According to the Vangelo delle Streghe;
“Diana was the first created of all creation. In Her were all things.”
In other words Diana, or Goddess, is PRIMEVAL DEITY. She existed before the first beginning, as CHAOS -God without form existing in a void, and having within Herself the seeds of all things, both spiritual and material, all mixed up together without order or definition. Primeval Deity is androgynous, having both feminine (spirit or yin) and masculine (matter or yang) elements, and is sometimes portrayed as such in myth and artwork.. Sometimes however Primeval Deity is portrayed as feminine, since we think of Primeval Deity in association with the Goddess, or Spirit -indeed as the Higher Self of Goddess. In this sense Primeval Deity is identified with the CRONE Goddess -the Goddess in Her aged state, having existed from before the dawn of time. This is the wisest and most knowing part of Goddess, most commonly called HEKATE. This is the Goddess portrayed with greater or lesser respect as the Hallowe’en witch, with Her pointed hat and broom.

For endless aeons Primeval Deity existed in this amorphous and undifferentiated state, in the darkness before the first creation. At first She slept, aware of nothing, resting and recharging, gathering Her energies and merely being -alone and complete in Herself.

But over the course of time, Primeval Deity began to stir; to become aware. First She became aware of Her own existence. In time She began to think, to dream, to question -to desire. She wondered; What would it be like to feel? What would it be like to move? To take action? To be able to receive sensation? To see? To taste? To hear?

And so for aeons Primeval Deity thought, and considered, and wondered. And then;
“Out of Herself, the first Darkness, She divided Herself. Into Darkness and Light She was divided. The God, Her brother and son, Herself and Her other Self, was the Light.”
Primeval Deity divided Herself -One became Two.

All of the physical, tangible, volatile parts of Primeval Deity went into the God, who was the Light. The God exploded into existence out of Primeval Deity in a shower of spark and flame which we remember as the Big Bang, the starting point of physical creation.

All of the spiritual, ethereal, eternal parts of Primeval Deity remained in the Goddess. In this sense Goddess is thought of as a continuation of Primeval Deity, since the consciousness of Primeval Deity is one of the Spiritual parts that remained with Her.

And the God spread out in all directions through the primordial void, a blaze of light and superheated matter. In time His fire would cool into stars, and from stars to Planets. As this happens the vibration of the matter slows, it becomes more dense, seemingly solid.

This slowing cooling, and solidifying, is described as “Falling into Matter.” Symbolically the God is described as having fallen into Seven Planes of existence. Some people say there are more, but then the divisions are not as exact as all that, so the number is not so important as the concept. Seven Planes is the ancient number, based on the idea of the seven Ptolemaic Planets (that is, the Sun, Moon, and those Planets visible with the naked eye). These Seven Planes are, from the lowest up; Physical, Emotional, Mental, Astral, Soular or Egoic, Monadic, and Divine. We will talk more about these later. The Seven Planes are also sometimes called the Seven Spheres, or the Seven Dimensions; all refer to the same basic concept.

The Vangelo continues;
“And when Diana saw that the light was so beautiful, the light which was Her other half, her brother the God, She yearned for it with exceeding great desire. Wishing to receive the light again into Her darkness, to swallow it up in rapture, in delight, She trembled with desire. And this trembling was the first dawn.

But the God’s light fled from Her and would not yield to Her wishes. He was the light which flies into the most distant parts of heaven, the mouse which flies before the cat.”
Seeing the beauty of the God -that is, of the physical Universe- the Goddess was entranced with desire, and wanted it back. She had dreamed of seeing and tasting and doing, but being separate from the God She could do none of this. She could only observe from outside that which She had created. The Goddess wanted the experiences She had dreamed of, and so She desired to take the created Universe back into Herself… But it wasn’t that easy.

The Vangelo tells how The Goddess went to the oldest part of Herself, Primeval Deity -Who was still within Her. The Vangelo calls Primeval Deity “The Mothers and Fathers who were before the first creation” emphasizing Primeval Deity’s androgynous aspect.

In other words, the Goddess consulted Her own Higher Self. In many ancient myths -notably the story of Demeter and Persephone- this same process is shown as the Goddess entering Hekate’s cave to take council of the eldest and wisest part of Deity.

In the Vangelo Diana asks Primeval Deity how She could reunite with the God -how could Spirit take Matter back into Itself? And the Ancient One, Primeval Deity, the Goddess’ own Higher Self, answered in this way;
“To rise You must fall. To become the greatest of all Goddesses, You must first become a mortal.”
In other words, it was not possible for Spirit simply to take Matter back into Herself. If the Goddess wished to reunite with the God, to be one with Matter and experience it, She had to enter into the physical world. Only in that way could Goddess and God reunite.

And so Diana “fell” -that is to say She descended through the Seven Planes to the Physical. She did this by dividing off parts of Herself -the many souls- which she sent into the Physical, placing them into physical forms. Each soul was to lead many lifetimes, going through many physical forms in the process. Reading this now, you are one of the lifetimes of one of those souls, which are part of the great Goddess. We are Her children, and also children of the God, for our existence is the accomplishment of their union.

The Vangelo describes this process in extremely symbolic terms. It tells how Diana took the form of a cat (the soul entering into material form) and in this way got close to the God, then resuming Her own form, made passionate love to Him.

Then, to maintain the Union of Spirit and Matter, the Goddess cast a spell;
“She sang a charm, and her voice was as the buzzing of bees. And then Diana sat at Her spinning wheel and began to spin the thread of life, and the God turned the wheel.”
In other words, having placed soul into matter, the Goddess used the power of “sound” -that is, VIBRATION- to set the Universe as we know it into motion. Energy is what holds all things together, from sub-atomic particles to the very galaxies of stars. The Vibration of that energy, it’s movement -sometimes described as “Frequency” – is what makes it work, and determines on what level it works. The denser or more physical a thing is the lower it’s Vibration or frequency is said to be. The more Spiritual the energy, the higher it’s Vibration is said to be. Vibration is comparable to sound, which can be a powerful magical tool. For this reason the Vibration of the Universe, at differing frequencies through each of the Seven Planes or spheres, is often described as the MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

Music and song have long been used in many spiritual traditions as a means of affecting the Vibration of energy. Sound can be used in this way to disperse negative or unfocused energy, to break down psychic blockages, and to create or effect specific energetic forms. Sound is a very powerful tool precisely because sound, or Vibration is the very force the Goddess used to set the Wheel of Life into motion.

Called the Goddess’ spinning wheel in the Vangelo delle Streghe, the Wheel of Life is a very ancient concept. It is represented annually by the sacred Wheel of the Year (which you will learn about in LESSON 3). From this Wheel the Goddess (Spirit) spins the thread of life -i.e.; determines it’s nature, qualities, the lessons to be learned and the things to be done and accomplished. The DESTINY, if you would. But the God (Matter, or perhaps more precisely physical experience) turns the wheel. As Goddess is the nature of life, the God is the process of living -the movement through the Planes of Existence. The Goddess is the essential nature of the Universe and life itself, She provides the Divine Spark which animates all things. But the God carries that spark forward. The God is Lord of Space and Time -master of the temporal universe. In this aspect He is called the Lord of the Dance, for He leads the dance of life, facilitating experience and growth.

In this way -their essence originating from the Goddess, their ability to move and to grow originating from the God, the many souls descended to the physical Plane. The goal of this, as stated above, was to experience; to learn and grow. Having arrived in the physical the souls set out to learn all that the physical Plane could teach them, and then began their ascent back up through the Seven Planes to ultimately rejoin with Goddess, from whence they come. Each Plane has it’s own special lessons, which are of great importance to the soul.

Though seemingly separated from the Goddess, each of these souls remains always attached to Her, always part of Her -for it is through them, as part of them, that Goddess entered into Her own physical creation, the God. We are one with the Goddess, and our experiences are Her experience. We are eternal and immortal as souls, never cut off from Goddess, or Spirit, only differentiated. All of the powers and abilities of Goddess are within us, and at our command, if we can clear our vision enough to see and access them.