Apple Folklore
Magick and Mystery
In the Plant Wonder Collective, this August is apple month! The time is ripe to enjoy the bounty of these harvest fruits and their deeply rooted ties to folklore and traditions.
Of course, it’s not quite autumn yet, but in August we enjoy the beginning of harvest season and look ahead to the coming shift. And to many, autumn and apples are inseparable. It feels so simple: apples are at their peak in autumn, they pair perfectly with warming fall spices, and so we associate them with the season. But apples have a complex and contradictory folkloric history that goes beyond sugar and spice. As it turns out, there are deeper roots that inextricably tie apples to autumn on a symbolic and even magickal level.
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In folklore and symbolism, apples represent both life and death, the underworld, fertility, love, knowledge, and remembrance.
Apples can be a tool for various forms of divination and even a means to commune with lost loved ones.
The sabbats of Mabon (the autumn equinox) and Samhain (Halloween) are associated with apples: at Mabon they represent the fruitful harvest and life, while at Samhain they symbolize the dying of the year and honoring the dead.
Apples have held a place of high esteem in lore since ancient times, from Eve’s first bite imparting knowledge to Hera’s orchard of golden apples that grant immortality. There are legends of apples associated with love, lust, immortality, and death across many cultures. The Norse told tales of the goddess Idunn who kept the apples of eternity, and the Celts associated apples with the land of Faerie. A long-standing tradition of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is to eat apples dipped in honey as a symbol of hope.
Folk practices using apples for magick and divination run the gamut. In days of old, young people slept with apples under their pillows to dream about their future spouses. If you carved the skin from an apple in one long ribbon and tossed it over your shoulder, it was said to land in the shape of your future lover’s initials. While druids made wands from the wood of apple trees, many boat makers would not carve boats from apple wood for fear of bringing on bad luck. Baking an apple pie could attract love, or keep your lover true to you. Charms, pendants, and “shrunken head” dolls were carved from apples.
The next time you take a bite into a tart, juicy apple, think about all the light, dark, and deep meanings it can represent!
“Apple is the key to magic and is used for medicine, love spells. […] Apple for rebirth and immortality.”
Alice Hoffman
Magic Lessons
This article is adapted from one that was first published in Botanical Anthology vol. 1 issue 2. You can check it out HERE!