This whole line of jewelry is inspired by some myth or story; I had a breakthrough aha moment yesterday -(usually when I hear good news unrelated to anything creative I am doing but will fuel and solve a creative problem) and finally executed one of the ideas I had for some time, which was wire wrapping clusters of precious and semi precious stones to my jewelry pieces. They are where I wanted to go with them and the end result reminds me of the pomegranite seeds.
Prized for its sturdy skin and juicy arils, the pomegranate became one of the first cultivated fruits and was so essential to daily life that it gained near mythical status.
The pomegranate features richly in mythology, as a symbol of birth, eternal life, and death, owing to its abundance of seeds and ability to 'bleed'. The deep red skin of the pomegranate was thought to link it to the blood of the earth, a taboo colour which also gave the fruit an association with forbidden desire.
From the Middle East the pomegranate made its way to China via the Silk Road, and on to India and Palestine, where its legendary status continued to grow. The pomegranate became known as a precious fruit bringing peace, whilst, according to legend, it was believed that one aril in every pomegranate had descended directly from Paradise.
Ancient lore has it that in Greek and Egyptian mythology the pomegranate was revered as a symbol of both immortality and the passing of the seasons. Egyptians often buried pomegranates with their dead, whilst King Tut took a silver pomegranate vase into the afterlife with him.
The original Phoenician settlers of Carthage, on the coast of North Africa, introduced the pomegranate to Ancient Rome where it was known by the name Punicum Malum or Phoenician apple. Pomegranates were depicted in mosaics, and married women wore headresses made of pomegranate twigs to show off their marital status.
By the time it reached Europe, the pomegranate had become so steeped in mysticism and folklore that in many ways its nutritional value had almost been forgotten. Instead the fruit became the fascination of artists and writers and featured in religious, mythological and heraldic texts and imagery.
During the Age of Discovery, Spanish missionaries planted the first pomegranate trees in the New World but it was not until the end of the 20th century that the West embraced the fruit as a healthy and versatile food source.
Below is the myth of the Greek goddess Persephone and the pomegranite.
Persephone was the daughter of the goddess
Demeter. One day Persephone was dancing with her
friends in a sunny meadow, having a good time, picking flowers.
Suddenly Persephone's spooky uncle
Hades burst out of the ground and grabbed her and pulled her into his chariot! He took Persephone (purr-SEFF-oh-nee) under the ground to his kingdom, the
land of the dead, and told her that he wanted her to be the Queen of the
Underworld and marry him.
Persephone was very sad there under the ground. She wanted to go up into the
sunshine again. But Hades would not let her. Persephone was so sad that she would not eat nor drink.
Meanwhile, back up in the land of the living, Persephone's mother
Demeter was looking everywhere for her and could not find her. She cried and cried. Finally she went to her brother
Zeus, who was also Persephone's father, and asked him to help find Persephone. Zeus, sitting way up there on top of Mount Olympus, was able to see where Persephone was. He told
Hades to give her back.
But Hades said he would only give Persephone back if she had really not
eaten or drunk anything from the land of the dead. Persephone had not eaten much, but it turned out she HAD eaten six pomegranate
seeds. So they agreed that Persephone could spend six months a year above ground with her mother, but she would have to spend the other six months in the
land of the dead with her uncle/husband. And that is how it has been since then, according to the story: that's why we have the
seasons.
If you look at Persephone's story another way, you can see that it is a way of talking about how
grain grows. Persephone represents the grain. Like grain, she comes up out of the earth in the spring, and dances in the meadow with her friends. Her mother
Demeter is glad to see her and makes the sun shine. In the fall, though, Persephone dies as the grain comes ripe and is harvested. She has to go back under the ground again, as men
plant the seeds under the ground. Persephone's mother is sad and cries, like the
rain in winter. Then every spring she comes up again.
There are a lot of Greek and West Asian stories that are like this one. Compare for instance the story of
Dionysos, or the story of
Tammuz or
Attis from
West Asia, or
Osiris from Egypt, or the story of
Jesus, who also died and rose again from the dead.
