Apples and Magic
by K.D. Spitzer
~from Llewellyn's Magical Almanac 2008

Apples have a long association with the gods, their magical powers called upon in deceit, distraction, and generally in divination - an association that continues today. The Romans introduced apple orchards to Britain; their goddess Pomona gave it powers of fertility and love.

The most famous place in legendary Britain is the Isle of Apples. Surrounded by water, it can only be glimpsed through the mists. It is Avalon, where Excalibur was forged and King Arthur awaits with his sister Morganna for his call to England's gravest peril.

Among the Celts, the fruit of the apple tree symbolized knowledge, magic, and prophesy. The tree was of the Celtic Underworld and acted as a sort of bridge between the living and the dead; it is an endless source of sustenance, satisfying hunger, yet always entire. Reminding us if its spiritual roots, it holds a special place at Samhain, the Celtic festival honoring the dead. We drink apple cider, make candy apples, and bob for apples. Some even bury apples so the souls waiting to be reborn will have food for the journey.

To the Gauls, the apple tree was as sacred as the oak tree.

The apples are placed in a large pan of water, which symbolizes the journey of the soul across the water to the far shore of Avalon and immortality. Trying to grab an apple with only the teeth reveals the difficulty of the trip. And as is the custom, the first person at the party to do so will have the kiss of the goddess and thus be the first to marry in the coming year.

Apple magic can be enhanced by dropping apples in water to see how they float on the surface; they don't always rise with the stem side up. Carefully carve a small indent in the top of the apple, and then insert a pink tea light. Place a bowl of these lights on your later and burn them to honor Venus and Pomona to attract love or enhance fertility. Use yellow tea lights if you want to increase your fertile imagination.

There are many ways of using an apple to find one's true love. Country girls in the United States, following the customs of their European grandmothers, would light a candle in the dark. Then, looking in a mirror, they would pare an apple. This spell guaranteed that the face of their future husband would be revealed in the mirror before they finished peeling. Possibly a slug of hard cider or applejack helped in this vision.

If the mirror did not display the identity of their own true love, another spell likely would. Again, it required peeling an apple. Back in the olden days, peeling an apple in one continuous unbroken piece was considered a housewifely virtue. So an unmarried woman would take her best paring knife and get to work. Once she had the peel, she would throw it over her left shoulder. When it landed o the floor, the peel's shape would form a letter of the alphabet - the first letter of the name of her future husband.

Since ancient times it has been deemed unlucky to harm an apple tree. Fortunately, this does not include the yearly pruning of the apple tree which, in fact, keeps apple trees healthy by preventing their limbs from becoming overburdened with fruits and breaking.

The branches and twigs that are pruned from the apple tree are often used for making magickal items such as wands, beads, wreaths, pentagrams for the walls, and even stick birdhouses. With a wood burner and a carving knife, runes and rune sticks can also be made from the branches that have been pruned off of the apple tree.

When you cut the apple fruit breadthwise you see the five-pointed star made from the placement of the seed casings. This symbol, the pentagram, is the traditional symbol of knowledge. That the five-pointed star, pentagram, is surrounded by the circular shape of the halved apple, the symbol becomes a pentacle. This is a symbol of protection, the protection of sacred knowledge.

Biblically, the apple is sometimes believed to be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is believed by many to be the fruit Eve gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden, although the exact fruit given is often hotly debated by biblical scholars.

Numerous superstitions surround the fruit of the apple tree which has most commonly been used in love magick and divinations. People once believed that apples would keep them young forever. Also, to eat an apple without first rubbing it clean was a symbolic gesture of challenging the "Devil."

In Germany there was a belief that if a woman, one that had given birth to many children, ate the first apple from a young apple tree, the tree would have many fruitful years to come.

One custom regarding the apple fruit is to bury a few apples, after their harvest, to appease the spirits of the dead. My children and I continue this custom every year on Samhain: burying apples in the garden in the hopes of appeasing the spirits of our dead ancestors. We also use this as a time of remembrance.

It was once quite common on New Year's Day to cut an apple through from top to bottom. If you could do this without slicing any of the seeds you would have a healthy and prosperous year.

And, of course, the best apple magic requires eating an apple every day, thanking the goddess of her blessings. It keeps the doctor away.

thank you is been a long time a looking for that

This is great, LE! I love it when the State Fair starts and I can get my candy apples. Gets me ready for Samhain. Something fun we are doing at the office for our activity committee--we are having a contest to identify different types of apples next week in honor of Johnny Appleseed's b-day (9/26).