The native apple
tree of the British Isles is the small crab apple tree. Its'
fruit is bitter but still useful for jelly and wine. The tree
tends to occur singly (when not being deliberately cultivated)
and in eastern England it has been calculated to occurr naturally
at approximately one tree for every ten acres. It burns well
and smells good though, as a sacred tree, there were penalties
for cutting it down in ancient times
The tree ogham
is queirt or apple: 
or 
(depending on whether the ogham is being written vertically or
horizontally). One reference to the apple ogham is as a 'shelter
for a wild hind'.
Shamans and poets
carried an apple branch to signify their office but in the mythic
tales the apple appears within an otherworld context a couple
of times. In the Land of Promise a warrior carried a silver branch
with three golden apples on it and this made lovely music which
inspired joy, whilst in the Isle of Women an Otherworld woman
appeared bearing a sacred apple branch. Steve Blamires has suggested
that the apple tree can be used as a calling sign to the Otherworld
that you wish to enter their realm. The word Avalon is actually
derived from an Old Irish word meaning "place of apples".
Sources:
Steve Blamires, Celtic Tree Mysteries: Secrets of the Ogham,
(Llewelyn 1997)
Edred Thorsson, The Book of Ogham, (Llewelyn 1992)
Helen McSkimming, The Trees of the Celtic Alphabet, (Dalriada
1992)
J. Edward Milner, The Tree Book, (Collins & Brown 1992)
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The Apple and the Mirror
I found this
little ritual on a website which I will link at the bottom. I
wrote Mara and ask her about the origin of this ritual and she
said that it's an adaptation of an old Scottish Samhain ritual.
Before the stroke
of midnight, sit in front of a mirror in a room lit only by one
candle or the moon. Go into the silence, and ask a question.
Cut the apple into nine pieces. With your back to the mirror,
eat eight of the pieces, then throw the ninth over your left
shoulder. Turn your head to look over the same shoulder, and
you will see and in image or symbol in the mirror that will tell
you your answer.
(When
you look in the mirror, let your focus go "soft," and
allow the patterns made by the moon or candlelight and shadows
to suggest forms, symbols and other dreamlike images that speak
to your intuition.)
Copyright Mara
Freeman, 1999 (used by permission)
http://www.chalicecenter.com/
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The
Sacred Apple
Stories about
the Apple are often encountered in folklore. The Apple is considered
as Underworld fruit, food of the gods and the dead. An apple
cut crosswise reveals a five-point star, symbolic of Woman and
Goddess at the centre. Apples also symbolise love and temptation,
as the stories of the Judgement of Paris and Genesis portray.
In the Greek
myth Paris, a mortal man must choose which of the goddesses Hera,
Athene or Aphrodite is the most beautiful. Overcome by the intoxicating
beauty of the goddess of love and seduced by her promise to give
him a woman as beautiful as herself, Paris awards the prize of
the golden apple to Aphrodite. The goddess gives Helen to Paris.
Thus begins the Trojan war -- for the most lovely of mortal women,
Helen, is already married to someone else. In Genesis, Eve offers
Adam an apple -- the forbidden fruit. This illustrates woman
as initiatrix -- certainly not evil, merely grossly misrepresented
by a paranoid, patriarchal outlook.
In some stories
apples are the food of
the people of Faerie and anyone who enters the Otherworld must
avoid them, or they will never return to their own place and
time. Thus the apple is a fruit of transformation. Apples also
mean fertility, and sometimes thirteen apples were buried after
the harvest had been gathered to ensure next year's yield would
be good.
Source of information
"Wheel of the Year"
Myth and Magic
through the Seasons
by Teresa Moorey
and Jane Brideson
Hodder &
Stoughton ISBN 0-340-68386-4
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