Salve Aeneas
Aeneas wrote:I am asking if the deity you associate with your Lares is always an epithet of Ceres, or can it be another deity?
As Aulus said, in my case, with my family, Ferentina is our Lar Familiaris, and She happens to be Ceres, just by another name.
A lararium is for your Lares. Other deities you would worship should technically be offered separate shrines. Some families did lay claim to a divine origin, and thus might have one of the higher Gods or Goddesses as a Lar. The Iulii for example, claiming descent from Aeneas, also posed Venus as their Lar Familiaris. The Iulii also maintained a cultus genialis, or family religion, in which other deities were worshipped at separate shrines in Bovillae. Some other deities were placed in family lararia. I have seen images of Hercules that appear to have been made specifically for a lararium. There though Hercules probably represents virility in the male members of the family, so that the family line might continue. Images of Fortuna and Roma are also found that suggest they were intended for a lararium. A case in point is a bronze lararium from Antioch where the central figure is that of Roma as a Tyche (Fortuna of the City of Rome), with Victoria in the back holding a laurel wreath over Roma, and then two winged (unusual) Lares holding up cornucopiae.
Modern practitioners of the religio Romana seem to confuse the lararium as a place of worship for all the Gods and Goddesses. I guess you can do that if you like. Better, I think, to have separate little shrines throughout your house and on your land, as the Romans did themselves. Why, for example, would you worship Janus at your lararium rather than provide a little shrine to Him at your front door? Why not have a shrine to Vesta in the kitchen? Perhaps another little shrine in your bathroom, and maybe a shrine to Minerva amongst your books, another to Mercurius over your computer? Why on earth would you place a shrine to Volcanus inside your house? The Romans did not even place shrines to Volcunus inside the City, lest it might cause a fire. The Gods are all around you, why would you then have only one shrine to Them? But for modern convenience I can see where you might bring some deities together at one place of worship. Properly speaking that would not be a lararium though.
Vale optime et vade in pacem Deorum