The Druidic College

The Sun sits low in the sky. As we gaze into his fiery center, a crimson sphere becomes visible in our mind's eye. Now is the time of love, of transformation, and the time of the lunatic! Let us now celebrate the Moon of the apple.

The Quert is feminine; it's element water. Her powers are of love, healing, and immortality. Her fruit and limbs are used in love rituals, handfastings and garden magick. In the Celtic mythology of our ancestors, the apple was regarded as the fruit of immortality. In Welsh the word “Avalon” means “apple island,” and is synonymous with the Irish Gaelic, Emain Albach, “the Island of Apples.” Avalon is synonymous with the Otherworld and the realm of the Lady of the Lake.

The apple tree has very close ties with the magician and shaman, and is used by them when undergoing magickal transformations or Otherworld journeys. In legend, Otherworld visitors arrive in guise of the shaman, bearing an apple branch as a sign of their mystical authority. The shaman, magician and the lunatic are credited with being aware of two sets of senses and the ability to use either as appropriate, in this world or the other. The “Otherworld” senses are said to be clearer and more perceptive than those of the mundane. In fact, the time of death is said to be that at which the lunatic’s senses return to him.

In the saga of the voyage of Bran, a woman of the Otherworld appears to him speaking of the beauties and wonders of the Otherworld. She also is shown carrying a silver apple bough. So entranced was Bran with her depiction that he immediately set sail for this wondrous realm and has many adventures along the way. It is the symbolic apple branch that the Word Ogham of Cuchulain refers to when it describes the apple as an “excellent emblem,” and “a sign of protection.”

The Quert Ogham shows five limbs branching off to the left, feminine side, of the main stave. From this great guardian tree you become aware of the five ways; the way into the past, to the convocation of the ancestors in the great orchards of the inner knowledge; the way to the present, to the growing place where saplings are nurtured and developed; the way to the future, to the harvest hall of plenty, also the cold, dormant place of waiting and seeding and; and finally, the way to the inner grove of order in which many fruits may be harvested.

The fruit of the Quert provides us sustenance and inspiration. What's more, it provides a link to mystical places where we can gain insight into our own past, present and future! This is also the Muin or Vine Moon. Vine is the tree of joy and exultation. Interwoven like knot work, the Vine is a symbol of the intricacies of the subjective world made manifest in the objective. The Vine Moon is the moon of the harvest, the time when the energies of the Earth begin to turn inward in contemplation of the winter to come, and to prepare for the rebirth of the spring. Wine from the grape vine is the fermented essence of the harvest containing the secrets of divine ecstasy. Muin is the ritual libation, sacred to the Gods and Goddesses. The Vine is also a symbol of the intertwining of the conscious and unconscious mind. It is a sign of liberation from inhibitions and restricting knowledge and actions. It is a gentle and systematic release from the constraints of logic and rationality. This liberation does not come through an abandonment of logic, or a drunken suppression of control, but through the full understanding of the interweaving of the inner and outer, the upper and lower realms. The Vine grows in a spiral, and is therefore representative of the unending dance of life, death and rebirth. While the apple can be the gateway to the Otherworld, the Vine spirals throughout the realms, and can serve us as a guide inward and then back again.