The entire mythological theme of my business is based upon the ancient Eleusinian rituals of ancient Greece. That is, the worship of Demeter and Persephone as both fertility and underworld Goddesses. One of the significant themes of dramatization that takes place in this mythology is the abduction of Persephone into the underworld by the God the Dead, Hades.
Hades had many names and probably just as many older origins. Almost all cultures the world over have an underworld God of some kind who is the God of the dead, just as almost all cultures the world over also have some version of the ancient pre biblical flood myth.
In the Celtic pantheon he is known as Cernunnos, or even sometimes as Manannon. He is the Norse God Odin, the Roman God Saturn, The Egyptian God Osiris, or even Anubis and he even has cross cultural counterparts in many African or Native American and Mexican tribal cultures. The pre Greek cultures knew him as Cthonic Zeus, God of both the Upperworld and the Underworld. Ancient Mesopotamian cultures probably knew him as the "old man of the mountain". Hindu's know him as Shiva. Christian mythology has unfortunately maligned him as "The Devil". I say unfortunate because his older origins give him a much broader scope of meaning, purpose and mythical psychology then the most recent interpretation.
The ancient Greeks and Romans knew him as Hades but also as Pluto or Pluton. Hades was both the name of the God and the name of the location of the Underworld.
Pluton was often given as an alternative name for Hades, but for a more specific reason, and this was to recognize Hades as not just the god of the Underworld but the God and giver of "wealth" which is what the word Pluton actually translated to. He was a god of mining, and who was the keeper of the gems, stones and minerals of the earth. It was Hades/Pluton who had the power to give wealth to humans. As such he was a materialistic God having his reign over the earth and the shadow world that lies behind men's physical lives. He was known as the god of "foundation" and his number is 4, in the system of numerology.
When I do my bead work, I pay homage to Pluton because without him, we would not have access to precious stones and gems to work with in this art form. Pluton as the original underworld alchemist and metallurgist is responsible for the very slow crystallization processes of certain stones that are forged by volcanic fires and formed in our dark soil and even radiated over hundreds of years in the dark caverns below our "middle earth". Great beauty is to be found in the darkness of the underworld, and it is our task to bring this beauty to light in the most ethical ways so that human kind can live in harmony with these processes and benefit from these most prosperous gifts.
