Hercules and the Apples of immortality

There are countless myths and legends in cultures all over the world of heroes setting out on quests full of seemingly impossible tasks. These stories are often multi-layered and resonate on a deep level to our own personal life journey, as we encounter the profound mysteries of this amazing world.
The Greek mythological hero Hercules sets off on a quest to fulfill twelve heroic labours in as many years. The twelve seemingly impossible tasks are imposed upon him as a penance for slaying his wife and children in a fit of madness.

The eleventh task requires of him to win the golden apples from a sacred tree, which confers immortality, in the gardens of the Hesperides (who are “the daughters of the West!”). This involves many trials, tribulations and trickery not the least of which is slaying the hundred-headed serpent, which guards the tree.

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The tree of paradise and the serpent.

Many paradisiacal gardens from cultures all over the world have a special central sacred tree and a serpent associated with it. In temperate climates this tree will usually be an apple tree, elsewhere it may be a fruit tree, which plays an equally important role in the indigenous way of life. 
The poet and mythical scholar Robert Graves notes that Hercules, who won the apples of immortality, is a personification of the energies of Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo is the Greek Sun-god of patriarchal civilisation, twin-brother to Artemis, who is the goddess of the virginal wilderness and the Moon. Dionysus is a goat-God, an unruly spirit, representing the energies of creativity, agility and fertility. Apollo also slayed a serpent, the Python, and usurped her power. It is interesting that his name is derived from the European linguistic root ‘apol’ (apple) and also that the Greek words for ‘goat’ and ‘apple’ are identical: ‘melon’.

The question arises why so many heroes seem to be destined to fight with the serpents all over the world. It is an important question to ask, because the serpent is an ancient symbol of the life force itself.
The theme of the battle between hero or saint with a serpent or dragon occurs all over the world. The Irish have St. Patrick, the English have St. George, and in India both Vishnu and Krishna have battled with serpents. In Mexico the great spirit Teotl crushed a serpent and in Scandinavia the God Thor bruised the great serpent with his mace. And these examples are just a few from a long list.

The stories are often portrayed as the triumph of light over darkness, or the victory of reason (the left brain) over the totality of our senses (the right brain), or the conquest of civilisation over virginal wilderness, etc.
Yet, there is no denying that the serpent is an archetypal symbol of immense stature all over the world. Its movements are wave-like, reminiscent of the flow of life-giving water. It represents eternity as the snake, which eats its own tail. It symbolises healing, as it is able to renew itself by sloughing its own skin. It epitomises wisdom, as one of the oldest creatures in our evolutionary history. In its coiled up form it stood for the womb and the female organs. In its erect form is resembles the male phallus. Its double tongue and dual nature reminds us that life is the dance of two energies: Yin and Yang, Female and Male. Both female and male deities have often been portrayed as serpents. Two snakes intertwined around a tree or a wand, are the universal logo of natural healing. It resembles the structure of DNA and the creative vortex. Legend has it that the Buddha once changed himself into a snake to heal the people.
And so it seems far too simplistic and naive to suppose, that fighting the creative force represented by the serpent can be reduced to resisting temptation.

The myth of the serpent slayers has many multiple layers of meaning.
One is the usurping of power by a new force from an older energy. Another is the so-called “triumph of light over darkness”. Alas, this is a false victory, because light and darkness are not enemies, because together they create one holy circle. The dance of black and white vortexing in and out of each other is the dance of life.
Another deeper meaning can be uncovered by the observation that the serpent-destroying hero is virtually always represented as enduring hardship and sufferings that lead to his own demise or death. Yet, the serpent will inevitably renew itself, no matter how many of its heads are cut off, because it is the symbolic essence and guardian spirit of free flowing energy, of life itself.

It is a sad fact that only by engaging in these great cycles of destruction and renewal many people seem to get a glimpse of the greater whole and the immortality contained therein. Maybe the remarkable fascination with the great epics of heroes and saints is also about the paradox of how like can cure like. In suffering and dying we are destined to destroy our great fear of death and annihilation.
It is one thing to engage in dangerous quests to climb Everest, or sail single-handedly around the world, explore the boundaries of consciousness by taking drugs and other pursuits where human abilities and endurance is stretched so far that it can’t but help glimpsing a different dimension. These are expeditions and trips where individuals look into the great abyss.
But it is another to force the whole world on a breath-taking journey in which we face annihilation of our species.

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The lesson of the Apple tree

Once more, in the long history of the rise and fall of ‘civilisations’ have we come to a point where we are trying to crush the guardian life force of this world by mastering Nature.
By trickery and physical might we are once again engaged in a truly global scale in the conquest of the great serpent of evolution.
Nuclear weapons, Germ warfare capabilities, ‘Star-wars’, Genetic engineering, Cloning, the reckless irresponsible use of resources, animals, water and land are a few examples.

There is absolutely no doubt about who will win this battle in the long run. A wise person said that if we win the war we have declared on Nature, we will be on the losing side!! She is older and wiser than we are and will renew herself.
And the human race is doing great harm to itself by thinking of the serpent as a monster, which needs to tamed and fought. The trees, which the serpent is guarding, do not only grow in Paradise, but are able to create a paradise right here and now on this Earth. Their great gifts have made our ‘civilisation’ possibly and are fundamental to our survival in the future.

It seems to me that as the most widely cultivated of all trees, the Apple has a great lesson to teach us. No matter how clever we think we are to have created our thousands of carefully bred cultivars, the fact is that even the most luscious, biggest shiniest, juiciest perfect apple has been grown largely, due to the vigour of the natural life force flowing through the tree! 
The choice we have is to fight the life force, each other, the land, the sky and space and be doomed. Or we can aim to understand it, love it and become part of its evolutionary genius. The latter will mean rising above and beyond superficial trickery and short-term patches, where we stumble from one unsatisfactory solution to the next in an ever-greater complexity of disasters.
It will mean a whole different technology and a whole altered approach to the problems we face. Instead of trying to achieve gain and growth by destruction, exploitation, rape and suppression, competition and so on, we have to look at ways of achieving gain and growth by loving, nurturing, compassion, sharing and becoming at one with the guardian serpent of the sacred tree.

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Eve and Adam eat the fruit of life

In the biblical story of the Fall from Paradise, Eve, encouraged by the tempting whisperings of the serpent, offers Adam the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. Together they eat the fruit with the result, that they are driven out of the Garden of Eden.

“And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman. You shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” (Genesis 3: 4-5)

The fruit is not identified in the Bible, and so Europeans have always filled this in by calling it the apple, base on their own Pagan Paradise Tradition. We need not argue about whether it was an apple, a fig or any other fruit, because they are all symbols for the same thing: “getting a taste for the fruit of life”. 

The story of Adam and Eve pre-dates Judaism and Christianity by thousands of years. Eve is the Great Goddess, initiating Adam into her mysteries. Please see also the The Pippala tree and the two birds reference in our pages on Buddha and the Bodhi Tree for an interpretation from Hinduism.

The Old Testament is of course much older than Christianity and has been translated, edited and revamped on numerous occasions, according to the fashions and understanding of the time.
Mythological scholarship helps us to understand the poetic parable of the fall from paradise. The garden of Eden, like Avalon, the Elysian Fields, the Hesperides and Asgard is the ‘Otherworld’, a healing, womb-like space from which all life came and to which all will return. It is the magic cauldron of transformation, which hold all the potential of life ‘in suspension’ (thus the potential lion and the potential lamb can lie peacefully together) until it emerges renewed or in new forms and combinations.

Many metaphors have been used to describe this ‘space’: Paradise, the Garden, the (Apple) Orchard, the Great Mothers womb, the Abyss, the Void, Zero, the Eternal Hunting Fields, the Western Isles, Heaven, Hell, and –just as an example of a more modern metaphor- the Compost Heap. Most people these days simply call it ‘Death’, but that may be a rather limited one-sided interpretation of the process.
The serpent is the Life force, often maligned and even called ‘the Devil’ (which is a rather derogatory and ungracious way to treat the gift of Life), because the serpents eat its own tail. All life feeds on other life. The fruit of life is good or evil, depending on whether you are the eater of life or the life being eaten!
When Eve offered Adam the apple growing ‘in the midst’ of the Garden, she offered him sexual intercourse. When they ate the fruit together, they created life and all consciousness, beauty and sadness that go with it, including death.
The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad are one.

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Mrs. Wholesome and the Apple orchard – a fairy tale

One of my favourite childhood stories is the tale of ‘Frau Holle’, a popular and widespread legend on the North-European continent. It is interesting for us here, because it is one of the few surviving stories of an Apple orchard in the Otherworld. The orchard is the home of ‘Frau Holle’, which means literally Mrs. Holy or Mrs. Wholesome.
The word ‘holle’ covers both fullness and hollowness, for she is none other then Hella, Hel or Hulda herself, the great Goddess of the Centre of All Things, the Hearth, the power, which transforms us all. She is the womb from which we come and to which we shall return. Because Hella personifies the energy of transformation, she is the fire at the heart of every energy process, including our digestion, the compost heap and our death and renewal. In Greek mythology she was known as Hestia, in Rome she was Vesta. Her name is related to the word ‘Helios’, meaning Sun.
Her eternally burning fires were degraded by Christian theologians into the concept of Hell.

Hella is both beautiful as well as terrifying, because whatever she creates, she will –sooner or later- have to break down again in order to create new life. She is pure process. She changes everything she touches.
My friend, Monica Sjöö, who was brought up in Sweden tells me there are many Scandinavian stories of people meeting the Goddess in the woods. Men are prone to fall deeply in love with her when they see her. Her front presents the loveliest and most beautiful woman one could ever hope to behold, but her back is hollow, or it is rotten, decaying, stinking flesh with maggots feeding on it.
Sometimes she is a ‘normal’ young woman of exquisite beauty, who is irresistible, loving and kind and sparkling with life force. A man might stay the night with her and feel utterly fulfilled in her intimate presence. However, usually he finds that on waking, in the cold light of dawn, he is holding an old wrinkled crone without teeth.

So much to introduce Mrs. Wholesome. Here is our story:

A beautiful, hardworking, loving girl has lost her Mother in death and now lives with her lazy stepmother and stepsister, who treat her miserably and make her work like a slave for them. One day she sits spinning by the well until her hands bleed. She tries to wash the blood of the spindle, when accidentally the spindle falls out of her hand and falls into the water.
She does not dare to go home without it and jumps into the well in a desperate attempt to retrieve it. She sinks right down and looses consciousness. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a magnificent Apple orchard, bathing in warm sunlight.
One of the Apple trees is so heavily laden with ripe fruit, that the boughs are burdened and sighing with the effort of carrying it. The apples say “Shake us, shake us, we are all rip.” The girl shakes and shakes as hard as she can, until it rains with apples. She continues until all the apples are frees of the tree. Then she stacks the fruit up in neat piles.
She walks on and sees a large bread-oven by the side of the path. The bread inside is whispering moan-fully: “I am done, take me out before I burn.” The girl responds quickly and empties the hot oven. She puts all the perfectly baked bread to cool on racks.
She walks on again and sees a cottage and its inhabitant: an old lady with rosy apple cheeks and absolutely enormous teeth. The girl is frightened of the huge teeth, but the old woman makes her warmly welcome. Mrs. Wholeness, for that is who she is, tells the girl she can stay as long as she likes, for besides appreciating her company, the old lady would be glad to have some help with the house work and all the jobs that need doing in the orchard. The girl accepts this offer gladly and settles down into a contented life. Helping Mrs. Wholesome in whatever way she is able. One of the important jobs they have to do, when refreshing their beds every morning, is shaking the feather beds very carefully from the upstairs window of the cottage. This makes it snow on Earth and if it is done too roughly, it could cause blizzards!

After carrying on like this for quite some time, Mrs. Wholesome notices that the girl, although helpful as ever, has sometimes a far-away look in her eyes. They talk about it and the girl says she sometimes wonders how things are back home. She misses her family, even if they were often cruel to her and would like to see them again. The old woman says she will show her the way back home. She takes the girl by the hand and leads her to a great door in the orchard. She gives her the spindle back and says: “And you shall have your reward for your loving labour.” As the girl walks through the door, she is generously showered in fine gold, which clings to her. She is received well at home, for now she is a walking treasure!

The stepmother wants her own daughter to gain the same great wealth and orders her to do as her sister did: Spin by the well, and so on. The story repeats the jump down the well, the waking in the orchard, the life with Mrs. Wholesome, but with a difference. The lazy sister can’t be bothered to shake the Apple tree in case the apples fall on her head, she does not take the bread out of the oven for fear of burning herself. She works with the old woman doing the chores for a day or so, only because she is desirous of the gold to come. She gets increasingly lazy and spends most of her days in bed in the cosy cottage. She is glad when Mrs. Wholesome sends her home, anticipating the same treasure as her sister received for her visit to the orchard. But as she walks through the arched door, sticky pitch falls upon her and it would never wash off again.

A version of this story appears in the English translation of the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. However, Frau Holle’s name is translated as ‘Mother Frost’. This does not complete justice to all the different aspects of Mrs. Wholesome. She is far more than the force behind the cleansing, bitter winter cold. In the Grimm version the orchard has changed into a flowering meadow. Beautiful as meadows can be, this is also a loss of symbolism, for meadows are literally places, which are for ‘mowing’. And may we remember again that the word ‘field’ comes from ‘felled’. It is a place where the trees have been felled. I believe that the little book I read so often in my childhood, contains an older version of the tale, in which Mrs. Wholesome was still recognised as the spirit of the Apple Orchard, the Lady of Avalon, an awesome healer, as well as being the cold force of destruction.

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