Apple (symbolism)

Ethnobotanical and ethnomycological scholars such as R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck and Clark Heinrich write that the mythological apple is a symbolic substitution for the entheogenic Amanita muscaria (or fly agaric) mushroom.

[2][3][4] At times artists would co-opt the apple, as well as other religious symbology, whether for ironic effect or as a stock element of symbolic vocabulary.

[5] The classical Greek word μῆλον (mēlon), or dialectal μᾶλον (mālon), now a loanword in English as melon, meant tree fruit in general,[6] but was borrowed into Latin as mālum, meaning 'apple'.

The phrase 'the apple of your eye' comes from verses in Deuteronomy 32:10, Psalm 17:8 Proverbs 7:2, and Zechariah 2:8, implying an object or person who is greatly valued.

According to legend, when the marriage of Zeus and Hera took place, the different deities came with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them Gaia, with branches bearing golden apples upon them as a wedding gift.

Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard.

[8] The Greek hero Heracles, as a part of his Twelve Labours, was required to travel to the Garden of the Hesperides and pick the golden apples off the Tree of Life growing at its center.

Melanion, a name possibly derived from melon the Greek word for both "apple" and fruit in general), who defeated her by cunning, not speed.

Hippomenes knew that he could not win in a fair race, so he used three golden apples (gifts of Aphrodite, the goddess of love) to distract Atalanta.

[10] In Norse mythology, Iðunn, the goddess of eternal youth, is the keeper of an eski (a wooden box made of ash wood and often used for carrying personal possessions) full of apples eaten by the gods when they begin to grow old, rendering them young again.

Gangleri (described as King Gylfi in disguise) states that it seems to him that the gods depend greatly upon Iðunn's good faith and care.

After borrowing Freyja's falcon skin, Loki liberated Iðunn from Þjazi by transforming her into a nut for the flight back.

Þjazi gave chase in the form of an eagle, whereupon reaching Ásgarðr he was set aflame by a bonfire lit by the Æsir.

[12] English scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson notes a connection between apples and the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility in Norse mythology, citing an instance of eleven "golden apples" being given to woo the beautiful Gerðr by Skírnir, who was acting as messenger for the major Vanir god Freyr in stanzas 19 and 20 of the poem Skírnismál.

[13] The Norse kenning apples of Hel (epli Heljar) occurs in a piece by the skald Þórbjörn Brúnason embedded in the Heiðarvíga saga.

For unmarried recipients the apples would be placed under their pillows in the hope that they would bring dreams of their future wife or husband.

[20] In the Arthurian mythos, the island of Avalon is considered the Isle of Apples, and its very name, originally Welsh, refers to the fruit.

[23] In North America a Native American is called an "apple" (a slur that stands for someone who is "red on the outside, white on the inside.")