Douking for Apples; food for the dead….

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.

Douking for Apples Painting

My own mashup of wassail/winter solstice does bring it forward a month, but a great excuse to get the fire blazing and have a boaty get together. This year we offered scribbles on lanterns to the harvest gods.

I can’t illustrate an apple without a nod to the tradition of the apple wassail; as revellers parade to the village orchard (or in my case the towpath), there is song and merriment and offerings of cider-soaked bread. There is not an elderly or ‘most productive’ Apple tree by my boat and so we hang the treats from branches of hawthorn instead. Hoping that to bless the trees shall bring a bountiful harvest……

Come morning the robins are having a fabulous feast (and so they deserve it, being teeny guardians of the orchard/towpath)

A true wassail occurs on twelfth night, and as a January event-we also conjure Janus; the two-faced ancient Roman god of beginnings, transitions, gates, doors, time, and endings. Looking toward both the past and the future, (with varying degrees of delerium according to my painting)- he is the namesake of January, symbolizing dualities such as war and peace, and life and death.

Animating my dual faced witch’s apple seemed an obvious next step…..

My Painting explores the two outcomes to testing a witch and explores bewitching bond between the witch and this fruit.

A communal mulled cider gets a pass around and some seasonal words of wisdom are read around a fire. A midwinter ceremony to honour the apple!.