Page 9 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS AND EUPHORIAS: Of Eyes and Funnels, Of Tracks and Traces IV

Galiet & Galiet
The Pomegranate is the most exotic star of the winter fruit season and one of the most resilient fruits: it can grow in drought and in sunny and part-shade conditions. It is available from October through December, which coincides with Persephone’s remaining in Hades in winter.
(footnoted)1
Pomegranate seeds. TheThesmophoriaareamacrocosmwhosejuicy seeds menstruate. Think wetness: Dionysian liquid life (semen, milk, wine, ecstasy, vine) merging with Demeter’s dry life, grain. Both Demeter-Persephone and Dionysus are majestically intertwined in the pomegranate: the Two Goddesses are beautiful symbols of ancestral female fertility and of the gift of agriculture that celebrate the lushness and richness derived from the bursting seeds within the womb and beneath the earth. In a way, Demeter and Persephone are both mother and daughter of this enchanting energy that unfurls expanding through the phosphorescence of uterine creation and rhizomes and roots, which pervades the natural cycles of coming into being and passing away. Dionysius is the intoxicating moon whose grenadine becomes the wine of fertility: he is the aphrodisiac spark that dwells within the pomegranate. Hence, both Demeter-Persephone and Dionysus, by sharing the essence of the
1 Chinese ode to the fertility of the Pomegranate and Sandro Boticello’s Madonna of the Pomegranate (detail) c. 1487.Tempera on panel Galleria Degli Uffizi, Florence.
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