Despite having read rather broadly in the "magical" literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, I've never read anything by or about Israel Regardie. I know him only as the guy who, in violation of his oaths of secrecy, published the Golden Dawn rituals. Commenter Wade, though, turns out to know his work much better, particularly the second title mentioned in my post:
To mention Israel Regardie brings back memories for me. . . . A juvenile infatuation with Crowley as a supposed transgressive figure led me to own a small library of books written or edited by Mr. Regardie. In my teens, his "A Garden of Pomegranates" was a veritable bible to me; I read it over and over. It's remarkable how little I can remember of it nowadays, several decades later; I remember next to nothing.
Today I was rereading Laura Bruno's post "Door Number 21: The Hermit Portal" (May 2020), which came up in "Owl-collecting (grand)mothers, octopuses, and Hermit Portals" (June 27). She compares the Tarot image to "the God Odin, who often appeared on Earth in the guise of a traveling hermit," adding parenthetically, "Sometimes I think Tania Marie and I met him in Mendocino back in 2009, where I first learned Runes."
This story of Laura's meeting a "wizard" in Mendocino and learning Runes from him is briefly recounted in Stories from the Messengers, so I knew in a general way what she was referring to, but I clicked the link and read the longer account in her post "Mendocino/Fort Bragg Vacation" (September 2009). The post ends thus:
I have not done justice to the otherworldy feeling of this encounter. I suppose I could have begun, "Two fair maidens met a werewolf on Full Moon's Eve" or "the shaman and the faeries walked together and down the road" or "a person's word is bond."But I think I'll just say, "we tiptoed into the Pomegranate Garden, tasted the fruit and smiled."
One more usually speaks of a pomegranate orchard, and that is the usual translation of the Ramak's book (to which Regardie's title refers) and of the Bible verse to which it alludes. So the fact that both Regardie and Laura Bruno opted for garden is an additional sync.
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Pomegranates are known for their red berries, and would seem to have a not-so-traditional link to the White Tree I first thought of a White Tree's red fruit when looking at the image of that tree-like image on your earlier post, "Owl and Deer". It is a White Tree/ Hart with Red blossoms or flowers.
I have never read Daymon's third book in his Words trilogy, feeling it likely has too much [text removed/ modified]. I did, however, awhile ago do a search for a few things in that book, and in doing so did read a few selected sections.
In seeing the red blossoms on that white tree image, I remembered very distinctly the mention of Galathilion - the White Tree of Tirion - having Red Berries. Here is the specific passage:
"So this light-silver, dewy rubbed, no abrasion spreading, came far into Arda' Realm, balm silver-veined, sucked into roots of Galathilion, white tree-sliver shooted, red berried..."
I have no idea the context surrounding it, and it may have been part of earlier drafts of some writings that had been shared at one point which is why the memory of the red berries came to me so readily. Regardless, at the time it caught my attention, with this follow up on pomegranates seeming to reinforce the link.
Galathilion and its descendant Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor, both have factored heavily into my own thoughts.
My main association with pomegranates is the myth of Persephone, especially as portrayed by Jane Morris in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting. It is the fruit of the underworld, and those who taste it must remain there. Somewhat similar to the BoM teaching that eating the fruit of the Tree of Life would for Adam and Eve mean losing access to mortality.
I think the various shoots of the original White Tree, planted in various places, also likely tie in to Zenos"s story about the olive tree, at least in a general way.
I suppose pomegranates growing in a garden rather than an orchard is also akin to olives growing in a vineyard.
Pomegranates are a type of berry, and it would be appropriate as such to say they grow in a garden or an orchard. Purists actually reserve the term orchard solely for trees, and technically pomegranates are a shrub, even though I understand they are often cultivated into the form of a tree, and many people refer to them as trees.
The association that came up for me was the Coldplay lyric video for "All My Love". I featured the lyric video on my blog, with one of the specific symbolic references being a large bunch of red balloons that a disguised Chris Martin went around Las Vegas trying to distribute to people. The red balloons grouped together remind me of both the pomegranate berries themselves (large red balls), but also how the seeds are grouped within the berry itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfawgZ5bfBQ&list=RDxfawgZ5bfBQ&start_radio=1
If Nimloth - the White Tree that is both a Tree and a Lady (Asenath) - comes from Galathilion, than it would be reasonable to suppose it also had red fruit. It is interesting that you associated the fruit in the comment above with Persephone and the story that eating the fruit meant one must stay among the dead in the underworld. I had brought up Sauron's commentary earlier regarding Nimloth and Izilba in Words of the Faithful, where he also associated the fruit of the White Tree (falsely) with death and the underworld.
Nimloth, as a reminder, is the tree that Pharazon burned down (I may have mentioned that once or twice...). As such, in my own symbols it has been referred to as an "Ash Tree", as well, since it was turned to ash. On the plane today, I had this interesting urge to watch Shawshank Redemption, a movie I had never seen.
The main protagonist's name is Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins. That last name is French for "Ash Tree", which had some relevance in terms of other symbols that popped up. For example, Dufresne's main buddy in the prison is Morgan Freeman's character called "Red".
Even the title of Redemption gets at the Red play on words. As mentioned in Daymon's books a couple times, there is a running game with Red-emption... Israel's redemption tied to the color Red. Anyway, the mention of the Ash Tree, and linking it to the White Tree, was just one interesting element of an overall story that really became about one man's escape from prison. Since an escape from prison (i.e., this earth) is central to my story, this overall story context in which these symbols were emerging was spot on. Even the name Shawshank - a fabricated name - tied in.
It is also not the first movie in which Morgan Freeman was partnered with a man named Robbins/ Robin, with the other movie being Robin Hood.
I should also clarify that Dufresne has the literal meaning of "from the ash", which referred to an ash tree, but can also, for our purposes, be very specifically applied to both the Red Berries (as coming from the White Tree, or the Ash Tree), as well as to the Phoenix, an important symbol we've covered before and which is also consumed, turned to ash and rises from it. I've likened Abinadi, partly due to his fate at the hands of Noah, to the Phoenix.
"Orchard" is definitely the standard term for a field of pomegranates. In the Song of Solomon, it's "pardes," whence "paradise." Come to think of it, Eden is another example of a place with fruit trees being called a garden rather than an orchard.
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