DEMETER The goddess of the Earth, in its capacity as a fruitful, growing thing, Demeter (also known as Ceres), was a daughter of Kronos and Rhea, and was looked upon by the Greeks as the all-nourishing mother of the Earth. The way life evolves from the seed which is cast into the ground and allowed to rot was the principle tenet of the belief in her. The seed was in the keeping of her daughter, Persephone, Queen of Hades, and the life that sprang forth from that seed was Demeter's. In this way the two goddesses were inseparable, and were styled as 'the two in one', or 'the great deities'.