Since 10AM this morning, I have been eating a pomegranate. It is now 5 pm, and I am almost done. There is no fruit, in my opinion, more deserving of reverence. My fingers are unstained. The pomegranate is a fruit requiring patience to eat. I love the intricacies of eating a pomegranate, and I love the time it takes to carefully peel away each compartment of the fruit and each individual jewel from the pith for eating. Time consuming, yes, but worth it. Eating a pomegranate (sans bucket of water) without staining the fingers requires such patience that it makes it an ideal fruit for meditation and fasting. I have eaten nothing but this pomegranate today, and I am not hungry. Of course, it’s helpful that I had nothing to do today but sit here and eat a pomegranate.
The pomegranate is a gigantic seedpod, filled to the bursting with seeds individually encased in ruby colored juice. The word garnet, another word for ruby, comes from the pomegranate. When I was a child, I knew the pomegranate as the Indian Apple and that is still how it is labeled in the supermarkets where I find it. When I was small, my mother told me it was named Indian Apple for the Native Americans. This is of course wrong as it was brought here by European settlers. For a while, I believed it was called Indian Apple because it was always to be found during “Indian Summer,” that is, the last warm snap occurring in Autumn, but that was also wrong. The name Indian Apple actually comes from the presence of the tree in India.
This is a fruit sacred to many mother goddesses…. Cybele, Ishtar, Hera, Eurydice, Persephone/Kore. Hera is clearly depicted with the calyx of the pomegranate as her crown, a tradition that may have been borrowed by King Solomon in the design of his own. Nana, mother of Attis, is said to have gotten pregnant from eating a pomegranate seed or an almond (both are Yonic symbols). Other Greek dialects call the pomegranate rhoa, connecting it with the name of the earth goddess Rhea. In ancient times, pomegranates were offered to Demeter and to the other gods for fertile land, for the spirits of the dead, and in honor of Dionysus.
It is said that when Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, he tricked her into eating four to six pomegranate seeds. Demeter refused to bring fruitfulness to the earth until her daughter was returned, and so Zeus commanded Hades to return Persephone. However, the Fates had decreed that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Because Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds, she was condemned to spend that number of months in the Underworld every year. During this time, her mother Demeter mourns and no longer gives fertility to the earth. It is likely that the pomegranate was sacred to Demeter before the theft of Persephone and this is why her daughter was tempted to eat them.
The Titan Orion was represented as marrying Side (a name that means “pomegranate”), connecting the story of the primal hunter to the Goddess. Polykleitos took ivory and gold to sculpt the seated Argive Hera in her temple. In one hand, she held a scepter while offering a pomegranate like a ‘royal orb’ in the other. ” Hera is said to have cast Side (an ancient city of Antalya which also displayed the fruit on its coins) into Erebus — “for daring to rival Hera’s beauty.” This resembles both the story of Atlantis and the story of Andromeda.
In Greece, when one buys a new home it is conventional for a house guest to bring a pomegranate as a house warming present. It is placed under or near the ikonostasi (home altar) of the house as a symbol of abundance, fertility and good luck. When Greeks honor the dead, they make kollyva (boiled wheat mixed with sugar and decorated with pomegranate seeds) as an offering. It is also traditional in Greece to break a pomegranate on the ground at weddings and on New Years. In Armenia, the pomegranate represents fertility, abundance, and marriage. The earliest tarot cards depicted the pomegranate instead of the coin.
Some Jewish scholars believe that it was the pomegranate that was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, an honor shared with the Apple and the Fig. According to the Koran, pomegranates grow in the gardens of paradise, and every seed must be eaten because one cannot be sure which one came from paradise. The Prophet Mohammad is said to have encouraged his followers to eat pomegranates in order to ward off envy and hatred. In Jewish tradition, the pomegranate is a symbol for righteousness, and it is one of the few images found on the ancient coins of Judea as a holy symbol. Exodus directs images of pomegranates to be woven onto the hem of the me’il, the robe of the Hebrew High Priest, and the fruit was depicted on the two pillars (Jachin and Boaz) which stood in front of the temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem. It was also a fruit sacred to Ba’al-Rimmon (Ba’al is a generic title used by many Middle Eastern gods meaning “lord,” in this case Lord of Pomegranates), which is the deity Solomon stood in for in his role as holy King when he married his divine bride, Shulamite. Today, many Torah scrolls are stored with a pair of decorative hollow silver rimmonim (pomegranates) placed over the two upper scroll handles. Rimmonim comes from rim, “to bear a child.” It is entirely possible that the pomegranate is a lost symbol of the Shekinah in Jewish tradition, the Goddess who has been all but stricken from the Abrahamic traditions.
Pomegranates are a motif found in Christian religious decoration as well. They are often woven into the fabric of vestments and liturgical hangings or wrought in metalwork, a tradition which may have been borrowed from Christianity’s Jewish roots. Pomegranates figure in many religious paintings by the likes of Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, often in the hands of the Virgin Mary or the infant Jesus, thus tying the fruit to another “mother goddess” as well as continuing the symbolism of Hera.
While fruitfulness is pointed out as the reason pomegranates are sacred to mother goddesses, the pomegranate is also an incredibly healthy fruit to eat. High in vitamin C and potassium, the pomegranate is a good source of fiber and low in calories. Pomegranate juice is high in three different types of polyphenol antioxidants – tannins, anthocyanins, and ellagic acid. These are present in many fruits, but pomegranate juice contains particularly high amounts of all three. As antioxidants, they are credited with helping in the prevention of cancer and heart disease. It’s unfortunate that the pomegranate is high in citric acid. This makes it not only a seasonal treat, but one I can only indulge in once per season. Any more than I’ve had today, and I’d break out in itchy hives. Fortunately, it is also an astringent due to the high amount of tannin in the juice. I won’t go into detail on why my allergy makes that important.
