Friday, April 24, 2009

Bile and Belenus

Beltane fire festival dancers, 2006Image via Wikipedia

I've been researching the Gaulish god Belenus since recently reading that the festival of Beltaine was named after him. In so doing I've run across a lot of information, some of which conflicts with things that I had read previously. For example, some sources seem to equate the god Bile with Belenus as though they're the same god, with Belenus being the Gaulish equivalent of the deity. Still other sources seem to differentiate between the two gods, with Belenus being treating as a solar deity (associated with Apollo by the Romans) while Bile is associated with the idea of sacred trees and/or The World Tree.

Can anyone recommend any resources that might aid in clarifying this issue? Or if anyone is familiar with this subject and would like to share their thoughts I would very much appreciate it.

I noticed that someone else started a thread about Danu/Anu and I was actually able to get some information about this subject from one of the links there. However, the relationship (if any) between Bile/Belenus is still unclear to me.

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