The pomegranate is ripe with connections to the Divine Feminine (pun intended). In Solomon’s Song of Songs, in his ecstatic celebration of love to his bride - the land of Israel - he exclaims “ Your lips are like a scarlet thread… your temple is like a split pomegranate from within your kerchief..” With a strong undercurrent of sexual innuendo, it is no wonder the pomegranate, with its bursting magenta gemstone seeds is seen as a symbol of passion and sexual desire.
From the Greek mythology of Persephone and the Eleusinian Mysteries to the Sumerian goddess Ishtar, pomegranates have been not only the food of the goddess, but also used as holy offering and incorporated into rituals for mystical initiation. With numerous mentions throughout the Torah, and given a role of adornment within the ancient temples and upon priestly robes, the pomegranate has played a fairly significant role - for a fruit. While there is a Jewish tradition that elevates pomegranates into sacred symbols because it was said they had 613 seeds, corresponding to the 613 mitzvot of the Torah, we know that the exact number of seeds in each pomegranate varies. However, that doesn’t make this fruit any less sacred in our eyes, nor in the eyes of the Sages. The formative Kabbalistic work of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, written in 1548, is titled Pardes Rimonim, “Pomegranate Orchard”, and laid the groundwork to organize the rather vague and unstructured Kabbalistic thought up to that time.
Lovers of Jewish mysticism and Divine Feminine wisdom that we are, one of our favorite things about these jewel box fruits, is that we believe it was the “forbidden fruit” in the Garden of Eden. Given that there was no modern irrigation back in the Iron Age, when the Eden myth was written, there is no way an apple could have grown in the arid desert climate. Furthermore, the original Hebrew text just calls it a “fruit”. So how do we know that this “fruit” was in fact a pomegranate? What other fruit has such a juicy history in the underworld, mystery, sexual awakening, and gnosis? Of course it was a dripping, decadent, bursting pink pomegranate with a crown on her head.
