Charge of the Goddess opening paragraph names a collection of goddesses, some derived from Greek or Roman mythology, others from Celtic or Arthurian legends, affirming a belief that these various figures represent a single Great Mother: This theme echoes the ancient Roman belief that the Goddess Isis was known by ten thousand names and also that the Goddess still worshipped today by Wiccans and other neopagans is known under many guises but is in fact one universal divinity. The second paragraph is largely derived and paraphrased from the words that Aradia, the messianic daughter of Diana, speaks to her followers in Charles Godfrey Leland's
Venus in culture the dawn. The Romans considered the planet Lucifer particularly sacred to the goddess Venus, whose name eventually became the scientific name for the planet. The second century Roman mythographer Pseudo-Hyginus said of the planet: Ovid, in his first century epic "Metamorphoses", describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens: In the classical Roman period, Lucifer was not typically regarded as a deity and had few, if any, myths, though the planet was associated with various deities and often poetically personified. Cicero pointed out that "You say that Sol the Sun and Luna the Moon are deities, and the Greeks identify the former