The Bön pantheon presents a vast and carefully ordered universe of divine, semi-divine, and spirit beings, in which every level of reality is populated with powers that can be approached, propitiated, or realized. At its summit stand primordial and supreme deities such as Küntu Zangpo, understood as an all-good, primordial Buddha-like source, and Shenlha Ökar, a principal peaceful, celestial figure and central object of refuge. Alongside these stand great creative and motherly principles, as well as systems of transcendent buddhas associated with directions and elements, all expressing a vision of reality that is both metaphysical and profoundly symbolic. These highest deities are not remote abstractions but living presences that ground the entire cosmology of Bön.

From this apex the pantheon extends into a rich field of enlightened teachers, meditational deities, and lineage figures. Tönpa Shenrab Miwoche, the founding teacher of Bön, is revered as a fully awakened being whose role parallels that of a buddha within this distinct religious world. Around such figures gather yidam-type meditational deities—peaceful, semi-wrathful, and wrathful forms that embody specific enlightened qualities and serve as focal points for tantric visualization. Realized masters and tantric deities, including wrathful protectors, exemplify how human attainment and divine manifestation interpenetrate within the tradition.

Equally central are the protective and wrathful deities who safeguard the teachings and practitioners. These include great warrior-like gods and queens of existence, along with a wide range of oath-bound protectors who subdue obstacles and negative forces. Many of these beings appear fierce or terrifying, yet are regarded as enlightened in essence, their wrath understood as a compassionate energy that cuts through ignorance and harm. Through ritual, they are invoked to guard sacred spaces, communities, and the continuity of the Bön teachings.

At the broadest level, the pantheon embraces a multitude of local deities and spirits that inhabit mountains, rivers, skies, and the very ground underfoot. Classes such as lha (sky and mountain gods), nyen (place spirits), lu (serpent-like water and underworld beings), and various other spirit categories reveal a world in which landscape and consciousness are deeply intertwined. These beings may be protective, ambivalent, or dangerous, and ritual specialists engage them through offerings, appeasement, or subjugation. In this way, the Bön pantheon weaves together shamanistic, animistic, and highly elaborated doctrinal elements into a single, many-layered vision of a cosmos that is at once sacred, inhabited, and spiritually navigable.