Home is Where You Hang Your Head
Apple magic for when fall threatens to enchant you.
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
An apple tree stands tall.
With each bite, sweet memories,
Of home, they gently call." - Emily Dickinson
I am always homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. Not because it’s been torn down or changed or been swindled by a con man selling musical instruments, but because it’s never existed. It’s a world I built out of all of the places I’ve lived and places I’ve seen on postcards.
I tell people I’m from the Rust Belt because that’s ~mostly~ true. Sorta. But really I’m not from anywhere and nowhere I’ve lived would really claim me as “theirs.”
So home is a patchwork construction of my childhood in New England, teen years in flyover country, the places my parents grew up, the distant country of my birth, and every home I built for myself as an adult.
Mostly that comes out in missing food and sounds and scenes. Missing thunderstorms or the steel gray water of the Atlantic Ocean, or the soft egg noodles of Cleveland Paprikash. Home is a garden gate that I am always walking through as a wayward traveler to an enthusiastic house that is always happy to see me and welcoming me back with scents and sounds and laughter.
Lately, I’ve been missing apples. I love Oakland, and California in general, but our apple game isn’t impressive. There are few trees around and everything in the store is mealy and mysteriously always out of season. It’s the tradeoff for eternal citrus. And as the cup of the year starts to tip and empty in the darkness of winter, the days growing gradually shorter and the temperature flirting with chill, as a witch I want to be offering apples. I want to be eating apple cider donuts, stuffing compote into pastry, walking down a windy street inserting my incisors through the skin of a McIntosh.
I am missing the liminal space of autumn as we lull in the post-high summer sun.
Apple magic teeters between love and hate. Marriage and hexing. In English Biblical interpretation, it’s forbidden fruit, worth knowing sin for. In Norse mythology, the gods remain young by eating enchanted apples protected by goddess Ydun. In folk magic, name an apple after your crush and counting seeds to see how many children you’ll have. In cursing, an apple head doll as a poppet to enact sadism and comeuppance.
I recently taught a class on love magic, and while I focused a lot on oil making (DIY love drawing oil kits available at Hidden Hand), I’ve been thinking about apples as love spells. How it’s a ward against disease, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and how warm cinnamon apple cider can heal a broken heart. How apples are the food of wisdom, of grandmas, and featured on some of the ugliest wallpaper I’ve ever seen.
But I don’t want the apples of California; I want the apples of a foreign country that is also imaginary. Golden apples hidden in groves stumbled upon by the pure of heart. Apple trees populated by haunted birds that heckle you as you collect for your magical cider press. The moonlit spot you meet your true love to run away together.
I’m personally more attached to the animism of memory and story. Apples make me think of home, wherever that is. And lately, I’m just feeling a little homesick for a place where the apples are ready to be picked, the donut oven is warm and filling the air with fragrance of sugar and dough, and where witches whistle past a small graveyard munching on honeycrisp and pocketing one for later.
UPDATES: I have a deck of spells coming out with Simon and Schuster that will guide you through rituals to find love, get more money, help manage disease, and feel more in control of your life. And it’s now available for preorder. I’m offering a promo right now that if you send me a receipt from your preorder, I’ll give you a free one card tarot reading. Reach out to doyouwanttodosomewitchcraft@gmail.com for more info.
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