八主祭祀是指對天、地、兵、陰、陽、月、日、四時八種對象的祭祀。它們的祠祀地點分佈在今山東半島即齊之分野上，三個在中部，餘在東部沿海。八主祭祀僅見於《史記》《漢書》，曾經得到秦始皇、秦二世、漢武帝和漢宣帝的祭祀，公元前31年郊祀制確立後，在國家祀典上被廢止。通過傳世文獻與考古材料比對揭示，八主應爲東方思想家以宇宙觀爲基礎所創設的祭祀體系，利用了戰國時期的地方祠址，重新排布了八主的祭祀地點，利用秦皇漢武對東方實施經略的機會，成功兜售了他們的宗教思想。八主祭祀所體現的宇宙論式的祭祀觀、人與自然的關係以及陰陽對等的宗教理念，對中國國家宗教郊祀制影響深遠。

The Eight Deities were the spirits of Heaven, the Land, Arms, the Sun, the Moon, the Yin, the Yang, and the Four Seasons, to whom sacrificial were presented. The sacrificial spots are located scatteredly in the State of Qi on the map of Han Star-field system, three of whom in the heart land of the Shandong Peninsula, and the others in the east-coastal areas. The historical texts on the Eight Deities only appear in the Shiji and the Hanshu. It is recorded that the sacrifices were presented to the Eight Deities only when the emperors of Qin and Han dynasties visited those places, who were the First Emperor and Second Emperor of Qin, Wu Emperor and Xuan Emperor of Han. Such practice was abolished from 31BCE, following the establishment of a new sacrificial practices presenting sacrifices to the Heaven and the Earth in the suburban areas of the capital city. The results of comparing the archaeological work with the historical text show that those late Warring States thinkers promoted and divined such a sacrificial system based on their contemporary cosmology, in the meantime emphasizing the status of human being represented by the Deity of Arms. When choosing sites for the eight spirits, the thinkers made tactical use of the previously existed religious practice to facilitate the worship of the Eight Deities. The success of the thinkers in selling their ideas to the rulers followed the decline of the Zhou enfeoffment system and the establishment of the jun-xian administrative system supporting centralized rule in Qin and Han periods. The thoughts reflected in the Eight Deities that the Heavenly Way is spontaneity, that the Human Way follows spontaneity, and that emphasizes both the Yin and the Yang as an inseparable pair of cosmological forces, constitute an important historical, religious heritage to the traditional Chinese state religion.