Apple
Ritual Uses
Apple bark, blossoms and pips can be
used in incenses for the planet Venus,
the element of water & to consecrate
emeralds & amethysts or to invoke a wren totem.
Apples may be used in incenses
to invoke & honour the goddess in
her many aspects, including
Aphrodite, Ceridwen, Diana, Eve, Flora, Godiva,
The Hesperides, Iduna, Olwen, Titaea, Venus,
Nehallenia, The Mecirc liae [apple nymphs],
Inanna, Demeter, Iduna, Morgana,
Pomona & Nemesis.
The apple is sacred to the sun god and
may be used to honour and invoke him
in his many aspects including Apollo,
Zeus, Herakles, Lugh, Bel, and soon.
Apple wands are employed
at Beltane, and in love magic.
The symbol of the apple is used on
several occasions throughout the year-
the apple blossom to represent
the rebirth of spring, apples at
the beginning & end of the harvest,
cider at Samhain, and the bare tree,
wassailed at Yule.
The blossom can be used in
temple decorations or chaplets,
apples can be eaten instead of the cakes,
and cider used to replace the ritual wine,
or simply used as part of
the feast which follows the ritual.
Wassailing can become part of the
Yule festivities, either during
the ritual or simply to welcome
all comers to a Yule party.
If you have apple trees
they can be wassailed as part
of the Yule ritual or in a personal rite.
Apple is an important emblem of initiation,
which is a metaphorical death & rebirth
into the mysteries of the goddess.
The symbolism of the tree
is an important subject for any
initiatory candidate to meditate upon,
in the months & weeks leading up to the rite.
An apple bough may be used to summon
the candidate to the circle & given to
him or herto carry into the circle
at the beginning of the rite.
In British tradition the legendary Isle
in the West was Avalon which
translates as the "Isle of Apples",
from the Welsh afal meaning "apple".
King Arthur- who was originally a Celtic sun god-
was taken there as he lay dying by Morgana ["Of the Sea"],
the sacred island goddess who guarded
the apples of the Otherworld.
To the Celts the afterlife was
lived in a permanent summer,
a land of the ever young, an apple orchard
where the trees were always in fruit.
The sea god Manannan had a palace called
Emhain of the Apple Trees on the Isle of Arran.
The Greeks believed that the good
spent their afterlife in Elysium,
which means "apple-land" or "apple orchards".
Its entrance was near the
Pool of Memory and it was a happy land of perpetual day,
ruled by Cronos, god of time.
The inhabitants could choose
to be reborn on earth wherever they elected.
As we have seen, eating an apple from the Otherworld tree
confers eternal youth, immortality or rebirth.
It represents self-knowledge,
rebirth and all the riches of the spirit,
a process known as initiation.
However, gaining the fruit is fraught
with danger and the mythic hero has
to travel through the underworld or journey
to an island in the far west.
The tree was always guarded,
usually by a snake or dragon.
The tree of the Hesperides was protected
by the serpent Ladon, which Herakles slew
in order to steal three apples.
In Judaic legend a serpent lurked
at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge.
The monsters are the Guardians of the Threshold
exemplifying the internal demons such as fear,
doubt and self imposed limits which
must be overcome.
Moreover, the treasure cannot be won
with logic and action alone,
but only with the help of the goddess within,
symbolised in the stories
by the various women and goddesses
that help the hero to complete his quest.
The story of Adam and Eve probably pre-dates
monotheistic Judaism by thousands of years.
Eve is the Great Goddess,
initiating Adam into her mysteries.
The fitness of a future king
was once tested by the trial
of him having to shoot an apple
from the head of a royal child
and as late as the 15th century,
initiation into the Archer's Guild involved
the candidate having to shoot an apple
from his son's head.
The original prize at the Olympic games
was an apple spray- a promise of immortality.
Plutarch said that though a foot race
was the sole contest in the games,
a single combat also took place
which ended in the death of the vanquished.
Once the fruit has been eaten,
the hero can never return to being what he was before,
he is fundamentally changed, initiated into the
mysteries of the Goddess.
To eat the fruit without having earned it,
simply to gain power, means death.
The rowan berry, red apple and red nut
are described as the food of the gods or of the dead,
and there was a taboo against eating red foods,
except in special rituals.
Herakles was called Melon ["of apples"]
in recognition that the apples
were given him because of his wisdom,
but this came with death.
The fairy queen warned Thomas the Rhymer
about eating the apples in her garden
as she said that to partake of the food of the dead
is to know no return to the land of the living;
in its raw state it is poisonous.
He therefore picked the fruit and presented it to
demonstrating both self sacrifice and
his love of the the queen, Goddess.
The queen transformed the apple
into bread and wine, which he could share.
The magical apple tree grows
on the Island of the West, where the sun
goes down and begins its nightly journey
through the underworld, on its way
to rebirth with the dawn.
It is in the underworld that initiation
into the goddess's mysteries
of death and resurrection take place.
Thus the apple marks the entrance
to the underworld, and the apple
is a passport to its revelations.
The Greeks believed that carrying an apple bough
that bore flowers, buds and fruit
at the same time would enable them
to enter the underworld.
In Celtic myth, Bran was summoned
by the goddess to enter the Land of Youth
with a silver white-blossomed branch
in which the bloom and branch were one.
In the realm of the goddess, birth, life,
death and rebirth are all one, and follow
each other in turn.
In this sense, the apple is the tree of immortality.
In conclusion,
the apple, symbolically and actually,
resembles the sun, which is born each dawn,
travels across the sky, changing colour
from yellow to red as it sets in the
western sky, before journeying
through the underworld to be
reborn in the rosy dawn in a froth
of apple blossom clouds.
At dawn and sunset,
cut in half by the horizon,
the sun looks like a cut apple.
When an apple is cut in half across
the middle, it reveals a clear pentacle,
the symbol of the goddess,
her womb and her promise of immortality.
Five is the sacred number of the goddess
and stands for her five stations of the year.
The pentacle is the orbit described by
the planet Venus, the Morning & Evening Star
which heralds the rising of the sun, & shines
after it has set, a promise of its rebirth.
The pentacle displayed in the centre
of an apple was the symbol of Kore,
the Greek maiden of spring, who
became Persephone the queen
of the underworld after
her marriage to Hades,
lord of the dead.
APPLE LORE
Source(s)
Special
Thanks
© Anna Franklin
First published in
Silver Wheel Magazine.
Graphics and Template By Darigon
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