Diana

Diana (Artemis)

Diana, also known as the Luminous One, Holy Mother, Lady of the Grove, Mother of the Forest, Lady of the Wild Creatures and Opener of the Womb, is an ancient goddess associated with the Moon, wilderness, hunting, magic, witchcraft, women, children, fertility and wild animals. She is one of the most important aspects of the Goddess in modern Wicca and is closely identified with the Greek goddess Artemis, although Diana appears originally to have been an independent Italian deity.

Diana is an ancient spirit indigenous to Italy, possibly Etruscan or Latin. Her worship preceded Roman domination of the region and later spread with Roman culture throughout Europe. Her earliest sanctuary may have been the sacred grove at Nemi, at the foot of the Alban Hills, where she was worshipped as Diana Nemorensis, Diana of the Grove. A temple was eventually dedicated to her on Rome’s Aventine Hill, most likely following the Roman victory over the Latins in the fifth century BCE.

Diana may initially have been one of the pre-eminent goddesses of the Roman region, paired with such important male deities as Janus and Jupiter. Some traditions suggest that Diana ruled the night while Jupiter ruled the day. She remained, however, an unusually independent and anarchic goddess, associated with wilderness, ecstasy and freedom. She was also considered the protector of slaves, immigrants, outlaws and others existing beyond conventional Roman society, many of whom were said to find refuge within her sacred forests. As Roman religion became increasingly formalised, Juno assumed a more prominent role as a state goddess while Diana retained much of her connection with the wilderness and those living at society’s margins.

Diana was known in various forms throughout Europe. Variations of her name include Jana and Tana in Italy, Debena or Devana in Czech tradition, Diiwica in Serbian tradition, Dziewona in Poland and Gana in Transylvania.

Over the centuries Diana became intensely identified with the Greek Artemis. Their names are now frequently used interchangeably, although they appear originally to have been distinct deities. Even the titles Artemis of Ephesus and Diana of Ephesus are commonly treated as equivalent.

As Artemis, Diana personifies many of the positive attributes of the Moon, including independence, self-esteem, protection and fierce aggressiveness. She is the virgin goddess and maiden warrior, owned by no man and beholden to none. In modern magical traditions she is frequently understood as part of a lunar trinity with Selene and Hecate. Within this arrangement Diana is associated particularly with earthly power and the waxing Moon.

The mythology of Artemis greatly enriched the later understanding of Diana. According to Greek myth, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the twin sister of Apollo, god of prophecy and the Sun. From the moment of her birth she was associated with the protection of women. Artemis herself was born without pain, but Leto suffered greatly while giving birth to Apollo, and Artemis was said to have acted as her mother’s midwife. Women consequently prayed to her for assistance and protection during childbirth.

As a young goddess Artemis displayed an intense love of freedom, adventure and wilderness. At her request, Zeus granted her a bow and quiver of arrows, a company of nymph maidens, a pack of hunting hounds, a short tunic suitable for running through the forests and eternal chastity. She became the guardian of wild animals and untamed places as well as the protector of those who appealed to her for assistance, especially women who had suffered violence or abuse.

Her protection could be accompanied by terrifying vengeance. Actaeon, a hunter who saw Artemis and her nymphs bathing naked in a pool, was transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds. Orion, whom Artemis loved, was killed by one of her arrows. In one version of the myth Apollo, who disliked Orion, tricked Artemis into killing him from a distance. Another version attributes his death to jealousy concerning Orion’s affection for Eos, the goddess of the Dawn.

When King Oeneus of Calydon neglected Artemis while making offerings of the first fruits of the harvest, she sent an enormous boar to devastate the countryside. The greatest warriors of Greece joined the famous Calydonian Boar Hunt, but it was the huntress Atalanta who first wounded the creature and won the honour associated with its defeat.

The cult of Artemis flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Her great sanctuary at Ephesus became one of the most celebrated religious centres of antiquity, and the Temple of Artemis was eventually counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Traditions surrounding the Ephesian goddess later became intertwined with those of Diana, producing the figure sometimes called Diana of Ephesus.

Diana’s association with Britain appears in the medieval legend of Brutus of Troy, the mythical founder of Britain. According to this tradition, Diana instructed Brutus to travel to Britain following the fall of Troy. Brutus was later believed to have erected an altar to Diana on the site eventually occupied by St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and some traditions identified the mysterious London Stone as a surviving remnant of this ancient sanctuary.

Diana’s worship survived deep into the Christian era. As late as the fifth and sixth centuries, traditions associated with her remained known among European pagans. As Christianity spread, however, the goddess was increasingly transformed by clerical writers from an ancient divinity into a sinister patroness of sorcery and nocturnal witchcraft.

Diana became especially associated with stories of women travelling through the night in supernatural processions. Historian Jeffrey B. Russell observed that such Dianic processions were not known in classical antiquity and may instead have developed from Germanic traditions surrounding the Wild Hunt, the terrifying nocturnal company of spirits believed to sweep across the countryside. Christian writers may have substituted the familiar classical name Diana for Germanic goddesses such as Holda and Berta, who were themselves sometimes associated with supernatural night journeys.

The influential medieval ecclesiastical text known as the Canon Episcopi, composed around the tenth century, condemned women who believed that they travelled through the night with Diana:

It is not to be omitted that some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of Demons, believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the night, to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on certain nights.

Diana also became associated with Herodias, the wife of Herod who, according to Christian tradition, played a role in the death of John the Baptist. Medieval folklore gradually transformed Herodias into a supernatural figure condemned to wander through the sky. In Italian tradition the name Herodias became associated with Aradia.

During the nineteenth century, folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland recorded traditions that he believed originated among Italian witches of Etruscan heritage. These accounts were eventually published in Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. In Leland’s account, Aradia is the daughter of Diana and her brother Lucifer. Diana sends Aradia to Earth to teach oppressed people the secrets of witchcraft and magical practice.

No deity became more closely associated with witchcraft in Christian polemical literature than Diana. When Christianity achieved political and cultural dominance, devotion to her was increasingly demonised. The Society of Diana became one of the expressions used by authorities in connection with supposed witchcraft, while Diana herself was portrayed by some Christian writers as a demonic figure. Her ancient association with forests, wild animals, sexuality, independence and people beyond conventional social authority made her particularly threatening to institutions seeking religious uniformity.

British anthropologist Margaret A. Murray later argued that an organised Dianic witch cult had survived secretly throughout the Middle Ages and into the period of the European witch hunts. Her theory has been rejected by modern historians because reliable evidence for such an organised underground religion has not survived. Murray nevertheless exerted enormous influence on twentieth-century interpretations of witchcraft. Her ideas were subsequently adopted and adapted by Gerald B. Gardner, one of the central figures in the emergence of modern Wicca in Britain during the 1950s.

Diana in Wicca

Although most modern Wiccans no longer accept Murray’s theory of a surviving medieval Dianic witch cult, Diana remains an important Pagan deity and magical archetype. As part of the Triple Goddess symbolism of the Moon, she is particularly associated with the new and waxing Moon, the approximately two-week period traditionally considered favourable for magic involving beginnings, growth, development and achievement. At the full Moon, within some interpretations of the lunar trinity, her power passes to Selene.

Diana is invoked as a nurturer, protector, huntress and guardian of independence. She walks the wilderness freely, answers to no husband or master and symbolises the ability to define one’s own path. Her bow and arrow represent concentration, direction and the capacity to identify a goal and strike it without hesitation.

She has consequently become especially important within feminist Witchcraft and traditions described as Dianic Wicca. In this context Diana represents female autonomy, self-determination, protection and spiritual authority. Although she is a lunar goddess, her realm is also profoundly earthly: forests, animals, sacred groves, women, childbirth and the untamed forces of nature all fall within her domain.

Diana also retains an important position within Italian magical traditions, including modern forms of Stregheria, where she is honoured not simply as the Roman equivalent of Artemis but as an ancient Italian goddess whose relationship with witchcraft survived centuries of religious condemnation.

From the sacred grove at Nemi to the legends of witches travelling through the medieval night, Diana has remained a figure of extraordinary persistence. Goddess of Moon and forest, huntress and protector, patroness of women and outsiders, she has repeatedly survived attempts to redefine, demonise or erase her. Her enduring power lies precisely in what she represents: wilderness that cannot be completely conquered, spiritual authority that cannot easily be controlled and independence that refuses to ask permission.

If Diana, Artemis, Hecate and the old gods are more to you than names in an encyclopaedia, stop standing outside the tradition looking in. Enter the Occult World Mystery School and go deeper into the gods, spirits, witchcraft traditions, grimoires and magical systems that shaped the hidden history of the occult. Reading about the mysteries is only the beginning; serious students pursue them, study their foundations and learn how the traditions connect. There are thousands of spirits, gods, demons, magical systems, grimoires and forgotten traditions waiting beyond it, and if you are determined to understand the occult rather than merely collect fragments of it, this is where your deeper education begins.

ALSO KNOWN AS:

Dea Jana

FEAST:

13 August

FAVOURED PEOPLE:

Thieves; outlaws; slaves; shamans; witches; fortune-tellers; Diana has dominion over women but men worshipped her just as passionately: what are described as werewolves may really be male wolf-shamans or lunar priests dedicated to Diana.

MANIFESTATION:

Although usually envisioned as a beautiful young woman, in Celtic Europe, Diana was worshipped in the form of a log.

ICONOGRAPHY:

Images of Diana and Artemis tend to be used interchangeably.

SACRED SITES:

• Oak groves

• Forests in general

• The famous witches’ walnut tree in Benevento, Italy

• Lake Nemi and the entire Forest of Nemi: A stream flowed into the lake from a sacred grotto near Diana’s Temple. The Mirror of Diana names the volcanic lake surrounded on three sides by forested cliffs.

• Temple on Rome’s Aventine Hill

• The present Cathedral of Saint Etienne in Metz, France, built on the site of her temple

TIME:

• The Festival of Torches was held annually in Diana’s honour beginning 13 August. Women carried torches to her temple at Nemi and elsewhere engaged in torchlit processions.

• On 15 August, women would journey to the Arician Woods to offer thanks and beseech Diana for future blessings. They were accompanied by crowned hunting dogs, leashed so as not to disturb Diana’s wild creatures.

• A Friday the 13th falling in the month of August is believed especially sacred to Diana.

CONSORTS:

Virbius, Janus

SPIRIT ALLIES:

Egeria, Hekate

ANIMALS:

All wild creatures, but especially wolves, dogs, deer, and black cats

ELEMENTS:

Fire and water

PLANET:

Moon, the light of the night

OFFERINGS:

Diana likes a drink. Strega liquore, allegedly inspired by an Italian witches’ recipe, is a favourite, but she’ll drink grappa, too. Cakes in the shape of the moon, topped with lit candles—the original birthday cake—are a traditional offering. At Diana’s ancient festival, the celebratory meal included wine, roasted young goat, cakes served hot on plates of leaves, and apples still hanging in clusters on their boughs. Offerings on behalf of wolves, wild creatures, and preservation of wilderness may also be appreciated.

OFFERING BOWL FOR DIANA

• Pour a little Strega liquore in a fireproof bowl, preferably an iron cauldron.

• Stand back and set it aflame using a long fireplace match as an offering for Diana.

• Only use a little Strega. Do not fill the bowl all the way or even halfway! Be sure to stand away from the bowl: do not hover over it. There’s an old joke about Italian witches with singed eyebrows, but it’s no joke if you’re harmed. As soon as the Strega is lit, there is a tendency for high flames to shoot up, considered a sign of Diana’s favour, but not if you are burned or if the house catches fire. Exercise caution, and always be aware of fire safety.

DIANA