Diana
La Regina delle streghe, Queen of the witches,Lady of the mountains and the gate
“And then, what was killing? Not much different than being killed.” ~Roberto Calasso, The Celestial Hunter.
The goddess of the hunt, Diana was born to release the bow, the arrow birthed with her, pointed and poised to fly, she aims. Diana was born of negation, of the invisible, of absence as she ran to the woods and from humanity. She became a bear, a deer, but more than that she kept changing, and shapeshifting until she was always open, she became a door. The arrow pierced the heart of the world that lived inside her prey and everything hidden inside it flowed out like a spring.
Diana didn’t just hunt, she ran, she ran towards her prey, she ran the woods, she ran the springs she bathed in.The entire forest opened to the pounding of her feet as she swiftly, but silently, tracked the animals she so desperately longed to be. Having left the city life, the conventions of the hearth and home, the laws of man, she clothed herself in the skins of her kills. An intimacy was made, a communication, contact with the animals. This contact was a portal, a gateway, to something less rigid like the keyhole in a solid door where all you have to do is change shape to fit through.
The hunter must become the hunted, predator and prey is like the witches sabbath when the unseen comes out at night, in the dark, to gather with the living and dance. The witch must become less mortal, less dense, eternal, like death, and the spirits more alive and human by contact with those that meet them. Diana, often considered the Roman counterpart to the Greek Artemis, was probably a convergence between a pre-Roman chthonic/local Italic deity and Artemis. This is likely because Diana represents a pattern that emerges naturally between humans and the unseen and was easily adapted to the incursion of the Greek gods.