More Elijah
Salvador Dali
The association of Elias with mountaintops seems to come from a different pagan tradition: Elias took on the attributes and the locales associated with Zeus, especially his associations with mountains and his powers over rain, thunder, lightning, and wind. When Elias prevailed over the priests of Baal, it was on Mount Carmel which later became known as Mount St. Elias. When he spent forty days in a cave, it was on Mount Horeb. When Elias confronted Ahab, he stopped the rains for three years.
A map of mountain-cults of Zeus shows that most of these sites are now dedicated to Elias, including Mount Olympus, Mount Lykaion, Mount Arachnaion, and Mount Taleton on the mainland, and Mount Kenaion, Mount Oche, and Mount Kynados in the islands. Of these, the only one with a recorded tradition of a Helios cult is Mount Taleton.
Elias is associated with pre-Christian lightning gods in many other European traditions.
Among Albanians, pilgrimages are made to mountaintops to ask for rain during the summer. One such tradition gaining popularity is the 2 August pilgrimage to Ljuboten on the Sharr mountains. Muslims refer to this day as Aligjyn ("Ali Day"), and it is believed that Ali becomes Elias at midday.
This common depiction of the prophet Elijah riding a flaming chariot across the sky resulted in syncretistic folklore among the Slavs incorporating pre-Christian motifs in the beliefs and rites regarding him in Slavic culture.
As Elijah was described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as "Elijah the Thunderer" (Ilija Gromovnik), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun in popular beliefs. Perun is also sometimes conflated with the legendary hero Elijah of Murom. The feast of St. Elias is known as Ilinden in South Slavic, and was chosen as the day of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903; it is now observed as Republic Day in North Macedonia.
In Estonian folklore Elijah is considered to be the successor of Ukko, the lightning spirit.
In Georgian mythology, he replaces Elwa. A Georgian story about Elijah:
Once Jesus, the prophet Elijah, and St. George were going through Georgia. When they became tired and hungry they stopped to dine. They saw a Georgian shepherd and decided to ask him to feed them. First, Elijah went up to the shepherd and asked him for a sheep. After the shepherd asked his identity Elijah said that, he was the one who sent him rain to get him a good profit from farming. The shepherd became angry at him and told him that he was the one who also sent thunderstorms, which destroyed the farms of poor widows. (After Elijah, Jesus and St. George attempt to get help and eventually succeed).
Among other peoples of the Caucasus, including the Ossetians and Kabardians, Elijah is understood as a kind of thunder-divinity named Uac-illa, Ilia, or Yeli, and was traditionally invoked in "choppa" ritual associated with lightning strikes and certain mental illnesses. If a person or animal was struck by lightning, a circle dance was performed immediately around the site, even if the storm was still ongoing, and Elijah's name was invoked alongside a nonsense word "choppa" or "coppay". If the victim had died, their family were forbidden from grieving and were required to bury them where they fell instead of in the village cemetery. If the victim survived, their lives were dedicated to Elijah: human survivors were prophets, while animals were released with a mark so that others would know not to take them home. In other versions of this tradition, the one venerated was not Elijah, but other traditional thunder-divinities like Shyble (Щыблэ), Afy (Афы), or Antswa (Анцуа).
Elias has other pagan associations: a modern legend about Elias mirrors precisely the legend of Odysseus seeking a place where the locals would not recognize an oar—hence the mountaintops.
Elijah - Wikipedia
