Who was Ceres anyway?
And why were suddenly all eyes turned her way, like the Kim Kardashian of space-rocks…
Was the supposed “buzz” around here just some massive marketing campaign for the Dutch beer of the same name that SpaceX just announced they would be surviving on-board their orbital space-tourism balloons?
We all hoped the mysterious maybe-visible maybe-not probes fired off the planet’s surface at our brave Dawn-Treader were laden with the golden goodness of the goddess: amber waves of grain, amber ales and IPA’s from the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
Drink up, let me fill your cup.
The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres’ frantic search for her, and her eventual but temporary restitution to the world above. In Latin literature, several versions are known, all similar in most respects to the myths of Greek Persephone’s abduction by the King of the underworld, named variously in Greek sources as Hades or Pluto. “Hades” can mean both the hidden Underworld and its king (“The hidden one”), who in early Greek versions of the myth is a dark, unsympathetic figure; Persephone is “Kore” (“The Maiden”), taken against her will; in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, her captor is known as Pluto; they form a divine couple who rule the underworld together, and receive Eleusinian initiates into some form of better afterlife.
