The Secret Language of Symbols: The Pomegranate

Sweetness, loss and a mother’s fear

There is something rather extravagant about a pomegranate. Beneath its tough skin are hundreds of seeds, each wrapped in a little pocket of juice. Open it, and you discover a fruit that seems to pack in as much life as it possibly can.

For thousands of years, it has symbolised fertility, abundance and renewal. Yet it has also long been associated with death and the underworld. That combination becomes particularly poignant in the story of Persephone and in a dream one of my clients had.

She had fallen in love and married a man who became deeply abusive. They had children, whom she described as her whole world: “The sun rises and sets with them.”

Eventually, she had to leave with the children.

Leaving began another ordeal. The court battles cost a fortune and left her feeling broken, though she remained determined to carry on and build a life with her children. By the time of the dream, those battles had ended. Her financial settlement was unsatisfactory, and custody was shared.

She dreamed she was eating a sweet pomegranate with relish. The juice dribbled down her chin, dripping onto her white dress.

Then she looked down.

Hundreds of smashed, spoiled pomegranates surrounded her. Her children crawled towards her, devouring the seeds.

Horrified, she rushed to stop them, but it felt too late.

The fruit that binds

In Greek mythology, Persephone is gathering flowers when Hades, ruler of the underworld, abducts her. Her mother, Demeter, searches for her in grief and anger. As the goddess of agriculture, Demeter can withhold growth, and the earth becomes barren.

Eventually, Zeus intervenes and orders Persephone’s return. Before she leaves, however, Hades gives her a pomegranate to eat. In the ancient Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she tells her mother that he compelled her to eat it against her will. Having tasted the food of his realm, she must spend a third of each year below ground, returning above for the remainder.

What struck me about my client’s dream was the connection that endures after departure.

She had left her husband, but their children meant that she could not simply leave the relationship behind. Shared custody required continued contact with the man from whom she had needed to escape.

The pomegranate seemed a fitting image for that predicament. Love, marriage and the creation of a family had bound her to someone who subsequently caused her enormous suffering.

Her children were deeply loved. Her anguish concerned the circumstances surrounding them, and how little control she now had over some parts of their lives.

Sweetness, white and red

The dream begins with enjoyment. She eats with relish. Before she sees the ruined fruit, it still tastes sweet.

We explored her associations. Might that sweetness recall falling in love, her hopes for marriage, or the pleasure of becoming a mother? Might it also suggest that, despite everything, she still had an appetite for life?

The white dress suggested more: a wedding dress, innocence, a fresh start, something she wanted to keep unspoiled. Against it, the red juice was startling, even blood-like.

White and red also have a place in alchemy, which Jung explored as a symbolic account of psychological transformation.

Albedo, the whitening, is associated with washing, purification, clarification and the beginnings of seeing more clearly. Psychologically, it can suggest gaining some distance from the confusion we have been caught in, allowing us to recognise what has happened.

Rubedo, the reddening, is associated with the coming together of opposites, often depicted in alchemy as a union of red and white. Psychologically, we might think of it as bringing what we have come to understand into the way we actually live.

Seen in this light, the red juice spilling across the white dress becomes especially evocative. The white may suggest innocence, or the wish to begin again; the red brings blood, feeling, anger, desire and the messiness of being alive.

Perhaps the image speaks to the difficulty of starting over when experience has changed us. We may long to feel untouched by what happened, yet need to make room for feelings that are anything but clean or orderly.

I would be wary of declaring this a rubedo dream, as though the appearance of red meant that some stage of recovery had been completed. The dream has too many troubling aspects for that. But the colours allow another possibility to sit alongside the stain: the red is also the juice of a fruit she is enjoying. It carries pleasure as well as pain.

Beneath the sudden shift from sweetness to devastation may lie a painful question: How did something I wanted so much lead me here?

That question can all too easily become self-blame. Loving someone, trusting them, or hoping for a family does not make a person responsible for the abuse they suffer.

What the children are taking in

The most frightening moment comes when the children begin eating.

They crawl toward their mother, picking up seeds from the spoiled fruit. Something associated with nourishment has become something she urgently wants to protect them from.

One possible reading concerns her fear of what they are absorbing: the conflict, the emotional atmosphere, and the consequences of their parents’ relationship. She has fought to protect them, yet the custody arrangement means she cannot always be there.

The children might also represent a young, trusting part of herself: the part that reached toward love without knowing what it would encounter. Their innocent movement toward the spoiled fruit could express her horror at discovering that something she had entered with hope and trust had become harmful.

Both possibilities deserve time. We worked with the images alongside her own experience of them, letting their meaning emerge rather than pinning

them down too soon.

Her rush to stop the children carries something of Demeter’s desperation. At the same time, her own experience recalls Persephone’s unwanted descent and the tie that prevents complete disengagement. She is both the woman who has suffered and the mother trying fiercely to protect.

The sense that it is too late is especially painful. After the expense and exhaustion of the court battles, she may have hoped for greater safety and freedom. Instead, she was left with an arrangement she found deeply unsatisfactory.

What remains possible

The pomegranate’s seeds have long symbolised the possibility of new life. In this dream, however, they lie among spoiled fruit. We need to hear the horror before rushing to reassurance.

Her fear for the children is understandable. It deserves attention without turning that fear into a prediction of their future. The dream shows us how frightened and powerless she feels; it cannot tell us everything their lives will become.

The red and white may also offer something she can return to over time. Can her trusting part find protection without disappearing entirely? Can she reclaim pleasure without fearing it will end in disaster? Can her anger help her recognise and defend her boundaries?

These are questions to sit with, not to resolve in a single interpretation.

She had left. She had endured the court battles. She was still there, caring for her children and determined to carry on. The dream’s terror deserved to be taken seriously, as did the courage with which she kept living.

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In these blogs, I share my thoughts on dreams and their symbolism. When I discuss a client’s dream, I put far more work into it than I reveal here: time spent exploring their associations, memories, and feelings, which helps the dream’s personal meaning emerge. For confidentiality reasons, I omit much of this material.  

My aim in this series is to help readers become curious about symbols and recognise their possibilities, while keeping the full exploration of a client’s inner life within therapy.

All client material is shared with explicit consent, and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.