The gate of the year

Clay relief representing the goddess Ceres, dating to the III-II century B.C., now in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome.
From an etymological point of view, the name Ceres derives from the same root (*ker, “growth”) of the verbs creare, “to create”, or crescere, “to grow”. At her origins, the goddess was probably the personification of the creative power, of the growing energy of the earth. The grammarian Valerius Probus, in his comment to Virgil, defined the goddess “Cererem a creando dictam”, “Ceres is called after making it grow” (Schilling 1981). The Archaic Ceres, to whom the Roman farmers offered a sow before harvests, was not only patroness of wheat and other cereals, but provided to the growth of all that was born from the cultivated soil, of all the fruits of the earth. It was really very faint the original difference between Ceres and Tellus (the goddess of the Earth), while later on she acquired a greater autonomy from the latter. Both these goddesses were protagonists in the ceremonies of the Fordicidia and of the Cerialia, which succeeded one after the other in the month of April (the 15 and 19 of the month) and opened the springtime cycle of vegetation, since they both presided over the growth and fertility of vegetation and of human beings as well. Like Tellus, Ceres was also associated with human fecundity, with the telluric movements and with the world of the dead.

[Image: http://www.pinterest.com/ilex13/myth-legend-fairy-tale/]




Tree Symbols

Back

Clay relief representing the goddess Ceres, dating to the III-II century B.C., now in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome. From an etymological point of view, the name Ceres derives from the same root (*ker, “growth”) of the verbs creare, “to create”, or crescere, “to grow”. At her origins, the goddess was probably the personification of the creative power, of the growing energy of the earth. The grammarian Valerius Probus, in his comment to Virgil, defined the goddess “Cererem a creando dictam”, “Ceres is called after making it grow” (Schilling 1981). The Archaic Ceres, to whom the Roman farmers offered a sow before harvests, was not only patroness of wheat and other cereals, but provided to the growth of all that was born from the cultivated soil, of all the fruits of the earth. It was really very faint the original difference between Ceres and Tellus (the goddess of the Earth), while later on she acquired a greater autonomy from the latter. Both these goddesses were protagonists in the ceremonies of the Fordicidia and of the Cerialia, which succeeded one after the other in the month of April (the 15 and 19 of the month) and opened the springtime cycle of vegetation, since they both presided over the growth and fertility of vegetation and of human beings as well. Like Tellus, Ceres was also associated with human fecundity, with the telluric movements and with the world of the dead. [Image: http://www.pinterest.com/ilex13/myth-legend-fairy-tale/]