworlds of Greek and Norse Mythology. As Hyrule doesn’t really have a direct underworld that we can see, the Evil Realm is the closest comparison we have.

 
Please note that this article has the most spoilers to this point. Though I have tried to mark most of them, some of them are unmarked (such as the name of Skyward Sword’s final boss). Read at your own risk.

 
Ganon/Ganondorf

First and foremost we must talk about the King of Evil. Killed so often and yet rarely for good, Ganondorf is called a God by Zant in Twilight Princess. The Deku Scrubs of Four Swords Adventures built a temple for Ganon called the Temple of Darkness. They believe that Ganon will come again, and when he does he will turn all of Hyrule’s forests into Lost Woods, giving them the ability to move around freely. I find this to be one of the most interesting points when discussing Ganondorf as a God, simply because he has a whole temple built to him. Without discussion of his magic, power, and immortality, that fact alone is one of the most telling and least known.

 
Ganondorf is called the King of the Evil Realm, and is often shown being trapped there. In a Link to the Past we see exactly what the Evil Realm looks like with Ganon as its king. What we knew initially of Ganondorf’s backstory was that he was the leader of a band of thieves that snuck into the sacred realm and stole the Triforce. We later learned that the band of thieves was in fact the Gerudo race, and he was the King of the Gerudo. He tells us in Wind Waker that he started attacking Hyrule for its resources. His land was the desolate desert and he envied the green lands of Hyrule. His bottomless greed, evident in his desire to take over Hyrule despite his people’s contentment with their desert life, led him to covet the holy Triforce kept in Hyrule, and so his story began.

 
If I had to say what level Ganondorf was on as a God I would place him with the Minor Gods of the Hyrulian Pantheon and say that he is the God of Thievery and Greed. At one time there would be have so much to talk about in relationship to Ganon, but after Skyward Sword I feel that the biggest case for the godship of most of these villains lies in the discussion on Demise. Therefore, I will save the bulk of that discussion for the section on Demise.

 
Malladus

Once again, the biggest argument for Malladus’ godship lies in Demise. However, he is also shown as being immortal, more than human, and very powerful. His title is “Demon King”, which again will be discussed later. Malladus is called the Demon King, ruler of the Dark Realm. See the Cosmology chapter for more information on the Dark Realm and the Evil Realm.

 
The legends in Spirit Tracks say that Malladus ruled over New Hyrule and subjugated the people to a life of terror. One day a group of people said they wouldn’t take it anymore and the Spirits of Good (See Demi-Gods) helped the people bind him with chains underground beneath the Tower of Spirits. These chains later became the Spirit Tracks.

 
I would say he was either a Demi-God, on par with the Spirits of Good, but I don’t know what he would be the God of. His character itself isn’t very fleshed out.

 
Bellum

Bellum is spoken of as if he were evil itself. In terms of main antagonists, we have the least information about Bellum. He is the only final boss that never utters a single word, except through Linebeck. Even then, that’s only to demand life force. Bellum has this insatiable hunger for the life force of others, and that is his only defining characteristic.

 
Oshus, the Ocean King, is listed here in the Demi-God chapter, and if he were Yin then Bellum would be his yang, the antithesis of everything that the Ocean King stands for. Oshus says that he and Bellum have fought for millenniums, and in Phantom Hourglass we come into a world where Bellum has the upper hand.

 
Bellum’s immortality and eternal struggle with the Ocean King land him a very tentative place on the Hyrulian Pantheon, possibly as the God of Gluttony or God of Destruction and Strife, since the perpetuation of these seems to be his only reason for existing.

 
Baron, God of War

This God and the next are very non-canonical and only mentioned for interest’s sake.

 
In Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, an officially-produced off-shoot of the Zelda games featuring Tingle, there is a character called the God of War. His name is Baron. Many do believe that these games take place in Hyrule, just Tingle’s warped version of the land of the Gods, and that mountain on which Baron lives, Mount Desma, is in fact Death Mountain.

 
Baron was once Bamo, the god of war. Bamo had a younger brother named Aron who was killed by humans in order to take the land the brothers lived on. Enraged and seeking revenge, Bamo went underground and used the mask of a demon to give himself new strength. Bamo, now known as Baron, became a drifter bodyguard. Baron was merciless and deadly, killing all those who met him in battle. When the families of those victims began to seek him out, Baron went into hiding at Mount Desma, using the demon mask to disguise his identity.

 
The Baga Tree

The story of the Baga Tree is a side story included in the officially endorsed Ocarina of Time manga. In this story the Baga Tree is the evil counterpart to the Deku Tree. He lives in the Lost Woods, much as the Deku Tree lives in Kokiri Forest, and his “children” are the Skull Kids, much like the Kokiri are the “children” of the Deku Tree. If we were to consider him canonical, then we would say that he is the guardian of the Skull Kids and the Lost Woods, much like the Deku Tree is the guardian of the Kokiri and Kokiri Forest.

 
In the story, the evil in the Baga Tree was caused by Ghoma, who later infests and kills the Deku Tree.

 
***SPOILER ALERT***

 
Demise

Now we get to the best part. What we learn about Demise, also known as the Imprisoned, changes and yet simultaneously reinforces what the whole Zelda series is about. We have always known that it was about Ganon, also known as Ganondorf, Princess Zelda, and Link. Ganon seeks the Triforce, which is only obtainable through Zelda herself for some reason, and so takes or otherwise harms Zelda. Link, usually a boy of no importance or experience, finds himself in the middle of it all and takes up a sword and defeats the evil king, thereby restoring balance to the world until Ganon is revived again and the cycle repeats.

 
We have always known this. What we lacked was why. Why does it always repeat? Why does the cycle exist? For that matter, is there even really a cycle to begin with, or is it all just random happenstance? If there is a cycle, did the Goddesses create this horrible irony on purpose, even though we have no direct stories of them doing so?

 
The answer is that there is indeed a cycle, but the Goddesses had no part in its creation.

 
For years fans have looked at the dark space in the Triforce an speculated about it. Some have said that it’s a tetraforce, and the dark space is the upside down one held by the phoenix on Ocarina of Time’s shield. Others have said that it’s a black piece of the Triforce, or the absence of a piece, powering evil such as Ganondorf since the creation of the holy relic.

 
I’m not saying that there is a tetraforce, or that the dark space in the Triforce has any importance whatsoever. But I am looking at that last line of thought: that something has powered evil since the beginning of time. In Skyward Sword we learn that this is true, but not in the way we had all thought. It had nothing to do with the Goddesses, and little to do with the Triforce.

 
The great moral lesson of Skyward Sword is also the key to the cycle: Hate itself is the source of all evil.

 
Let me explain how I arrived to this conclusion. When we meet Demise, Fi tells us that he looks different to each person who sees him. What we see in the game is what Link sees when looking upon Demise. I do not believe that Demise can create illusions for people. His very being stands for Hate itself, and the form of hate looks different to every person. When I think of hate, I think of a specific person in my life who represents hate to me. You may think of something different; war, for example, may be what hate looks like to someone. Whereas to me Demise would probably look similar to that specific person, he may look like a soldier or a gun to the person who thinks hate is war, and something else entirely to you.

 
When Demise is speaking to Link before the final battle, he says these words:

 
“The hate for the gods that has boiled in my veins…You will taste all of it in the bite of my blade. It won’t be long now. At last, the almighty power I’ve sought for millennia… I will take the Triforce for my own… And the world shall be under my foot for eternity!”

 
He has been chasing after the Triforce for millennia in order to have the absolute power he desires in order to rule the world. This is a desire very similar to Ganondorf’s. I do not believe, however, that merely ruling the world was Demise’s ultimate desire as it was Ganondorf’s. I think that the true Demon King desired something far worse.

 
You see, as discussed in the article on the Major Gods, the world is the goddesses creation, and the Triforce is the residue of their power left behind in it, a little piece of themselves they didn’t expect to leave. Demise’s hate is for the goddesses themselves, not the world they created. However, the goddesses are gone, returned to their distant nebula, and Demise does not have the power that he needs to reach them. Therefore, he seeks to obtain the power of the goddesses through the Triforce and use it to take over the world.

 
Once the world and everything in it is his, his true goals would come to the surface. Someone like Demise is never content with “almost”. It would not be enough for him to merely rule over the goddesses symbolically by ruling over their creation. He hates them. Through his dominion over the creation of the golden goddesses and his possession of the power of the goddesses, Demise’s ultimate goal would be to reach Din, Nayru, and Farore wherever they are and destroy them. By doing so, he will destroy balance itself and the world the goddesses built on it. What he would do after that is all imagination.

 
However, Link obtains the Triforce and defeats Demise in battle. What is disturbing is the fact that Demise is not phased by this. He believes that hate cannot be killed, and speaks a curse that would span the rest of time. He says:

 
“My hate never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end! I will rise again! Those like you… Those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero… They are eternally bound to this curse. An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!”

 
This is how the cycle begins. This is the true being behind Ganondorf, Ganon, Malladus, Bellum, Vaati, Zant, and all other evil in the Zelda universe. Specifically, look to Demise as the spirit that possesses the villains later referred to as the Demon King or the Evil King, such as Ganondorf and Malladus.

 
Demise, the God of Hate, is the source of all evil, and I would say that he is a major god of the Hyrulian Pantheon. He is the physical embodiment of hate itself, and the spirit behind all the evil in Hyrule. He is not as powerful as the goddesses, but he does seem to be eternal like them. He is definitely more important in Hyrulian Mythology than those listed in the Minor Gods chapter. There is only one more major god to discuss, on par with Demise but below the Goddesses, and she is the focus of our next chapter.

 
***END SPOILERS***

Not included here, but perhaps should have been are Majora (Minor Gods), Skull Kids (Spirits), Poes (Spirits), Stalchildren/Stalfos (Spirits), and Vaati (not considered a god because of how he obtained his power).

 
Like I said, most of these are purely speculative, but they have enough of the appropriate attributes to warrant a mention in this article.

 
PREVIEW OF ARTICLE 9:

Finally, we come to the article that caused me to realize all of this. We will discuss in great depth the paradox that is Hylia, the Goddess in Skyward Sword. We will talk about her many functions within the Hyrulian Pantheon, as well as her individual attributes and actions. If you’re afraid of spoilers, don’t read on until you have beaten Skyward Sword.