Panagiotis showed me some tomatoes he has grown and explained to me how they are raised from ancient seeds, all the way from Peru, Panagiotis is a member of a scheme, exchanging seeds from various countries, helping to keep ancient food species alive and a type of Asian cucumber, again, an ancient species,.
This is not all, Panagiotis has an artistic flair,and has created the most fascinating sculptures, made from stuff you or I would have thrown out, old lamps, useless bit of metal etc. Some of his sculptures adorn his garden and add a wonderful Bohemian touch to his house.
I could visit Panagiotis every day, there is always something new to learn, up there in his little corner of paradise, called Ancient Sicyon. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address. The Pomegranate — Photo by Fir Aphrodite Venus , Salvador Dali Proserpine-Dante Gabriel Rossetti Drupes organic pomegranate jam. More Magical Greek myths:.
The blue blood of the Greek Gods. Arcadia, Greece: Nymphs, Naiads and Dryads. How the ancient city of Athens got its name and the sacred olive trees of Greece. Search for:. Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Welcome to Greeker than the Greeks. Join me on Facebook. Every Picture Tells A Story. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy. It was a narcissus, the exact flower her father hoped that she would find. As she reached down to pluck it from its resting place, her feet began to tremble and the earth was split in two. Life for Persephone would never be the same again.
The thought of this brought terror to her heart, yet any screams of protest were soon lost within the darkness, as they descended quickly into the Underworld below. She searched high and low for her dear daughter, who had vanished from both the heavens and the earth. Consumed by depression over the loss of her child, she soon ceased to remember her worldly duties as Goddess of Grain and Growth.
As she watched the plants wither and die all around her, she felt her own hopes begin to fade as well. At the same time, deep down in the realm of the dead, Hades hoped to explain his actions to the sweet Persephone. Professing his love, he told her of the plan her father helped deploy and begged her to stay and be his wife.
Far above the darkness of the Underworld, her mother continued to wander the forlorn earth. Eventually she found her way to the town of Eleusis, where she rested by a flowing fountain. Stripped of all her vital energy, she appeared old and wrinkled beyond her years. In The Unicorn in Captivity , a medieval European tapestry one can inspect before touring the quince grove at the Met Cloisters in Manhattan, a unicorn sits within a low-fenced pasture beneath a pomegranate tree.
The unicorn appears to be bleeding from wounds of the hunt that chained him to this tree. The blood is pomegranate juice. Pomegranate seeds are incisor-shaped—fat at one end, where a blood blush pools, narrowing at the translucent tip, where the seed might, were it an actual tooth, root in the jaw.
If we believe the Doctrine of Signatures—the idea that God has written a language in plants that we can read to identify our medicines—this shape means pomegranates can relieve oral maladies. The Doctrine of Signatures was part of the worldview by which early doctors, herbalists, and apothecaries transformed an organism into a specific medicinal resource, an alchemy we present-day capitalists surely understand.
In my glass right now, as I write this: iced pomegranate juice and the black-winged corpse of a fruit fly. The juice is sweet, acidic, and tannic, wicking the moisture from my mouth in a pleasant way, a quenched feeling that also makes me want another drink.
Juicing a pomegranate can be as easy as pressing the fruit between your palm and a countertop, crushing it gently as you roll, then cutting off the top and inserting a straw. Eating pomegranate seeds requires a bit more work. Start by scoring the peel, then pull the fruit into quarters, revealing garnet-colored seeds. She abandons her duties and walks among mortals disguised as the sort of old woman who might look after the children at court. Nothing will grow until her daughter returns.
And even after Persephone comes home, she has eaten the food of the dead and must go back to Hades for a fourth or a third or half the year, provoking another winter.
This cycle of death and rebirth makes Demeter and Persephone empathetic to mortals as no other gods are. Pomegranates represent fertility, but also a pause in fertility—in myth and in life. In ancient Greece, Dioscorides recommended pomegranate seeds and rind as birth control. Subsequent experiments in the s and 80s on the contraceptive powers of plants found that female rats fed pomegranates and paired with male rats who were not fed pomegranates experienced a 72 percent drop in fertility.
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