Douking for Apples
Digital Painting
Douking or ‘dooking’ is the same word used to describe dunking a woman in water to test if she might be a witch. Apples are symbolic to the core,; chop one in half and notice the pentagram seed formation....this was a celtic fertility symbol associated with Roman Goddess Pomona. Later, becoming the more familiar apotropaic symbol in folk magic used to ward of evil influences. Eventually we reach the neopagan representation of the five elements. A popular Samhain tradition is to ‘bob for apples’ but the roots of this game lie in divination and portrayal as ‘’food of the dead’.. Apples were strung up and twirled so that they spin in front of a fire, the order the apples fell told of the order each person who hung them would marry. My Painting explores the two outcomes to testing a witch and explores bewitching bond between the witch and this fruit.