Aradia

Daughter of the Roman goddess Diana in the cosmology set out in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899). The text presents her as a messianic teacher who descended to earth to instruct the oppressed in witchcraft. There is no independent historical evidence for Aradia as a historical person — modern scholarship treats her as a literary creation of Leland’s late-Italian-folklore source material. The "Charge of Aradia" from Leland’s text was substantially adapted by Doreen Valiente into the modern Wiccan Charge of the Goddess.