God initially appears in this swirling vision (5)
I believe the answer is:
sight
'vision' is the definition.
(I know that vision can be written as sight)
'god initially appears in this swirling' is the wordplay.
'initially' indicates taking the first letters.
'appears in' indicates putting letters inside.
'swirling' indicates an anagram (letters get swirled around).
The initial letter of 'god' is 'g'.
'this' with letters rearranged gives 'siht'.
'g' going inside 'siht' is 'SIGHT'.
(Other definitions for sight that I've seen before include "Observe" , "Sense" , "Vista" , "A great many" , "something to behold" .)