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It is thought that the apple originated between the Caspian and the Black
seas, but the fruit has been enjoyed almost as long as the human race has existed. Remains of the fruit have been found in Stone Age villages, while the Greeks and Romans cultivated and spread several varieties. Cultivated apples were introduced into America by settlers from England.
The apple was one of the most sacred trees of the ancient Europeans; under Celtic law, to fell one was punishable by death. A 7th century poem states, "three unbreathing things paid for only with breathing things: an apple tree, a hazel bush, a sacred grove". This importance is reflected in the amount of lore which has gathered around it. As we shall see, it is of colossal significance in the western mystery tradition. It plays its part in several major festivals of the year, and to give us a clue to its mystery and
consequence we will follow its stages in the journey around the wheel of the year.
The spring equinox- or more specifically, March 19th - was sacred to the
Nordic goddess, Iduna, who on this day appeared as a swallow to herald the arrival of spring. She was the wife of Bragi, god of poetry, and was the
personification of spring or immortal youth. She had no birth and was never to know death. The Three Fates or Norns guarded a tree of magical apples which granted eternal youth and immortality, and only allowed Idun to pick the fruit. She kept these wonderful apples in a casket and gave the gods a daily taste to keep them young and beautiful. No matter how many were eaten, the number in the casket remained the same. Once she was kidnapped and the gods felt the onset of old age. The cold wintry wind, Thiassi, detained her in the frozen north until she was rescued by Loki, the south wind, the harbinger of her return in spring. Another version of the story says that she fell from the world tree Yggdrasil in the autumn and was held in underworld until her husband Bragi went to rescue her. He wrapped her in a white wolfskin, representing the snow and the months of January and February. The strings of Bragi's harp were silent in the underworld. This story is a plain recounting of the myth of the goddess of vegetation carried away in the autumn, while the absence of Bragi symbolised that the singing of the birds had ceased in the winter. The power of the apples represents nature's resurrection in the spring. Idun personifies the light half of the year between the spring and autumn equinoxes and thus is the keeper of the apples of life.
The apple blossom in the spring confirms that the light half of the year has well and truly returned. At this time the apple is associated with the summer goddess of vital energy, fertility, lust, love and marriage, called by various names: in Welsh myth, she is the goddess Olwen, She of the White Track; in Greek, Aphrodite, and in Latin, Venus, but she has many other names around the world.
Aphrodite and an apple feature in one of the most famous tales of love and passion. At the wedding of Peleus and the water nymph Thetis all the Olympian gods attended. The Fates and Muses sang, Ganymede poured nectar and the fifty Nereids [water nymphs]danced a spiral dance. Crowds of centaurs attended and the couple were given many fine presents. However, the goddess Eris ["Strife"] had not been invited and while Hera, Athene and Aphrodite were talking, she rolled a golden apple at their feet which bore the inscription "To the fairest." The three goddesses each claimed it. Zeus commanded Paris, Prince of Troy, to make the choice; Hera offered him wealth and power while Athene offered him fame and wisdom, but Aphrodite won by promising him the
most beautiful woman alive, Helen. Helen was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta, but when Paris visited her, she fled with him to Troy. Menelaus and his brother, Agamemnon, organised a large Greek expedition against Troy to win her back . Thus the apple is thought to represent choice and beauty, passion and its ambivalent implications.
The apple also appears in Norse mythology in connection with love and
fertility. The king Rerir longed for a son and heir and prayed to the goddess Frigga who eventually sent her messenger, Gna, with a miraculous apple which she dropped into his lap. He recognised the goddess's messenger and ran home with the apple to share it with his wife and so the hero Volsung was born.
This connection with love, marriage and fertility was preserved in folk lore
and folk magic. The women of Kirghizstan rolled under a single apple tree to conceive. In some parts of Europe an apple tree as planted at the birth of a male child, and if the tree grew well, so would the boy. In England apples were often used in love divination. To discover whom she would marry a girl would peel an apple and throw the unbroken peel over her shoulder. If it formed a letter it was the initial of her future husband. In Austria it was believed that a girl could learn her future by cutting open an apple and counting the seeds. If there were an even number then she would marry shortly. If she had been unfortunate enough to cut one of the seeds however, she would have a difficult life and end up a widow. If a girl had several suitors and could not chose between them she might remove the pips from an apple and throw them onto the fire, reciting the name of lover with each one. If one of the seeds popped she would marry that man.
There is a strong connection between the fertility of women and the fertility of the apple tree. German lore says that if a fruitful woman with several children eats the first apple from a young tree, then it too will have many fruitful seasons.
The apple harvest begins at the beginning of August, which the Celts referred to as Lughnasa, the time of strength and fruitfulness. A drink of Lamb's wool or Lammas wool ( from the Gaelic La Mas Nbhal or "feast of the apple gathering" ) was prepared, a hot spiced drink of cider and ale, with toast or pieces of apple floating in it.
At the beginning of November, the Romans celebrated the festival of Pomona, goddess of fruit. The expansion of the Roman empire meant that the customs associated with her festival spread throughout Europe and the Celts adopted some of them, which still survive to this day, such as bobbing for apples at Halloween, which the Celts called Samhain, the Festival of the Dead and the start of winter. In Wales at Halloween apples were roasted in the chimney corner, suspended on twine, and were added to ale and brandy in the wassail bowl with raisins, spices and sugar. Another custom was the suspended horizontal stick with a lighted candle on one end and an apple on the other. You had to catch the apple in your mouth with your hands tied behind your back. Cider has strong links with magic and may have been used in the orgiastic rites of the goddess. Strong cider was called "the Witches Brew".
As part of Yule festivities apple trees were, and in some places still are,
wassailed or honoured to encourage them to crop heavily in the coming year. The trees are visited and cakes or bread soaked in cider are placed in the branches, and cider poured over the roots. Occasionally roasted apples floating in cider are offered. Sometimes shots are fired to scare away evil spirits from the orchards. Trees that are poor bearers of fruit are not honoured. The pouring of cider on the roots may well have replaced the more ancient practice of pouring blood on them as a ritual act of fertilisation. Wassailing was also introduced into parts of America.
Not only apple trees were wassailed. Special wassail bowls, made of wood and bound in iron bands, decorated with mistletoe, evergreens and ribbons, were carried in procession and offered to all people that were met with festive songs. They were filled with Lamb's Wool [hot ale or cider, roasted crab apples, toast, nutmeg, sugar and eggs]. In Wales the wassail making took place on Twelfth Night. Cakes and baked apples were layered with sugar in a wassail bowl with twelve handles, then warm, spiced beer was poured over them. It was passed around the company then the wassail [the cakes and apples] was shared out. In Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Twelfth Night fires were lit, twelve smaller fires and a thirteenth larger one. The farmers
and servants gathered around it in the winter dark to drink a toast in cider
to the next harvest.
We can now see that the apple has five stations throughout the year
representing birth, marriage, maturity, death and rebirth. Five itself is a
significant number in connection with the apple tree, more of which later.
The apple tree can be seen marking the passage of the year itself and also the solar cycle: the frothy apple blossom in the spring as the clouds of dawn; the budding and ripening apples changing from yellow to red, as the sun does as it crosses the sky; the mature red apple as the setting sun; the withering of the trees in autumn, and their wassailing in the depths of dead winter to encourage their rebirth in the spring.
According to Robert Graves [in "The Greek Myths"] the name of the sun god Apollo may be derived from abol meaning "apple". The Greek goddess Nemesis carried an apple bough in one hand and a wheel in the other, symbolising the passage of the year from birth to death to rebirth. In Baltic lore the sun lived in a castle at the far end of the sea. During the day she rode across the sky in her copper wheeled chariot. At dusk she washed her horses in the sea, then drove to her apple orchard in the west. The setting sun was a red apple that fell from the orchard.
In Greek myth the Hesperides were three maidens who lived on an island in the west where the golden apples of immortality grew. They were Aegle which means "brightness", Erythraea "the red one" and Hespera "evening light." Their names refer to the sunset when the sky is the colour of ripening apples, and when the sun itself, cut in half by the horizon, appears like a cut apple as it sinks and dies in the west.
In European mythology legendary isles of apples are common, and always lie in the west, the place of the dying sun, from which it proceeds to enter the Underworld, or Land of Youth, travelling through the realms of death in preparation for its rebirth. All Neolithic and Bronze Age paradises were orchards; "paradise" means "orchard".
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 the queen, demonstrating both self sacrifice and his love of the 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 also the orbit described by the planet Venus, the Morning and Evening Star which heralds the rising of the sun, and 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.
Ritual uses:
Apple bark, blossoms and pips can be used in incenses for the planet Venus, the element of water and to consecrate emeralds and amethysts or to invoke a wren totem.
Apples may be used in incenses to invoke and honour the goddess in her many aspects, including Aphrodite, Ceridwen, Diana, Eve, Flora, Godiva, The Hesperides, Iduna, Olwen, Titaea, Venus, The Mêliae [apple nymphs],
Nehallenia, Inanna, Demeter, Iduna, Morgana, Pomona and Nemesis. The apple also 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 so on.
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 and 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 also an important emblem of initiation, which is a metaphorical death and 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 and weeks leading up to the rite. An apple bough may be used to summon the candidate to the circle and given to him or her to carry into the circle at the beginning of the rite.
Medicinal:
Apples, apple peel and apple juice have a variety of very safe herbal uses.
Raw apples, eaten after meals, reduce acidity in the stomach and can help prevent indigestion and heartburn, reduce plaque deposits on teeth and therefore prevent tooth decay. Apples also help to de-toxify the blood and are useful in the treatment of arthritis and rheumatism, gout and high
cholesterol levels. Eaten at bedtime, apples can help insomnia. Stewed apples are a laxative, help reduce fevers and if left out overnight are used as part of the treatment for candida albicans. Baked apples can be used as a poultice for skin inflammations.
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