Expensive, messy, and highly acclaimed for its health benefits, the pomegranate is stereotypically associated with rich wellness enthusiasts who care too much about questionable scientific research on chemical compounds no one can pronounce. And surely the pomegranate must not have changed its branding much since the beginning of time, with its association with rich pharaohs or kings and ancient medicine, representing prosperity and power in both practice and mythology.
However, the pomegranate holds a lot more ground in its overall mythology. It can represent death, life, marriage, and a myriad of other major facets of life; I believe it encompasses these facets in a rather beautiful way. By growing and understanding the plant, I hope I can not only reveal the cultures that birthed the original symbolism behind these plants, but also the way they might still help us understand the world.
One apt symbol attributed to the plant might be that of abundance. The pomegranate fruit is most commonly known for its sheer number of seeds (called “arils”); in fact, its Latin name “pomum granatum” means many seeds or grain, both of which were universally associated with bountiful harvest and plenitude. The arils themselves resemble small jewels, so much so that the gemstone garnet was named after the pomegranate, “garanatus” meaning “seed-like.”
The plant itself supports this symbolism, having one of the easier care guides for home gardening. The older plants are so fruitful that it’s advised not to leave all the plant’s fruits on the tree each season.
The seeds are extremely easy to germinate; some people suggest removing the fleshy aril in a towel and refrigerating the seed before burying it half an inch deep in a warm seed bed covered in foil. However, when I was younger, I would spit the seeds of some of the arils I ate and simply bite off the tips of the husks before planting them, and these grew quite quickly too, though you can simply plant seeds directly and watch them grow as well.
Propagations are fairly easy as well. Some people recommend taking a year-old hardwood cutting of 10-12 inches and submerging at least 3 nodes into the water. I’m hardly that precise in my propagations, and though my success rate is probably far lower, I have gained several successful propagations simply by sticking suckers of half that length into water.
Thus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that pomegranates are associated with prosperity in the Hindu Vedas or Buddhist ceramic art. In Ancient Egypt, the pomegranate was minted into the official coin and depicted in religious offerings and prayers for bountiful harvest; they were commonly placed in pharaoh tombs to ensure success in the afterlife, placed alongside some of the pharaoh’s wealth.
In Ancient Greece, the pomegranate was associated with Hades, who not only ruled the dead in the Underworld but the precious metals and gemstones underground. Some modern Greek traditions constitute giving artistic depictions of the fruit as housewarming gifts or offerings to home alters to invoke new abundance. Likewise, Turkish families crack the pomegranates on the floor on New Year’s Eve for a plentiful year.
The plant makes its appearance in Abrahamic tradition for a similar reason. The pomegranate was proof of plentitude within the promised lands in Jericho, brought back by Jewish spies. Later sources claim the pomegranate holds 613 seeds, which represent the 613 laws of the Torah, and signify the bounty of the promised land, despite looking outwardly unappealing. Followers of the Kabbalah/Qabbalah, a school of thought in Jewish mysticism, break the pomegranate in rituals for prosperity.
For adjacent reasons, pomegranates often represented fertility and marriage; even in the modern zeitgeist, seeds are often associated with conception, but in ancient times, when fruits and children were both considered bounty, the pomegranate was often smashed in wedding ceremonies to forebode a bountiful marriage in either children or prosperity or happiness, signified through the scattered seeds. In the Middle East, including in some Islamic traditions, the wedding couple breaks the pomegranate as they enter their new home, and Mohammed is said to have associated pomegranates with pregnant women; in Armenia, the bride throws it against the wall. In China, the couple throw it on the bedroom floor.
In Greek mythology, the pomegranate is explicitly associated with the goddess of marriage, Hera; in a statue described by Pausanius, she holds a pomegranate in one hand and a scepter in the other, crowned with the Graces and Seasons. This may be due to the myth of Orion’s wife, Side, who boasts a beauty greater than Hera’s and consequently gets transformed into a pomegranate by the goddess; some people say this is why the wedded constellation returns when the pomegranate starts to ripen in Greece.
Perhaps it’s the fruit’s affiliation with marriage and reproduction that brands it as a fruit of love and sensuality, associated with Aphrodite and featuring in Romeo and Juliet. In Abrahamic religions, King Solomon builds a temple with 200 pomegranates crowning the two entrance pillars, and despite his divinely bestowed intellect, he later encounters his downfall because he follows the gods of his many wives; a Song of Solomon even describes one lover with the “temples” of a pomegranate. Likewise, in the Song of Songs, the lyricist describes his lover as a hidden beauty.
These associations might also represent the pomegranate’s relation to femininity. From the Greek goddesses (Hera and Aphrodite) to Buddhist legends (Hariti or Kishimojin), to tarot cards (The High Priestess behind the pomegranate curtain), the pomegranate is overwhelmingly associated with female figures. And, funnily enough, the plant itself encourages this association, both through the fruit’s positive effects on female ailments like menopausal symptoms (and visually coinciding with blood), and through its flowers— while the pomegranate tree has male flowers, its female (or hermaphroditic) counterparts are self-fruiting, partially negating the male counterpart.
On the other hand, the plant is associated with patriarchal power. As with its aforementioned link with pharaohs, the pomegranate in the Middle Eastern area associated its globe with the imperial orb. In Rome, the pomegranate is simply a symbol of physical power or strength.
Due to the rape and forced residence of Persephone in Greek mythology, the idea of power takes on a different interpretation for the pomegranate and is often analyzed with the impression of ownership and repression, which might be invected on the pomegranate fruit’s enclosing exterior, which traps the beauty and fruitfulness of spring inside. Thus, when the season ends and the exterior of the pomegranate dries up, the winter that is attributed to Demeter’s grief (through the loss of her daughter, Persephone, to the Underground) arrives. Of course, this enactment of power and ownership becomes either apt or funny in the light of its association with marriage, where both interpretations may apply.
However, the meaning of power might simply be an extension of the plant’s representation of abundance and plenty. After all, a talisman that promotes abundance and fertility also implicitly combats a “lack” of something.
Punica Granatum is said to have originated from ancient Persia, an arid desert zone that now resides in the eastern end of the Middle East (now Armenia through Iran to North India). This region is notable for hot, dry summers and harsh, cold winters, and the plant itself looks affected by it— multiple thin trunks covered in flaky, gray-brown bark and thin frail leaves.
Yet the plant persists. The dry heat of plant zones 7-10 is where the plant thrives; The warmth and sun not only improve the health of the plant, but also improve the sugar content of the fruits, which consequently improves their flavor. Even though the pomegranate prefers acidic, loamy (well-draining) soil, it is also relatively drought tolerant and can survive and a wide variety of soil conditions, in full sun or partial shade, and can tolerate colder temperatures than citrus plants. In fact, in the true spirit of rough childhoods, the pomegranate doesn’t appreciate being overly coddled, and its fruit often get stunted by fertilization or split by over-watering.
I grow an indoor dwarf pomegranate by a northeast-facing window. Usually, I water the plant about once a week and do an irregular insertion of vermicompost and fish waste fertilization from my tank and worm bin, but doing these regularly doesn’t make a visible difference to the plant’s health.
Even without fertilizing, the plant can easily become difficult to control if you don’t manage its growth every few years. The pomegranate tends to grow from all directions in small outcropping branches called “suckers.” Some pomegranate producers in California train their bushes off the ground into the shape of a tree for easier floor maintenance.
The best time to prune the plant is in its winter dormancy, unhindered by leaves; coincidentally, suckers are the easiest part of the plant to propagate, and winter is the best time to take propagations.
The plant’s unrealistic ability to thrive in harsh climates might have contributed to its reputation as a symbol of abundance as well as power.
For example, in Chakra practices, the pomegranate is linked to the Muladhara or the Root, which is the foundation of the spine or the body’s energy and affects an individual’s sense of control over survival or finances. The opening and closing of this chakra change how grounded and confident an individual feels.
It should also be noted that there are several interpretations of Persephone’s myth, including the versions in which Persephone willingly eats the pomegranate, and therefore has agency over her own choices. While some classicists think this is an idealization of ancient myth, she picks a narcissus when she initiates the story (where Narcissus is famously known for self-infatuation and self-absorption, the flower might signify a self-made decision), and she is seen by Necate, the goddess of crossroads (crossroads being the crux of a choice, and choice being the crux of agency).
In this case, the “power” of the pomegranate is given to Persephone, and the choice she makes relates to marriage with Hades. And in this case, the meaning of the pomegranate circles back to the idea of prosperity (through Hades) and love. With the emphasis on power, love might also be associated with passion. After all, the pomegranate is associated with blood, as mentioned previously, and blood is symbolically linked to the idea of energy, which is why blood is often brought up in the rhetoric of life and passion.
The aspect of life, and even passion, makes sense in the context of the actual fruit. The pomegranate’s health benefits have been understood from ancient times, being used to cure digestion, fertility, and skin issues; modern research finds that it’s one of the highest-rated antioxidant fruits, and has anti-inflammatory qualities that are believed to combat heart/blood disease. It has anti-bacterial or anti-fungal properties, essential vitamins and minerals, and fiber. Maybe its association with passion, childbirth, and power may be attributed to its relation to the symbolism of life.
However, the pomegranate arguably has equally strong associations with death. As mentioned before, pomegranates are associated with Hades and the Underworld, even past the myth of Persephone, and they were often placed in the tombs of pharaohs for safe passage into the Underworld— in ancient Egypt they were given the role of protecting the dead. In modern Greece, the pomegranate is a Fruit of the Dead, and it’s included in kolyva, a mourning food that commemorates the dead; it’s even used in winter ceremonies to remember the dead and the inevitability of death.
Despite its association with death, the pomegranate is one of the hardier plants I grow indoors. The plant itself is hard to kill and therefore has few treatments specific to its kind.
Some sources online claim the benefit of using oil sprays for scaly bugs (in the winter), sulfur dusting for mites (in June), and soap or Lannate for aphids (throughout the year). Overwatering can give the fruit “blackheart” (Alternaria ssp.) or leaf/fruit spot disease (Cercospora punicae), which has been increasing in severity every year due to current global changes in climate.
In one Greek myth, the god of madness, Dionysus, is torn apart by titans, his blood producing the first pomegranate tree. Because Dionysus is often associated with the repressed, marginalized individuals of society, including women (for example, the Maenads were a group of women integral to Dionysian myth), this might be circled back to the plant’s correspondence to repression (through death) or to the feminine. It might also be associated with passion, both because of the pomegranate’s specific link to the god’s blood but also because this myth correlates almost directly with other myths of Dionysus, in which someone is often pulled apart in a violent frenzy (with passion, of course). Maybe this is a representation of power and passion that has become liberal to the point of devastation. After all, blood can mean life, but blood can also mean death.
You might find this juxtaposition resolved through the myths outlining the transcendence of life, through immortality or the afterlife. In one Zoroastrian (Iranian) tradition, Esfandyar/Isfandiyar eats pomegranate and becomes an invincible hero; likewise, it is eaten on Yalda night, or winter solstice, in which communities celebrate the victory of light over darkness. The Greek historian Herodotus notes the golden pomegranates on Persian phalanx warrior spears, possibly for the same immortality. In Egyptian culture, the pomegranate might suggest a cycle of death and rebirth; like Rhea brings Dionysus together, Isis brings Osiris back to life with pomegranate juice. In some cases, the myth might simply imply that Isis gave Osiris life energy through the symbolic representation of blood. It might also be a reference to the pomegranate’s healing properties. However, in a different interpretation, this rebirth is a transcendence from death. The same can be said about their myths regarding an afterlife, even if that life proceeds in the Underworld.
Maybe this idea comes from the pomegranate’s sweet fruits, which display ripeness not through the glossy sheen of the apple, but through the dried hexagonal form of a dead fruit, ringing with a metallic sound when hit.
Some cultures will associate the pomegranate with divinity. In Abrahamic tradition, the tree is often either suspected as the “Tree of Life” or the “Tree of Good and Evil”; this juxtaposition has the same contradiction as the pomegranate’s association with both life and death, but still implies the fruit’s divine power. In the Koran, the gardens of paradise contain pomegranate trees, and in the Torah, the priest’s garments are adorned with pomegranates. In Buddhist culture, the pomegranate is one of three blessed fruits (along with the citrus and the peach), and in Hinduism, it is one of nine plants offered to Durga, the ten-armed goddess of retribution and justice. In Zoroastrianism, the pomegranate is used in rituals as an explicit symbol of perfection in nature, and the soul’s immortality.
Like I said, this association with perfection or immortality might be a simple exaggeration of the health benefits of the fruit, or its association with the cycle of life and death— the fruit’s transcendence of the dichotomy in favor of the whole. After all, love, passion, marriage, prosperity, and childbirth are all encompassed in the idea of life and death.
In my opinion, however, this breakdown of the pomegranate’s symbolic meaning suggests that the pomegranate simply symbolizes life, whether it’s before or after death. It’s more interesting to say the symbolism of the pomegranate not only transcends death but also life— that is, rather than symbolizing the physical existence of a person, as well as the facets of human life, I think the accumulation of associations with this plant suggests that the pomegranate symbolizes the essence of a person— in other words, their drive or energy.
The pomegranate isn’t just associated with life and death. It’s associated with passion, love, and creation. Thus, it is a symbol not just for birth but for the conception of the idea of a life, and the conception of existence after death. Just like the pomegranate tree itself doesn’t encompass all of the meanings and purposes attached to it, the physical body doesn’t encompass everything attached to it. Thus, the pomegranate appears outside the bounds of life and death just as much as it appears within it.
But then again, it’s just a fruit; the symbolism of the fruit isn’t to be taken so seriously. We can find a fruit infused with meaning, but it will still physically taste and look the same. We can create meaning within it, but the meaning will only last as long as we hold it. And I think that’s part of the beauty of the pomegranate tree: when growing it, it can be like growing a mirror, and seeing yourself through it, containing your entire life through it. And all the while, it can hold nothing at all.