Hey Nathan sorry if this is a really dumb question but what is a patron deity? And a matron deity too, every time I try and google it I just get a bunch of results of How To Find Out Who Your Patron Deity Is and nothing about what that actually is😅
Hi, this isn’t a dumb question at all!
The spiritual community has a habit of mixing the religious history of various cultures that all have their own terms of what defines a patron god so for the sake of this question, I will be focusing on ancient Greece, Rome and how it changed in Europe and eventually influenced how we see patron gods today.
Patron gods as the spiritual community uses it today evolved from a concept called “Tutelary Deities”: (LINK)
“A tutelary [deity] is a minor-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.“
Major Gods like Olympian gods were usually the Patron gods of cities or Kings, like Athena being the Patron god of Athens for example (LINK) , or Alexander The Great (LINK) claiming to be the child of Zeus (this was usually a power move much like how later, Kings would claim they were appointed by God).
For the average person, this is a little trickier to know, only because we don’t have a lot of information on non-wealthy people (I’m including priests as wealthy people in this post because they were usually well funded by the city-state or had really good connections that eventually made them financially better off than the average peasant or farmer), but we do know priests had the gods whose temple they tended as patron gods and wealthier people like philosophers had gods they preferred. Socrates talked about his daimon (LINK) which became a popular topic among ancient Greek scholars.
Tutelary deities who protected locations or individuals were a big part of the ancient Roman religion. Rome believed every person was born with a type of divine guardian they called a "Genius” for men or a “Juno” for women (LINK) For imperial cults, Tutelary deities were a big focus and emperors were known to have major gods as their patron deities. Augustus had Apollo, while Constantine claimed Sol Invictus as his patron before converting to Christianity.
Because Rome later fully converted to Christianity with the invention of Roman Catholicism (LINK), Rome was very influential in the reshaping of Christianity, it is thought these ideas also influenced the beliefs behind the Christian concept of the “Guardian Angel” : (LINK) Because the christianization of Europe has erased a lot of ancient traditions and practices, modern pagans are now researching and re-adopting the idea of patron gods.
Now that I gave you all that information it all comes down to belief and what feels right for you.
Spirituality is very personal and relies on what feels right to the individual. What feels right to one might not feel right to another.
A lot of modern worshippers see patron deities as gods who have been with them their whole lives and others see them as gods they have sworn their life to because they have chosen to be the priest/priestess of that god, etc.
I personally think people spend too much time and energy stressing over finding a patron god but this is more of a “you’ll find out who they are after you’ve been doing this for years” kind of thing.
Plus, people spend so much energy looking for their patron god instead of working with the gods sent by their patron god to help them with whatever skills they need but their patron, for whatever reason, can’t provide.
Moral of the story, don’t worry so much about your patron and just trust that you’ll find them when the time is right.
Also, it’s okay to not have or even believe in patron deities. Everyone walks their spiritual path in their own way, at their own pace and with their own beliefs.
