Saint Ilie or Saint Elias, the 20th day of July

A theory of the religious believes genesis is regarding the meteorological phenomena and the fear they have raised into people. Saint Ilie seems to descend from an ancestral divinity, pre-Christian, with prerogatives not only of climatic kind, but also to punish people, if they somehow have made mistakes in front of God.  

“God of Fire and Sun within the Romanian Pantheon, identified with the Iranian-origin God Mithra, with Helios of the Greek mythology and with Gebeleizis of the Getae and Dacian mythology, that has taken the name and the celebration date of the holly prophet Ilie (the 20th of July). As solar and meteorological divinity, Sântilie is provoking fires during the hot summers, it produces thunders, lightning and thunderbolts during storms, it retrains and releases rains, it decides where and when the hail shall fall” (Ion Ghinoiu, “Mica enciclopedie de traditii romanesti”, Bucharest, Agora Publishing House, 2008, page 266).

It is clear that we are dealing with a revenging God, such as God of the Old Testament, that is watching people, and when they make a mistake, it punishes them without mercy. The sins may be numberless, but mostly they are consisting in failure to observe the non-working days of the holydays (especially the important holydays) and, mainly, during the days when this God-Saint is celebrated. 

Anyway, the worst enemy of Saint Ilie is Satan, the devil that is seducing the human beings and it makes them sin. This is happing because, once upon a time Saint Ilie has been a human being (soldier, hunter, agricultural, farmer or cattle seller etc.) and he has been forgiven by God. Then he was raise to the heaven in “a fire wheels carriage with two of four winged white horses. Up there, in the sky, he is running trough the clouds (he whirs, thunders, jars,  bangs), lightens and trikes to the right and to the left all the devils with his fire whip. Scares, they hide on the earth> among trees, under the cornices of houses, in the churches’ towers and even in bodies of animals, especially in dogs and cats. Wanting not to miss any devil, the Saint strikes also trees, people, cattle, houses, churches when devils may be hidden.

The symbols defining  Sântilie are those of an authentic solar God  and they are easily recognizable:  the fire wheels carriage and the winged horse, the thunders, the lightning and the thunderbolts that are lighting the cloudy sky; subordination and hierarchy of divinities that bring glow and fire during the month of July (the “Oven month “) many of them being his sisters (Pârliile, Panteliile), brother (Ilie Pălie, Pantelimon) or simply charioteers of the heavenly carriage (Foca) (Ion Ghinoiu, “Mica enciclopedie de traditii romanesti”, Bucharest, Agora Publishing House, 2008, page 266).