Apples

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It has been a number of years since I felt the excitement that the change of season brings. Living many years in a climate where the change in seasons is fairly drastic has been an experience I have loved. Living in Chico, California is much more temperate than Mt. Shasta City. We now enjoy an amazinag growing season and trees and beautiful landscaping design everywere. It is such a beautiful little city with a wicked hot summertime... and it's end is indeed WELCOME. I do miss my apple trees...

Apples are at the forefront of my mind when Fall approaches. I have many apple memories ....picking apples off my trees, picking many rotten apples off the ground and tossing them over the fence...(shhh!) The sweet and cidery smell that my basement had when I stored boxes of apples over the winter. Drying apples, making applesauce and apple pie and every kind of apple dessert imaginable.

Apple Pie.... my favorite. No I'm not going to post a recipe. I am proud to say that I can peel, core and slice an apple in 30 seconds. No fancy tool needed. But alas...that was the old me and I have changed and am NOT the baker I was. In fact it has been a number of years since I last peeled an apple!

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The Isle of Apples

Avalon means the Isle of Apples, a fruit sacred to the Dark Goddess. Celtic Kings received the Goddess's magical apples of immortality and went away to live with Her in the Hollow Hills. An apple was given to the Kings of Britain to signify their sacred marriage to the Goddess of the land. The apple which Eve gave to Adam was the maligned Goddess's sacred fruit of eternal life.
Cutting an apple across reveals the magical pentacle of the core, the Virgin Kore, Morgana, the underworld Goddess hidden within Demeter, the Earth Mother. This five-pointed star in a circle was the Egyptian hieroglyph for the underworld womb of transformation. Avalon is such a place of transformation.
Cutting an apple across reveals the fivefold pips which form a pentacle, the symbol of Kore, the Dark Virgin Goddess. Apples were thereby thought to be dangerous fruit.
Apple games are played on Hallowe'en at the end of October, during the Samhain Festival, which is sacred to the Crone Goddess. In patriarchal folklore apples were dangerous fruit, the Old Woman's apple was often poisonous. http://www.kathyjones.co.uk/

The Isle of Avalon means the Isle of Apples and today the slopes of the island are still covered in small apple osrchard. Photo by Simant Bostock

AUTUMN EQUINOX

On September 22nd of 2009, we celebrate the Fall or Autumn Equinox also known as Mabon, Wine Harvest, Feast of Avalon, Alban Elved, Alban Elfed, Mehregan, the Higan-e and Winter Finding depending on the derivation. Whatever the origins, the Autumn Equinox is universally observed as a time for celebration and gratitude of both harvests and of the hearth as a symbol of family, friends and the home. The name "equinox" itself is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), therefore the length of night and day, light and dark are equal. On the day of the fall solstice, the sun enters the sign of Libra: the constellation appropriately represented as scales and balance. It is also associated with apples as potent symbols of death, rebirth and transformation. (Avalon is one of the Celtic names given for the Island of the Blessed Dead and literally means the "land of apples.") examiner.com

Here the nights are cooler, the air smells like dried plants and dust. The Earth is spent. The harvest is in and I am weighing, measuring and evaluating this years crop. I am offering thanks and am in awe of such bounty! I will go inward and check in with myself and see where I am going now. Time to be still and see where the balance is. Then.....I will make pie.

Have a wonderful Fall Equinox!!

~~~Ragna xo