Apple Magick
by Eliza Yetter
(written in 2003 / revised 2007)

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.

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.

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