October 21 – The Apple and the Veil

Apple magic, offerings to the dead, and wisdom of Avalon.

There is no fruit more sacred to October than the apple. It ripens just as the year begins to wane, a final gift of sweetness before the frost. To bite into an apple now is to taste sunlight remembered — the warmth of summer caught within a thin red skin. In old myth, the apple has always been a symbol of mystery: knowledge, immortality, the bridge between worlds. On this twenty-first day of October, when the veil grows thinner and the breath of the dead stirs the leaves, the apple becomes the key to passage — a small, perfect globe connecting earth and spirit, life and death, human and divine.

The Celts called this the fruit of the Otherworld. In their stories, Avalon — the Isle of Apples — was the place where souls journeyed after death, a land of eternal healing and rest. It was said that the priestesses of Avalon tended orchards whose blossoms never faded and whose fruit could grant wisdom or rebirth. In every bite was a revelation. When the mists of autumn rolled in, they were believed to be the breath of Avalon drifting across the mortal world, calling us to remember that death is only another shore.

Cut an apple crosswise and you will find a five-pointed star hidden in its heart. This secret geometry is one reason it has long been considered magical. The five seeds echo the pentagram — the symbol of balance between the elements and the human form itself. To reveal this star is to open a doorway between realms, a reminder that magic often hides in the ordinary. The apple is both fruit and portal, nourishment and offering. It belongs to both the living and the dead.

In many old Samhain customs, apples played a central role in connecting the two worlds. They were placed on graves or floating in bowls of water to honor wandering spirits. Families would leave an apple on the table overnight as food for ancestors returning through the veil. In divination, apples revealed truths of love and destiny — a peel tossed over the shoulder might spell a future lover’s initial, while seeds dropped into fire told of wishes that would come true. Beneath the playfulness of these rites was reverence. The apple was the mediator of fate, the fruit of the threshold.

Tonight, you might create a simple ritual with this ancient fruit. Choose an apple that feels heavy and whole in your hand. Wash it gently and hold it before you as twilight gathers. Speak aloud your gratitude — for the harvest, for the earth that bore it, for the unseen hands that tended it. Then, with a steady breath, cut it crosswise to reveal the hidden star. Let the sight of that small perfection remind you that every ending conceals a new beginning. Place one half on your altar or windowsill as an offering to the ancestors, and eat the other half slowly, mindfully. With each bite, imagine the wisdom of the season filling you — the calm acceptance of change, the peace that comes with cycles completed.

If you keep an ancestral altar, apples make ideal offerings during this time. Their sweetness bridges sorrow and gratitude, reminding us that remembrance need not be mournful. Arrange them in threes or fives, numbers of harmony and protection. You may carve a symbol into their skin — a spiral for rebirth, a heart for love, or simply the initials of those you wish to honor. Leave them overnight, then bury them beneath a tree in the morning. As the fruit returns to the soil, the offering completes itself — life feeding life again.

Apples are also used in magical work for wisdom and insight. They are sacred to many deities of knowledge and love — to Hera and Aphrodite, to Bran the Blessed, to the Lady of Avalon herself. You may use them in divination tonight by floating several in a bowl of water and marking each with a sigil or rune that represents a question. Gently stir the water and observe which apple drifts toward you first. Its mark holds your answer. The water and the fruit together become oracles, mirroring the balance of emotion and matter, intuition and understanding.

The apple also carries the memory of the human story — the ancient tale of temptation, awakening, and the cost of knowledge. Whether seen as a fall or a blessing, that myth reminds us that to seek truth is to accept transformation. When you bite into the fruit, you claim the power to see beyond illusion. This is the heart of the season — the courage to look past appearances and accept what lies beneath. The veil does not separate only the living from the dead; it separates ignorance from wisdom, and fear from understanding. Each time you choose to see clearly, you lift a corner of it.

As the night deepens, the scent of apples and woodsmoke mingles in the air — a perfume of memory that feels older than language. It calls to something ancestral within us, something that remembers orchards under moonlight and hands weaving garlands for unseen guests. In this atmosphere, the boundary between the worlds feels as fragile as breath. If you listen, you might hear a rustling that is not just wind, or feel the faint warmth of presence beside you. Offer a quiet word: “To those who came before, I give thanks. May this fruit guide you home, and may your wisdom dwell within me.”

When morning comes, you may take the seeds from your ritual apple and plant them in the earth. This simple act binds the magic of remembrance to renewal. As the seeds rest through the winter and awaken in spring, they carry forward the love and prayers you offered. The cycle continues — life, death, and life again — all within the small, perfect shape of a seed.

The apple’s lesson is gentle but profound. It tells us that sweetness and sorrow are not opposites but companions. That endings, when honored, become beginnings. That within every heart — human or fruit — there is a hidden star. To see it, you must cut to the core, past surface and skin, past what is merely seen. The veil grows thin, but so too does our resistance to truth. When you eat of the apple, do so not with fear of consequence, but with reverence for revelation.

May this day remind you that wisdom is never lost — it only waits to be tasted again. May the fruit of the earth nourish you, the spirits of the dead bless you, and the star within every apple guide your steps through the lengthening shadows of October.