Of Pentacles And Apples

I came upon an interesting tidbit about Pentagrams and their association with apples ( a Pentacle is the five pointed star and a Pentagram is the same five pointed star enclosed in a circle) and believe it or not had never heard of the Pagan lore attached to it. As follows is a (not so ) brief summary of it's origins in Pagan history


Think of an apple... juicy and red and ripe for the picking. When it is sliced in half, it magically shows us a five pointed star formed by the seeds inside. Each of these five seeds contain a symbolism reflecting the spiritual aspects of this universal symbol: idea; sustenance; life, secret knowledge and the hidden mysteries within the earth.


Remember the story of Adam and Eve...? In Christian lore, the apple represented hidden knowledge which was forbidden to human kind and the apple signified that which we should not attempt to know ... and attempts over the centuries to obtain knowledge of the Universe ...and therefore, ourselves... were suppressed. The Pentagram in its modern guise as the pentacle was also a target of this subjugation.


The Pentagram was originally a symbol of the goddess, Kore, who was worshipped in many countries as widespread as England and Egypt thousands of years ago, but under many different names (i.e. Cara, Ceres, Carnak, Core, Car, Karnak, etc). Kore's sacred fruit was the apple. When cut through its equator, the apple has a near perfect pentagram shape inside, with each point containing a seed. Many Wiccans, Pagans and Roma (Gypsies) still cut apples in this way and the Roma refer to apple cores as Stars of Knowledge


Think of this next time you eat an apple.