all-father

The chief god of a pantheon.

Odin.

A supreme being; a god who rules over all others.

Our first lesson is that God is a Father ; the second, that He is an All-Father ; that His Fatherhood is a fact in which others, without any limit perceptible to us, have an equal share with ourselves.

At a primitive stage this is sometimes (e.g. with the Australians) scarcely regarded as communion with a specific divinity or divinities, yet the All-Fathers and the mythical beings fill an important rôle in these rites, while at a more developed stage the rites have a close connexion with chthonic or heavenly powers.