Lucifer Italian witch-cult. In Leland's mythology, Diana pursued her brother Lucifer across the sky as a cat pursues a mouse. According to Leland, after dividing herself into light and darkness: Here, the motions of Diana and Lucifer once again mirror the celestial motions of the moon and Venus, respectively. Though Leland's Lucifer is based on the classical personification of the planet Venus, he also incorporates elements from Christian tradition, as in the following passage: In the several modern Wiccan traditions based in part on Leland's work, the figure of Lucifer is usually either omitted or replaced as Diana's consort with either
Classical mythology influence on later Western culture was the "Metamorphoses" of the Augustan poet Ovid. Syncretized versions form the classical tradition of mythography, and by the time of the influential Renaissance mythographer Natalis Comes (16th century), few if any distinctions were made between Greek and Roman myths. The myths as they appear in popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries often have only a tangential relation to the stories as told in ancient Greek and Latin literature. Classical mythology Classical Greco-Roman mythology, Greek and Roman mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is both the body of and the study of myths from the