Hephaestus make love to Athena: at the moment of climax she pushes him aside, and his semen falls to the earth where it impregnates Gaia." Hephaestus was associated by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus (of Mount Etna) and Vulcanus of the Lipari islands. The first-century sage Apollonius of Tyana is said to have observed, "there are many other mountains all over the earth that are on fire, and yet we should never be done with it if we assigned to them giants and gods like Hephaestus". In the Trojan war, Hephaestus sided with the Greeks, but
Aulë Aulë Aulë is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, who is primarily discussed in "The Silmarillion", but appears also in Tolkien's other works. In Tolkien's pantheon of Middle-earth, Aulë is a knowledge deity, sometimes worshipped as a god by men, representing skill and craftsmanship, who is also thematically associated with Earth, stone, metal and the dwarves. Because of his associations with smithing and skill, Aulë is similar in thematic role to the Greek god Hephaestus, the Roman god Vulcan, the Finnish god Ilmarinen, the Yoruba god Ogun, and the Norse god Völundr. Aulë the Smith is a